Influence Grid

Congrats, Andy! It doesn't feel that long ago that I commented on your 10k ARR milestone :)

I think selling was probably a smart idea, one small change from TikTok (or wherever you're scraping from) and your whole business is in trouble. I've experienced similar frustrations with my own product (YT to IG) where Instagram have implemented various changes and restrictions.

Looking forward to seeing what you build next!

Newb question I know but what does "Invest in SEO early" mean exactly, buying add words? Adding the write meta data to the site? Please elaborate 🙏

Andy, I was going to build just this app. I did not understand how to monetize it and I thought it's best to use their api. But I could not find anything for it, so I put the idea on a backburner.

Never thought scraping would be a viable solution, but you've clearly proven me wrong. Congrats!!!

Hey Andy, congrats on your sale! Sounds like you made the right move.

Why did you choose the creator's niche? Any interest on particular or you just saw the opportunity?

I am super interested on Saas for creators as I think there's huge potential. Is your Next move on that direction?

Congrats Andy,
I remember reading your post in SaaS marketers a few weeks back.
I think your product was the first TikTok focused product.
Can't wait to see what you build next :)

Amazing learnings and success, Andy. Do you have any particular tips about selling your website? How did you approach finding a buyer? Which platform did you use etc.

Congrats! How did you come up with the idea?

congratulations!
how was the project transfer process? Do you use a dedicated email account and signed up with it for all-around services?
Have you used escrow service for transfer?

Thanks.

So much valuable stuff. I really hope you'll take some time to reflect on everything and share everything you remember. Congratulations.

Now do it again ;)

congratulations! seems like the right decision

Fantastic Andy! Congratulations, very happy for you mate 🥳

Massive congratulations Andy. Big fan of what you did with Influence Grid. It definitely fell into the category of a product I discovered when looking into doing something similar at the time. Really happy to see the validation in it and sale!

Amazing!!! Congrats Andy.
Any details how you sold it? Was it inbound?

About point #4, does that mean you weren't interested? Congrats by the way!

Congrats Andy! Thanks for sharing your SEO strategy as well.

I started earlier this year Growth Gems and only at $620 MRR so far...So this is inspiring.

Very timely product too, nicely done. Looking forward to what you're building next!

Congrats if you've managed to achieve what you wanted, but if you managed to grow from 0 to 3500MRR in ~6 months, selling for the future income of the next year seems like a net loss, unless your operation costs where prohibitively high.

On a related topic, how did you manage to get a buyer? Did you advertise you wanted to sell? Were you somehow audited? (checking you are not violating licenses, TOS, etc.?)

Nice job, and great learnings. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks for sharing this! How does SEO look like in your case, was it writing articles around a specific keyword like in the Tweet described, you have some examples of some you did?

Big congratulations Andy. I still have influence grid saved in my bookmark saved from an influencer campaign I ran, back when I discovered the tool. :D

Do you mind sharing what marketing budget per month you had including for SEO?

Also, How many keywords did you initially target?

Congrats again.

Cheers!

Would you mind sharing a link (or name) to the github repo you referenced in the Data Sourcing section #2 in the Google doc?

Congrats Andy! And thank you for all this information. The Google doc is an excellent guide.

Congrats, Andy! It seems like a really nice idea executed very well. All the best for your next project!

In one of the comments, you had mentioned about putting up some details in Google Docs about your product. If it isn't proprietary would you be able to share it here?

Congrats dude! 🥳

I'm sure you handled this properly, and I only ask because I look for buying opps but the buyer knows the risk that encompasses scraping and what that could negatively do to the current MRR if the platform changed?

Also, how did you find your buyer?

Congratulations :)
Neat react ux, love it.
Can you share some info about the tech stack you used?
It also looks like the webscraping was a massive work, what did you used and how hard was to develop it?

Congrats on your sale Andy!

Did you sign a non-compete? ;)

What do you think Ahrefs and Moz. have in common? :)

They scrape GOOGLE!!

Their MRR? 1M+ MRR. I wouldn't be too worried about it. Yes the scraping breaks sometimes but it's also where money is made. Doing things other people aren't doing.

Then again I can imagine it's a great feeling to have sold your first business! It can only get better! :)

Great to hear and also good advice - particularly the reality of big PH/HN launch vs long term SEO/direct outreach.

Congratulations Andy! This is great to read. Wishing you more success for the future

Nice job! Congratulations on the sale!

May i ask what other practices did you apply to get visitors to your page?

I'm feeling that with my current product, scraper.ai i have good conversions but driving traffic to it seems rather hard?

Congrats Andy, hope to see more awesome products from you!

Nice!! Can you tell from which source you got the sale?

Congrats Andy - great news. That's rapid progress from our IndieBeers interview back in February!

Congrats Andy! The next one seven figures. Any idea of the next venture?

Congratulations, Andy! That's some great advice!

We are working on a SaaS product called Browsee (https://browee.io) which helps products to improve User Experience using Session Recordings, Heatmaps, and Funnels. It is good to see other bootstrapped SaaS businesses doing well.

It would be great if you can give us some feedback on Browsee too!

Hi Andy,
This is genius,
Everybody is talking about Tiktok but brands don't know what to do with it but know they should.
You will be known as one of the Tiktok experts when it blows up, a bit like Ben from Makerpad in the Nocode space.
Well done!

Congrats, Andy!
I just wonder if you knew about this before you've started the project: https://influencermarketinghub.com/tiktok-influencer-marketing-platforms/

This is awesome! It isn’t just Vine’s natural successor, or a flash-in-the-pan fad for young audiences wanting more than selfies, but one of the first examples of a Chinese-developed, super smart, AI-powered product, that at its core is a content curation app, rather than simply social media.

Nice! What type of cold outreach? emails?

Congrats, Andy!

Congrats!!!

Congrats man! Anyone who can make money off of a two sided market place, is an absolute genius! This is a huge accomplishment. Best of luck to turning that 10kARR into 10kMRR.

Nice one, Andy! I love how the homepage is essentially a demo of the tool without having to signup. No BS funnels - I don't have to give you my name, email address and mother's maiden name before being able to try it out :)

Interested to know what your main method of customer acquisition is. SEO? Direct outreach?

Wow, great results in a short time! Congrats!

How did you gathered the info about the influencers?

HUGE! Congrats mate. Massive - slowly but surely

Congrats!

That is awesome!

Congrats Andy

Congrats on that Warner Music Group customer!!

Good stuff! I have 3 customers ATM.
I hear you about Stripe. I don't even myself get the emails when I get a new customer!
BTW, love your product, I'm 100% bullish on TikTok.

Hey Andy! Whats your email? Would love to chat I have some connections in the social media space I think you will find valuable in terms of connecting to large brands who are looking for influencers on TikTok.

So cool to have paid customers from first days. Where this paid customers came from?

Nice work! At 2 customers a week, you’ll be at 100 customers in a year!

Congrats!! 😀

Keep going Andy!

Hey Andy, is there a good email to contact you with? Would love to connect. :)

It feels amazing to win some skirmishes, but its important to press an advantage after small victories and prepare for bigger battles. You have not a bad product, you have lots of opportunity to maximize the retention of your users on the site by offering analytical tools and capabilities that the customers want. This will keep them dependent on you instead of exporting the data, and they will pay you for any convenience and intuitive tools that you can provide them.

Feedback loops - adding new functionality, measuring your retention, and growth are top priorities now - things get harder from here, not easier, but certainly more exciting.

Awesome, Andy!

Congrats for the progress and thanks for sharing that you've started without an account/profile section. I always thought it was necessary to have one at the beginning, but you've converted customers before that, which tells that we can still add value to our customers without all the necessary stuff!

Grats! Super innovative!

Kudos Andy!!

Very Cool! How you got the data?

Looks interesting.

One thing you could do is add an exit popup with a lead magnet (ebook, email course etc) with tips on how to use TikTok

Not everyone will be ready to sign up and look, but if you drip them information slowly should help.

Update: the industry journalist wrote the article a bit quicker than I expected! Still no signups yet but a great backlink if nothing else https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-app-lists-tiktok-influencers-by-engagement-topic-and-audience/568736/

Interesting I shared it with a Social Media manager friend.

For future iterations, I would suggest hiding the side menu and add a CTA to show it and also detect the user country and show him 5 top local influencers.

Best of luck!