Reached $1k MRR
by dqmonnJust ran the numbers, and I reached the goal that I had set for 2019 with a few months delay – I made over $1k MRR for the first time!
Now, this milestone is always a little bit tricky. For me personally, having people share this always made me a little anxious, and I'm sure there will be one or two other people who share this sentiment now, with this post. Especially when people reached this after 6 months or so, I felt like all I am doing must be wrong.
But don't forget this: It took me over 2 years to get here!
It took me so long because this is a project I started from zero. I had (almost) never made any money on the internet, and certainly didn't build anything with traction before. Plus, I was 18 or 19 when I started, was missing a TON of experience.
Overnight successes are not a thing. A project might reach this milestone in a month, or 6 months, or a year in the making, but it's rarely only that. Behind these products are also people who had dozens of failures and years of experience.
So, let's go into some of the issues that I have made over the past two years, and I hope it can help some of you not to do the same thing and hopefully reach this milestone faster:
- I built an extremely overblown MVP over a 4-5 month period, which slowed me down even after launch and often made no sense to customers
- I believed 'marketing' was plastering my site all over Reddit. I had to find channels that work for me in months of exploration work, produce a lot of content and make a lot of mistakes to find something that works. I am still finding new channels today (the latest one are Facebook groups who appreciate my content!)
- I was too scared to charge more for a long time, when most people didn't mind
- I wasn't ready to take big risks in fear of losing my tiny little MRR. If you don't live from this, take all the risks that you can. I should have experimented with business models, pricing and billing a lot earlier.
And finally, some things that I did right, and hope you will too:
- I didn't give up, even when it didn't grow for a long time
- I built an audience over the course of two years, wrote a ton of blogposts, collected a lot of e-mails, visited a few podcasts
- I always stayed true to the mission, made a lot of friends (your best ambassadors) that way.
- I read a lot, listened to people who went through it all before, avoided common mistakes
- Visited IndieHackers every day :)
-
2
Congrats on the milestone and thanks for sharing your learnings!
-
1
Sure, thanks for reading!
-
-
2
Well done! I love the "didn't give up" part ;)
What's the next goal? Do you believe you're going to be able to accelerate from there?
-
2
Going forward :) Let's see where this leads to.
I believe it's not going to take another two years to put another $1k on top. I have channels that work, traffic that is very predictable, a powerful mailing list and more and more a budget to get help on board. It feels in my control.
It's going to be a time of less coding, less exploration, and more marketing. I hope to invest a bit of energy in community building as well. I know that the software works, it's time to scale it.
That being said, not in a rush to get to $10k MRR in a year and possibly risk quality and integrity, but I expect things to go quicker now.
-
-
1
just a question, were you committed full time or was it a side project, if it was part time, for how long, and how would you comment on doing it part time, any advices?
-
1
Good job mate! It's so true, thats there are no overnight success. Keep up the good work! :D
-
1
Good job - marketplaces are not easy!
Do you need more mentors? I saw that you don't have marketing-related mentors. I have mentored before and always loved to do it, would love to help on your platform too if you need to.
Cheers! -
1
Congratulations Dominic!
This is so awesome!
I love that you made the hardest thing in the world work - a two-sided market, not an easy journey!
I'd guess the harder part is the demand side - mentors are easier to recruit than clients?
I read your replies to some of the posts here - it seems you're doing the right thing and doubling down on marketing - I'd suggest doubling down on a VERY narrow market - developers? sales? marketing? business? It doesn't really matter - just make sure to conquer a beachhead and move from there.
Cheers
Jonathan-
1
Hey Jonathan!
Haha thanks! Yeah, today I realize how much easier it might have been to start with something one-sided. But that's the beautiful things I guess: The more experience we get, the more we shy away from the things we feel to be hard, and the less we get to experience.
Actually quite the other way around. It's really, really hard to find good mentors. Each mentor goes through an application process, is vetted and evaluated. Not a lot make it! On the other hand, once you get great mentors, the demand side basically fills itself. You are creating access to some of the best of their craft after all, who wouldn't be willing to pay for that?
The marketplace is already quite niched down to tech markets, so Engineering, UX/UI Design and Management specifically. Again, should probably have started with a JavaScript or Machine Learning mentorship site or something, but it is what it is.
-
1
Thanks for sharing - that makes sense!
What I meant is not "why didn't you" - which is never productive, but "why don't you" so to speak, leave the site as is but try to "dig in" into a specific venue and not have your marketing efforts spread thin.
f you'd like to talk about this a bit more, I'm doing (free) 30-min consults now - I'd love to hear more and maybe I can help - https://calendly.com/jonathanoron
-
-
-
1
Hey congrats! I think there is some very helpful wisdom in here that is good for any Maker new or already on their journey. Excited that you have hit this milestone. And you should not take anything away from how long it took because every product for every market is different.
You never know how early you are and I know I have in my own experience underestimated how much hard work it is to actually build something.
Looking forward to the next milestone!
-
1
Congrats, this is awesome! Very inspired by the success, and as a mentor on the platform (just got my first mentee this week 🎉) very inspired by the execution of the platform too!
-
1
Thats amazing to hear, on to 2k!
-
1
congrats! this is fantastic news!
-
1
Congrats on the milestone! That's big.
I didn't give up, even when it didn't grow for a long time
This seems to be so important, and a common theme throughout IH.
I'd love to hear more about why you didn't give up and move to something else. Were you getting positive feedback from early users that helped you push through? Were you just pushing through with sheer willpower?
-
2
Thank you!
Early, it was just a matter of customers and revenue numbers. For a long time, when I didn't really find a growth channel that would work, I was at this weird point of ~20 customers and $200 MRR. At that point, churn was too big and acquisition too low for anything to grow. But I had 20 customers, and they didn't seem too mad, so I kept going to see where it all led to.
I also told myself that I would shut it all down if I'd go back to under 10 customers, cause clearly it wouldn't stick, and also remember that I had a pretty bad week where I lost a few customers and maybe went back to 12? I was just hoping that it wouldn't go lower.
In the mid-term, maybe since the last year or so, it was feedback from mentees. The mentorships started to work out and actually produce success stories. People went from 0 to slaying technical interviews in a few months. They got jobs because of their mentors, got through difficult situations because of their mentors. I was begged not to ever shut the platform down, even. How could I say no to that?
It makes me think that I'll keep doing this for a long time.
-