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32 Comments

Reached $6000 MRR

Just hit $6k MRR roughly a year after launching.

Imgur

In between the launch a year ago and now, there has been a pivot, a rebrand, and a whole bunch of new features.

But you know what? In the last few months, going from $3k to $6k MRR, there's much less of a dramatic "startup" story to tell. I've pretty much settled into a routine of:

  • getting customer feedback (from paying customers)
  • building new features
  • blogging / tweeting / newslettering about new features
  • improving the marketing site

And that's it.

It feels great. It feels almost like a job, but a really awesome job where there's a sense of stability but also a sense of ownership.

Being an indiehacker: 10/10 would recommend.

  1. 3

    Congrats for the nice growth.
    I would like to ask you, before you started, did you knew about https://www.bannersnack.com/ ? It seems like they have a very similar product and offering, probably more features since they have been around longer. In case of yes, how did you reason about creating a new competitor, and how did that affect your business and product development plan?

    1. 5

      Last I checked they didn’t have an API which is the core value prop of my product. So I never saw them as a competitor.

      Now that I take another look today, it looks like they launched an API back in April (a month after I launched my API) but it is part of their “enterprise level” offering only.

      So it looks like we are still aimed at different audience segments.

      I don’t pay much attention to competitors or even products in an overlapping space.

      I just forge my own path.

  2. 3

    Congrats, Jon! It's been fun watching Bannerbear grow! Keep up the great work!

  3. 2

    Congrats. What are your marketing channels and how did you discover the channels which work?

    1. 2

      I'm afraid that I never have a good answer to this. I just blog, tweet, write newsletters and make sure the marketing site does a good job of communicating the value prop.

      Google is my biggest driver of traffic, followed by twitter.

  4. 2

    Congratulations Jon. When you mention the improved marketing site do you refer only to the design/aesthetics or also to the content?

    1. 1

      It's all of the above. Improving the marketing site includes:

      • tweaking the design
      • describing the product / new features better
      • adding more demos
      • writing tutorials / blog posts
  5. 2

    Really cool to see. I see things really start motoring from June onwards – is this when you started going hard on the above bullet points?

    1. 2

      I think it was a few things:

      • increased pricing
      • major new feature (API)
      • and yes, settling into a rhythm which made my feature shipping and marketing activity much more consistent
      1. 1

        cool to know, this was my question too. Congrats!

      2. 1

        Nice! So you didn't see much churn when you increased your pricing? Or did you grandfather existing customers?

        1. 3

          grandfathered.

          I don't think it's ethical to raise prices for existing customers.

  6. 1

    That's great to hear. And once the feature requests stop and the documentation is complete. Bannerbear will become a well oiled machine. Please write a book then. Been following you since your mojo days.
    Congratulations... 👍👍

  7. 1

    huge congrats Jon!! the next 2x will hopefully become easier and easier!

  8. 1

    Congrats on your milestone. What does your process look like for systematically getting feedback and then turning it into product features?

  9. 1

    Congrats Jon! This is so inspiring. Thanks for sharing so much about your journey!

  10. 1

    Congratulations Jon!

  11. 1

    Hi Jon,

    This is great, good work.

  12. 1

    Congrats Jon! The motorcycle is getting closer and closer :))

  13. 1

    Very inspiring Jon! Keep at it 📈

  14. 1

    Best thing about being indiehacker 👏 congratulations Jon

  15. 1

    You're at exactly the place I want to be! Past the point of "make or break" decisions, pivoting, bug fixing, etc. and on to just slow steady growth where the amount of work you put into it seems to have a direct effect on the bottom line. Congrats!

  16. 1

    I like your logo and your landing page, who made your website logo?

  17. 1

    Congratulations Jon!!

  18. 1

    Awesome! Keep it up 📈

  19. 1

    Inspiring @yongfook! Thanks for sharing your story

  20. 1

    Congratulations! Well done 👏

  21. 1

    Stoked for you man!

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