71
44 Comments

Visalist crossed 400K MAU and $40K ARR

Visa List is my most successful microstartup so far. One thing that made this milestone possible is the corona virus trackers which has now been used by more than 150K people. I feel good and bad at the same time, bad because we are facing such huge pandemic and good because i’m able to help travellers during such difficult times.

The growth rate is now around 15% which bring the MAU to 405K users so far. The revenue has been also stable.

So i have decided to take a break from visa list and build something else that i have been ideating from sometime. Thanks everyone who has been there showing supporting, giving feedback and cheering for me. This Indie Makers journey of 3 years has been absolutely amazing.

https://visalist.io

  1. 5

    Why are you taking a break? Why not keep pushing forward? No idea your situation but seems analogous to Pieter Levels who was trying various things until he hit on NomadList and then he never stopped pushing on that. Would love to know what you are thinking hoping for etc.

    1. 3

      Pieter definitely pushed nomadlist but also did remoteok. I have built almost all the things that I wanted for the v1. I have other things planned which will take another year so before I get on with it, I wanna try my other ideas. Also I got bored working on this for almost two years. I can take the risk now as I'm financially stable more or less now.

      1. 3

        Highly suggest pushing it to the max. I've done similar in the past only to regret not focusing on the cash cow.

        1. 2

          thanks. I'm not abandoning it, just taking a short break to build something new.

      2. 2

        Makes sense. Good luck!

  2. 5

    Congrats ! I just saw a similar copy few days ago. But yours is far better designed. Really nice ! Good luck for your next project.

    1. 3

      I know which one you are talking about, i think they just started a month back. I believe that competition is good for the market.

      1. 3

        I was surprised and that makes me sad to see how many copies are coming up recently (I think I saw at least 2-3 pages touching the visa topic in the last 2 months)

      2. 2

        This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

        1. 3

          Two things
          #1 Makes sure you are not lazy as the fear of competition keeps you on your toes
          #2 more options to innovate and learn from competition

          1. 2

            This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  3. 4

    Great job with Visa List! My wife and I were planning a euro trip recently and searched for "monaco visa for indian passport", a page from Visa List was at the 3rd (or 4th) spot and we found the information we were looking for :) Looking forward to your next product, good luck with it!

    1. 1

      This just made my day. Helping people is the main reason I built visa list.

  4. 2

    Awesome job @1hakr! It's a dream for me to get to where you are today. Thank you for the inspiration.

    I also put your tracker on my little list of trackers: https://github.com/abuuzayr/coronavirus-apps

  5. 2

    How did you compile the list of visa requirements and how much time, effort and money went into this? Seems like a good success story that I'd love to hear a podcast about.

    Last question, how do you manage the data in the back? what's your admin system?

    1. 1

      Manual mostly but have also automated few data points. It took me almost a year get here working full time. I used MySQL and to manage data I use sequel pro.
      Thanks for thinking it's a good success story @csallen are you listening? 😅

  6. 2

    Hi, i know this sounds like a really dumb question but how does the site generate revenue?

    1. 3

      It looks like ads

  7. 2

    Well Done Indie Hacker!
    That's it, That's the comment.

  8. 2

    Not sure how you can fix this (I'm not a developer) but maybe when the cursor is over the map part DISABLE page scrolling, because maps and the page fight with each other when scrolling, and your mouse happens to be over the maps

    and if the page is not scrolling and instead the maps, maybe just bring up a tooltip to ask the user to move their mouse away from the map section to scroll the page

    users can be dumb and smart at the same time

    1. 2

      I think maybe you mis posted this comment @Raccoon ?

      1. 1

        I tested on win 10, and had problems scrolling when zooming in and out on the top right map section. I know you can use the plus and minus button, but yeah, great site just sharing a user action that's all

  9. 2

    Good luck with the new venture! I wish you even bigger success compared to VisaList.

  10. 2

    Awesome! Keep pushing Hakr 🤙

  11. 2

    Amazing Hari! Well done :)

  12. 2

    Haha saw it the other day :) Great timing!

  13. 2

    Very nice! I'd love to learn about your tech stack, revenue streams, lessons learned, etc. Do you write about any of that somewhere?

    Edit: I have some feedback on the sign-up confirmation email, if you're interested. I can email you a screenshot of what I'm seeing.

    1. 1

      Sure, you can DM on twitter.

  14. 2

    Hell yes. Congrats man. Sucesos in a nutshell...

  15. 2

    Congrats! But for me the page has so many ads and I don't have adblocker and its just really frustrating.

    1. 2

      I don't fully like the ads myself but for a content platform, ads are the only way to survive. Look at any news publication now a days.

    2. 2

      I wonder if ads disappear when you pay for a subscription. What do you find frustrating about the ads?

  16. 2

    Congrats bro! What's your next project about?

    1. 2

      Thanks, will announce it soon.

  17. 2

    👏 Great Job @1hakr, Looking forward to your next product.

    1. 1

      Thanks man! 😁

  18. 2

    Great results. How low is bounce rate? Do they visit other pages besides virus map ?

    1. 1

      It's around 30-35%. It's the other way around actually, everyone who uses visa list now checks the emergency map.

  19. 2

    Great job and congratulations! Excited to follow your next project.

  20. 2

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

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