Learning Web Development & Launching a SaaS in 50 days

[Aulig]

I got more free demo requests, so I've started working more on automating my service so I dont have to spend much time on those. Making decent progress on that, but have some bugs to fix and big improvements planned still. Also I've found a bunch of stuff from a competitor (his twitter & his indiehackers account). Apparently he's making 10k a month now and has 10 team members. That's interesting, but what's more important is that I can copy his marketing strategy One thing he said he did is enter into software directories like "alternativeto", so I will do that now too.

 

[Aulig]

I'm submitted in the software directories now, it was more work than expected as some of them are picky about what they accept and what not. Also got my first article, I paid 1$/100 words so relatively cheap. The quality is decent, I'll still have to go over it though and reword some things. Towards the end it felt very stretched out with unfitting information which I suspected to happen. I told the seller to do something between 500-1500 words, but obviously he wanted the biggest order so it was 1500 lol. I have to admit that it was a difficult topic though. When I have an easier article idea, I will probably try the next content writing service.

 

[Aulig]

It's been a while since the last update, but I don't have much to share. University has been taking up a lot of my time, but SEO is a waiting game anyways so it's fine. The entry in the software directory has been quite useful, it's been sending me around 3 targeted visitors per day I think I can ramp that up by getting some reviews and likes on there to push me to the top. Still need to do more work on my product, but the automation part is as good as done.

Also a bunch of links I built finally showed up in the GSC, so I hope those will help me rank for the important keywords finally lol.

That's basically it. I will continue building backlinks, getting some guestposts and writing blogposts of course.

 

[The John Doe]

It's been a while since the last update, but I don't have much to share. University has been taking up a lot of my time, but SEO is a waiting game anyways so it's fine. The entry in the software directory has been quite useful, it's been sending me around 3 targeted visitors per day I think I can ramp that up by getting some reviews and likes on there to push me to the top. Still need to do more work on my product, but the automation part is as good as done.

Also a bunch of links I built finally showed up in the GSC, so I hope those will help me rank for the important keywords finally lol.

That's basically it. I will continue building backlinks, getting some guestposts and writing blogposts of course.

What does the revenues look like?

 

[Aulig]

What does the revenues look like?

$0 lol. But I'm fine with that, I'm in it for the long run. My goal is to be earning $500+/m by october.

 

[raptor911]

Great journey i must say @Aulig . Im planning on a similar project, but im still in the learning phase (js, frameworks, adiing api´s)
Do you know a good resource where to learn js and the framewors?

 

[Aulig]

Great journey i must say @Aulig . Im planning on a similar project, but im still in the learning phase (js, frameworks, adiing api´s)
Do you know a good resource where to learn js and the framewors?

Thanks! I'm not sure, I always just learn by doing If you're an absolute beginner, you can probably learn the basics from youtube or other free courses

 

[Aulig]

It's been a while since the last update again, just wanted to let you all know I'm still going strong haha. Continuously improving the site design and stuff, but I must admit I haven't published (m)any articles lately. I should definitely get back to that and also work on my existing ones too. It's evergreen content but still refreshing it should be good because every time you look at it again you get new ideas for improvements.
I've been putting more work into the product and just want 2 more big features to work well and then I can deliver a great service almost automatically.

Google rankings are still improving steadily, I've gone from 100+ to 90 and now around 70 on my important keywords. Very happy about that.

 

[Aulig]

Rankings are in the range 60-70 now, so gained around 10 spots. This has led to quite the big increase in search impressions already:


I'm still lazy regarding the articles I wanted to work on, but my priority has been automating and perfecting the product to a point where I'd be happy to deliver it to customers and could withstand a sudden surge in orders. For that I'll need to train an AI, which requires me to collect and annotate a bunch of data for first. I've trained 3 VAs to do this for me and will let them each work 10 hours (cost ~$4/h) to see how much they can get done. Probably will let the most efficient VA continue with the rest of the task if I need more data afterwards.

 

[Aulig]

Hiring VAs is a great choice, if you have any easy and repetitive task on your hand you should definitely consider outsourcing it. I tried 3 VAs and all of them were really hard working and kind guys. A lot of them are desperate for work, especially in these tough times currently. So you're really helping them out by giving them work (and paying them fairly). I gave them a lot of freedom in regards to when they do the work, just so its as easy as possible for them, even though one even said he'd work at night so its in my timezone if I want. But yea, no reason to make it more difficult than it needs to be.

If you're looking for more infos on VAs, check out @BassTrackerBoats thread here: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/do-you-want-to-multiply-your-income-clone-yourself.794921/
It's a very informational read.

Basically I got my data quickly and will try to train my AI on it. If I need more data I'll hire the most efficient of the 3 VAs to collect some more. Once the AI is operational I'll finally be able to focus on marketing without having to fear overwhelming myself with work lol.

 

[Aulig]

Not doing a crazy lot atm, have an exam I need to prepare for. Google rankings are improving steadily though which is awesome

Here's my search impressions:


Here's my keyword rankings, the ones at the bottom are around 45 - 80. Once I get those on the first page I should be set lol.


So yea, there's an upwards trend with both search impressions & rankings. Search clicks/page visits are still really low, but I think the CTR will improve a lot with higher rankings. I hope the trend continues like that, then I can expect page 1 rankings in about 2 months I'd guess
Until then I will keep posting articles & getting some backlinks and hopefully get my product to a well usable state.

 

[The John Doe]

Not doing a crazy lot atm, have an exam I need to prepare for. Google rankings are improving steadily though which is awesome

Here's my search impressions:
View attachment 137022

Here's my keyword rankings, the ones at the bottom are around 45 - 80. Once I get those on the first page I should be set lol.
View attachment 137023

So yea, there's an upwards trend with both search impressions & rankings. Search clicks/page visits are still really low, but I think the CTR will improve a lot with higher rankings. I hope the trend continues like that, then I can expect page 1 rankings in about 2 months I'd guess
Until then I will keep posting articles & getting some backlinks and hopefully get my product to a well usable state.

Great,

Which tracking tool are you using?

 

[Aulig]

Great,

Which tracking tool are you using?

It's just Search Console data and a DataStudio template. I use this template: https://bikeshopseo.com/resources-and-guides/free-google-data-studio-rank-tracker.html
and edited it a bit.

 

[Aulig]

Today I edited my website a lot, I replaced all my images with images from undraw.co. That site is really really awesome if it's the type of design you like. There's tons of free to use images that automatically get converted to your preferred color scheme. You also get them as SVG, which is even smaller than the webp images i had before. That way I brought down my homepage size from ~950kb to ~350kb as it has a lot of images. That dropped my pageload time from 2.7 seconds to 1.8 seconds according to gtmetrix.

Very happy about all of that

 

[Aulig]

I rewrote some articles that I got from writers and also translated them to german (my site is in english & german). Meanwhile seeing some upwards movement on serps again after it stagnated/dropped for a bit:

As you can see one keyword even cracked the top 30. It's not an important keyword though I think, doesn't seem to get many searches. By the way the transparent lines are predictions based on past performance, so as you can see I'm currently close to them. When you look at the predictions until november, it looks like this:


So as you can see, the prediction says I should hit rank 1 (I doubt it, but page 1 would be good enough for me as a start) on a bunch of those keywords until october. The future will tell us how accurate the prediction is

Next steps are reworking my homepage to give it a better design and then finally fully automate my product. I'll probably work on both of those simultaneously, depending on what I feel like doing The AI to automate the product is making progress, but not as good as I'd like yet, so I'm still working on it.

 

[Aulig]

Hell yea boys, look at these nice gains the past 2 days (all the way to the right)


One keyword moved into the top 10, but that one doesnt get too much traffic surprisingly (its very short and its what i wouldve searched when looking for my service). A bunch of those other more important keywords (more traffic) moved up 10 to 20 positions, now most are in the top 40.

I've done the major rework of my homepage and the conversion flow that i announced in the last post, now that stuff looks a lot better. Now I finally need to focus on the AI (i dont know why I'm not more motivated to do it lol, it's not annoying work or anything) so I can get back to some customers that were interested in a free demo. I will start working on that right now actually, maybe I can get a basic version of it done until tomorrow even? its already late evening, so maybe not

 

[Shopllc]

Nice journey! Good luck!

 

[kaudo]

2 questions.
Have you tried to check your competitors backlinks with ahrefs and tried to copy them?
Your competitors probably have some of their reference customers listed on their websites. Have you tried to contact them and offer your product free for comparison of product features? If nothing else, you may get some valuable feedback on what the customets really want from the product.

 

[Aulig]

Nice journey! Good luck!

Thanks!

2 questions.
Have you tried to check your competitors backlinks with ahrefs and tried to copy them?
Your competitors probably have some of their reference customers listed on their websites. Have you tried to contact them and offer your product free for comparison of product features? If nothing else, you may get some valuable feedback on what the customets really want from the product.

Yea, I've checked their links and theyre mostly crappy to be honest. I've found some good information (guest posts by my competitors where they talk about their strategies) but not much regarding ranking. Theyre mostly ranking because they've been around for a while, my site is new in comparison. But I think as my domain ages and I do a better job than them on SEO I will continue to rise up the serps.

I actually know their products in great detail from all the stalking I've done lol. But I like your idea a lot, in many cases this could be beneficial to get some early feedback. I will keep this in mind, but I think I will just contact the people that have already reached out to me for a free demo.

 

[Aulig]

Man I got a ton of work done these past days. Finally my product is in a state where I could handle a bunch of orders as I've integrated the first version of my AI now. It was very frustrating work but I'm so glad I powered through it (literally worked from the morning until i went to bed) these past days.
Now I'll take it a bit easier on this project so I don't get burnt out lol. Have some stuff to do for university anyways, so I'm not doing nothing

Next steps are editing and publishing another blog article I received from a writer and doing more SEO stuff. Regarding the SEO stuff I found something hilarious, I can get some nice d0follow links from a competitor. I'll be building some of those regularly lol. And no, I didn't hack his site and you shouldn't do something like that either, as that would be illegal.