SaaS •Entrepreneurship

How I Grew My App to $13K/month (Even Though I Hate Marketing)

Starter Story • • 14 min • #125
How I Grew My App to $13K/month (Even Though I Hate Marketing)

Bhanu built SiteGPT and he’s grown it to $13K/month. But here's the thing... he's a builder, NOT a marketer. In this video, we'll dive into how Bhanu used his building skills to get thousands of views on his product (for free).

Summary

  • Banu

    • Built two SaaS products.
    • Grew one SaaS to $6,000 MRR and sold it for $250,000.
    • Grew SiteGPT to $13,000 MRR.
    • Launched SiteGPT in March 2023.
    • Generated about $500,000 in revenue from SiteGPT by the time of the interview.
    • Describes himself as a builder, not a marketer.
    • Uses engineering as marketing to attract most customers.
    • Worked as a software engineer after college at a large startup.
    • Quit after 8 months because he did not want that path for the rest of his life.
    • Moved back to his parents’ house to reduce expenses and build his own products.

  • SiteGPT

    • Gives a website its own AI assistant that can answer questions about the site’s business content.
    • Lets users create a chatbot, add it to their website, and pay a monthly fee.
    • Prices plans based on how many chatbots users need, how much content they have, or how many messages they expect each month.
    • Serves about 130 businesses.
    • Has an average customer revenue of about $100.
    • Has a customer lifetime value of about $1,700 to $1,800.

  • Metrics And Traffic

    • Has received more than 1 million website visitors since launch.
    • Gets about 50,000 visitors per month.
    • Turns about 200 monthly visitors into leads.
    • Turns about 60 of those leads into trials.
    • Converts about 25% to 40% of trials into customers.
    • Gets 60% to 70% of traffic from Google.
    • Gets almost 90% of Google traffic from free tools.
    • Gets about 50,000 clicks from Google each month because of free tools.
    • Gets around 300 leads, mostly from Google.
    • Spends $0 on paid marketing.

  • Origin Story

    • Built Feather first and grew it to about $5,000 to $6,000 MRR.
    • Started seeing AI tools on Twitter around January or February 2023.
    • Decided to learn AI by building something useful for Feather customers.
    • Built a chatbot that could answer questions based on a customer’s blog.
    • Realized the product should not be limited to Feather customers.
    • Split the chatbot into a separate product.
    • Built and launched SiteGPT in 2 weeks.
    • Reached $10,000 MRR within the first month.
    • Sold Feather for $250,000 so he could focus fully on SiteGPT.

  • Free Tools Marketing Strategy

    • Built almost 50 free tools in total.
    • Builds tools that relate to SiteGPT so tool users can become potential customers.
    • Gives examples such as a PDF-to-markdown tool and a chatbot name generator.
    • Says creating a new free tool now takes less than 5 minutes because existing tools provide the pattern.
    • Uses Cursor to generate new tools by following the structure of prior free tools.
    • Believes free tools are an easy, low-cost, low-effort way to drive traffic to a SaaS product.
    • Likes the strategy because it lets builders market by building instead of doing sales, cold email, or content.

  • Free Tools Playbook

    • Start in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer with a blank search to discover broad keyword opportunities.
    • Apply include filters based on the product category and tool type, such as AI and generator.
    • Add a keyword difficulty filter, such as less than 10, to find terms a decent website can rank for.
    • Add a volume filter, such as at least 1,000 monthly searches, to focus on terms that can drive traffic.
    • List promising keywords in Notion with global search volume and keyword difficulty.
    • Write a relevant call to action for each tool that connects the free tool to the main product.
    • Create a prioritization table with keyword, volume, difficulty, build effort, and relevance to the product.
    • Prioritize tools with high volume, low keyword difficulty, low build effort, and high product relevance.

  • Tech Stack And Tools

    • Uses Ahrefs for SEO research around free tools.
    • Uses SiteGPT for website support.
    • Uses Cal.com for booking customer calls.
    • Uses Data For and PostHog for analytics.
    • Uses Sibyl AI for customer call recordings.
    • Uses Bento for email.
    • Uses Feather for writing blog posts.
    • Uses Featurebase for feature requests and bug reports.
    • Uses Mintlify for documentation.
    • Uses Claude Code for AI-assisted coding.
    • Uses ChartMogul for subscription analytics.

  • Lessons And Advice

    • Advises founders not to spend months launching something.
    • Recommends launching with the core feature of the product.
    • Says user feedback should guide the product direction after launch.
    • Believes builders who dislike marketing can use free tools to market through something they already enjoy doing.
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