I Built a Free Finance Dashboard as a Solo Dev — Here's What I Learned

I was tired of using 5 different apps to track my money. One for budgeting, one for crypto prices, one for dividends, one for market news. So I built my own.
It's called CollectCX — a free finance dashboard that tracks everything in one place. No signup, no account, your data stays in your browser.
Here's what it does:
Year-at-a-glance budget spreadsheet for tracking income and expenses
Live crypto prices updated in real time
Dividend calendar with ex-dates for 27+ stocks
Market news feed covering 795+ tickers
Spending heatmaps and savings rate tracking
I built it with React and it's completely client-side. No backend, no database, no server costs. Your financial data never leaves your browser.
The hardest part wasn't building it — it was getting people to find it. As a solo dev with zero marketing budget, I'm learning everything from scratch. SEO, social media, backlinks — none of it comes naturally when you'd rather be writing code.
A few things I've learned so far:
Your site doesn't exist to Google until you manually ask them to index it. Meta tags matter more than you think — mine were still set to default React App text. Genuine engagement with other builders beats any paid promotion. Building the product is maybe 30% of the work. The other 70% is getting people to notice it.
I'm documenting the whole journey on X @collectcx if you want to follow along.
If you're a solo dev building something, I'd love to hear how you approached marketing. And if you want to check it out: https://www.collectcx.com/