DEV Community: Alexandr Belogubov

From 0 to 27 paying users: My 3 launches in 10 months and $6,500 in revenue

Alexandr Belogubov — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 08:55:01 +0000

I launched my affiliate tool for the first time on September 16, 2024.
It was called Referral Page back then.
Zero users, zero dollars. I thought maybe nobody needed it.

A few months later, I tried again. This time with a new name — Refgrow.
Still, only one client and $127 revenue after launch.
It felt slow. I started doubting if this idea was even worth it.

On April 7, 2025, I decided to give it one more serious shot.
I updated the product, changed some things based on feedback, and launched again.
That time I got 15 paying users and $5,136 in total revenue.

Today, Refgrow has $6,587 in total sales and 27 paying customers.

The truth is, progress was slow and there were plenty of moments where I wanted to give up or switch to something else. I took breaks. But each time I returned, there was still a problem worth solving, and the product kept moving forward.

I kept seeing the same pain point: founders don’t want external affiliate portals, they want something native and simple, built right into their own product.
I didn’t see any tool doing this the way I wanted, so I kept working on Refgrow.

Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t quit.
It’s still early, and I’m still figuring things out, but this is already further than I thought possible after that first zero-dollar launch.

If you’re in the same spot, maybe between launches or thinking about giving up, just know — sometimes it really is just about coming back and trying one more time.

How I Built a Referral Exchange That Grows SaaS on Autopilot

Alexandr Belogubov — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 07:56:47 +0000

Most SaaS founders struggle with the same problem:

How do you get affiliates to discover your program when you're just starting out?

You can:

Tweet about it ☁️
Email your users 📧
Ask around in communities 🙋‍♂️

…but none of these scale reliably.

🧠 Rethinking Affiliate Growth

I started wondering:

What if affiliate programs could promote each other — automatically?

No outreach.

No cold DMs.

No separate dashboards.

Just:
✅ Embedded referral dashboards

↔️ Affiliate traffic shared between products

⚖️ Credits to keep the exchange fair

⚙️ The system I built

I created a Referral Exchange, built into Refgrow — my native affiliate platform for SaaS.

Here’s how it works:

You opt-in from your dashboard
Your program appears inside other SaaS dashboards (and in the public directory)
If someone clicks your program and joins → you lose 1 credit
If someone joins another program via your dashboard → you earn 1 credit

Credits are the currency of attention.

You can buy more if you need a boost.

Or earn them by helping others grow.

🛠️ Technical bits

Click attribution works using referral codes + query params
Signup detection is tracked via the same webhook/event system used for affiliate conversions
Credits are handled per-project and logged in a dedicated table
Program listings are auto-filled by scraping homepage metadata + feeding it to GPT-4o for summary (title, logo, description)

🧪 Key lessons

SaaS founders prefer tools that feel like infra, not marketing hacks
Embedded discovery converts better than sending people to another platform
Credit-based mechanics keep the system balanced and spam-resistant
Auto-generated listings remove friction and increase adoption

💬 What do you think?

If you're building something affiliate-related — or trying to kickstart growth for your SaaS — I’d love to hear how you handle discovery.

Drop a comment, or check out how it works live:

👉 https://refgrow.com

Thanks for reading!

How I built an embeddable affiliate program for SaaS (no dashboards, 0% fees, no earning limits)

Alexandr Belogubov — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 09:06:45 +0000

Affiliate programs are a great growth engine — but most SaaS tools make it harder than it should be.

I wanted a way to give my users referral tools inside my product. Not a separate platform. Not more tabs.

So I built Refgrow — a fully embeddable affiliate engine designed for SaaS.

Problems I had with existing tools:

Redirecting users to external dashboards
Commission fees on affiliate payouts
Earning caps (e.g. Rewardful limits you to $7.5k/month on the base plan)

What I built instead:

Fully embedded affiliate UI
0% payout fees
Works with Stripe, Paddle, and LemonSqueezy
Unlimited revenue from affiliates, even on the cheapest plan
REST API, mass payouts, white label options available

Tech stack:

Vanilla JS snippet
Hosted tracking logic + analytics
Customizable UI, designed to be styled to match your brand

TL;DR:

Launch an affiliate program inside your SaaS in 5 minutes. No commissions. No caps.

Curious to hear: how are you handling referrals in your own product?