DEV Community: Indie Dev Log

Google Indexed 13 Pages of My Side Project. I Still Got 1 Click This Week.

Indie Dev Log — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:05:30 +0000

Lately, I’ve gotten into the habit of checking one number in Google Search Console:

Did anyone click through to my site from Google?

This week, the answer was:

1 click.

Not great.

But compared to when the site had almost no exposure at all, at least something is happening.

Google has started indexing SmartConvert, a small online conversion tool I’m building. Right now, 13 pages are in the index.

The problem is:

Getting indexed is not the same as getting traffic.

I’ve been learning that the hard way.

The numbers so far

Over the last 7 days, Google Search Console showed:

36 impressions
1 click

Overall, since launch:

404 impressions
5 clicks
Average position: 71

GA4 showed 28 users this week.

None of these numbers are impressive. But I’m sharing them because I think the gap between “indexed” and “getting traffic” is something a lot of indie developers run into.

You submit your sitemap.

You verify everything.

You see pages slowly appear in Google.

And then you wait.

And wait.

And still get almost no clicks.

What I did this week instead of adding more features

My first instinct when traffic is low is usually:

Build more tools.

That’s the developer brain talking. More pages, more features, more surface area.

But this week, I deliberately didn’t add a bunch of new tools.

Instead, I worked on four basic things:

Added user login
Added a blog
Added Chinese language support
Submitted the site to Bing

None of these feels as satisfying as shipping a new tool. But I’m starting to realize that building a product is not the same as writing code.

Before, I only asked:

What can I build next?

Now I’m trying to ask:

Will anyone search for this?

Will Google index it?

If it gets impressions, will anyone click?

If they click, will they actually use it?

That shift in thinking has slowed me down a bit. In a good way, I think.

Google is indexing my site very slowly

Right now, Google has indexed 13 pages.

But the site has more than 20 pages in total, and the rest are still waiting to be indexed.

I’ve done the basic things:

Updated the sitemap
Resubmitted the important pages
Checked and verified the sitemap

Still, some pages just sit there without getting indexed.

At first, I wanted to dig into every technical detail.

Is the sitemap broken?

Is something misconfigured?

Am I missing a meta tag?

After checking everything, I didn’t find any obvious problem.

So I’m leaning toward a simpler explanation:

SmartConvert is still a new site, and Google is still figuring it out.

I don’t want to just call it the “Google Sandbox.” That feels too vague. But I do think new sites need time to be discovered, crawled, processed, and evaluated.

There isn’t much I can do except:

Submit what needs to be submitted.

Check what needs to be checked.

And keep watching.

Why I started a blog

This was one of the bigger decisions this week.

Before, SmartConvert was basically:

Find a need → build a tool → launch it

Now I’m testing another path:

User has a problem → searches for it → finds an article → then uses the related tool

For example, someone might not search for:

PDF Compressor

They might search for:

How to compress a PDF

Or:

How to reduce PDF file size

The underlying need is the same. But the search intent is different.

So I want to see if content pages can bring in search traffic that the tool pages don’t.

I have no results yet. I just started.

But it’s worth testing.

The login feature is early groundwork

I also added user login this week.

With my current user numbers, login is not an urgent feature. Almost nobody is asking for it yet.

But if I ever want to add:

Free usage limits
Paid plans
User accounts
Usage tracking
History

Then login is the foundation.

So this is me laying groundwork for something that may or may not matter later.

I don’t know when it will become useful. But I’d rather build it before I desperately need it.

I also submitted the site to Bing

Besides Google, I submitted SmartConvert to Bing this week.

There’s no data yet.

So there’s nothing to analyze.

I’ll leave it alone for now and check back later.

Chinese language support

SmartConvert now supports Chinese too.

My main target is still overseas users, but adding another language makes the site more complete.

Will it bring more users?

I don’t know yet.

Build it, then see what the data says.

Maybe it helps. Maybe it doesn’t.

At least I’ll learn something.

The real lesson: indexed does not mean traffic

The biggest thing I’m learning is that getting indexed is only step one.

It means Google has found you.

It does not mean Google trusts you.

It does not mean you rank.

It does not mean people click.

It does not mean people stay.

For a new site, there’s a long chain:

Discovered → crawled → indexed → ranked → shown → clicked → used → retained

Every step has its own delay.

And you can’t skip steps by adding more features.

What I’m doing next

I’m not going to panic and add 20 more tools just because indexing is slow.

I’m not going to give up on the current direction just because I got 1 click this week.

Instead, I’ll keep improving what I already have.

I’ll keep writing blog posts.

I’ll keep watching Search Console.

I’ll keep checking which pages get impressions and which ones get ignored.

And I’ll keep sharing the real numbers, even when they’re small.

Maybe new sites really do need time.

Next week, I’ll check the numbers again.

If you’re also building an indie product or side project, I’d love to hear how you handle the “indexed but no traffic” phase. What worked for you?

SmartConvert Weekly Update: 45 Users, 4 Search Clicks, and a Rejected AdSense Application

Indie Dev Log — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 04:15:12 +0000

I'm building SmartConvert, a small online tools website, as a solo developer.

Another week of building SmartConvert is over.

I didn't launch anything particularly big this week.

Instead, something happened that I was already expecting:

My Google AdSense application was rejected.

The reason?

Low-value content.

Honestly, I wasn't particularly surprised.

SmartConvert still has relatively little content, the number of tools is still small, and Google hasn't started sending much search traffic to the site yet.

So given the current state of the website, the rejection was more or less what I expected.

But it also made something clearer to me:

Building a website is easy. Building one that people actually use is much harder.

Let's Look at the Numbers

Here are the numbers from the last seven days.

Google Analytics 4
Total users: 45
Active users: 45

And from Google Search Console:

Total impressions: 340
Total clicks: 4
Average position: 71
Average CTR: 1.2%

Looking at those numbers on their own, they don't look great.

Only 45 users in seven days.

Only 340 search impressions.

And just 4 clicks from Google Search.

An average position of 71 also means that most of the keywords are still appearing fairly far down in the search results.

But strangely enough, I think these numbers are more useful than having no data at all.

At least people are starting to find the site through search.

At least a few people have clicked through.

That means SmartConvert isn't completely invisible.

It's just very early.

I Added Three PDF Tools Last Week

The main thing I worked on last week was adding more PDF tools.

This time, I added:

PDF to Word
PDF compression
PDF merging

Along with the tools that were already available, SmartConvert is gradually becoming a more complete online tools website rather than just a small collection of utilities.

But this week, I'm not planning to add a bunch of new features.

Instead, I want to wait.

The reason is simple:

The new PDF pages haven't been indexed by Google yet.

If I keep adding tools as fast as possible, it's easy to fall into a pattern where I'm constantly busy without actually learning anything.

You can build several features every day.

The progress looks impressive.

But the real questions are:

Do people actually need these tools?

Will Google index them?

Once they're indexed, will they get any impressions?

Will anyone actually click through from search?

I don't have the answers yet.

So I'm going to pause for a while.

Let the data catch up with the work.

Being Rejected by AdSense Actually Made Me Slow Down

Before building a website myself, it was easy to look at other sites and imagine a simple formula:

Launch a website.

Put some ads on it.

Get traffic.

Make money.

After actually doing it myself, I've realized how many steps are missing in between.

You need content.

People need to search for it.

Google needs to index it.

People need to find it.

They need to actually click.

They need to actually use the product.

Only then does advertising revenue become something worth talking about.

So for me, the AdSense rejection isn't really bad news.

It's simply telling me something very directly:

SmartConvert isn't ready to make money yet.

That's fine.

I don't need to monetize it yet.

For now, I need to make the product better.

The Most Important Thing Right Now Isn't More Development

If I approached SmartConvert the way I used to approach software projects, I'd probably just keep building.

Not enough features?

Add more.

Not enough PDF tools?

Add more.

Not enough AI tools?

Add more.

The page doesn't look complete?

Keep improving it.

At the end of the day, I could have dozens of Git commits and feel like I had been extremely productive.

But users don't show up just because you pushed 20 commits today.

That's probably one of the biggest differences between software development and product development.

When you're writing code, the question is often:

How do I build this?

When you're building a product, you also have to ask:

Does anyone actually need what I'm building?

That question is much harder to answer.

What Am I Watching Next?

For the next few weeks, I'm not planning to add a large number of new features.

Instead, I want to watch three things.

Google Search Console

I want to see when the new PDF pages start appearing in Google's index and search data.

Search Impressions

Once they're indexed, will they start appearing for more search queries?

Will impressions actually increase?

Real Users

Will people discover SmartConvert through Google and actually use the tools?

These numbers might not improve quickly.

I might even discover that these PDF tools barely get any search traffic at all.

But at least I'll have an answer.

And that's useful information.

SmartConvert Is Still Very Far From Success

Right now:

45 users in the last 7 days.

4 clicks from Google Search.

$0 in revenue.

AdSense rejected.

These aren't impressive numbers.

But this is exactly the stage I want to document.

Most stories people see begin after a product has already started working.

Very few people carefully document how difficult things looked at the beginning.

I'm right in that stage now.

So I'm going to write the numbers down.

Then I'll come back and look at them again after some time has passed.

Maybe a few months from now, these numbers will look much better.

Maybe they'll still look terrible.

Maybe the product won't work out at all.

That's okay.

At least I'll know:

I actually gave it a shot.

Next week, I'll keep watching the data.

Why I Started Building My Own Product as a Programmer

Indie Dev Log — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 04:08:00 +0000

I’m a Programmer
For most of my career, I’ve been doing one thing:

Writing code.

Apps, APIs, bugs, releases, maintenance, changing requirements...

I’ve been doing all of that for years.

But recently, I started having a stronger and stronger feeling:

I want to build a product of my own.

Not something I’m building for someone else.

And not a project that ends once a requirement is finished.

I wanted to start from zero, take an idea, build it, launch it, find users, and eventually see whether it could actually survive.

So I started building SmartConvert.

It’s an online tools website focused mainly on file, PDF, and developer tools.

It’s not some groundbreaking product.

In fact, it doesn’t have many users every day right now.

But that’s exactly why I want to document the journey.

Because I’m genuinely curious:

Can an ordinary programmer, working alone, use today’s AI tools and low-cost cloud services to build a real product that people actually use?

What Happens Before the Success Story?
I’ve read plenty of stories about successful indie developers.

Someone makes thousands of dollars a month.

A product gets tens of thousands of users within a few months.

A solo founder builds a SaaS business and reaches impressive annual revenue.

Those stories are inspiring.

But I’m more interested in another question:

What actually happened before the success?

What happened when the product first launched and nobody used it?

What do you do when you only have a few dozen visitors a day?

Does SEO actually work?

Should you spend money on ads?

Where does the first dollar come from?

And once a programmer starts building a product, how many problems appear that have nothing to do with writing code?

Those are the things I want to find out for myself.

So I Decided to Document the Process
I’m not going to write about "success strategies."

I don’t have any success story to share yet.

Instead, I want to document what actually happens along the way:

What I built.

Why I built it.

How much I spent.

How many users showed up.

What I got wrong.

And what happened in the end.

For example, I’ll be documenting the growth of SmartConvert as I continue building it.

I’ll also write about how I use AI coding tools to develop products, and what it’s actually like to work with services such as Cloudflare, AI platforms, browser extensions, and other developer tools.

If I eventually make money from it, I’ll write about that too.

And if it fails, I’ll write about that as well.

Because I think that for someone who is seriously thinking about building a product, a real story about failure can be more useful than a beautifully packaged success story.

This Is Where It Starts
So this is where the blog begins.

I’m a programmer.

And now I’m trying to build a product on my own.

Welcome to The Indie Development Log.