Five months ago, my MRR was $0.
Today it's $175.
That number won't impress anyone on Twitter. No "we went from 0 to $10k ARR" energy here. But it's real, it's recurring, and it came from a process I can repeat — which matters more to me than the number itself.
This is the honest story of what didn't work, what did, and what I'm doing next.
Month 1: The Google Ads Graveyard
Like most first-time founders, I started with the obvious move: paid ads.
I set up a Google Ads campaign, pointed it at my landing page, and waited for the signups to roll in. €100 later, I had exactly zero paying customers. Not even a meaningful spike in free signups.
The worst part wasn't the €100. It was that I learned almost nothing. With a tiny budget, the algorithm never had enough data to optimize. My keywords were too broad, my ad copy was generic, and my landing page wasn't proven yet. I wasn't running a test — I was donating money to Google.
The lesson: paid ads amplify a funnel that already converts. They don't fix a funnel that doesn't. I had it backwards.
The Pivot: Treating SEO as a Compounding Asset
Instead of pouring more money into a channel I didn't understand, I made a deliberate bet: SEO is slow, but it compounds. Ads stop the moment you stop paying. Rankings don't.
So I committed to a simple rule: every single week, I improve my site's SEO. No exceptions.
That's it. Not a 30-day sprint. A weekly habit.
The Weekly SEO Loop That Actually Worked
Here's what I did every week, in order:
1. Run a technical audit. I used open-source repos to audit my own site — checking for broken links, missing metadata, slow pages, crawl issues, schema problems. You don't need an expensive tool for this. There are solid public repos that do the same job if you're willing to run them yourself.
2. Pull my Search Console data — with an MCP. Connecting an MCP to Google Search Console was a game changer. Instead of clicking around dashboards, I could ask questions directly: Which queries are getting impressions but no clicks? Which pages are stuck on page 2? What's my average position trending toward?
3. Fix one thing. Whatever the data pointed at, I fixed it that week. A weak title tag. A page that deserved internal links. A query where I ranked #11 and just needed a push.
4. Repeat. Week after week after week.
The compounding is real. Small gains stack. A page moving from position #12 to #6 isn't a win on its own — but do that across fifty pages, and your traffic curve starts bending.
Long-Tail Keywords: The Only Game Worth Playing as a Solo Founder
Early on I wasted time dreaming about ranking for big, juicy keywords. That's a trap. You will not outrank a funded competitor with a content team on a head term.
So I did the opposite. I deliberately targeted the easiest long-tail keywords I could find — the ones with low difficulty, clear intent, and almost no serious competition. Queries with 50 searches a month, not 50,000.
Here's why this works:
- You actually rank. Momentum matters more than volume when you're starting.
- The intent is specific. Someone searching a long-tail query usually wants exactly what you built.
- You build authority. Enough small wins and the bigger keywords start becoming realistic.
Don't ask "where's the volume?" Ask "where can I realistically win?"
Directories and Backlinks: The DR Boost Nobody Talks About
While the content was cooking, I did something parallel: I listed my product in as many SaaS directories as possible.
Product Hunt. Alternative-to sites. Niche tool directories. Startup lists. Anything legitimate where a new product could get a listing.
Two things happened:
- My Domain Rating climbed fast. Directory backlinks aren't glamorous, but they're real. Enough of them and your domain authority moves — which makes all your SEO work land harder.
- I got actual traffic. Not massive, but real visitors with real intent, from people browsing directories specifically looking for new tools.
Plus, a Product Hunt launch brings that initial spike of visibility — and more importantly, feedback from people who actually tried the product.
Then the First Subscriptions Came
Here's the part that surprised me: it wasn't instant.
I didn't get a customer the week I started SEO. I didn't get one after the first audit. It took a few weeks of consistent weekly work before the first subscription landed. Then another. Then another.
The early subscribers came from search. People finding a specific page that answered a specific question, trying the product, and deciding it was worth paying for.
At $175 MRR, I'm not popping champagne. But here's what I do have:
- A channel that keeps working while I sleep
- Organic signups arriving without me spending a cent
- Proof that someone, somewhere, wants what I built enough to pay for it
That's a foundation. And unlike an ad campaign, it doesn't disappear when the budget runs out.
The Honest Lessons
1. Don't buy growth before you've earned it. Google Ads on an unproven funnel is just expensive tuition. Organic traction first, then amplify.
2. Consistency beats intensity. One hour of SEO every week for five months beat every "growth hack" I tried. The boring thing, done repeatedly, is the thing that works.
3. Target what you can win, not what looks impressive. Long-tail keywords, easy directories, small wins. Momentum is a strategy.
4. Use the tools that exist. Open-source audit repos, an MCP connected to Search Console — I didn't need a big budget, I needed to actually look at the data and act on it.
5. If the number is small, say so. $175 MRR is $175 MRR. Pretending it's something else doesn't help anyone — least of all other founders in the same spot.
What's Next: Back to Ads (This Time, Smarter)
Now comes the part I've been avoiding.
Paid ads are my next step — and it's still the domain I know the least about. But this time the situation is different. I have a funnel that's been proven organically. I have pages that convert. I know which keywords actually bring buyers, not just visitors.
That's a completely different starting point than the €100 I blindly threw at Google five months ago. This time, ads are leverage on something that already works — not a substitute for product-market fit.
I'll write up what I learn, including the failures. There will be failures.
This is the story of building Podcastify — an AI tool that turns articles, PDFs, URLs, and videos into podcast-style audio conversations. If you're building something and grinding through the early days of SEO, hit subscribe — I write about what's actually working, with real numbers.
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