30 days ago I shipped HookRay — a webhook testing tool meant to compete with webhook.site — and committed to publishing real numbers at the 30-day mark.
Here are the numbers. They're humbling, but I think other indie hackers will get more from honest data than from another "I hit $10K MRR" post.
The product
HookRay (hookray.com) — webhook testing tool with real-time updates, search, replay, and smart payload parsing for Stripe, GitHub, Shopify, etc. Built because webhook.site's 50-request URL expiration was driving me crazy.
Stack: Next.js 16, Supabase, Stripe, Vercel. Solo, ~3 weeks build time.
The 28-day Search Console data
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Impressions | 881 |
| Clicks | 8 |
| CTR | 0.9% |
| Avg position | 12.1 |
| Indexed pages | 22 / 126 (17%) |
| Signups | 2 |
| Paying customers | 0 |
| MRR | $0 |
That's ~31 impressions/day, 0.3 clicks/day. A big fat nothing.
Three things the data told me I didn't expect
1. The article I thought would win didn't
I assumed webhook.site alternative keywords would drive traffic. My comparison article ranks position 10 — top of page 2, basically invisible. People searching this are probably seeing webhook.site, a few others, then giving up before clicking page 2.
2. The SEO is winning on the wrong product
My accidental top performer is the QR code API comparison article. It's ranking:
- Position 2.7 for
best javascript qr code library 2026(6 impressions, 0 clicks) - Position 4.5 for
qrserver api status 2026(6 imp, 0 clicks) - Position 5.6 for
qrserver api still working 2026(7 imp, 0 clicks)
Those queries are all people worried api.qrserver.com is dying. None of them came to read a comparison — they came for a status check. I was serving the wrong intent at the right position.
3. Position 2-3 with 0% CTR means meta is broken, not content
Getting to position 2-3 organically is hard. Getting 0 clicks from that is a title/meta problem, not a ranking problem. For "qrserver api still working 2026", my article title was "Best QR Code API for Developers in 2026" — which doesn't answer the worry the user is bringing.
What I actually did about it
This week I rewrote the QR article based on what the data was telling me:
-
New title:
Best QR Code API 2026: QRServer Alternatives + HookRay Compared - Added a dedicated top-of-article section: "Is api.qrserver.com Still Working in 2026?" answering the search intent honestly
- Added a migration snippet showing how to swap
api.qrserver.comURLs for the HookRay QR API
I'll know in 7-14 days whether CTR moves. If it goes from 0% to even 3%, I've tripled my total site traffic without writing a new article.
What I'm NOT doing
I resisted every indie-hacker instinct to "build more features" this week:
- Not adding custom response codes to HookRay (the #1 webhook.site feature I'm missing). Features don't fix distribution.
- Not spinning out QR into its own domain (my gut said yes, the data says wait — still too early).
- Not pivoting the whole product. 881 impressions is not enough signal to pivot on.
The uncomfortable truth about SEO + indie products
60-70% of indie hackers never reach $1 MRR. Most fail at distribution, not product. I'm in that valley right now, and SEO alone is a 6-12 month play.
So I'm pairing SEO with faster-burn distribution — Dev.to posts like this one, Reddit, a Product Hunt launch in a few weeks. Transparency + data does well here, and the SEO compounds in the background.
Questions for this community
- Anyone else had SEO surface a niche you didn't plan for? Did you lean in or stay on original course?
- For those who hit $1-100 MRR: what was the distribution channel that actually worked, vs what you thought would work?
- Is there a single worst-ROI activity you wish you'd skipped in your first 3 months?
I'll update this post with numbers at day 60. Drop your email in the comments or follow for the update if you want the receipts.
— Shota
HookRay is live at hookray.com. If you're testing webhooks and want a free alternative to webhook.site, that's where it lives.
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