Table of Contents
- Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
- How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
- Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
- What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
- What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
- Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
Roberto Robles is the founder of KatLinks - Affordable SEO Tool for Makers
Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
I've been running my SEO agency, KatRank, for over a decade, so I understand the importance and the impact showing up on Google can have on a business. The two main hurdles to SEO are that most people don't know much about it, and that the tools available to help you work on your SEO are expensive.
To tackle the last one, I decided to build a simple to use and affordable SEO tool with all of the features any small business or indie maker could need to improve their SEO. Of course, I started with an MVP to validate the idea. The MVP only had a basic feature to help track and manage backlinks, and after some positive feedback, we started building out the rest of the features.
Of course, building an affordable SEO tool is not enough to get people working on their SEO. That's why I also have some learning resources, starting with SEO-related tweets I post regularly on my Twitter account.
I also have other resources people can use to learn more about SEO:
- I created a website at superseo.tips with over 180 actionable SEO tips
- I publish a newsletter at rankmakers.net where I go into detail about specific SEO topics
- I have a YouTube channel at roberto.digital/youtube where I upload content related to SEO, Marketing and Tech.
My goal is to use my free resources and my SEO tool to help people get started on their SEO strategy.
How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
It took us about a year to reach 40+ paying users. Currently, our MRR is a little over $600. Most of the growth has come from Twitter, online referrals, and SEO. One of our biggest challenges has been churn.
We have a cancelation flow, and thanks to that, we have discovered that most of the users who cancel are just not using the tool enough, mainly because they don't see SEO as a priority or did not get to use it enough to get benefit from it. That's why I focus a lot on education so people can learn about SEO and know what they need to work on to improve their rankings and organic traffic.
Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
We use PHP/Laravel, DigitalOcean for our servers and some 3rd party APIs for SEO data.
What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
Email, Loom, Twitter, Question.to, Plausible Analytics, Encharge and Driftly
What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
Knowing your audience is the best way to build products they need and would want to use. Also, customer support and being helpful is one of the best things you can do for your users.
Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
Books: For the last couple of years, I've been into Sci-Fi books. I can recommend everything from Jeremy Robinson, Martha Wells and Andy Weir.
Newsletters:
Simon Hoiberg - https://simonhoiberg.com/newsletter
Gene Maryushenko - https://www.getrevue.co/profile/Gene
Andrea Bosoni - https://www.zerotomarketing.com/
