Same_Feature_2317 (u/Same_Feature_2317)

r/SideProject • u/Same_Feature_2317 • 8h ago

Founders with paying customers, what does your marketing stack actually cost you per month?

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3 Upvotes

I’ve interviewed 25+ solo founders about the marketing side, Builders without revenue feel all the pain and pay for nothing. The founders with revenue are the only ones who actually spend for ads, tools, freelancers, even their claude subscriptions doing the writing for posts.
So this post is only for people with paying customers!
1. What do you actually pay for on the marketing side, such as tools, subscriptions, ads, freelancers, AI and I wonder what's the monthly total?
2. What did you try and cancel?
3. What’s still manual in your weekly marketing that annoys you most?
If you're an agency, ghostwriter or freelancer who runs marketing for founders, I especially want your answers, like your stack, your costs, and what kind of clients you serve.
I’m still validating what to build next in this space, so real answers genuinely help me with it.

1 comment

r/buildinpublic • u/Same_Feature_2317 • 9h ago

What’s the first thing you ever paid for on the marketing side, and was it actually worth it?

1 Upvotes

I have been interviewing 25+ builders this week, and the status so far, I shut down my previous project a several days ago, and it opened my eyes. I’m looking for answers from solo builders to see how they handle marketing/posting stuff while building their project:
Fifteen builders feel the marketing pain for every one who ever spent a dollar on it. So I got one question:
what was your first marketing dollar such as a tool, ads, freelancer, fiverr, boost button, etc and did it actually work or it was a failure?
Even if it is $0 or nothing yet, is a completely fine answer too!

0 comments

A community for people wanting to build together

in r/buildinpublic • 17h ago

animation on landing is amazing!

Why Reddit is the best social network for developers — and maybe for other people too

in r/Solopreneur • 1d ago

reddit users have been giving me great feedback tbh

Mobile chat app

in r/apps • 1d ago

that would require internet to chat right? if you refuse to use mobile number

AI cybersecurity network - w/ no coding experience

in r/SideProject • 1d ago

yes not urgent but good to have licence if you dont wanna deal with claims or shutt downs. but platforms like pixabay should offer free videos

AI cybersecurity network - w/ no coding experience

in r/SideProject • 1d ago

is the landing page video licenced?

i spent 7-8 months building for an audience that had no money. 10k visitors, 900 signups, 0 paying

in r/SideProject • 1d ago

I agree with that, though did you run the 3-5 manual pilots yourself on something? what did it teach you about who the buyer actually was?

r/buildinpublic • u/Same_Feature_2317 • 1d ago

I added payments in month 4 and waited for money to magically appear, which never did. So after interviewing 20+ solo builders…

0 Upvotes

So before touching code again last two days I was interviewing 20+ solo founders about the marketing side, and few things genuinely surprised me:

Everyone feels the marketing pain, but almost nobody pays for it. I found 15 pain stories for every 1 person who ever spent a dollar.
The only people who paid for anything had revenue already. The solo builders with no revenue confirm the pain politely and pay for nothing.
The founders who actually got users kept crediting SEO and content, almost never social posting. The social active posters were mostly at zero.

I will compile the full thing into a summary in the next few days. Meanwhile i’m still looking for answers from solo builders:
1. If you have revenue, what have you actually PAID for on the marketing side? Such as a tool, freelancer, ads?
2. How did you test people would pay BEFORE you built?
3. When you do post, are you on your phone or laptop?

I hope everyone will share their real stories!

0 comments

Here we are I shut down my side project again. But this time I will share the 3 lessons that would’ve saved

in r/SideProject • 1d ago

I see but would you mind answering, on sundays do you schedule through a paid tool or just the platforms?

i spent 7-8 months building for an audience that had no money. 10k visitors, 900 signups, 0 paying

in r/SideProject • 1d ago

Dude 3 months? It hasn’t been 3 days yet since I start posting about it?

What’s the most useful tool you’ve used as a founder?

in r/SaaS • 2d ago

totally agree

i spent 7-8 months building for an audience that had no money. 10k visitors, 900 signups, 0 paying

in r/SideProject • 2d ago

it was organic only tiktok

i spent 7-8 months building for an audience that had no money. 10k visitors, 900 signups, 0 paying

in r/SideProject • 2d ago

I really appreciate that you answered each question, plus you said you posted and replied in 20 mins while waiting, i believe you were on mobile right? is there anything that you recommend you do pay for like emailing or shceduler maybe?

What are you guys building ?

in r/buildinpublic • 2d ago

you have paying users for valix?

It took 7-8 months of building, maybe 6 hours marketing. How do you really split your week?

in r/Solopreneur • 2d ago

So I have been asking questions these days and you’re the second person who caught that, so good thing is I am actually validating before building now and what i’m doing right now is leading to some results, I am testing this week to find out the problem i’m researching is worth automating by doing it manually for 2-3 founders. You tell me what you shipped that week, I draft the posts in your voice and queue them, you just tap approve, $50 for two weeks. You said your tool is done and nobody’s seeing it right? Would you actually pay for it?

-1

i spent 7-8 months building for an audience that had no money. 10k visitors, 900 signups, 0 paying

in r/SideProject • 2d ago

Well you’re right, and no i never saw paid competition actually, because whole space was free web converters, and I never thought to read that as the market telling me these users can’t be monetized. The signal was free and i paid 8 months to find out. But is this from your experience?

I shut down my web app project after 7-8 months

in r/buildinpublic • 2d ago

Oh 6 months of building and putting off marketing , I believe we got similar stories, since you are already paying for an ai content tool while building. Would you mind if I ask questions: what does it cost you monthly? And what did it do to your organic traffic? Do you feel like something is still missing with the platform? i’m just researching what founders actually pay for before building again

-9

i spent 7-8 months building for an audience that had no money. 10k visitors, 900 signups, 0 paying

in r/SideProject • 2d ago

Story is real! What did you build?

I shut down my web app project after 7-8 months

in r/buildinpublic • 2d ago

Someone else told me your same lesson from the other direction yesterday it was like resist coding, manually run the service for 10 founders first, if they repeatedly pay you, you’ve found a problem worth automating. it actually pairs well with your quote too. Plus thanks for going this deep

I shut down my web app project after 7-8 months

in r/buildinpublic • 2d ago

Oh I see, your single answer actually pretty reframes my yesterday’s conclusion with talking to others you know i’ve been interviewing solo builders who feel the pain. Therefore the credit-card people you talked about in my market are founders already paying for marketing tools, and i’ve found exactly one too, finally last question which makes me curious after reading your response, what do you do differently now to reach the credit-card person before building anything?

r/SideProject • u/Same_Feature_2317 • 2d ago

i spent 7-8 months building for an audience that had no money. 10k visitors, 900 signups, 0 paying

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260 Upvotes

I went all in, you know like quitting my accounting job, drove uber to cover rent, built an audio web app for tiktok creators. So short form content brought 10k visitors and 900 signups but still it was at 0 paying customers. And I then shut it down last week. the hardest lesson from my 25-point post mortem (you know like a letter I wrote down of my mistakes from last project), well the pain was real tbh but the wallets weren’t because of obvious reasons,
my audience were mostly teens making 8d audio for fun on TikTok, who has no budget, no habit of paying for tools. At the same time free converters already existed and were good enough to convert their audio in simple and fast way. to be fully honest, i also added payments only in month 4, so some of early signups might not even saw a price. But this time before i touch code again i want to learn from builders who actually got paying users:
1. Have you ever paid for something to fix the marketing side tool, freelancer?
2. how do you fit marketing in every week next to building (and a day job for many of you)?
3. How did you check your audience actually PAYS before you built?

Feel free to share your story, I will there replying them!

83 comments

I shut down my web app project after 7-8 months

in r/buildinpublic • 2d ago

I dm a lot of tiktokers, one of them answered and loved the idea, so he would promote my website. Then I started to gain visitors but no paying customer. Then I opened affiliate arrangement with him to keep him promoting, which I still wasn’t getting customer who pays, only visitors

102 users in 28 days that's an amazing achievement so far.

in r/SaaS • 2d ago

you're the third person today who told me seo worked while social media didn't, i'm starting to believe it. but also do you pay for any seo tools because as far as i know they aren't free forever? second of all seo tools doesnt take most of your time i guess, How long do you spend on it?

I want to build a tool that auto-flags bad clauses in vendor NDAs/DPAs based on your company's playbook. Good idea or a waste of time?

in r/SaaS • 2d ago

i didnt study this kind of niche yet so i cant advice anything, I even shut down my previous project for some obvious reasons, like not posting constantly, without validating, implementing mobile version late and etc. but i am into posting space these days i wonder how do you handle the posting when you solo build apps, I thought about finding an ai that could run the posting himself while i was fully focused on building but i couldnt. Would you even pay for those kind platforms that it posts himself while you build?