Startups For the Rest of Us

Episode 626 | Scratching an Itch, Launching a Free SEO Tool, and Growing to $18k MRR

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In episode 626, Rob Walling chats with Nick Swan, the founder of SEOTesting.com. SEOTesting helps SEO professionals and agencies automate the reporting of page updates and changes. Nick originally launched it as a free tool under a different name.

In this episode, we cover when Nick decided to charge for it, renaming the tool, rewriting the codebase, and the journey to growing to $18,000 MRR.

Topics we cover: 
  • 3:17 - Growing SEOTesting.com to $18,000 MRR
  • 4:53 - What kinds of businesses use SEOTesting.com?
  • 8:11 - The decision to build SEOTesting
  • 12:33 - Launching SEOTesting as a free tool
  • 15:39 - When Nick started to charge for SEOTesting?
  • 18:16 - Nick’s initial pricing strategy and rollout
  • 27:06 - Reflecting on the initial launch
  • 29:49 - Nick’s thought process for pivoting and changing the company name
  • 34:45 - Reaching product-market fit
  • 36:01 - Nick’s decision to bring on a co-founder a few years in
  • 39:32 - Prioritizing marketing vs. development
    • Links from the Show:
    • Nick Swan (@NickSwan) I Twitter
    • SEOTesting.com 
    • TinySeed 

      • If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you.

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      Startups For the Rest of UsBy Rob Walling
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