Elston Baretto was last on the pod in March 2021, when he’d just grown his tool, Tiiny.host, to $600 MRR and we recorded as part of my mission to share stories of unknown indie hackers with potential. Fast forward 2 years and Tiiny Host has grown to $10k MRR and Elston has just quit his job to become a full time indie hacker.

👉 My side project, Whitstable Craft Co.

Topics covered:

• Hitting $10k MRR
• Why PDF hosting has been pivotal for growth
• Build what people search for
• Why SEO has been such a huge growth driver
• How to do SEO
• Going full time
• When is the right time to quit your job?
• How much to pay yourself
• Launching before it's perfect
• Pressure of growth
• How to keep indie hacking enjoyable

Recommendations

• Book: The New New Thing
• Podcast: Postgres.fm
• Indie Hacker: Vetted Founders (tbc)

Follow Elston

• Twitter
• Tiiny Host

My links

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Indie Bites YouTube
• Join the membership
• Personal Website
• 2 Hour Podcast Course
• PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)
• This Indie Life Podcast

Sponsor - Ahrefs

Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.

If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.

To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools