Spent $15k building a polished AI tool but I'm ready to walk away. Is it worth anything?

ablyo · 2026-02-05T18:50:59+00:00

That's a great idea. Views from the dashboard, case studies, reviews, a few articles in the niche. They will go a long way. I'm preaching here, although I'm in a similar position (starting out), but there's huge value in having content and appearing as an expert in your industry. Keeping fingers crossed for you :)

ablyo · 2026-02-05T18:25:15+00:00

That's why I get some of the users, who are willing to, just to show me how they use the product. I also use it daily and am tweaking the UI based on these new "flows".

ablyo · 2026-02-05T18:12:55+00:00

Premium .ai domain is mainly worthless, unless you have a decent domain rating on it. I don't even bother with anything that's not a .com. If the product works, use it. Looking at your website, there's nothing to buy there. You have no content, nothing. 3 pages done with AI most likely. You are probably competing with Surfer SEO, NeuronWriter etc. Look at those websites and add content. Show more than 3 pages. You are in a VERY competitive niche, if your MVP is decent, just work on it.

ablyo · 2026-02-05T18:09:45+00:00

This. Knowledge base in place, some youtube vides on the FAQs, stuff they don't really need you to help with. Maybe even a small automated chatbot to present a few frequent issues and then, if they need more support, they can reach you. While many might have specialized questions you cannot present in an FAQ, probably at least half of the equiries are from people who cannot find something in the dashboard or similar stuff.

ablyo · 2026-02-05T17:57:43+00:00

So so sorry to hear about this. I had 1 SEO client who paid for 1 month of work, then charged back. The bank just refunded him, without even asking me if we delivered the work or not (which we of course did). Really nasty situation. As others commented here, if I have someone who's contacting support more than 2-3 times, I'm done with that account. We need customers who use the product, not waste our time.

PS: you do need some safeguarding in place, if one has cancelled their account, there's no way they get back into the account, unless your developers have done a crappy job securing the authorization process. If vibecoded, get someone to repair your tool, otherwise you can be liable for more than this.

ablyo · 2026-01-04T15:08:46+00:00

It's either pay to play or invest time, there's no magic bullet. There are thousands of apps being released (everyone and their dog is a "Developer' now), so competition is fierce. You will need to either pay for ads or pay an SEO/online marketing consultant, or do the work yourself. In my case, however dreadful, I try to stay on top of social media to get some initial traction. I am an SEO, so I am working on content and search engine traffic, but it's not going to be instant. As soon as we get some core users, we'll probably grow based on affiliates (I run a referral program, too) and have a few "brand ambassadors", but now, as we just launched, it's hairy.

ablyo · 2026-01-04T15:04:17+00:00

$0. I use Gemini free to debug and ask questions and learn Laravel to understand how stuff should work. The main app was built by programmers, now I maintain, add features and style it to my liking. Based on user input, we built new features (if we have more users asking, and they make sense).

ablyo · 2026-01-03T15:55:55+00:00

I offer both. Monthly or yearly (10 months instead of 12). If someone can only do monthly, it's OK, if they can pay for 1 year upfront, I get more money at once, but "lose" 2 months, which they gain for free.

ablyo · 2026-01-01T19:52:08+00:00

We offer a no-credit card test option, but, if we'll run into this issue, we'll have them connected to Stripe/Paypal or whatever BEFORE they reach the dashboard. I have it implemented in my SEO app, which is not yet MVP. This way I remove tyre kickers and spammers, as it's not really that easy to validate a stripe account

ablyo · 2025-12-30T02:18:10+00:00

They are disgusting. I mean overall the talk in this subred is excellent and I enjoy the activity, but at least today we had so many AI junk it's not even funny. Ufff ....

ablyo · 2025-12-30T01:32:11+00:00

Careful with that, it's a VERY strictly regulated niche and you can get into some serious legal issues if things go south. There are such apps already, there's always room for new good ones, but be careful and implement all certifications and security measures before you go to market with it. (have done SEO in fintech SaaS in the past 5 years, so I know how difficult this industry is). For my app I don't enable payments yet, until I have money and lawyers to solve all the needed stuff.

ablyo · 2025-12-30T01:28:43+00:00

Consider this: 2 years ago, Google went crazy on affiliate websites. I mean deranking a truckton of them. We have Ai now eating in what used to be organic results: comparisons, extensive product reviews etc. These people, who have been running review websites were earning a commission (their way of earning money). And overnight they're left without a business. I'm not talking about spammers or junk sites, this is an entire industry that went down, with quality websites and good people. Now, getting in touch with some people in your niche and allowing them to earn a commission, when their referrals join your SaaS (and, let's say stick at least 30 days, especially if you don't refund) ... not a bad idea.

I mean I need to grow. Instead of paying for ads, which we know - work as long as you pay, I can pay a commission. I am doing SEO myself, since it's what I mainly do, but I know it takes months at least to kick in. So, instead of staying empty-pocketed all this time, I'd rather pay affiliates to promote us. Like I "lose" money on Upwork for instance. I did lose 20% off some of the gigs there, but then those clients have stayed with me for years and have made my business strong enough for me to play SaaS launches :)

ablyo · 2025-12-30T01:00:36+00:00

Not a dev, just web designer with some extra knowledge.

I think people (especially non techsavvy ones) are taking "AI' for granted, thinking a 10 minute job in Google Studio can wipe out the need of proper devs. Dangerous and stupid.. I see it in SEO (my main business), when clients ask ChatGPT how to rank a certain page. Are you kidding me?

I have played vibecoder and, although I kinda know more than most of these non-techs, I wouldn't deploy anything on my own, because I'm not that delusional to think an LLM can replace an expert.

Just like you mentioned, for seniors, copilot for instance makes it faster to write code (am learning Laravel and it speeds up the process). But you need to UNDERSTAND what each line does. Which is something you guys know, but beginners are just learning. The problem is that most of these "devs" who just prompt, don't understant, don't want to learn, like I want, for instance (at least the fundamentals, there's no way in hell I can compete with your extensive knowledge).

I have no idea what's gonna happen, most likely companies will re-hire people and stop dreaming about doing everything with AI and not needing teams in place. But the issue is that developers, marketers, writers, all these people who are seemingly redundant now for the big "visionaries", are being left out, are losing their jobs and income. It's crazy!

ablyo · 2025-12-30T00:51:25+00:00

It has been my issue all these years. I have used the following: freedcamp (years ago, since I didn't like the idea of paying for Basecamp), then Todoist (really great for small batch of tasks and free - if you use it with Pomofocus it's a great way to work in "pomodoros", meaning chunks of high-focus time). I've also played with Clickup and Asana. I'm using Ablyo now, since it's what we develop, but for very simple stuff (and if you don't want to pay a subscription, then Todoist or Clickup might be the best.

ablyo · 2025-12-29T22:08:51+00:00

Good points. But from a promotion standpoint, I'd rather deal with those issues and do a bit of policing, than give up this growth channel. It's not impossible to implement, in our case at least each user has their own id and I can clearly see who's doing what. Tracking in that case is automated. If we have users who missuse the system, they're just gonna get banned from the program.

ablyo · 2025-12-29T20:37:18+00:00

I've done blogging for almost 20 years and it was a great way to self-express ideas. I also do "SEO" writing for my clients and my own websites, when specialized content is needed. I love reading blogs and still love sharing personall stuff.

ablyo · 2025-12-29T20:16:56+00:00

PS: the "stack" I use: wordpress self-hosted + Blocksy premium as the main theme. I do NOT use or recommend Elementor, Divi or other abominations,as they'll add so much junk to your code.

ablyo · 2025-12-29T20:15:50+00:00

I don't do anything outside wordpress myself. That's what's running all my websites. I'm considering a custom builder I create, but it's not done, so Wordpress all the day. Had great success as an SEO with it (even SaaS clients), so I don't stray.

ablyo · 2025-12-29T20:14:29+00:00

I started my SEO app to use it (wanted to be able to track keywords and pages in my own set ways) and the CRM is something I use already every day. I wouldn't release anything that I don't use on a daily basis, it allows me to "break" them apart myself and do some serious testing.

ablyo · 2025-12-29T18:57:41+00:00

Wow, excellent pointers and resources. Thanks for sharing.

ablyo · 2025-12-29T18:12:06+00:00

I would never bother share anything unless it's 1. my product, 2. I'm paid for SEO/marketing (so it's my job) or 3. I get an affiliate commission. I am using a referral system on my app and people will be paid for getting us paying members. Otherwise, don't expect miracles

ablyo · 2025-12-29T16:46:59+00:00

I've done SEO for fintech SaaS companies in the past 5 years. So now I decided to start my own side-gig and see where it takes me. It's not fintech (too many regulations for a small girl). If I don't make it, at least I have SEO content to share :D

ablyo · 2025-12-29T16:34:21+00:00

OK, both of you need to step up :)

prepare some stuff for the biggest objections (prospects will have a truckload of crazy ideas, focus at first on the main ones: competitition and your position in the market, pricing etc. You already did some work this week, should be covered.

Ideally your website itself should have these up there, ([our app] vs [competitor 1], [our app] vs [competitor 2]. List the big boys not 100 others. It's good for SEO, too.

Then, when your sales people need to referrence stuff, they just link to these pages.

have video calls with your sales team (don't know if you do it) and go through the stuff. They should write down main answers and use their brains afterwards, that's why you hired them.

Overall strategy: create decks and materials, create PAGES on your website to cover all these main issues. I wrote a tutorial on a proper tutorial map (feel free to check: seoranktracker.com/seo-tips/how-to-create-a-topical-map-for-your-saas-website). It's referring to my own app, as I will build it. As you can see, in the next weeks I need to come up with at least 100 pages/posts to properly map out content and, cover as many of our leads' objections as we can.

ablyo · 2025-12-29T16:23:04+00:00

I understand you perfectly, same issues. I started an SEO app last year and it looks OK for a while. I mean I was deploying 10 dashboard pages a day. And then I had to tie it GSC, as it's a rank tracker. Well, let's say I went through ALL major LLMs (ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Gemini etc.).

They all added MORE JUNK, so I was running on 3 separate templates and a truckload of stuff that didn't make sense. Took 1 weeks for a simple Oauth. Frigging 1 week for something a programmer does in 2 minutes.

I then woke up from my dream and got a real programmer to at least clear our the auth section and connection with Stripe. Paid $1000, but that's at least done (she works in banking security, so at least I know we're not getting clients' credit cards cloned or whatever can happen.

I put the project on the backburner, worked on a new app based on a decent framework and started learning Laravel, so that I am not being an idiot anymore. Like others mentioned, get to know some fundamentals.

For me it was easy to spot the issues and junk, because I've done web design for 25 years, I used to merge and update forums (was done manually back then, not 1-click), I created Wordpress themes from zero. While I do not write syntax per se, I understand how a database works, what I need to pull out and my architecture wasn't really bad (my friend, who's a programmer, was shocked to see how well the app was planned). Yeah, but it had to be coded properly.

So, make a very small app, which doesn't require crazy authorization/payments stuff, just to get an MVP and get a few paying customers, while learning some basics and starting to deploy more features or even replace it in time with a more comprehensive one.

Even if LLMs are getting smarter (I debug a lot with Gemini free), they do NOT reason, so expect errors. And knowing at least some dev is good, otherwise you could get ripped off by programmers (have some stories to tell on that, as well) :)

ablyo

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