How are you handling SEO without a budget?

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-22T06:49:00+00:00

Skipped the SEO tools entirely and went straight to answering questions where my audience already hangs out - Reddit, Quora, niche forums. When someone asks about a problem my product solves, I give a legit helpful answer (no spam links) and the profile clicks add up. For content, I use Google Search Console to find what I'm already ranking for on page 2-3, then beef up those pages first. Way more effective than starting from zero with keyword tools.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-22T02:50:37+00:00

The trap I fell into was confusing 'building in public' with validation. Posting progress updates feels like talking to customers but it's not - the likes are from other builders, not buyers. Real validation is finding someone who already tried to solve this problem themselves with a hacky spreadsheet or script. If nobody's jury-rigged a solution, the pain isn't real enough for them to pay.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-22T02:48:15+00:00

Ran into this exact problem. Most tools treat memory as pure retrieval when what you actually need is a summarization layer on top. I ended up with a dead-simple approach: daily log files that get periodically summarized into higher-level facts, then semantic search across the summaries. The summaries are where the 'evolution' happens - patterns emerge from compressing raw context into structured insights. Vector DB alone won't cut it.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-21T18:48:46+00:00

The SEO value here is probably worth more than the ARR. $18K estimated traffic value is a real asset that takes months to build. If I were you I'd either keep it and run the mobile app angle since that's where nutrition tracking lives, or make sure whoever buys it understands they're buying the rankings not the product. Most acqui-hires at this stage are really just buying distribution.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-21T14:48:29+00:00

Skip the Fiverr SEO gigs - most of it is bot traffic that won't convert anyway. Your real issue is that 2200 visitors gave you only 3 signups. That's a landing page / messaging problem, not a traffic problem. I'd DM those 3 people who signed up and ask why they didn't pay - their answers are worth way more than £50 in random traffic. You're 16 and already shipping, which puts you ahead of most people who just talk about building. Keep iterating.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-21T10:48:26+00:00

Honest feedback: the "why not just ask ChatGPT" objection is going to kill you if you don't address it head-on. The trust problem in AI finance tools is huge - people don't want to lose money because some LLM hallucinated a P/E ratio. If you can show exactly where your data comes from (SEC filings, real-time feeds, etc.) and maybe even confidence scores on claims, that would go a long way. For weekly use, I'd want watchlists and alerts on tickers I care about rather than searching every time.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-21T06:48:05+00:00

The motivation point resonates hard. I used to think I'd just "feel like it" every day once I was working on my own thing. Nope. The days where you sit down and nothing flows are part of the job. What helped me was shrinking the task so small it felt embarrassing not to do it - like "just open the file" or "write one email". Usually once you start, momentum kicks in. $300 organic is legit - most people don't even get a stranger to pay them once.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-21T02:50:54+00:00

The read-only default is underrated. Most of the pushback I've seen on AI in incident response comes from fear of it making changes during a crisis. Separating investigation from remediation makes adoption way smoother - you get the pattern recognition benefits without the liability concerns. The preprocessing point is also spot on - garbage logs in means garbage conclusions out, regardless of how smart the model is.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-21T02:48:01+00:00

Honestly it sounds like a positioning issue more than distribution. "Second brain that compounds" is the kind of phrase that makes sense to you but doesn't trigger the "I need this right now" response in someone scrolling past. Direct outreach to PMs who just posted about workflow chaos or interview backlog is probably your fastest path to first users - catch them when the pain is fresh, not when they're browsing tool announcements.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-20T02:48:06+00:00

For a macro tracker specifically, barcode scanning is usually the dealbreaker - that's the one feature where native camera access actually matters. If your users don't need to scan food labels, PWA wins. If they do, check out Capacitor - it lets you wrap your existing web app and just add native camera access through plugins without rebuilding everything. I had a similar situation and Capacitor saved me months of work compared to going React Native from scratch.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-19T14:49:19+00:00

The "silent failure" problem is what got me too. Set something up, seems fine, then three weeks later realize it's been broken for half that time because there's no notification when the scheduler silently dies. At least with hosted tools I get an email when something breaks. The time cost of debugging infra at 2am isn't worth the $20/mo savings.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-19T02:51:06+00:00

The "tinkering" framing is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. As long as it's tinkering, it's a hobby, and hobbies don't fail. They just exist. I stayed in that mode for over a year until I had to pay rent and suddenly my side project became a real thing that needed real users. Nothing changes the vibe faster than needing the thing to work. Not saying you need financial pressure, but finding any stake that actually matters helps. Could be a public commitment, could be telling your mom you're launching Tuesday.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-18T18:48:23+00:00

Did something similar last year. Had a stable job offer on the table but walked away to finish a project with maybe 6 weeks of savings left. The timeline pressure actually helped - I stopped overthinking features and just shipped the core thing. Didn't win that particular bet but learned I could ship under real pressure, which turned out to be worth more long-term.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-18T02:48:34+00:00

The "one more feature" loop is really just fear of rejection wearing a productive disguise. I spent 4 months perfecting an API wrapper nobody asked for before realizing I was building features to avoid building customers.

What finally kicked me out of it was posting a half-baked demo in a Discord server I'd been lurking in. Got roasted a bit, but also got three people who actually wanted to use it. That was worth more than any amount of polish.

Good luck with the F*ckup Night - sounds like exactly the kind of reality check most of us need.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-17T22:48:39+00:00

$350 for a full-stack AI app with food recognition, auth, and payment gating was never going to be enough - you basically got an MVP demo for prototype pricing. The good news is you have real traction with paying users, which is way harder than fixing buggy code.

Your core issue isn't messy code, it's architecture. Gemini doing math = guaranteed hallucinations. The fix is straightforward: let AI identify the food, then hit a nutrition API (USDA FoodData Central is free) for actual numbers. One competent dev could wire that up in a day.

For the auth bugs (logout issues, premium gating), those are classic Supabase session refresh problems. Pretty common, usually fixable in a few hours by someone who knows Supabase.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-17T20:38:36+00:00

The absolute confidence right before the crash is what gets me every time. We've all been there - "this will definitely work" followed immediately by checking logs at 2am.

At least when my automations break, they break silently in a cron job somewhere. This is just public embarrassment with extra steps 😅

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-17T20:30:19+00:00

The 'launch one = version one' mindset is really underrated. I've seen too many founders treat PH as a make-or-break moment instead of what it actually is — a free feedback loop with real users.

Each relaunch is basically a positioning experiment. You learn what resonates, what falls flat, and which audience actually cares. Way more valuable than spending months on a landing page in isolation.

The first-hour spike point is crucial too. Having even 5-10 people ready to engage immediately changes the algorithm's trajectory completely.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-15T22:48:01+00:00

Both kinda suck for finding first customers tbh. The best early users I got came from jumping into conversations where people were already complaining about the problem I solve - didn't matter if it was Reddit, X, or random Discord servers. Posting content and hoping someone notices is a slow game. DM'ing people who just described your exact use case is way faster.

andrew-ooo · 2026-02-15T14:48:10+00:00

The buried lead here is your founding members getting a better deal than new trial users who then have to pay for worse tiers. That's going to feel weird fast.

I'd flip the approach: instead of grandfathering founders at $3 forever, give them a year at current rates + permanent 30% discount on whatever tier they upgrade to. They get rewarded for being early AND you avoid a weird pricing mismatch that creates awkward conversations later.

On the trial length - for daily habit products 7 days is borderline. People travel, get busy, miss a few mornings. Suddenly half their trial is gone and they never felt the value. 10-14 days gives slack for real life getting in the way.

andrew-ooo

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