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Startups For the Rest of Us

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

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Management, Entrepreneurship, Business, Marketing

4.8792 Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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. Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher

Transcript

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0:00.0

If you happen to be listening to this while you're a business of software in Boston this week,

0:04.3

my co-founder, Anar Volset, is there live on the scene in Boston.

0:08.9

And if you'd like to link up with him, if you're interested in perhaps applying to Tiny Seed,

0:13.0

or better yet, if you're interested in potentially investing in our syndicate or in one of our next funds,

0:18.8

you should reach out to Anar Volset on Twitter.

0:22.9

That's E-I-N-A-R-V-O-L-L-S-E-T. His DMs are open. Or if you happen to see him in the hallway,

0:30.1

just say, hey, I've been a big fan of Mark Littlewood and the team at B-O-S since years.

0:37.0

In 2009, I think, was the first one that I did an attendee talk at, and then I spoke at the next

0:42.2

event.

0:42.8

And as always, we wish Mark and his team the best as they run their event this week.

1:00.0

It's another episode of Startup to the Rest of Us.

1:05.6

I'm your host, Rob Walling, and this week I talk with Nick Swan, the founder of SEO testing.

1:12.8

We run through his experience, launching a free tool, starting to charge for that, gaining traction,

1:18.2

renaming the tool, getting a new domain name, rewriting the code base. It's a really interesting and fascinating journey of growing SEO testing.com to 18K MRR. Before we dive into our conversation,

1:26.5

I want to thank you if you have rated this podcast

1:29.8

in Apple Podcasts. I've been trying to get to 1,000 worldwide ratings because there are so very

1:35.7

few podcasts that have that number of ratings in the tool. And I believe when I started asking,

1:41.5

we're around high 800s. And now I look today, 977 ratings.

1:47.7

And a rating doesn't even need a review. You can just click five stars. So if you haven't rated

1:52.3

this podcast, I'd appreciate it. Our most recent review is a five-star review that says my

1:56.9

favorite startup podcast. It's from Jazz Manders from Australia. I just spent eight and a half

2:02.0

hours of a solo road trip listening to back-to-back startup to the rest of us episodes.

...

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