not a $320k success story. not even close. but I figured the honest early numbers might be useful for anyone in the same stage.
I launched it about 8 months ago. it tracks how brands show up in AI search results across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and others.
here's where the $14k came from:
free audits that turned into consulting: $6,200
– did about 40 free AI visibility audits for businesses. 8 of them asked for help fixing what we found. charged $500-1200 per project depending on scope.
monthly SaaS subscriptions: $4,800
– 12 paying users at $50-150/month. most came from the consulting clients or Reddit.
one-time setup fees: $3,000
– a few clients wanted us to build their AI-optimized content pages. charged flat fees.
what I learned:
– free audits are the best sales tool I've ever used. 20% conversion rate.
– consulting funds the SaaS. without it I'd have run out of money by month 4.
– the SaaS grows slower than I expected but churn is almost zero because the data changes weekly and people keep checking.
I'm not here to sell anything. just figured someone at month 1-2 might want to see what month 8 actually looks like.
8 months in. $14k from a SaaS nobody's heard of. here's the breakdown
byu/SolutionBright297 inEntrepreneur
Posted by SolutionBright297
4 Comments
ran into this. consulting lets you build and test your product with paying customers. it’s gold for finding true pmf before scaling.
Oh boy, not another one of these
This sub consists of:
50% sales pages/marketing
20% AI saas
20% employee’s
5% solo entrepreneurs
3% Small/medium size business owners
2% serial entrepreneurs with multiple six figure exits
Only 10% of posts are worth it
how do you “track how brands show up in ai search results”? Do you just look up related search queries and try to make them show up in the results when the LLM google searches?