Finally made $750 in my business and acquire 8k users in the last 24 hours!

I've always dreamt of building an online side business where I can build once and sell to millions. I love that business model but have never dreamt that I can achieve that, given that I am not a programmer in my career. I have been following several business podcast for the past years as a drive and motivation to create my own business. 

Over the years, I've delve a little on to web development using WordPress and in the hope of earning some money from that. I learnt in the hard way but is a good learning story and journey. I realised that what you put all your efforts building and excited for doesn't mean anything for anyone else and also learnt the importance of UI UX. 

Fast forward to 5 months ago (July 2024), I've came across several low code app builder. With the help of the low code tools in combination with chatgpt, I've finally launched my first mobile app - Rolly: AI Money Tracker.

But the business challenges doesn't end here, but it's just the beginning. I got no experience and skills on marketing but I've got my drive and passion that keep propelling me forward. By keep listening on people sharing their journey, looking at different apps to brainstorm etc, I've managed to now grow my user base from 1k (in 5 months) to 7.5k (in 24hours). On top of that, I've made $750 now and it's my first business that went positive on earning. It's been an interesting journey and I would just love to share my journey with everyone else, just like how I listen to others.

I've learnt alot from listening and researching on different experiences from entrepreneurs. The last marketing that got me the hit was a Reddit promotion post. Since I'm just a solo indie hacker working on this, my marketing budget is very very limited and this Reddit promotion is perfect for me, doesn't cost me a huge amount of dollar but just giving out massive promotions on the lifetime subscription of my app. For anyone interested, this was my giveaway in Reddit previously.

The best part is the last 24 hours where it went crazy. I spent 5 months to acquire 1k users but then the last 24 hours has acquired 8k users for me. I was looking at my google analytics and at one point it has 700 real time user (something I never ever achieved - I usually got 0-5 realtime user LOL).

As for my advice to people dreaming the to be entreprenuer - Don't overthinking about all the problems you will face before starting. You will encounter hundreds of problems along the way and you just need to solve them one by one. You will never start if you think about what's not working and there will never be an answer for everything - even I don't have an answer for everything now.