Some things can't be rushed

Tim makes a really good point here. Some things can’t be rushed due to the nature of how SEO, backlinks etc works:

Building a SaaS takes time:

• seo: months
• affiliates: years
• backlinks: years
• reviews: years

If you’re at 1K MRR after a year (or two), you’re doing a great job.

I thought that my Carrd plugins project was a slow growth one after going hard at it for some months, and decided to start a new one while just maintaining the previous one. I wonder if i might be wrong now… 🤔

My main conclusion after 6 months of going hard at it was that it’s the Carrd plugins market size was too small, and customer’s are price sensitive and less likely to want to pay. But Tim’s about SEO, backlinks taking time resonated, because maybe the market is big—and bigger than I thought—but I didn’t give it enough time for SEO to work! Either that or I have not yet found the best distribution channels for it to reach the true size of the market.

But having said that, my page ranking position is pretty high up for “carrd plugins”. Perhaps it’s being able to rank higher on “carrd” and “carrd templates” that matter? Or pivoting to channels that can reach more Carrd users. My current reach are limited to smallish communities on Facebook and Reddit. Maybe there’s other channels that I’ve yet to unlock to grow it bigger?

Thankfully, I didn’t decide to shut it down entirely but to slow down a bit on pushing it. I still answer support emails, contribute actively to communities, launch 1 plugin a month. I can simply continue as per what I’ve been doing. I can crank back up a bit on launching new plugins and trying out experiments.

Most importantly, not downvote the project’s potential just because of 6 months data! In the bigger scheme of things for software and internet businesses, 6 months really is nothing. Got to keep going.

So thankful to chance on this little insight to make me think harder, and challenge assumptions.

Onwards!