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:

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.

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

Startups For the Rest of Us

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