AMA
Official ask-me-anything conversations with notable guests
Artem Vysotsky

We bootstrapped all in one ai platform without ads to 200k users in two years. AMA

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Hey,

Artem here. I left Meta in Apr 2024 to fully dive into realm of GenAI. I knew back then that with the pace of development the distribution wins, not the product. So I spent a year cracking SEO and wasting tens of thousands on ads so you don't have to. Happy to share my learnings and answer your questions.

Some stats. As of now our app has over 200k registered users with up to 700 joining daily.
Before AI summaries we've reached 200k monthly visits on the website.
And then crashed hard in the past few weeks.

We also iterated on product like crazy and learned a ton.

Ask away!

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Thanks for being open about the crash part too. @artem_vysotsky

Artem Vysotsky

@ismaila_adamu yeah, not every story is a success story

Dheeraj

Hey Artem, appreciate you putting up this AMA! As someone super early-stage, I'd love to know how you knew when it was time to double down and start working on your SEO. We're still pre-SEO (sub 100 users at the moment) but we're iterating fast — I'm also curious what you'd do differently if you were at that early stage again, before the traffic.

Artem Vysotsky

@dheerajdotexe try building SEO optimized mini tools for your product, but make sure they convert into registrations.

I would start researching pain points before building the product.

Chris Surita
Going to hog this since I’m first! What surface did you use to reach users in the greatest quantity? Tangentially, when you gained users in rapid succession, what strategies did you use to retain them in higher quantities? If you gained 10,000 users but lost the same number in a month I feel like that’s not really as impressive as gaining 1000 but retaining 800. Last Q, there’s so much content out there. So many strategies. Organic marketing via small circles, influencer outreach, and as you probably know buying ad space whether that be through the ad market offerings from Google or other big players. I’m not to ask what you would pick, but what wouldn’t you pick as a strategy today to differentiate? Also, belated congrats! That’s not a long runway from your time at Meta until now and I love to see it.
Artem Vysotsky

@csurita our most popular pages (70% of all traffic) on the website are SEO optimized mini tools https://writingmate.ai/free-tools.

Initially, our churn was very high 20% but with time it started dropping. It is still our focus as a B2C app.

Our "know how" was to build 70 mini apps to drive traffic. It turns out there is an untapped potential.

Nika

What were the most effective marketing techniques to scale it to such numbers?
+ Biggest learnings?

Artem Vysotsky

@busmark_w_nika as I said above, most unexpected thing was to discover SEO optimized mini tools. They drive majority of the traffic. https://writingmate.ai/free-tools.

Priyanka Gosai

This is seriously impressive, Artem 200K users bootstrapped, without ads, is no small feat. Especially when most founders burn budget chasing early traction.

Quick question:

You said you “cracked SEO” what specifically worked in the early days? Programmatic SEO? Tool-based pages? Or just consistent long-form content?

Curious how much of your early traffic came from SEO vs. direct or referrals?

Thanks for doing this really looking forward to your breakdown!

Artem Vysotsky

@priyanka_gosai1 tool based pages. They rock