My non-AI app made $8000 USD in 2 months. Here’s how I did it
I’ve been building AI wrappers for the past 3 years as an indie hacker. None of them became profitable. Building failed products taught me how to code, design and market properly. And one day all those skills paid out
The idea
2 months ago Skype announced it was closing down. Most people used Skype for video calls, but there was a niche of people who used Skype to make cheap international calls to mobile and landline numbers. That was a golden opportunity – major playing leaving the market, and its users scrambling for an alternative.
That’s how I made Yadaphone. I took one feature of Skype I used myself – making cheap overseas calls, and created a website that allowed people to do it.
Launch
I built an MVP in a weekend. The design was minimalist, landing non-existent, but the app worked – you could sign up, buy credits and call. I wrote a quick post on r/Skype. It got removed in an hour, but it was enough to get my first users. This is where I got real lucky for first time. One of users, became a super-fan of my product. He started giving a lot of feedback and promoting my app among his friends. His testimonial is still featured on my landing page (hi Nico!).
Promotion
Reddit was great to get the first users, but the traffic from it depends on my creativity and people upvoting the posts. I couldn’t rely solely on it. That’s when I decided it was time for the Product Hunt launch. I prepared everything, but was so stressed with support requests, that when the launch came … I forgot about it.
2 hours into the launch I looked at my phone and saw people upvoting Yadaphone. I panicked and started spamming about it in all my social media. I also sent an email to all my existing users – and it was super helpful. My own users started uploading the product, and we finished 11th that day – earning us a featured badge and a really strong backlink from PH.
Growth
PH launch was also useful, because this is how we got our first b2b customers. Next day after launch, a guy texted me out of the blue saying he wanted an enterprise plan for his company. I said, sure I’ll get back to ya (of course I didn’t have an enterprise plan back then). I coded the organization management logic in a night, and the next morning was presenting my solution to his company of 20 people. That worked, we onboarded him and the next day I got a Stripe notification of several hundred bucks. It felt surreal.
What didn’t work
Paid traffic
I tried paid traffic on Google, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Facebook. None of them worked. The worst by far is Reddit. Reddit ads are mostly bots who are not even active on the website.
What I learned is that social media paid traffic will only work if you already have viral posts that you can promote even further. Otherwise it’s a waste of money. Google works if you target a super niche keyword (example: target the keyword “calls to the United States” and have a specific page built for this keyword).
TikTok and Insta reels
I tried posting reels, but this was a pure waste of effort. None of them got any views. I still think it can be a good source of traffic, but you need to know what you are doing.
What worked
Reddit. Great source of traffic, great audience (just don’t get banned for promotion)
Twitter/X. One of my tweets was reposted by Pieter Levels. It got 200k views, a ton of publicity and sales. I still post to Twitter every day. Great marketing channel
Collaborations with journalists. Yadaphone got featured early as one of top Skype alternatives in a well-ranked article. Good for domain authority and traffic
Linkedin content. LinkedIn is so filled with AI content, if you post something genuine, you are guaranteed to get engagement. I post to LinkedIn every day. Sometimes about Yadaphone, sometimes stuff related to products in general (for example, I made an overview of top Reddit startups launches recently). Good reactions, and shows that you as a founder stay behind you work
This was an overview of my experience launching a profitable non-AI product as an indie hacker. I would be happy to answer any questions you guys have!
You can check out Yadaphone here: yadaphone.com
Replies
minimalist phone: creating folders
Hey Denis, just a fundamental question, but I am very curious:
How did you make it into Reddit? (I mean not to be banned because policies are strict there.) 🙈
Yadaphone
@busmark_w_nika thank you! I got banned a lot before, but eventually i figured out that:
1) you need to share your denuine story and pain, not just promote. If it feels scary to post – you are posting the right thing
2) do not include links to your products. First of all, Reddit bans for them. Second – people will google your product manually and it's good for the SEO
@busmark_w_nika I had the same question in mind, thanks for asking.
@denis_iurchak I checked your reddit profile, can only see your founder story. What was your strategy? Commenting on existing posts?
Yadaphone
@busmark_w_nika @admiralrohan yes, commenting definitely drew a lot of traffic, but also don't forget that builder subs have a lot of high-value adjacent audiences. For Yadaphone it was digital nomads, biz owners and freencers who hang out or r/SaaS. Plus, Reddit recommends viral posts even to people outside of the original subs. I wrote a post about how I went viral on reddit, you can check it out here https://www.producthunt.com/p/yadaphone/my-latest-post-on-reddit-got-300k-views-and-1000-upvotes-here-are-8-things-that-helped-me-go-viral
minimalist phone: creating folders
@admiralrohan @denis_iurchak Thank you, this is gold. I had one article on my Substack on that topic too, and it provedto me that personal stories are hitting :)
Product Hunt
Nice overview! I really appreciate the channel breakdown and am a bit surprised targeted keyads didn't work too well on Google. Did you have info grabbers to capture the folks landing from ads? Or was there just not enough traffic from paid in general?
I remember your launch of @Yadaphone btw! I think you did a great job capturing the timing of Skype shutting down and building something not overly complex for the end user to solve the problem.
Yadaphone
@gabe thank you! I think paid traffic didn't work mostly because it led to the defautl landing page. I am focusing now on creating dedicated landings per campaign and i hope it performs much better
Product Hunt
@denis_iurchak good luck! Curious to hear how it goes.
Product Hunt
Great post. What's the plan for the next 60 days? More Reddit/X/LinkedIn or do you plan to try other channels, too?
Yadaphone
@steveb thank you! Definitely more useful content on social media + we are working on outbound campaigns to reach more b2b folks who need cheap online calling
pretty cool stuff. Thanks for providing the info.
Yadaphone
@amol6 thanks man! hearing that from AppWhiz definitely counts as something :)
Hi Denis, I do have a technical question. Which service are you using to make international calls?
Yadaphone
@eljo_prifti hey! we are using a combination of providers, mainly Twilio and Telnyx
Very cool to hear that you've achieved some success! I remember your launch here on Product Hunt, it was refreshing to see a non-AI product with a clear business application and customer use-case.
Thanks for following up with your story and details on what did/didn't work. Definitely taking notes for my own launch in the coming months. :)
This is a nice overview of Yadaphone on Product Hunt. I wish you all the best. I am curious because I am launching something innovative. Do you have any ideas for those of us who use social media but are novices when it comes to marketing
Yadaphone
@chris_hunter6 thank you! try and post more about your real pains and things you learn. The more you post, the more engaging your writing becomes, and eventually you start getting eyeballs on your content
Graphify
Nice, thanks for the insights and great timing with Skype.
Yadaphone
@hussein_r thank you!
congrats on all the consistent work over the years paying off when the moment was right