I Built A $20K/Month AI App In Less Than 1 Year
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Hello, my name is Nick and I'm the founder of Textero, an AI-powered writing assistant. Our company is young—very young, because I started it in 2023.
I built it because, while the market for AI tools was rapidly developing, there was still a need for more tools tailored to specific needs. That’s why our product's goal is to transform how people learn by making studying more personalized and accessible. I personally believe that cooperation between humans and AI can produce incredible results. It saves time and allows for more creativity, which is exactly how Textero works.
Textero currently generates an average monthly revenue of $20,000, although some months can be higher or lower. We all understand when students experience high and low seasons.
How did you come up with your business idea?
I started Textero a few years after graduating from university. I knew all the challenges and pains students—our main audience—face and just wanted to create an extra source of inspiration for them. You know, it’s okay for designers to look at a lot of pictures to get inspired. So why can't we get ideas from AI before writing papers? That’s how the idea for Textero was born.
This was my first product, so I took it very seriously. After launching the website, we quickly began to attract users. One by one, they found us through Google search. A funny fact: Textero was free for the first two months because I couldn’t decide on a business model, and I wanted to gather more feedback. Who helped me? My friend, a developer, and a few outsourced developers.
Give us a step-by-step process for how you built the first version of your product.
It was obvious to me that there was already a real market for this product. We all noticed the growing popularity of ChatGPT, but I wanted to create something more collaborative—where you could get ideas and work with those AI-generated ideas within the app. It was also clear that I didn’t have much money to spend, so I had to DIY as much as possible. I simply bought the domain and started working with my friend.
It took just a month to get the first version of Textero, along with some initial traffic, mostly from Google search. We didn’t charge any money for the first few months to gather feedback and find bugs—and there were plenty of them:) But as the number of users grew, I started registering on directories for AI tools to gain more traffic.
Just when I introduced a paid version of Textero, I learned about seasonality factors. We experienced a -20% drop in daily active users, which was followed by an even bigger decline after a Google SEO update.
As for our business model, Textero initially had a freemium model, offering a free version of the product with limited features. I chose this approach to build a user base without relying on a paywall. While this model was effective in attracting users, the subscription rate remained low. I experienced challenges in converting free users into paying customers, and I’m still working on improving the conversion rate. The only difference now is that we have a bigger team.
How did you “launch” the business?
Initially, Textero was a project developed by two people over the first two months. We created a basic writing assistant and a very simple website. Due to our limited budget, we focused on building organic traffic through content marketing and directory submissions.
In 2023, we relaunched the website and significantly improved Textero by adding more languages and expanding our source base. Now, Textero offers access to over 215 million academic sources to assist with research. My goal was to launch the updated version before the new academic year, so we prioritized simplicity of design but accuracy of our writing tool.
This was one of the most challenging periods of my life, but also one of the most insightful. I learned a lot by being in charge of everything from start to finish. We were also lucky to have early users who told us what they thought of other similar tools. For example, it helped us find things we could make better, like using more up-to-date information and making the text generation faster
How did you land your first customers?
Our first customers came from Google search after the first two months. We noticed the potential of paid advertising, so we started investing in Google Ads and expanded our marketing efforts. Along with our growing team, we experimented with various marketing channels—from Instagram Reels to creating writing guides on Pinterest.
But we encountered challenges along the way. For instance, we were receiving 10,000 daily organic clicks, but the next day our website suddenly dropped out of Google's rankings, thanks to the October Core Update. We had to remove most of the content from our homepage and work on regaining our rankings.
What lessons did we learn? Every day started with a challenge and ended with five more. I found out that I was very stress-resistant.
How have you grown your business?
Since Textero was free for the first few months, we built an email list. We began working with it by sending out updates about Textero, highlighting its strong points. This strategy was somewhat successful but not enough to become profitable. So our team expanded, and we brought on a few SEO specialists, link builders, and marketing specialists.
As our audience is young, we wanted to be where they are. So, we started using almost every possible channel to grow our business. We responded to feedback on Reddit, created useful writing tips to share on X, and made many funny videos on TikTok. Over time, we realized that not all channels worked for us. We decided to concentrate on a few key social networks.
Additionally, we created an affiliate program and actively engaged with our affiliates to share product news and offer special promo codes for their audience. And it’s working!
But 2024 was a wild ride. We were getting more popular, but our competitors were adding dozens of new features, while we were stuck with just a few. So, we decided to merge with another platform AHelp, a well-known learning hub that was on the market until 2011. This cooperation helped us gain access to more tools and technologies for our product development, which also helped to multiply our number of customers.
Give us a breakdown of your revenue & financials.
Our gross margins are 50-60% on average. We are expanding the team, but many people work part-time. Now, average monthly revenue is $20K, so I think it’s quite a good result. Right now, we focus on writing and research assistance, but we are adding extra tools to the platform to prevent users from switching to other sites.
For example, we offer a tool that evaluates any writing to make it more readable and provides tips for improvement.
What does the future look like?
I am confident that Textero will continue to grow. Our team is motivated, and our user base is expanding, so why not? Our goals for the next year include increasing our subscription rate and expanding our product offerings. I want to keep focusing on organic growth, but it might also be a year of more partnerships.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Good decisions:
1) I chose to start with a Freemium model, which helped us attract a large number of users and get valuable feedback.
2) Launching an affiliate program.
3) Simplicity of website.
Mistakes:
1) It was better to have more people to launch the product.
2) Learn more seasonality of business before its launch.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
I think the best advice would be: doubting yourself and your product is okay. It’s normal! It's the doubts that lead to constant improvement. And no matter how hard it is to compete, this competition is also a great opportunity for growth.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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