It's great that anyone can create an app and a product these days. It also means there's a lot of noise to get through to really get customers and get users that you want. And to be honest, if you think that just going full time on something is gonna make you more productive and excel, your product, that's definitely a wrong assumption because it's and excel at your product, that's definitely a wrong assumption because it's it's very dangerous when you have all that time to figure out what to do with it, especially if you don't have a team or anything, like, pushing you in a direction.

Hello, and welcome back to Indie Bites, the podcast where I bring you stories from fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less. In this episode, we have Elston Baretto. He's the founder of Tinyhost and is probably in a similar position to most indie hackers, working on a side project that earns a few $100 MRR alongside a full time job. Elston started out his career at JP Morgan and then chased a start up dream, co founding a company with 14 employees. But then after that failed, he went back to a full time role and launched TinyHost in January 2020.

You may not have heard of Elston and his project, but I want to bring you some more relatable stories of those indie hackers who might be in a similar position to you, who are facing some of the same challenges that you are. In this episode, we talk about how Elston made a $1,000 in a couple of days using lifetime deals. How his SEO strategy has led to over a 150 sites a day being created using his product, and the tactics he used for that. Now, Elston is a member of the community that is sponsoring today's podcast, Weekend Club. If you've listened to episodes of Indie Bites before, you would have heard me talk about this community because I owe a lot to everyone at Weekend Club for me launching this podcast and staying motivated to keep pushing forward.

In fact, right now, I'm recording this on a focus buddy session with 2 of my weekend club friends, Rishi and Charlie, ensuring that I get this episode out today. Weekend Club runs sessions every Saturday in European and US time zones to work through our goals for the day. If you want to join the friendliest community for indie hackers and bootstrappers, head to weekendclub.co and enter the code indie bites for 50% off your 1st month. Elstom, welcome to the podcast. Can you tell me a little bit more about Tinyhost and why you started it?

Tinyhost is just a very simple way to share your web project online. What I realize is we've got to a point on the web that it is actually very simple to get your web page out there. And, you know, I was making websites 10, 15 years ago, for example, and there were a lot of things you had to do to get, get a web page up there. But the problem was I felt like the tools and the services out there hadn't caught up with the simplicity out there. A lot of the cloud services, you you can upload these websites very simply on there, but you need the technical know how to do that.

I literally wanted to create a very simple drag and drop kind of service. Let's say you have a web page here, literally zip it up, copy and paste it onto this web page. And within literally 10, 15 seconds, it's live. That's it. And there's literally, you know, 2, 2 inputs to fill.

1 is the domain name you want. And the second is the zip files. There are a lot of tools, web page builders out there, but there are a lot of people out there who interested in learning to code and interest in playing around HTML or just getting a template themselves and want to edit it, but they need to upload it somewhere. So we are situated in a place where you have a little bit of experience or you can edit your HTML file here and there using your own tools. But you don't want the limitations of a website builder because the website builder is very limited in a sense that you can only use specific templates or change certain parts of it.

So it it removes the hosting element of web development for you.

Well, it's good to see you capture the niche there and it's great to see tiny host doing well. Talking of being successful, you had a pretty successful launch of TinyHost using lifetime deals. Now, there's some conversation around lifetime deals being beneficial, maybe they're giving away too much value to start with, maybe if you sell lifetime deals it won't be profitable long term. How have you found that has benefited you for tiny host and how did that launch go?

To be honest, I I didn't know much about lifetime deals before this and I saw a few coming up here and there, and I was like, this seems like an interesting sales channel. So I was really trying to push for sales and revenue for for tiny host. I think there's a a few really high level points to consider that have made it successful. The first thing is definitely the the presentation of the offer. So if you look on our website, we've had a really cool widget that showed you what you would get, how many, slots available.

So it was a limited capacity and how long the offer would last for essentially. So for example, if you didn't buy the 1st tier because it's it was sold out, then the price would, move up to the 2nd tier and then the price move up to the the the third tier on top of that. We created a really cool OG image which had a very vivid description of what the deal was, what the, you know, full price of the offer was, but what you're getting in for. And so every time somebody shared that across WhatsApp or Facebook or Twitter, that image came up and it was very clear, for example, that we had a limited lifetime deal offer. The the pricing was very important as well.

I think with pricing, you have to set it between the bounds of these LTDs, which are between 50 to a $100. What you

So we'll talk a little bit about marketing because I think as a marketer and someone who's worked in marketing my whole career, when I watch indie hackers, sometimes it's painful because they build their products away silently. They may even do it for years before they Yep. Then launch. You're actively putting marketing first for tiny host, and you're a developer.

Yeah. Honestly, it gets it gets the better of us. So I learned this lesson the hard way, and I think a lot of people have to learn the lesson, to be honest, especially if you're a developer. I I had to launch an app years ago. We spent 6, 8 months developing it.

And then suddenly we launched it and we were like, why isn't every single person in the world downloading this? As much as it's great that anyone can create an app and and product these days, it also means there's a lot of noise to get through to really get customers and get users that you want. For me, it came to a point where, yeah, I I enjoyed the technical part, but I realized I really liked the the marketing side of it. So as as much as tiny host was a was a new kind of SaaS product for me, it was an opportunity for me to really understand how to market a product. So if you look at the the very first version of tiny host compared to it now, very little has really changed in the sense I could have built a lot more features out than I have right now.

But I spent 80% of my time just focusing marketing and 20% based on feedback product development. And and that's worked really well. I think, like, we we have over 7,000 websites which has been uploaded since that. In a very in a quite competitive space as well because I I didn't realize what kind of competitors I I'd have in in the space.

Yeah. How how did you feel when you were getting that traction? You were starting to see tons and tons of people using it, and it it must have been quite quick in these, what, 11 months. You're up to 7,000 Yeah. Sites hosted.

Yeah. It's great. It's a weird thing with, I think, products is you get this kind of numbing effect where when you get your first user, you're like, wow, this is great. And then suddenly you have a 100 users and you're like, okay. This is alright.

But you just constantly want more and more. But you could get to a point where you just now okay. I've got 7,000. Now how do I get to 10,000 or 50,000 or 100,000?

Do you think that's a problem? Do you think it's a problem that we're we're we're always looking to get bigger and bigger and may maybe why some indie hackers end up taking investment? I've noticed a few indie businesses who start out fully indie, and they want to be indie. They have no intention of raising. But as they start to get traction, they want more, and then they will raise so they can go further.

Yeah. I feel like to get to a certain goal, you need to have the drive to get there. And that drive doesn't just disappear when you get to that goal. Right? I think you have to be clear about what you're trying to do with your product and and where you're trying to get with it.

So try and least set your goals. For example, that you want to get to this stage. It's a very big problem in the startup world. But what I like about the indie space is there's no real pressure besides yourself to figure out where you want to go. So it's purely your prerogative and what you feel like you need more and I think yeah, there is a definite something inside a lot of builders out there to want more more revenue or and I think the common thing is making money is more fun than spending money with a lot of entrepreneurs out there.

So, Elston, you mentioned earlier that you've seen some success with creating those SEO pages. For me, I really struggle to understand SEO and I'm thinking we can do like a mini SEO masterclass here. Can you talk us through how you figured out the terms you wanted to rank for? How you made these pages and then figured out what copy to put on them? And then sort of when you start to see traction from the pages.

1st of all, I I don't understand SEO either, but I think I understand understand enough to get some results from it. The the basic premise is you have a website and Google will feature you more and more depending on how many other websites link to your website. And it also depends on what the content of your website is and the domain authority or rating of the website that links to your website. I created set of 5 landing pages, and these are based off using a tool like Ubersuggest or as a reference. There's a lot of tools out there and just ideas of what using people would Google around your product or topic.

And then from that, it gives you a table of results around those kind of keywords and also tells you a search difficulty as well as how much traffic that website that that search term gets and how much people are paying to target those keywords. So the sweet spot is a low search difficulty. So it's from 0 to a100. So anything around 20 or less with a high CTC, I think, is cost per click and that is what you want to create a page about. So, for example, I created a page around host HTML file, which is where I'm ranked very high right now.

And there was very low kind of search difficulty on that. And the content of the page has to be engaging. There's no point just creating pages. We just copy and paste content because Google, again, will down rank you. It needs to be around 800 to 1000 words.

However, it needs to include those keywords. So you'll find a lot of SEO driven content is not the most engaging from a reader, but it is tailored towards Google's kind of search engines, and so it has keywords and that kind of stuff. And so I made 5 or 6 landing pages against different topics around that, and that did really well. And there's a lot more you can do. There's things like page speed, how long it takes to load, how long people spend on your website.

So if they literally come on your website for one second and bounce back to another website, Google will note that, and they will down rank you for that. So trying to keep it engaging, so maybe something that makes them stay for a few seconds longer. So all these things add up. But the basic, I think, foundation and the real premise of the search engine optimization is backlinks, domain links, and keywords. So targeting topics around that, I think, is is a very good start.

But you need patience with it. That's really the big thing. And I saw with Saba, I see with other people. And you think you want you get instant results. But it takes a long time, months months for Google to really trust you.

It's like building a relationship with with the web and and Google.

So how's the SEO been performing for you since you started doing it?

Yeah. It's been doing really well recently. I created about 5 landing pages back in February or March, and that was by recommendation of Saba from Veed. And these were targeting specific long tail words or just things which are underserved related to the app. And literally nothing came through from that for months months.

And then suddenly, literally, in, like, November, I saw, like, a massive influx of just people creating websites. So back in February, it was something like, I don't know, 30 sites a day was it was a good number. But now I'm literally getting around a 150 sites uploaded every single day. And past 10,000 sites uploaded in total since launch, which is a great number. It's probably even higher than that.

And yeah. So it's been really well, and I've realized that this is the main kind of strategy that's working so far.

Yeah. And you've sort of been everywhere. You've been at JPMorgan where you work in the corporate rat race. You've been at uni in the states. You've been working on side projects that have done well, side projects that have flopped, and you've also worked in your your own funded businesses.

Yeah. That that journey, I think, a lot of people haven't experienced in in the short such a short space of time, which I have. But what I thought I liked at the beginning is not what I like now. I remember, for example, back in uni, when the social network came out and I was like, wow, you see the insights of Facebook. This is great.

Can't be that hard to, you know, build a startup. I'm like, how wrong I was at that point in time. Again, it depends on, I think your, your character and and your passions and interests. What's been the

most enjoyable marketing things for you with tiny host? And what sort of advice would you give to to indie hackers? Maybe from a tactical perspective, for growing.

Producing, again, developing content or building something related to your product which you can really share across lots of channels. So for example, we built a simple kind of page that had 75 ideas of how freelancers and agencies can get new clients. That was something we launched on Product Hunt. So that was really cool for me because I could spend a week or 2 building up, put a lot of attention into it. And then spend the rest of the time just sharing across as many channels as possible.

So you you've been building mini projects as marketing Yeah. Your main project. You said it took you 2 weeks, but you can really get stuck into it. And it didn't feel much like marketing. It was just another project.

A side project for your side project. Exactly. Maybe that's a nice way of framing it for the people that don't enjoy specifically just marketing. TinyHost, when when we chatted earlier, is on about 4 and a half k revenue, and it's not enough to sustain you full time. You do have a full time job still Yeah.

And you work on TinyHost at the side. How how do you sort of manage your time building it? And do you have that have any plans to go full time on it? And that is that the ambition?

Yeah. I think eventually, I I would like to. And that that's always been my idea is to build a team around it and get it to a bigger stage. I think it's definitely difficult to do a product part time and there's sacrifices that need to be made. But I've also worked full time on on a product and I've seen the downsides of it.

And to be honest, it's if you think that just going full time on something is gonna make you more productive and excel your product. That's definitely a wrong assumption because it's it's very dangerous when you have all that time to figure out what to do with it, especially if you don't have a team or anything like pushing you in a direction. So the focus is a really key important part of you're doing a project part time because you only have x amount of hours a week and day. So it's being a really, militant and cutthroat with the decisions and and figuring out what's the most important thing to do. And that's also helped me figure out.

Yeah. It's it's been marketing at the end of the day rather than building a new product.

Definitely. Alright. Nelson, it's been a great chat. I finished every episode on 3 recommendations. Your favorite book, your favorite podcast, and then indie hacker people should follow.

My favorite book, I think for indie hacker would be attraction. I don't do you want me to get the exact title?

No, I've, it's been recommended before.

I've been listening to 1 podcast for like years years before it became a big trendy thing. And that's the Tim Ferriss show, which a lot of people probably have, have heard before. And then my favorite indie hacker is Saba from Veed shout out to Veed. Io. He's been really useful in just directing me just a little bit ahead in terms of what I should do next, which I think is a big thing as well.

Fine. Try and find them some kind of mentor, which is just a little bit ahead of what you were, where you are. It's super helpful.

Thank you so much for joining me.

No worries. Thanks, James.