Indie Hustle
Posts
This Directory About No-Code Tools Is Making $10K MRR

This Directory About No-Code Tools Is Making $10K MRR

Indie Hustle
October 16, 2023

A Directory About No-Code Tools Making $10K MRR

Hello! Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your business?

Hi my name is Art, I am the founder and CEO of NoCodeDevs!

I am from Pittsburgh, PA where I was born and raised (the apple doesn't fall from the tree). I am 37 years old and have 2 young children + a dog.

NoCodeDevs is a online directory and education resource for all things no-code. Our curated directory features over 500+ different no-code tools, apps, videos, and templates.

Additionally, we have a growing community, courses, merch and a newsletter with over 9,500+ subs.

Finally, we publish ~1 free learning video to our YouTube channel each week.

How did you start this business? Take us through the process.

The business idea was born from being a project manager in the Oil and gas industry.

As a non-technical person, I was frustrated by my inability to build internal apps & automations to streamline my workflows.

As a result, I started to teach myself how to build these operations using what is now commonly referred to as "no-code" tools.

The initial MVP was built on Webflow + MightyNetworks, and we had a free newsletter that was sent to a "few" subscribers.

Here’s a quick timeline of how NoCodeDevs evolved over the years:

In March 2020: added a community.
In October 2020 : added a directory, challenges and bootcamps.
In December 2020: added a platform to launch new No-Code tools
In June 2021: added tutorials and templates
In September 2021: added a chrome extension to watch tutorials
In January 2022: added a YouTube channel
In December 2022: added product boosts and upvoting function to the directory.

How did you get your first initial customers?

Our first customers came in organically via Twitter (now X).

We were posting Threads on how to build different apps, websites, and automations which led to various different SaaS companies reaching out about co-marketing initiatives.

We have never run any ads or paid promotions (for better or worse). Our growth plans in Q4 and beyond are to continue creating high-quality educational content on YouTube and other social media channels!

We primarily market the business through 3 channels: YouTube, Twitter (now X), and our weekly newsletter.

We've also done some SEO blog content (about 100 articles) to boost our organic search reach. Right now, we are primarily focused on video marketing via YouTube and reposting that content to other platforms.

Interested in more growth strategies?

Check out this extensive database of over 300+ growth strategies from various indie founders.

With this database, you would be able to find out stories of:

who got 100 paid users in just 1 day for his SaaS
who used a pricing strategy to hit almost $15,000 in sales for his digital product
who shared a step-by-step process to finding journalists and their email address in order to get free PR coverage for your business
who went from merely hundreds to over 200,000 monthly search impressions implementing just this one strategy
how this creator went from 0 to 2,500 email subscribers in just 30 days
who generated 6 figures from a digital product in just 2 weeks

How does your business make money?

We run as a media business, so most of our revenue comes from ads & partnerships.

We do have some courses and paid offerings, but they are a very small portion of the revenue pie. In the future, we plan to expand our course offerings as well as introduce various productized services in 2024.

The brand/business is doing well over $10k MRR. The revenue comes from a mix of both advertising and partnership revenue.

At this stage, I am primarily doing the "unsexy" things to keep the business operating. This includes bookkeeping, payroll, reviewing contracts, etc. I also generally oversee the content and partnership pipeline to ensure that things are healthy and running smoothly.

Our tech stack for running the business is currently: