Weekly Indie Log #2

Welcome to my second edition of the Weekly Indie Log! Let’s get the big news out of the way first: Stomod reached $120 MRR for the first time. Reaching $100+ MRR Stomod reached $120 MRR in February and I couldn’t be happier about it! It took way over a year to reach here but now that’s I’m here it feel unreal and makes me believe that I can kick on and increase on that number. With this though in mind, I am doubling down on marketing, SEO and ads. I will be trying out various combos in the next few months with the idea of finding the best channels to acquire customers for Stomod. So far ads has been a good push toward moving beyond $100 MRR. I will be trying out some influencer marketing as well and have set aside a monthly budget for these initiatives. Since I am new to ads and using ads platforms as a channel, I will be giving each channel a spin and see what works best. I will be reporting back of course in the upcoming weekly indie log posts. The channels I’m looking at are: Google Ads, Bing Ads, Reddit Ads, Twitter Ads, TikTok Ads, Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads. This is a long term plan and I only have so much money to throw at these platforms - but I intend to give each one a shot and re-invest earnings from Stomod into those. Contingency planning for my trip After the first edition of my weekly indie log , I went on vacation with my family to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur for two weeks - which put a stopped on my updates during that period. However, the life of an indie hacker is to be on alert all the time. During the time I was in Bangkok, I fortunately did not have any downtime for either of my products stomod.com or assistflare.com . However, I did prepare for the trip in advance to make sure if shit hits the fan, I am ready. Before the trip, I did some contingency planning for what I would do if stuff went awry during my time away from home. I did pack my laptop to bring along for the trip. However it was not idea lug that around Bangkok in a backpack. I decided to take the lighter weight 12.1” iPad Pro I have along and setup essential software on both my iPad and iPhone. These are the software I have on all my devices which allows me to be ready to intervene if anything goes bad: Termius - app which allows me to SSH into my VPS to restart/diagnose problems if any. Uptime Robot - monitors my products’ uptime and alerts me if there’s any issue. Crisp - For users to reach out to me if there’s any problem via live chat. Logsnag - To keep an eye on new sign ups and user flow on the apps. Drizzle Studio - For making changes to the database if needed. Airalo - For easy e-sims for data plans for internet access Going into action during the trip During my trip, I had to spring into action twice for two customers to help them setup their blogs on Stomod. Fortunately both times I was in the airport and had time to kill anyways and managed to help them out without any issues. Coming out of those support sessions, it’s evident that I need to automate the ability to host a Stomod blog under a sub folder of another domain. Right now, there’s some manual intervention needed from my side which I plan to resolve in my next coding week. Marketing week x coding week This brings me nicely to my new initiative going forward into March. I came across Jon Yongfook’s blog post: 3 Reasons Why I Think 50% Coding 50% Marketing is the Best Framework for Solo Tech Founders . This prompted to me consider trying this out as I felt mixing both coding and marketing was being counter productive. So last week, I decided to fully focus on coding. Previously, I would code a feature and then tweet about it with a video showcasing it. This time around, I decided to forego any tweeting or talking about those features and fully focused on my todo list for the week and managed to knock out a record number of tasks off my todo! Weekly 3x gym challenge I saw a tweet from Pieter Levels (a.k.a levelsio on X) where he challenged anyone joining his “2024 PIETZ GYM CHALLENGE” to go to the gym 3x weekly or pay him $100. I’m not going to pay him $100. I decided to join the challenge and I’m posting updates on Twitter to keep me accountable. So that’s two initiatives already I’m part of together with the alternating coding & marketing weeks

Apr 10, 2025 - 08:23

Welcome to my second edition of the Weekly Indie Log!

Let’s get the big news out of the way first: Stomod reached $120 MRR for the first time.

Reaching $100+ MRR

Stomod reached $120 MRR in February and I couldn’t be happier about it! It took way over a year to reach here but now that’s I’m here it feel unreal and makes me believe that I can kick on and increase on that number.

With this though in mind, I am doubling down on marketing, SEO and ads. I will be trying out various combos in the next few months with the idea of finding the best channels to acquire customers for Stomod. So far ads has been a good push toward moving beyond $100 MRR.

I will be trying out some influencer marketing as well and have set aside a monthly budget for these initiatives.

Since I am new to ads and using ads platforms as a channel, I will be giving each channel a spin and see what works best. I will be reporting back of course in the upcoming weekly indie log posts. The channels I’m looking at are: Google Ads, Bing Ads, Reddit Ads, Twitter Ads, TikTok Ads, Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads.

This is a long term plan and I only have so much money to throw at these platforms - but I intend to give each one a shot and re-invest earnings from Stomod into those.

Contingency planning for my trip

After the first edition of my weekly indie log , I went on vacation with my family to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur for two weeks - which put a stopped on my updates during that period.

However, the life of an indie hacker is to be on alert all the time. During the time I was in Bangkok, I fortunately did not have any downtime for either of my products stomod.com or assistflare.com .

However, I did prepare for the trip in advance to make sure if shit hits the fan, I am ready.

Before the trip, I did some contingency planning for what I would do if stuff went awry during my time away from home.

I did pack my laptop to bring along for the trip. However it was not idea lug that around Bangkok in a backpack. I decided to take the lighter weight 12.1” iPad Pro I have along and setup essential software on both my iPad and iPhone.

These are the software I have on all my devices which allows me to be ready to intervene if anything goes bad:

Termius - app which allows me to SSH into my VPS to restart/diagnose problems if any.
Uptime Robot - monitors my products’ uptime and alerts me if there’s any issue.
Crisp - For users to reach out to me if there’s any problem via live chat.
Logsnag - To keep an eye on new sign ups and user flow on the apps.
Drizzle Studio - For making changes to the database if needed.
Airalo - For easy e-sims for data plans for internet access

Going into action during the trip

During my trip, I had to spring into action twice for two customers to help them setup their blogs on Stomod. Fortunately both times I was in the airport and had time to kill anyways and managed to help them out without any issues.

Coming out of those support sessions, it’s evident that I need to automate the ability to host a Stomod blog under a sub folder of another domain. Right now, there’s some manual intervention needed from my side which I plan to resolve in my next coding week.

Marketing week x coding week

This brings me nicely to my new initiative going forward into March. I came across Jon Yongfook’s blog post: 3 Reasons Why I Think 50% Coding 50% Marketing is the Best Framework for Solo Tech Founders .

This prompted to me consider trying this out as I felt mixing both coding and marketing was being counter productive. So last week, I decided to fully focus on coding. Previously, I would code a feature and then tweet about it with a video showcasing it.

This time around, I decided to forego any tweeting or talking about those features and fully focused on my todo list for the week and managed to knock out a record number of tasks off my todo!

Weekly 3x gym challenge

I saw a tweet from Pieter Levels (a.k.a levelsio on X) where he challenged anyone joining his “2024 PIETZ GYM CHALLENGE” to go to the gym 3x weekly or pay him $100. I’m not going to pay him $100.

I decided to join the challenge and I’m posting updates on Twitter to keep me accountable. So that’s two initiatives already I’m part of together with the alternating coding & marketing weeks