Ninglz
New member
Solo dev here. About a month ago I launched a small tool that turns a still image into a short video clip using a few models stitched together on the backend. Site is imagetovideoai.net for context .
The build part was fine. Stripe,, refund edge cases — annoying but doable in a couple of weekends. What's actually wrecking me is SEO.
A few things I didn't expect in the first 30 days:
Google indexed the homepage in about 4 days, then sat on most inner pages. No errors in Search Console, just… nothing yet.
"image to video ai" looks soft on Ahrefs but the SERP is basically Runway, Pika and a wall of YouTube tutorials. Hard to wedge a new domain in.
I submitted to a bunch of "AI tool" directories. Most felt useless. The only referral traffic I can actually see came from two niche forum posts.
Programmatic landing pages helped a bit, but only after I stopped auto-generating and wrote the first handful by hand.
Revenue is basically a rounding error right now. Two Stripe payments total in the whole month — one $29.9 monthly subscription and one $49.9 credit pack. That's it. I know 30 days is way too early to judge anything, but I wanted to write this down somewhere before I forget what month 1 actually felt like.
For people here who've been through it — in the first 90 days of a new site, did backlinks or content move the needle more for you? Or was it just patience?
The build part was fine. Stripe,, refund edge cases — annoying but doable in a couple of weekends. What's actually wrecking me is SEO.
A few things I didn't expect in the first 30 days:
Google indexed the homepage in about 4 days, then sat on most inner pages. No errors in Search Console, just… nothing yet.
"image to video ai" looks soft on Ahrefs but the SERP is basically Runway, Pika and a wall of YouTube tutorials. Hard to wedge a new domain in.
I submitted to a bunch of "AI tool" directories. Most felt useless. The only referral traffic I can actually see came from two niche forum posts.
Programmatic landing pages helped a bit, but only after I stopped auto-generating and wrote the first handful by hand.
Revenue is basically a rounding error right now. Two Stripe payments total in the whole month — one $29.9 monthly subscription and one $49.9 credit pack. That's it. I know 30 days is way too early to judge anything, but I wanted to write this down somewhere before I forget what month 1 actually felt like.
For people here who've been through it — in the first 90 days of a new site, did backlinks or content move the needle more for you? Or was it just patience?