Blog
The GrowthMap Blog
Writing on indie product growth, app marketing, SEO for solo founders, and lessons from shipping software.
Affiliate Marketing for Indie Apps: A Practical Guide
How a solo developer sets up, recruits for, and manages an affiliate program: commission structures that work for one-time and subscription products, the tracking setup, and how to find your first 10 affiliates.
The Indie Hacker's Guide to Hacker News Show HN
What actually puts a Show HN post on the front page: timing, title writing, handling the comments, and what the launches worth studying have in common.
How to Use PostHog for Indie App Growth
A practical PostHog setup for solo founders: the handful of events worth tracking, how to build your first funnel, and the three dashboards that show you exactly where users drop off.
How to Get Your First 100 Paying Customers as an Indie Developer
Users and paying customers need completely different tactics. This is the guide for the paying customer milestone: where they actually are, how to convert them, and three mistakes I made that cost me months.
Why Most Indie Apps Fail at Marketing (And What to Do Instead)
Five marketing mistakes that sink indie apps before they find traction, and the three-channel focus strategy that actually works for solo founders.
The Indie Dev Marketing Calendar: Hour 1, Week 1, Month 1, Year 1
Exactly what to do at every stage after launch: Hour 1, Week 1, Month 1, Year 1. A reference playbook for indie devs who want the right move, not just any move.
How to Validate a SaaS Idea Before Writing a Single Line of Code
A pre-build validation playbook for indie devs: landing page tests, manual prototypes, pre-orders, customer conversations, and signals to build or stop.
How to Do Competitor Analysis Without the $300/Month Tool Stack
A scrappy six-step guide to understanding your competitors using only free tools. Identify who they really are, analyze their pricing, mine their reviews, audit their SEO, study their content, and map where your product wins.
Growth Teardown #4: How Finch Grew a Mental Health App on TikTok Without Spending a Dollar on Ads
Finch is a self-care app with a virtual pet bird, and it grew almost entirely through TikTok content its users created without being asked. The mechanics behind that growth are worth understanding.
5 Free Ways to Find Where Your Customers Hang Out
Most founders assume where their customers are. Five free methods to find them exactly: Reddit search, SparkToro, newsletter discovery, surveys, and review mining.
What a $19 GrowthMap Report Actually Tells You (Full Breakdown)
A section-by-section breakdown of what a $19 GrowthMap report contains, how it compares to ChatGPT, and where it is genuinely strong or falls short.
Growth Teardown #5: How Pieter Levels Grew Nomad List to Tens of Thousands of Members by Doing Everything in Public
Nomad List grew through building in public on Twitter, a Hacker News front-page launch, radical revenue transparency, and SEO from thousands of user-contributed city pages. No ads, no investors, one person.
The $0 Marketing Stack I Use to Grow 3 Apps
Every tool I use to grow Balance Pro, Limelight, and GrowthMap with no ad spend: the actual free tools, the weekly routine in real hours, and what I would pay for if I had the budget.
The Indie Developer's Guide to App Store Optimization in 2026
A practical guide to the five App Store Optimization levers that actually move the needle, with a worked example from Limelight's own listing, free tools for each lever, and a 10-item checklist.
Growth Teardown #3: How Typefully Grew by Distributing on the Platform It Was Built For
Typefully built a Twitter thread drafting tool and grew it almost entirely through Twitter. The playbook: founder-led distribution, content SEO for the problem not the product, and a free tier that markets itself.
Growth Teardown #2: How Fathom Analytics Built a $1M+ Business by Timing GDPR
Fathom Analytics launched 13 days before GDPR went live and grew to $1M+ per month in revenue with no outside investors, no ads, and a team that has stayed in the single digits for eight years. Here's exactly how they did it.
Growth Teardown #1: How Carrd Reached $2M ARR Without Spending a Dollar on Marketing
Carrd is a one-person SaaS that hit $2M ARR by accident. Built for one use case, discovered by audiences its creator never anticipated. Here's exactly how it happened and what solo founders can take away from it.
How to Get Your First 100 Users Without a Marketing Budget
The 5-playbook system solo founders use to reach their first 100 users with zero marketing budget. Scripts, a 30-day plan, and real examples included.