$15,000 revenue in 3 months with a phone call app: what nobody tells you

Denis Yurchak has been an indie-hacker for over 3 years. His previous apps had little to no success. Like many, Denis thought he knew how indie hacking worked: you build something, launch it on Product Hunt (or Huzzler 😁), or any other directory and try to get some users. But after making $15K in 3 months, he realized this couldn't be further from the truth.

Here are some of the lessons he learned from his recent success:

Going viral has a price

Denis made several viral posts on X and Reddit, which brought a lot of attention to his app. With this attention also came fraudsters and people trying to abuse the app.

He describes spending multiple days fighting them off. You have to prepare beforehand for users abusing your app. For instance, when building the Huzzler referral system, we had to put multiple checks into place to ensure users couldn't abuse referrals (IP address detection, server-side rules, behavior analysis). AI might try to build the perfect system, but the devil is in the details.

Customer support takes 90% of his time (there might be a business opportunity here)

Many people think creating a SaaS or other software project is all about code. Once written, it's done. Denis describes experiencing quite the opposite. Things were going wrong in ways he couldn't have imagined before. While code quality is important, there will always be issues and support requests.

Denis was spending so much time he decided to build a custom support system using Cursor. It depends on the business, but a custom solution can actually be handier or cheaper if created effectively.

For anyone reading this who is looking for startup ideas. This might be it. Try to build anything that will save a business x amount of hours per week handling customer support.

Do not hesitate to give people refunds

When a customer is "pissed," you should refund them without much hesitation. It will help you succeed in the long term, and you'll build trust with your audience. They might leave a good review or come back later when you've solved their problem or added a feature.

Denis also says that sometimes the product is just not a good fit for the customer. You must then say goodbye and just move on.

He also states something interesting:

90% of support requests come from customers who spend under $5. People who spend $20+ make barely any requests, and I hardly ever hear from the enterprise folks.

Planning system

Currently, his biggest pain point is planning. Denis says that now that he is running a profitable business, planning has become really important. If you don't plan well, you might forget to fix some bugs, or they will be fixed far too late. Interestingly enough, Denis uses a custom planning system:

• First, he splits tasks into 3 categories: routine, product, and personal.
• He doesn't allow more than 3 or 4 tasks per area.
• He tracks the time spent on each task.

User feedback

Denis quickly figured out that talking to customers and handling their problems quickly is of utmost importance. He works as follows: when someone pays for his product, within an hour of purchase, he writes them an email and asks if something went wrong. If something did go wrong, they can respond to his email, and he fixes the bug quickly. If everything went well, he then asks for a review. This system gave him a 4.7 Trustpilot rating in under 3 months, which is impressive.

We think this is also an overlooked aspect of the indie-hacker community: public reviews. Many people Google for reviews and read them before purchasing a product.

To get back to the emails, another really integral part, and what a lot of people don't do, is that he turns these emails into real conversations.

I get to know my users, learn about their background, and sometimes, I get crazy stories from their lives. As a bonus point of being a founder who talks to users, you get to know people from all walks of life and burst your X/Reddit bubble.

By personally replying, Denis is effectively building a lot of trust with his audience. This will again reflect in positive reviews and returning customers.

This post was inspired by a reddit post made by Denis Yurchak.

If you're interested in his journey, make sure to follow him on X and feel free to invite Dennis to our Huzzler community, as he is not on here (yet 😁)!

Check out Yadaphone here: yadaphone.com

Let us know if you want more case studies like this.