I Built a $17K/Month SaaS Without a Single Viral Video

I dare you to try this strategy.

I promise it'll work. This is Ben, and he built an app that just hit $17,000 a month. I saw how big this problem was, so I had to solve it. But here's what I love about his story. He didn't dance on TikTok or chase viral trends. Nope. His approach is much more methodical than that. Literally anyone can use this exact playbook and use it for their app. So I asked Ben to come onto the channel and share his entire playbook on this. And in this episode, we'll get into how his simple app that does one thing can make $17,000 a month, why building an audience is a waste of time, and why this platform is the most underrated place to get customers right now. Let's dive in. I'm Pat Walls, and this is Starter Story. Ben, welcome to the channel. Tell me about who you are, what you built, and what's your story.

Appreciate you having me, Pat. So I build software products. One we're talking about today is called Follow Buddy, and it is a tool that helps you safely find who unfollowed you on Instagram. Follow Buddy makes $20K per month. We have 82,000 users currently, 3,128 paying users, and we've spent $0 on ads. This is all organic traffic, again, predominantly from search across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. So we operate on a subscription model. We have weekly, monthly, and yearly plans. We definitely push the yearly plan the most at a $50 per year price tag. And so we offer a free trial. And then if they don't cancel, it converts to the weekly, monthly, or yearly plan, depending on what they selected. So here's Follow Buddy's revenue cap. We've got 484 people actively on a trial. The revenue over the last 28 days was $17,422. New customers, $14,000. Active subscriptions, $27,520. So this is Follow Buddy's specific channel. So this is the branded channel for the product. And you can see we've generated 40,000 views over the last 28 days. These are predominantly search-based views, which is going to be the focus of the strategy for the rest of this video.

Okay, cool. I'm excited to talk about this YouTube strategy because I think that's super cool. And we're going to get into it. But before we do, how do you even get to this place? How do you get to the point where you have a successful online SaaS business? What's your background?

I've been running a marketing agency for seven years. I started it while I was in college. We just tried to offer everything to everyone. Very quickly learned that's a horrible way to run a business. So I was really young. So convincing anyone to work with me was hard. But software companies, because they were more tech native, they were more than open to it. Very quickly after doing that, I learned how impactful YouTube could be for SaaS. I became multiple software companies, highest converting either affiliate or they were a customer of mine. YouTube became their highest grossing revenue source. And I basically dedicated my entire business and the things that I've built to that exact strategy. I've been rinsing and repeating that for like seven years.

Okay, we're going to get all into this YouTube search playbook. But I understand how you did you even come across the idea for FollowBuddy? Like how do you even come up with this idea?

Very funny story. So when I was growing my agency, I started making content about how to grow online. And I was more focused on helping people grow. So getting followers, but a lot of people on Instagram are very concerned about who was unfollowing them. And so through doing that kind of content, so many people just saw me as their Instagram support person. And I tried my best to always answer these questions. But I started getting so many of them really quickly around three or four years ago, all around the specific subject of people getting banned or losing their Instagram account. And after investigating it a little further, I saw it was because they all were using an app to find who unfollowed them and why it got them banned is because it violated Instagram's terms of service. So then I was like, what was there a way to do this that is safe? My team and I went to the drawing board, we found a way that you could kind of do it. I made a video about that. And it got like 1 point something million views. And that strategy that I brought to the internet has since been repeated so many times that it's referred to as the compare lists method. I actually built a business for a guy by accident, because we just sent the traffic like a million people to some random list sorting tool on the internet. So he owes me a coffee. And then we decided that can we build this thing. So I was chewing on this idea for four years because I was already working with software companies, but I knew I couldn't afford to do it myself. So every year I would go on Upwork and ask my developer friends saying how much would this cost to build. And then two years ago, it finally got down to a price point where I said, okay, let's go, let's build this thing.

I really want to talk about this YouTube search strategy. I think there's a huge alpha here. We had someone on the channel recently that talked about this. I want to go even deeper on it eventually. But first, just explain to me at a high level, how do you get customers for your SaaS?

All of our traffic is organic. And it's all search based across the different social platforms. Why search traffic is so important is because it's high intent traffic. So I don't have to convince people of something they've already convinced themselves. They're simply trying to source a solution. And I want to be the guy that can give it to them and any business even if you're not a SaaS business, you should be doing this because I guarantee you even if there's not a ton of people searching certain things that would lead them to you guaranteed there are some and if there's no content for YouTube to put there, they put the next best thing. So meaning that something bad even could rank number one, if there's not much competition.

Would you be able to show me like a video or a search keyword that you rank for that drives meaningful revenue for your business?

Totally. So the example that I'll show you is a video called best Instagram unfollower tracker apps. And it's got 25,000 views, and it was made seven months ago. So anybody who's searching this in, they obviously have the immediate problem. And they're looking for a solution. As I mentioned earlier, our biggest problems that people have been scammed by the other options. And so this actually gave me an opportunity to also educate people on why and how we're different, which made the conversion for this way higher. Here's the analytics. So you can see that I made this thing seven months ago, it took me 20 minutes to make and look, it's getting this many views every 48 hours of people that are incredibly warm and ready to buy. And then let's see here in terms of the keywords we're ranking for we are number one front follower app Instagram, not bad. Best Instagram unfollower tracker number one, as you can see, there's a lot of ones here.

What I love about Ben's strategy is that he has a repeatable system for creating content and growing his business. But here's the thing, this strategy only works when you actually have a product to share. So if you're watching, but you're not exactly sure what to build yet, well, I have something for you. The team over at HubSpot put together the micro SaaS ideas database. It's 190 plus real micro SaaS business ideas with the actual numbers behind each one revenue, traffic cost to start pricing models, everything. This database will help you skip the guesswork and start building something valuable right now. Head to the link in the description and you can grab it for free. All right, let's get back to the episode. I do tell people all the time, you can make a crappy video and it can rank number one. There isn't that much competition on YouTube. You could probably even record a loom video pretty quick and rank on something if you have a niche SaaS, that's super cool. Let's dive into the actual playbook here. If you were starting over with a SaaS or with content, in 2026, and you wanted to actually create content that ranked in YouTube search engines that actually drove revenue, what would be your step-by-step playbook?

I'd repeat the exact same process every single time for any product that I build or any business that I work with. The first thing that I think people really get wrong in SaaS is they're so obsessed with getting customers. They don't take the time to think about who those customers are and the problems that they have. So the first exercise that I would put you through would be a breakdown of the awareness ladder for your specific customer. So I don't worry about not aware of the need, which is typically the bottom. I go right to aware of the need, then there's aware of some solutions, then there's aware of specific solutions, aware of benefits, and then convinced and ready to buy. I used to just do this in my head, but now you could talk back and forth with ChatGPT and think about the questions that someone who would want to buy your product would be asking at every step of the journey along the awareness ladder. You then want to figure out, how are they asking it? Because a lot of people can say, I understand that someone would ask this question, but how they would ask it, very different story. So use something like vidIQ or keywords everywhere to type into the YouTube search bar and see how many people are actually searching for that per month. I would then put my strategy together for which videos that I want to make prioritizing based on the intent of the traffic. So how likely would that person who wants this video be to buy and how many people are actually searching for their period. Once I've outlined all the keywords I want to go after, I usually start with like 10 to 20, and then I'll go through and see what's currently ranking for the people that type that in. You will be shocked that some of them will actually have no relevant content there period. You should probably get that video ASAP because even if it's horrible, you'll probably rank number one. But if there is some competition there, what I look for is how can I do this better? So understanding the problem itself, if I come to a keyword and I see there's a ranking video there, and let's say it's 12 minutes and the guy was just babbling for most of that, and it could have been a four minute video, I will then go quickly make the video in a shorter form factor, in turn giving more value to viewer, which will then give you better data to rank me there faster. And what you want to do is essentially make videos for each of those things so that whatever point they're at, they find you and you can take them to the next place until they end up buying from you. If you do SEO correctly, you will rank within the top three to five listings almost every time even on a brand new channel. Step two is to record the content when you're creating the packaging. So the title and the thumbnail for a search based video, the only thing that you're really trying to do is to confirm to them that they're in the right place. So the title should be incredibly obvious, front loading the primary keyword, but still be written for a human. The biggest mistake that I see people make when they're doing YouTube SEO is they're so literal to talk to the computer. But I always give the example of you need to talk to the computer and the human at the same time. So you need to give YouTube what it needs in terms of the specific keyword. But if it makes sense to put something else in addition to that to create more relevance for the person, and it's going to increase the chances that they click that also do that don't be a robot, you're a person. So once you've figured out the title and the thumbnail thinking about all the things that I just mentioned, when you're actually filming the content, think about the viewer again, confirm the click as soon as possible. So when someone clicks my video, I will confirm yes, you're in the right place by basically repeating what the search was, then I'll get right into it, because that's what they're there for throughout the video, depending on what it is, I'll always try to be as honest and helpful as possible over deliver, give them what they need, and then show them the good and the bad. So with any product, there's going to be pros and cons to it. I have consistently found that if you mentioned a con potentially I've seen has improved conversion rate. And then if it's not a purchase ready video, I will guide them to the next step in the awareness ladder. If we started off broad down here, and I know there's a logical question they would ask after watching this video, I will make that video and send them to that as the call to action to further nurture them. Step three is packaging and optimize the content. So what that would look like is you start from the title, you make that keyword optimized for whatever your target was. And then once I have that, I will also repeat multiple relevant keywords within the description, again, writing for a human being because when people are searching on YouTube, they see the title, the thumbnail, but they can also see the first two sentences of the description. So a lot of people will just put their app link there. That's a missed opportunity because anything that I have on someone's screen to increase the chances of them clicking my video over someone else's, I want to take full advantage of. So I will write a fairly compelling description, including multiple highly relevant keywords, and then the link to access my actual app. And the final step in the SEO process is going to the tags, and I will add in highly relevant tags, I will basically try to say whatever the exact thing is that I'm targeting in every way in which it can be said. So here's that same example that I mentioned earlier. And this would be an example of very low on the awareness ladder, because people are just aware of the problem, and they're trying to find solutions. So best Instagram unfollower tracker apps, that's the title, and then looking to find who unfollowed you on Instagram, that's also highly relevant. These are the best apps to find unfollowers on Instagram in 2026. Then if you want to see the tags here, they're all incredibly highly relevant to the problem I'm solving, right? So unfollow app, Instagram, Instagram unfollow app, Instagram unfollow app comparison. So all the different ways that people are basically saying the same thing, I will try to include here to increase the relevance of my video, increasing the chances that I get ranking, because the more specific that you are, the higher likelihood that YouTube will believe that you actually understand this problem in turn, they'll put you there. And if you made a decent video, you'll get good data, you'll stay there. And you'll keep getting views like I just showed every single day. And step four is essentially monitoring how these things perform and just keep stacking bricks. I will keep remaking variations of your target keyword videos again and again and again until you start ranking. The awesome thing about YouTube SEO, unlike Google, it's almost impossible for you to get multiple high ranking listings within Google very possible on YouTube, and especially if you're doing this across multiple channels, so that whenever anyone searches some variation of this problem, you are the face that they see. And eventually, it's highly likely they're going to end up buying from you if they buy period. This process requires almost no creativity, anyone can do this and get some results for sure.

I want to stop you there for a second because you're great on camera, you're great talking to the camera, you've been experienced at this, I think a lot of people watching this go, it's easy for him to do because he has this audience, he has all these YouTube channels already built up. He's a recognizable face in this space. What would you say to that?

I would say that's stupid. Why I would say that's stupid is because I grew my entire YouTube channel doing the exact same things I'm telling you now. So I only have those things because I did what I'm saying. I get where people would go there, but I promise you, that's a limiting belief. There's also probably way less competition than you realize. If that came up, that's something that should not stop you whatsoever. And that's probably what's stopping everyone else who you may compete with.

I agree. Let's switch topics a little bit. I'm actually curious. Follow Buddy, how does this app work? Could you just give me a quick demo? I want to see how it actually works. Would you be able to share?

Here is the dashboard. All that we're doing is telling people who unfollowed them through leveraging Instagram's export data feature. So all that you have to do is go follow the steps to get your followers and following information that is approved from Instagram. We're not breaking any of their terms of service. And then you just come in here and you would upload it. So I'll upload my file right here. I'll click generate results. It's going to compare to my previous audit. We're finding the snakes, as you can see, we're detecting our fake friends. And then in turn, it'll pull up the results of all of those people. And I will say, you'll probably see some information here that breaks your heart. I've got 319 unfollowers, 264 non-followers. So definitely some sad stuff. But if you were to click on any of these, it brings you to Instagram. And so as long as you're signed in with Instagram, you can basically use this to clean up your account.

On that same note, I'm curious how you built this. What's the tech stack here?

I'm not the developer. As I mentioned, I work with the developer, but it is built with React. And for back and forth with customers for signups and whatnot, we use SendGrid. We use MongoDB for the database. For cloud computing, we use AWS. And then for the tools for marketing, I pay for Keywords Everywhere just to see how many people are searching specific keywords. And then we use RevenueCat to process payments, which takes about 1% on all transactions.

Since you had some people help you with that, what's your advice for anyone who's watching this who may be more on the creator side of things or non-technical?

I've consistently found over the last few years that partnering with the best people possible is the way to go. Giving people skin in the game can be a great way to do it. It could look like ongoing money, which is how it works for me is that I employ a developer full-time. And so that was very appealing to him that I told him that once we build this, you'll also have full-time employment afterwards. But that could be a revenue split. It could be whatever it may be. But I will say that with AI, the difference between someone who's okay and someone who's great is growing by the day. And so I would do anything you possibly can to work with somebody who is awesome, even if that means that you're taking home less than you wanted to originally. The value difference, in my opinion, is 100% worth it. I paid for not thinking like that with about a year of my time and a lot of money.

Thanks for sharing that. Last question that we ask everyone who comes on the channel, if you could go stand on young Ben's shoulders before you built software, maybe even before you were creating stuff, what would be your advice to anyone who's watching this that wants to build a cool SaaS like you've done?

I would say don't overcomplicate it. If you even have the slightest idea or inclination, go try it. You have no idea what you don't know yet. The best thing that you can do is if you have even the slightest idea, move because you need to validate the concept as soon as possible. You don't even need to be creative. I know so many people use that as an excuse. If you follow this exact approach, there's almost no creativity needed because you're just trying to go to where the people already are and just show up there when they try to solve their problem. Thanks for having me on.

Well, that's great advice. Thank you Ben for coming on the channel and sharing this. I'm a huge fan of YouTube. Obviously, Starter Story is built on YouTube. I believe this. This is a great strategy and I hope that we can find even more people come on the channel as this continues to work and from what you've shared. So thanks for coming on and sharing all this. All right, producer Gus, what did you think about this one?

Well, first Ben just awesome. Second, we've had a few founders like this where it's like they have a system for creating content and markets their product and that's like kind of different than just creating random content and hoping it somehow leads to downloads or whatever.

I mean, there's so many things that I liked about his story. I don't have time to share all of them. If I could say one thing about it, I really do think that YouTube is still so underrated. He's even diving deeper into not just YouTube, it's YouTube search. It's a massive opportunity of searches and it's also a low competition landscape of inventory that gets served on YouTube. And as he explained, it's because people don't want to make videos. I'd rather AI generate an article that ranks on SEO. Well, guess what? That ain't going to work anymore. YouTube, it won't be like this forever, but at least for a few years, you can create a stupid video and you can rank number one for it. And if that video has intent towards your product, that video can rank for years and drive significant revenue to your business.

Yeah. I think about with the AI-ification of everything, I think there'll be people that skew like a hundred percent towards AI, but there's going to be a good chunk of people that are like, yeah, I want to hear from somebody, a real person about whatever my problem is.

That's probably a good sign too, that YouTube has longevity. I think that would be the platform where if I was starting to think about distributing content, I would start on YouTube. That was an awesome video. Thank you for watching. If you're looking to build something, if you're looking to find an idea, build it with AI and ship it something, maybe like an unfollow tracker. Well, you can do that with AI. And the best place to do that is in Starter Story Build. Inside Starter Story Build we will help you come up with an idea, build it and get it in the hands of users in days by using modern AI tools. So check that out. I'll put a link in the description. Thank you guys for watching. We'll see you in the next one. Peace.