Philipp Keller lives in Switzerland with his wife, two teenage kids, and a talent for turning Google Sheets into a side income. By day, he’s a product manager at a real estate marketplace, by night, he’s the accidental founder of backl.io, a Notion-based guide that helps startup founders get their first backlinks and start climbing the SEO mountain, without crying or cold emailing every blog owner on the planet.
What started as a byproduct of a completely different project has somehow turned into a $60,000 a year solo business. There’s no team, no fancy AI, just one guy, one landing page, and a very honest pitch on Twitter.
The False Start
Like many first-time founders, Philipp built a product but that launched it to total silence, and immediately realised that even if you build it, they will not come unless Google decides you’re worth ranking.
He didn’t want to run ads (because ads require money and the product was making none), so he threw himself into SEO. Backlink outreach came highly recommended, but sending cold emails to strangers asking for favors wasn’t exactly thrilling, each email took about half an hour to write, responses were rare, and the entire process made him feel like a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman in 1997.
Following intensive SEO research I started building backlinks by cold email outreach. Over the course of the next months it ranked on the first 5 positions on Google for its main keywords.
Philipp Keller
Eventually, though it did work, he managed to rank #3 for his keywords, beating out much larger sites, which gave him an idea, could he automate the process and save others from the same pain. He built a small app in Retool, tweeted a screenshot with a casual “Anyone want this?”, and was surprised when 26 people said yes. He assumed they were just being nice, then the DMs started.
He launched a 10-seat beta and it sold out in three days, so he added more features and got more feedback. More importantly, he watched his customers not using it properly and realised most of them had no idea how SEO worked, so then he did what few builders are brave enough to do, he admitted the product wasn’t the answer and decided to make something people actually understood.
There was lots of interest, which I initially dismissed. But people kept insisting I should build it for real, so I dropped my first startup and focused on building an MVP
Philipp Keller
Take 2
He called the second attempt, SEO Kickstarter, which thankfully replaced the original working title, “Directory of directories,” that would have put even the Google’s crawlers to sleep.
He spent his Christmas break analysing 200 startup websites to identify easy, high-impact backlink opportunities, which basically means he did the hard work so his customers wouldn’t have to. He turned it all into a Notion doc, sent it to 10 people, and got back exactly zero useful feedback unless you count “Happy Christmas” as market validation.
Still, instead of quietly giving up, he built a landing page using Tailwind UI, posted three headlines on Twitter asking for roasts, got thoroughly destroyed, and somehow emerged with better copy and a title that didn’t make people fall asleep mid-scroll. backl.io was born!
Launch Day
He launched on a Monday morning with just a video and a tweet and by lunch, he’d made 15 sales. By midnight, he’d made 87. Revenue for the day? $3,400. All from Twitter, all organic, all while assuming it would flop.
After launch, Philipp did something smart. He didn’t just keep tweeting, he started tweaking his landing page obsessively and tracked every single change against conversion data. He reached out to Twitter marketers to roast his homepage, added testimonial after testimonial, and made it his mission to turn every single buyer into a backlink evangelist.
He also set up an affiliate program on a whim and offered a generous 40% cut, partly because he wanted help, partly because someone told him it was fair, and mostly because he didn’t feel like doing the marketing himself. Turns out that strategy worked, three affiliates now drive around half of his sales and one of them made a TikTok that got 730,000 views.
The Current Version
Today the business is doing around $5.2K in monthly revenue with a 75% gross margin, with the biggest cost being paying affiliates their fair share, and the rest goes into tools and services for SEO research. The income is lumpy, since the product isn’t subscription based, but Philipp doesn’t mind, he has a day job, no urgent bills to pay and a long enough runway to learn, experiment, and break things without spiraling into panic.
He’s looking into running ads next and expanding the product for agencies and ecommerce brands. The plan is to turn this into a more robust product with a wider target market, though it’s clear that Twitter, affiliates, and word of mouth are already doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
Lessons learned
If you’re looking for takeaways, there are plenty! First, don’t waste months building a product no one asked for, ‘build in public’ has become a great tool for developers not just for feedback but for sales too. Talk about it early, post screenshots, ask for feedback, get roasted, and of course, launch! Don’t email it to ten people and hope for validation. Build a landing page, name your price, post it, and find out if it floats.
Third, consider lifetime pricing if you’re new, it’s easier to sell, less commitment for buyers, and you won’t wake up to chargeback emails just because someone forgot they subscribed. Finally, stop pretending you need the perfect product, just help people solve a problem and make it easier than the alternatives. Speak like a human. Show up consistently.
