Day 1 - Building a Micro SaaS from Scratch (Podsplice Launch)
An unfiltered, behind-the-scenes look at our recording tool's first day
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”
That’s from John Wanamaker — the 19th-century retail king who basically invented modern advertising. He dropped this truth bomb over a hundred years ago… and it still hits today.
Swap “advertising” for “SEO” and nothing’s changed. You know some of it’s working — but figuring out which part? That’s the game.
It’s easier than ever to build and launch something because of AI.
It’s also harder than ever to stand out. Every second, a ton of AI slop is dumped on the internet for people to sift through.
My brother and I just vibe-coded a new tool called Podsplice.
Instead of pretending that we have everything planned out, I’m going to document the journey and show you how the sausage is made.
A lot of this experiment will be throwing many things at the wall and seeing what sticks.
We’ll show you the wins, losses, bloopers, and everything in between.
I won’t filter anything. You’ll get to see (and copy) all the good ideas.
You can also learn what not to do from our mistakes (I’m sure there will be many).
Without getting into the weeds too much, we decided to build Podsplice because we were “scratching our own itch”.
We like to record videos for YouTube where we share our screen and talk over it. There are many software options to do this.
But it is surprisingly difficult to record your screen AND record the audio playing from a tab.
For example, if I want to make a reaction video and comment on someone else’s YouTube video, it is very annoying to figure out.
There are clunky software options like OBS, but they are difficult to use and take too long.
Most browser-based software like Canva, Descript, and Riverside will let you record your screen, but none of them capture the audio that comes from a YouTube video.
With those software options, if I share my screen of a YouTube video, I just see the video but can’t hear anything.
Podsplice solves this problem by recording the “system audio” in addition to everything else.
Podsplice records everything locally and then mixes the high-quality sounds and visuals together to give a polished final product.
It does other things too, but that’s one major differentiator and pain point we wanted to solve.
The problem? No one has heard of us — yet.
Day 1 Goal — Showing up on Google
This should be obvious, but I want “Podsplice” to show up #1 on Google as quickly as possible.
If Google can learn what Podsplice is, then so can LLMs like ChatGPT.
I did 3 things.
1 — Write a Medium Article
Medium has been pretty annoying for me lately, but it still works well for SEO.
I wrote this article yesterday: How to Record a Screen Share Video with System Audio
It actually showed up on Google for that search term, but it disappeared while I was writing this. lol.
I find Google often indexes content, drops it, then indexes it again.
I’m not expecting too many views on this article, but I know Google will read it and at least get our domain: www.podsplice.com indexed sooner than later.
2 — Make a YouTube Video Using Podsplice
I did this yesterday
It is showing up on both Google and YouTube search. So mission accomplished.
I only have 22 views so far (and some of them are mine) but I’m ok with this start because its showing up.
3 — Make some Reddit Posts with “Podsplice” in the post
I find Reddit annoying, but it gets a lot of visitors, and it gets indexed quickly by Google.
The Reddit moderators ban “self-promotion” like crazy. It is very difficult to put a link to my own stuff.
This is why I have my own subreddit. I am my own moderator, so I can allow the links.
The title of the post was How to Record a Reaction Video Without OBS
It is already showing up in Google search.
I also made a couple of posts in subreddits I don’t own.
Instead of putting a link (and getting banned — which often happens), I just answered questions and put the name “Podsplice” in there with no link.
I searched Google for “Reddit” + a topic where I think Podsplice can help.
I answered the questions and recommended Podsplice with no link.
Anyone who likes my answer can just Google “Podsplice” and find me. This is one reason I want to show up quickly on Google search.
I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but we wanted to have a name that is easy to say, understand, write, and spell.
For example, if I say “Podsplice” during a YouTube video or someone mentions it, I want it to be easy to understand and write out.
Google cares about “mentions” in addition to links, so just having the word out there in cyberspace helps.
Results:
I got the top 3 search results for Podsplice after a day.
I hope they reindex my Medium article, and I assume they will (based on my experience).
We got 2 people to sign up with their email to our waiting list.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results of our first day.
These results aren’t the headline-grabbing sensational ones, but they are at least honest and realistic.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions!