I built this app for my dad. Now it makes $18K/month

Built a truly minimal MVP as a Chrome extension in 2 weeks (the easiest thing to build), uploaded it to the Chrome Web Store and asked about five friends to leave reviews on day one. The store sent free traffic with almost no work: 10-20 page views right away. People kept downloading without any marketing, which convinced him to pursue it as a side project.

Posted on Reddit daily at launch with a content angle he knew would go viral in every subreddit, reposting the same angle in five or six subreddits until he got blocked. The angle itself was not described.

Built SEO as the main growth engine: about 200 blog posts and about 30 different landing pages on a Framer website localized into four or five languages, produced with his own SEO tool (Romeo SEO). His reasoning: in a crowded market the product customers see first wins, so one article ranking above a competitor in Google or AI search gets the click even if the competitor's product is better. No traffic or signup numbers given.

Recently started YouTube with standard videos on how to do speech to text, then launched a series called 'AI For Seniors' aimed at Voicy's older users. Videos are recorded with Tella. No cadence or conversion numbers given.

As a product manager, he got on as many user calls as possible. About 60-70% of callers were fast-typing professionals wanting ~10% more productivity; 20-30% were people with physical disabilities or less tech-savvy seniors who loved the MVP and asked for nothing more. Rather than compete with funded rivals like Wispr Flow, who don't go after seniors, he refocused Voicy on older people and people with disabilities, for whom dictation is a painkiller rather than a vitamin, and who compare it to a 15-year-old dictation tool rather than Wispr Flow.

Offers a 'disability discount': anyone who emails the founder gets 20% off. No verification process described.

Monthly plan at about $8.49; lifetime plan at about $260 (roughly 30 months of the monthly price). Lifetime sales come on top of recurring revenue.

After about 6 months as a Chrome extension, built a Windows app with Electron (about 3 months), against the belief that only Mac users pay for apps, because the business world is on Windows. Then shipped Mac (one more month), Linux (2 weeks), iOS and Android so Voicy is available everywhere.

For his SEO tool Romeo SEO, usually marketed to indie hackers, he found local traders want local SEO more than indie hackers do, and is going after them because that market is less crowded. Early stage; no details on how he reaches them.