Building a Developer Tool in Public: 60 Days of Real Metrics

60 days since I launched ARIA publicly. Here's every metric I track and what it's telling me.

The Full 60-Day Dashboard

What the Trends Are Telling Me

SEO is the channel that scales. Content compounding is real. Month 1 I wrote 21 articles. Month 2 I wrote 21 more. But month 2 SEO traffic was 4x month 1 — because month 1 articles were now ranking.

Session length increasing is a good sign. Average session went from 4.2 to 7.1 minutes. Users are staying longer, using more features, having deeper interactions with ARIA.

48h retention jump came from onboarding. The change I made in week 6 (get users to their first error diagnosis immediately) directly caused the retention jump from 31% to 52%.

What I'd Tell Someone Starting Today

1. Build the simplest thing that demonstrates core value. I spent too long on the repo scanner before the error diagnosis flow was good enough to retain users.

2. Content before launch, not after. Build an audience of the exact developers you're targeting while you build. When you launch, there are already people who care.

3. SEO is slow but compounding. First 2 weeks: nothing. Week 4: first trickle. Week 8: real traffic. Patience required.

4. Onboarding is more important than features. A user who can't find the value in 60 seconds is gone. No feature adds value if users don't see it.

5. Talk to every churned user. I've emailed every person who cancelled. 3 out of 3 gave me specific, actionable feedback. That's gold.

Month 3 Goals

• MRR: $300
• Product Hunt launch
• Annual pricing live
• Referral program live

Will report back on day 90.

I built ARIA to solve exactly this.
Try it free at step2dev.com — no credit card needed.