Free Tools Helped Add $920 MRR in 31 Days

RevenueCat shows $1,920.18 MRR and 330 active subscriptions for GainFrame this morning. I crossed $1,000.04 on July 12. The app launched on March 8, so the first $1,000 took 126 days. The next $920.14 took 31.

The biggest change during the second leg was the free tools. I shipped three new ones, improved the pages already ranking, and added 424 internal links. Organic clicks to the tools went from 302 to 2,799 in matched 30-day windows. GA4 organic tool sessions went from 290 to 2,807.

That work put GainFrame in front of a lot more people searching for body-fat estimates, physique ratings, and body visualizers. I think it helped the MRR line move faster.

The revenue number is public on RevenueCat's verified page. The search numbers are from Google Search Console through August 11. The last two days are fresh data and may shift slightly. MRR is the August 12 snapshot.

The first $1,000 took 126 days from launch. The next $920.14 took 31.

The second leg is running at 3.7 times the daily pace

The simple arithmetic is $1,000 divided by 126 days, then $920.14 divided by 31 days.

That puts the recent pace at about 3.7 times faster per day. RevenueCat MRR moves in chunks because monthly subscriptions, annual subscriptions, renewals, and churn land on uneven days. The recent curve includes a sharp jump from August 8 to August 11.

The tools were the biggest distribution change I made during the second leg.

Free tools became one third of organic search

I compared the 30 days before the $1,000 milestone with the 30 days after it.

The site grew fast. The free tools directory grew much faster. Nearly one in three organic clicks now lands somewhere under /tools/, up from roughly one in nine in the prior window.

Tool clicks accelerated after the estimator funnel rebuild, Physique Rater launch, internal-link work, query rewrite, and Body Visualizer launch. MRR climbed from $1,000 to $1,920 during the same month.

GA4 showed the same jump after people reached the site:

The tools went from 290 organic sessions in a month to 2,807. At that point they were doing real distribution work for the app.

The existing tools did more work than the new ones

I added three tools after the $1,000 milestone:

• AI Body Transformation on July 18
• AI Physique Rater on July 23
• Body Visualizer on August 6

The directory went from 11 live tools to 14. Roughly 76% of the added tool clicks came from pages that already existed on July 12. The three new pages accounted for the other 24%.

Four pages produced 97% of all tool clicks. Existing pages produced 76% of the added clicks.

The body-fat-from-photo tool went from 206 to 1,486 clicks. Its CTR barely changed, 10.53% to 10.88%, while average position improved from 7.63 to 5.87 and impressions rose from 1,956 to 13,662. The page started showing up far more often and ranking higher.

The body-fat visualizer went from 12 to 480 clicks. CTR improved from 9.16% to 13.20%, while average position moved from 10.02 to 7.49. Its main query, "body fat visualizer," produced 148 clicks at position 3.92.

The Physique Rater is the breakout new page. It produced 538 clicks from 2,234 impressions, a 24.1% CTR at average position 3.92. On July 23 I expanded the number of pages linking to it from about 3 to 23. On July 31 I rewrote the copy around "rate my physique," "rate my body," and "body rater" after Search Console showed the original query split. Traffic started taking off around July 31. I think the links and query rewrite helped.

The other two new tools are too new to judge. AI Body Transformation produced 34 clicks. Body Visualizer produced 33 clicks and 1,040 impressions after launching on August 6. Google indexed it in under a day. I will judge it after it has 28 days of data on September 3.

The classic calculators produced almost nothing. TDEE, macros, FFMI, calorie deficit, calories burned, one-rep max, and strength standards combined for only a handful of clicks. Four pages generated 97% of tool traffic. The total tool count is a weak metric by itself.

What I changed from July 12 to August 12

I pulled the repository history from July 12 through August 12 and matched the meaningful changes against the traffic timeline.

Three new tools mattered. The month also included funnel work, search retargeting, hub cleanup, and 424 additional internal links.

Most of the work was on pages that already existed.

July 13: I rebuilt the photo estimator result screen. It had four competing dark blocks and buried the App Store download behind them. I reduced it to one decision area with the download and email report together. The change happens after the search click, so I treated it as funnel work.

July 18: I shipped AI Body Transformation. The launch commit also linked the new tool from six relevant blog posts and two sibling tool surfaces. It received a real place in the graph on day one.

July 23: I shipped and interlinked the Physique Rater. A second commit featured it on the tools hub, added it to related-tool footers across the calculator set, and linked it from seven relevant articles. Exported pages linking to it moved from about 3 to 23.

July 29: I reordered the tools hub around real entry traffic. The ItemList schema had a duplicate position that invalidated every item after it. I fixed the numbering, moved the visualizer ahead of low-traffic calculators, changed the title to match the pages that already ranked, and rewrote cross-links based on entry-session behavior.

July 31 through August 1: I rewrote pages around the searches people used and fixed the internal links. The first full audit found 46 orphan pages, 929 internal links, and a median of three inbound links. One pass took the graph to 1,279 links and eight orphans. The current count is 1,353 links, seven orphans, and a median of four. The seven remaining orphans are founder and product-news posts that I share directly. Search traffic is not their main job.

August 6: I shipped Body Visualizer after the audit found a new query family. "Body visualizer" showed 40,500 monthly searches, 22% yearly growth, and low reported keyword difficulty. The related family was roughly 86,000 monthly searches. I kept it separate to avoid disturbing the body-fat visualizer, which already ranked for a more specific query.

When I first started publishing tools, I thought finishing the page was most of the work. Now I spend just as much time on the search people use, links from related pages, the result screen, and leaving the page alone long enough to see what happened.

The audit changed what I shipped

I wrote the mechanics of the weekly SEO audit loop a few days ago. The short version is that every run pulls Search Console, checks market data, inspects every local page and link, proposes a small set of changes, waits for my approval, then records what shipped and when it can be judged.

It changed what I shipped:

• Stop adding generic calculators because the existing ones have almost no search demand on this site.
• Improve the pages already earning clicks before widening the directory.
• Add a tool when people are searching for something interactive, as they were with Physique Rater and Body Visualizer.
• Add the internal links when a tool ships.
• Leave a new page alone for 28 days unless something is broken.

It also stopped me from shipping a few bad ideas. I froze an 11-post measurement-stats cluster after market data showed several target keywords declining 33% to 66% a year with 0.3% to 1.0% CTR. I reverted a body-fat chart title test after it lost cleanly. I skipped adjacent workout and nutrition ideas when the search results showed the wrong shopper.

The best output from the loop is often a smaller shipping list.

PostHog is missing the recent website events that connect a tool result to an App Store click and then a subscription. My guess is that the tools helped a lot. TikTok, Reddit, product changes, and older trials were active during the same month too. Fixing that tracking is next.

I am still $79.82 short of the milestone

I have not hit $2,000 MRR yet. At $1,920.18, a good day can cross it and a bad churn day can move it away again. I would rather publish the current number than round up early.

The pace has already changed a lot. The first $1,000 took 126 days. The next $920.14 took 31. During those 31 days, the tools directory grew from 11 pages to 14, organic tool clicks rose 827%, and pages that already existed produced 76% of the added traffic.

I plan to keep the next month boring: fix the website tracking, protect the three search winners, wait for the new tools to collect 28 days of data, and improve tools people already use before adding more.

If you are building your own app and want any of the raw numbers behind this, ask. I am happy to share them.