I Make $17K/Month With One Strategy

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I Make $17K/Month With One Strategy

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Mar 20, 2026

Ben makes $17K/month from a SaaS he grew without ads, going viral, or being creative. His strategy: make the same video over and over again. This is his full breakdown.

Free database → 190+ micro-SaaS ideas making millions: https://clickhubspot.com/gdv

Follow Ben: https://x.com/iambenleavitt
Check out FollowBuddy: https://followbuddy.com/

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🏁 We're hiring: starterstory.com/jobs

This video is an educational case study of this founder’s experience. It is not financial advice and does not guarantee any income or results. Every business is different and your results may vary.

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No tools listed for this business.

I dare you to try this strategy I promise it'll work

This is Ben and he built an app that just hit 17 000 a month

I saw how big this problem was so I had to solve it

But here's what I love about his story

He didn't dance on TikTok or chase viral trends

Nope

His approach is much more methodical than that

Literally anyone can use this exact playbook and use it for their app

So I asked Ben to come onto the channel and share his entire playbook on this

And in this episode we'll get into how his simple app that does one thing can make 17 000 a month

why building an audience is a waste of time

and why this platform is the most underrated place to get customers right now

Let's dive in

I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

Ben welcome to the channel

Tell me about who you are what you build and what's your story

Appreciate you having me Pat

So I build software products

One we're talking about today is called Follow Buddy

and it is a tool that helps you safely find who unfollowed you on Instagram

Follow Buddy makes 20 000 per month

We have 82 000 users currently 3 128 paying users and we've spent 0 on ads

This is all organic traffic again predominantly from search across YouTube TikTok and Instagram

So we operate on a subscription model

We have weekly monthly and yearly plans

We definitely push the yearly plan the most at a 50 per year price tag

And so we offer a free trial

And then if they don't cancel it converts to the weekly monthly or yearly plan

depending on what they selected

So here's Follow Buddy's revenue cap

We've got 484 people actively on a trial

The revenue over the last 28 days was 17 422

New customers 14 000

Active subscriptions 27 520

So this is Follow Buddy's specific channel

So this is the branded channel for the product

And you can see we've generated 40 000 views over the last 28 days

These are predominantly search based views

which is going to be the focus of the strategy for the rest of this video

Okay cool

I'm excited to talk about this YouTube strategy

because I think that's super cool

And we're going to get into it

But before we do how do you even get to this place

How do you get to the point where you have a successful online SaaS business

What's your background

I've been running a marketing agency for seven years

I started it while I was in college

We just tried to offer everything to everyone

Very quickly learned that's a horrible way to run a business

So I was really young so convincing anyone to work with me was hard

But software companies because they were more tech native

they were more than open to it

Very quickly after doing that I learned how impactful YouTube could be for SaaS

I became multiple software companies highest converting affiliate

Or if they were a customer of mine

YouTube became their highest grossing revenue source

And I've basically dedicated my entire business and the things that I've built

built to that exact strategy

I've been rinsing and repeating that for like seven years

Okay we're going to get all into this YouTube search playbook

But I want to understand how did you even come across the idea for Follow Buddy

How do you even come up with this idea

Very funny story

So when I was growing my agency

I started making content about how to grow online

And I was more focused on helping people grow

So getting followers

But a lot of people on Instagram are very concerned about who was unfollowing them

And so through doing that kind of content

so many people just saw me as their Instagram support person

And I tried my best to always answer these questions

But I started getting so many of them really quickly

around three or four years ago

all around the specific subject of people getting banned

or losing their Instagram account

And after investigating it a little further

I saw it was because they all were using an app to find who unfollowed them

And why it got them banned is because it violated Instagram's terms of service

So then I was like

well is there a way to do this that is safe

My team and I went to the drawing board

We found a way that you could kind of do it

I made a video about that

And it got like one point something million views

And that strategy that I brought to the internet

has since been repeated so many times

that it's referred to as the compare lists method

I actually built a business for a guy by accident

because we just sent the traffic like a million people

to some random list sorting tool on the internet

So he owes me a coffee

And then we decided like can we build this thing

So I was chewing on this idea for four years

because I was already working with software companies

But I knew I couldn't afford to do it myself

So every year I would go on Upwork

and ask my developer friends saying

how much would this cost to build

And then two years ago it finally got down to a price point

where I said OK let's go

Let's build this thing

I really want to talk about this YouTube search strategy

I think there's a huge alpha here

We had someone on the channel recently that talked about this

I want to go even deeper on it eventually

But first just explain to me at a high level

how do you get customers for your SaaS

All of our traffic is organic and it's all search based

across the different social platforms

Why search traffic is so important

is because it's high intense traffic

So I don't have to convince people of something

They've already convinced themselves

They're simply trying to source a solution

solution And I want to be the guy that can give it to them

And any business even if you're not a SaaS business

you should be doing this because I guarantee you

even if there's not a ton of people searching certain things

that would lead them to you guaranteed there are some

And if there's no content for YouTube to put there

they put the next best thing

So meaning something bad even could rank number one

if there's not much competition

Would you be able to show me like a video

or a search keyword that you rank for

that drives meaningful revenue for your business

Totally

So the example that I'll show you is a video called

Best Instagram Unfollower Tracker Apps

And it's got 25 000 views and it was made seven months ago

So anybody who's searching this in

they obviously have the immediate problem

and they're looking for a solution

As I mentioned earlier our biggest problem

is that people have been scammed by the other options

And so this actually gave me an opportunity

to also educate people on why and how we're different

which made the conversion for this way higher

Here's the analytics

So you can see that I made this thing seven months ago

It took me 20 minutes to make

And look it's getting this many views every 48 hours

of people that are incredibly warm and ready to buy

And then let's see here in terms of the keywords

we're ranking for

We are number one for unfollower app Instagram not bad

Best Instagram Unfollower Tracker number one

As you can see there's a lot of ones here

What I love about Ben's strategy is that he has

a repeatable system for creating content

and growing his business

But here's the thing

This strategy only works when you actually

have a product to share

So if you're watching but you're not exactly sure

what to build yet well I have something for you

The team over at HubSpot put together

the Micro SaaS Ideas Database

It's 190 plus real Micro SaaS business ideas

with the actual numbers behind each one

Revenue traffic cost to start pricing models everything

This database will help you skip the guesswork

and start building something valuable right now

Head to the link in the description

and you can grab it for free

All right let's get back to the episode

I do tell people all the time

you can make a crappy video and it can rank number one

There isn't that much competition on YouTube

You could probably even record a loom video pretty quick

and rank on something niche if you have a niche SaaS

That's super cool

Let's dive into the actual playbook here

If you were starting over with a SaaS

or with content in 2026

and you wanted to actually create content

that ranked in YouTube search engines

that actually drove revenue

what would be your step by step playbook

I'd repeat the exact same process every single time

for any product that I build

or any business that I work with

The first thing that I think people really get wrong in SaaS

SaaS is they're so obsessed with getting customers

they don't take the time to think about

who those customers are and the problems that they have

The first exercise that I would put you through

would be a breakdown of the awareness ladder

for your specific customer

So I don't worry about not aware of the need

which is typically the bottom

I go right to aware of the need

then there's aware of some solutions

then there's aware of specific solutions

aware of benefits

and then convince them ready to buy

I used to just do this in my head

but now you could talk back and forth with chat GPT

and think about the questions

that someone who would want to buy your product

would be asking at every step of the journey

along the awareness ladder

You then want to figure out how are they asking it

Because a lot of people can say

I understand that someone would ask this question

but how they would ask it very different story

So use something like vidIQ

or what I use Keywords Everywhere

to type into the YouTube search bar

and see how many people

are actually searching for that per month

I would then put my strategy together

for which videos that I want to make

prioritizing based on the intent of the traffic

So how likely would that person

who wants this video be to buy

and how many people are actually

searching for their period

Once I've outlined all the keywords

I want to go after

I usually start with like 10 to 20

and then I'll go through

and see what's currently ranking

for the people that type that in

You will be shocked that some of them

will actually have no relevant content their period

You should probably get that video ASAP

because even if it's horrible

you'll probably rank number one

But if there is some competition there

what I look for is how can I do this better

So understanding the problem itself

if I come to a keyword

and I see there's a ranking video there

and let's say it's 12 minutes

and the guy was just babbling for most of that

and it could have been a four minute video

I will then go quickly make the video

in a shorter form factor

in turn giving more value to the viewer

viewer which will then give YouTube better data

to rank me there faster

And then what you want to do

is essentially make videos

for each of those things

so that whatever point they're at

they find you and you can take them to the next place

until they end up buying from you

If you do SEO correctly

you will rank within the top three to five listings

almost every time

even on a brand new channel

Step two is to record the content

When you're creating the packaging

so the title and the thumbnail

thumbnail for a search based video

the only thing that you're really trying to do

is to confirm to them

them that they're in the right place

So the title should be incredibly obvious

front loading the primary keyword

but still be written for a human

The biggest mistake that I see people make

when they're doing YouTube SEO

is they're so literal to talk to the computer

but I always give the example

of you need to talk to the computer

and the human at the same time

So you need to give YouTube what it needs

in terms of the specific keyword

but if it makes sense to put something else

in addition to that

to create more relevance for the person

and it's going to increase the chances

that they click that

also do that

Don't be a robot you're a person

So once you've figured out the title and the thumbnail

thinking about all the things that I just mentioned

when you're actually filming the content

think about the viewer again

Confirm the click as soon as possible

So when someone clicks my video

I will confirm yes you're in the right place

by basically repeating what the search was

Then I'll get right into it

because that's what they're there for

Throughout the video depending on what it is

I'll always try to be as honest

honest and helpful as possible

Over deliver give them what they need

and then show them the good and the bad

So with any product

there's going to be pros and cons to it

I have consistently found that

if you mention a con potentially

I've seen has improved conversion rate

And then if it's not a purchase ready video

I will guide them to the next step

in the awareness ladder

If we started off broad down here

and I know there's a logical question

they would ask after watching this video

I will make that video and send them to that

as the call to action to further nurture them

Step three is packaging and optimize the content

So what that would look like

is you start from the title

you make that keyword optimized

for whatever your target was

And then once I have that

I will also repeat multiple relevant keywords

within the description

Again writing for a human being

because when people are searching on YouTube

they see the title of the thumbnail

but they can also see the first two sentences

of the description

So a lot of people will just put their app link there

That's a missed opportunity

because anything that I have on someone's screen

screen to increase the chances of them clicking my video

over someone else's

I wanna take full advantage of

So I will write a fairly compelling description

including multiple highly relevant keywords

and then the link to access my actual app

And the final step in the SEO process

is going to the tags

tags and I will add in highly relevant tags

I will basically try to say

whatever the exact thing is that I'm targeting

in every way in which it can be said

So here's that same example that I mentioned earlier

And this would be an example of very low

on the awareness ladder

because people are just aware of the problem

and they're trying to find solutions

So best Instagram unfollower tracker apps

that's the title

And then looking to find

who unfollowed you on Instagram

Instagram that's also highly relevant

These are the best apps to find unfollowers

on Instagram in 2026

Then if you wanna see the tags here

they're all incredibly highly relevant

to the problem I'm solving right

So unfollower app Instagram

Instagram unfollow app

Instagram unfollow app comparison

So all the different ways

that people are basically saying the same thing

I will try to include here

to increase the relevance of my video

increasing the chances that I get ranking

Because the more specific that you are

the higher likelihood that YouTube will believe

that you actually understand this problem

In turn they'll put you there

And if you made a decent video

you'll get good data

you'll stay there

and you'll keep getting views

like I just showed every single day

And step four is essentially monitoring

how these things perform

and just keep stacking bricks

I will keep remaking variations

of your target keyword videos again

and again and again until you start ranking

The awesome thing about YouTube SEO

unlike Google

it's almost impossible for you

to get multiple high ranking listings within Google

Very possible on YouTube

And especially if you're doing this

across multiple channels

so that whenever anyone searches

some variation of this problem

you are the face that they see

And eventually it's highly likely

they're going to end up buying from you

if they buy period

This process requires almost no creativity

Anyone can do this

and get some results for sure

I want to stop you there for a second

second because you're great on camera

You're great talking to the camera

You've been experienced at this

I think a lot of people watching this go

it's easy for him to do

because he has this audience

He has all these YouTube channels

already built up

He's a recognizable face in this space

What would you say to that

I would say that's stupid

Why I would say that's stupid

is because I grew my entire YouTube channel

doing the exact same things I'm telling you now

So I only have those things

because I did what I'm saying

I get where people would go there

but I promise you that's a limiting belief

There's also probably way less competition

than you realize

If that came up

that's something that should not stop you whatsoever

And that's probably what's stopping everyone else

who you may compete with

I agree

Let's switch topics a little bit

I'm actually curious

Follow buddy

How does this app work

Could you just give me like a quick demo

I want to see like how it actually works

Would you be able to share

Here is the dashboard

All that we're doing

is telling people who unfollowed them

through leveraging Instagram's export data feature

So all that you have to do

is go follow the steps

to get your followers

and following information

that is approved from Instagram

We're not breaking any of their terms of service

And then you just come in here

and you would upload it

I'll upload my file right here

I'll click generate results

It's going to compare to my previous audit

We're finding the snakes

As you can see

we're detecting our fake friends

And then in turn

turn it'll pull up the results of all of those people

And I will say

you'll probably see some information here

that breaks your heart

I've got 319 unfollowers

264 non followers

So definitely some sad stuff

But if you were to click on any of these

it brings you to Instagram

And so as long as you're signed in with Instagram

you can basically use this to clean up your account

On that same note

I'm curious how you built this

What's the tech stack here

I'm not the developer

As I mentioned

I work with a developer

but it is built with React

And for back and forth with customers

for signups and whatnot

we use SendGrid

We use MongoDB for the database

For cloud computing

we use AWS

And then for the tools for marketing

I pay for keywords everywhere

just to see how many people

are searching specific keywords

And then we use Revenue Cat to process payments

which takes about 1 on all transactions

Since you had some people help you with that

what's your advice for anyone who's watching this

who may be more on the creator side of things

things or non technical

I've consistently found over the last few years

that partnering with the best people possible

is the way to go

Giving people skin in the game

can be a great way to do it

It could look like ongoing money

which is how it works for me

is that I employ a developer full time

And so that was very appealing to him

that I told him that once we build this

you'll also have full time employment afterwards

But that could be a revenue split

It could be whatever it may be

But I will say that with AI

the difference between someone who's okay

and someone who's great is growing by the day

And so I would do anything you possibly can

to work with somebody who is awesome

even if that means that you're taking home

less than you wanted to originally

The value difference in my opinion is 100 worth it

I paid for not thinking like that

with about a year of my time and a lot of money

Thanks for sharing that

Last question that we ask

everyone who comes on the channel

if you could go stand on young Ben's shoulders

shoulders before you built software

maybe even before you were creating stuff

what would be your advice to anyone who's watching this

that wants to build a cool SaaS like you've done

I would say don't overcomplicate it

If you even have the slightest idea or inclination

go try it

You have no idea what you don't know yet

The best thing that you can do

is if you have even the slightest idea move

because you need to validate the concept

as soon as possible

You don't even need to be creative

I know so many people use that as an excuse

If you follow this exact approach

there's almost no creativity needed

because you're just trying to go

to where the people already are

and just show up there when they try to solve their problem

Well that's great advice

Thank you Ben for coming on the channel and sharing this

I'm a huge fan of YouTube

Obviously Starter Story is built on YouTube

I believe this

This is a great strategy

and I hope that we can find even more people

to come on the channel as this continues to work

from what you've shared

So thanks for coming on and sharing all of this

Thanks Pat appreciate you having me on

All right Producer Gus

what did you think about this one

Well first Ben which is awesome

Second we've had a few founders like this

where it's like they have a system

for creating content and markets their product

and that's kind of different

than just creating random content

and hoping it somehow leads to downloads or whatever

I mean there's so many things that I liked about his story

I don't have time to share all of them

If I could say one thing about it

I really do think that YouTube is still so underrated

He's even diving deeper into

it's not just YouTube it's YouTube search

It's a massive opportunity of searches

and it's also a low competition landscape

of inventory that gets served on YouTube

And as he explained

it's because people don't wanna make videos

They'd rather AI generate a article that ranks on SEO

Well guess what

That ain't gonna work anymore

YouTube it won't be like this forever

but at least for a few years

you can create a stupid video

and you can rank number one for it

And if that video has intent towards your product

that video can rank for years

and drive significant revenue to your business

Yeah I think about with the AI ification of everything

I think there'll be people that skew 100 towards AI

but there's gonna be a good chunk of people

that are like yeah I wanna hear from somebody

a real person about whatever my problem is

That's probably a good sign too

that YouTube has longevity

I think that would be the platform

where if I was starting to think about distributing content

I would start on YouTube

That was an awesome video

Thank you for watching

If you're looking to build something

if you're looking to find an idea

build it with AI and ship it

something maybe like an unfollow tracker

well you can do that with AI

And the best place to do that is in Starter Story Build

Inside Starter Story Build

we will help you come up with an idea

build it and get it in the hands of users in days

by using modern AI tools

So check that out

I'll put a link in the description

Thank you guys for watching

We'll see you in the next one

Peace

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