How I Grew My Plugin to $12K/Month

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How I Grew My Plugin to $12K/Month

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Feb 12, 2026

Vikash built Bulkmockup, a Photoshop plugin that makes $12K/month. This video breaks down the three-step content system he uses to grow and get customers on auto-pilot

Build your own micro-saas → https://build.starterstory.com/select-plan?promo=TINY&utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=vikash

Follow Vikash: https://x.com/vikashkprajapat

Check out BulkMockup: https://www.bulkmockup.com/

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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.

Chapters:

0:00 - Intro

1:13 - BulkMockup overview

1:32 - Business analytics and dashboards

2:13 - Founder background and idea

3:34 - Going from idea to product

4:34 - Content through customer pain

5:25 - Real examples of content

6:40 - Content Flywheel Playbook pt. 1

8:40 - Solve one problem

9:38 - Content Flywheel Playbook pt. 2

11:30 - App Demo

12:48 - Tech Stack

13:33 - Final advice

14:18 - Pat and Gus reflections

16:50 - Build your own app!

Chapters

Stack

Transcript

Chapters

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No tools listed for this business.

My strategy is simple I turn customer pain into content

This is Vikash a guy from India who built a simple piece of software that makes 12 000 per month

But what's way more interesting than that is how he finds customers

He's not going viral or chasing TikTok trends His approach is much smarter than that

I create content for one specific problem for one specific customer

So I brought Vikash onto the channel to break down his entire playbook

And in this episode we'll dive into how to find business ideas hiding in plain sight

Why chasing views and impressions is a complete waste of time

And his three step playbook on what he would do if he had to start over today

These don't get a lot of views but they convert and bring us customers every day

All right let's get into it I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

All right real quick before we get into the episode

Vikash is about to break down his entire marketing strategy

But it's important to say that all of this started with a simple idea that

solved a very painful problem This story that you're about to watch will

prove to you that there is no such thing as a problem that's too small

If you have even a tiny idea and you don't know where to start

well after you watch this video I have something for you that will

help you get started right now I'll talk more about that a little bit later

But for now let's dive into the episode

Vikash welcome to Starter Story I'm excited to have you

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

I'm Vikash I built a Photoshop plugin called Bulk Mockup that brings me 12 000 a month

I'm excited to share my content flywheel growth marketing strategy with you today

Okay Vikash there's a bunch of cool stuff going on here We got YouTube we got plugins

Before we get into all that in this really cool kind of system and framework you have

for getting customers I want you to walk me through what does your business do

How does the business model work And if you can pull up some of your

your revenue screenshots I'd love to see them

So the product is very simple Mockup creation process is a manual job

that takes around 30 to one hour Our plugin helps the customer convert it into two minutes

The business model is quite simple We have a Photoshop plugin

Customer find us through YouTube They purchase the Photoshop plugin

run it through Photoshop with their mockup template and they pay us monthly for that service

This is my Gumroad dashboard and these sales data are from last year

So I've been consistently hitting around 12 000 13 000 a month

Okay Vikash before we get into your strategy how you get customers

and how you found this idea let's talk about your background How do you get to this point

I started doing freelance work on Upwork and freelancer com These were all Photoshop jobs

So one day I saw a project where a client wanted to automate some part of Photoshop

I did not know how to do it So instead of skipping the job I told the client

let me figure this out So I went into Stack Overflow and learn JavaScript in one day

And by the end of the night I hacked out a Photoshop script that did the job

And then it became an internal tool for my freelance gigs

I saw clients they wanted to hire a virtual assistant to create mockups

for their print on demand store I applied for such a job

job It asked me to create 1 800 mockups And he was expecting

I'll take maybe three or four days to complete the job

The whole 1 800 mockups got done under 30 minutes The customer was stunned

He asked how did I do it I did not explain I just you know

know give me 300 and I'll give you this And without giving any second thought

the customer wired me 300 And at that moment

I realized I'm on to something And that is how Bulk Mockup was born

That is an amazing story I love to hear that businesses started on platforms like Upwork or

Fiverr because that's a place where there are so many business ideas hiding in plain sight

So many people needing jobs done having to automate things There are so many ideas on

these platforms And it's just super cool to see someone who's built an amazing business

that started there So you sort of find the solution on Upwork just kind of this random

random script that you're able to run But then how did you turn this into an actual

business or product that you could sell even though you didn't have any technical experience

It did not start as a SaaS at all The first version was a hacky Photoshop script

I started selling it as a one time fee and soon realized that it cannot be defensible

So I logged myself into my room for two straight months and put that Photoshop script into a very

bad UI UX product The logic was messy but somehow it worked I did not know how to do

license validation or user management And because of that I had to sell it as a one time fee

So for a couple of years I sold it as a lifetime deal And once I had enough funds I went ahead

to Upwork and hired a developer that helped me to polish the product and bring it to what it is today

Okay So you learn how to build this You sort of hack this together You figure it out A lot

lot of people watching this can do the same especially with AI tools nowadays But what I want to talk

about more is the business You got this business to 12 000 MRR and I'm sure it didn't just come

from building something It came from growth and distribution and focusing on customers

You shared something really cool with me which is your sort of flywheel or how you think about

finding customers Could you explain that to me and how it works My growth or marketing is what

I call a content flywheel And the fuel of this content flywheel is customer pain So I discover

customer pain create content around that and that content attracts new customers for me That

leads to a discovery of new problem And then it's feedbacks entirely into my new content again

I create YouTube videos that solve long tail customer problem My videos do not get a lot of

views but they are solving a real pain a customer is having A customer watches that video He finds

that solution He trusts me And then he purchases the product You do not need to get a viral video

to be successful at marketing your product A simple video that solves a customer pain is what

you need Okay I love this concept building content based on customer pain I'd love if you

could show me a real example of this these YouTube videos that you create what do they look like

How did you create them And how much revenue does a video with a few hundred views actually drive

I'll share two examples The first one is this video I split the design manually and automatically

in Photoshop So if you look at the view count this sits around 370 views in past four months

But I have had three customers out of this 370 views That's 15 a month multiplied by 345 MRR

just from one video And then I have another example This video hits on the higher view It

has 12 000 views in last six months And this video has amounted to 213 in the last six months

Every video is an asset for me It goes there sits on YouTube on Google

and brings me customer every month Creating the video is very straightforward I do not

care about introduction having a very good setup Just record the solution and that's it

People love when you speak to their problem directly You do not frame it as a YouTube

video or a video that goes viral Okay cool I love these examples Obviously

they just have a few hundred views and each video leads to a few hundred in revenue

but compounded over time you have all these assets on YouTube that solve legitimate problems

that people are searching for And this compounds right This is going to keep growing

which I think is super cool And I'm a huge fan of YouTube obviously So that's why I've been

really excited to bring you on the channel My next question is let's say anyone watching this

wants to build their own SaaS or their own plugin or just some sort of software What's your whole

playbook from start to finish on how to implement this marketing flywheel So this is my three step

process for my content flywheel Step one collect customer pain I do not brainstorm content ideas

I harvest customer pain and I have four touch points to harvest the customer pain The first

touch point is I go into communities where my customers hang out I silently go there and I

read through those conversations I make a list and see if there's a pain that is being repeated

day after day If I feel I start a conversation there to get more context into the problem

I never sell on the communities Touch point number two is onboarding emails So once a customer

customer signs up on our services I send out an email to my customer Do you want any custom tutorial

just meant for you And we have a lot of good tutorial ideas submitted by the customers and it

exactly speaks a long tail problem the customer is facing and what is their confusion Then touch

point three is our customer support If you go into our website and look at our reviews we have

more than hundred five star reviews and most of the reviews talk about customer support That is

because we treat customer support as an education channel Whenever a customer reaches out to us to

get help on their problem we directly ask them send us your file We will record a custom tutorial

video for you and at times we also get on a call with our customers and we walk them through their

workflow and solve the problem on the call We record all this conversation and over the span of

three years we have over 1500 recorded videos and these videos are gold mine for us People talk

about the real problem the edge cases that never come up in search keyword results or anywhere and

we create content around those support calls And the fourth touch point for harvesting customer pain

is YouTube comments I go to my niche find out videos that has not high views but high number of comments

comments High comments signals customer pain which is unresolved and then make a list of all

the objections that the customers have and then I simply create a better content around that answering

answering all those objections What I love about Vikasha's story is that his app solves a tiny

problem and in my opinion these are the best kinds of apps The ones that solve one problem for one

specific type of customer and thanks to AI apps like these are getting way easier faster and

cheaper to build but what's still missing is the roadmap for how to do this How do I find a good

idea What AI tools should I use and how do I get this in the hands of real customers quickly Well

this is exactly why we launched Starter Story Build Inside Starter Story Build we will give

you a plan to follow for building your first app We'll teach you how to find good ideas what tools

to use and how to build and ship your app in just a few days Thousands of people have joined Starter

Story Build and are working together to launch their first apps with zero coding experience So

if you're ready to build head to the link in the description and use the code TINY at checkout for

a special deal That's T I N Y TINY Our next bootcamp starts very soon so if you're ready to build

build let's get started Alright let's get back to the episode Okay so four different ways to

find customer pain It's crazy to see there are so many business ideas hiding in plain sight Not

just content ideas but business ideas You can find business ideas by going on YouTube comments

and seeing what people are saying It's absolutely insane how it's all there Okay so you mine this

customer data this problem data this pain data What do you do next The next step is creating

content Creating the content becomes very easy because all the customer pain are from real

conversation So when I start creating content I kind of understand who the customer is what's

their problem and the third step of the strategy is distribution Before publishing I run through

a checklist I want that video to be not only serve a YouTube audience but to sit there as an asset

asset So I figure out an SU angle to it and I optimize that video for search and ranking on Google To

To rank a blog content on Google you have to have authority backlinks and then you get the first

ranking But a lot of people do not know that if you create a YouTube video with the same search

intent and optimize that for Google your YouTube videos will rank and 22 views on our YouTube

channel comes from Google search The optimization is very simple If you know on page SU optimization

have the keyword in the title in the description and first 30 seconds of your transcript So this

is how my distribution works and this is the whole strategy that I use to get customers

All right well thank you for sharing that Vikash What I think is really special about what you do

is that you actually talk to customers You get on support calls obviously just to be helpful and

have great customer service but also it's just this amazing opportunity to find content ideas

I think a lot of people watching this and a lot of people that I talk to they want to sit there

and they want to code all day and not talk to customers Obviously the classic startup advice is

talk to customers talk to customers talk to customers This is a great example of this and

a cool way of how you have sort of turned talking to customers also into this amazing marketing

flywheel that's helped you build this amazing business So I think that's super cool I want to

switch topics a little bit and have you give me a demo of your app Can you show me the app that

makes 12 000 MRR So this is Photoshop and this is my plugin Bulk Mockup I'll show you a quick

demo So we have our design files into three folders These are mockup templates of a woman

woman wearing a t shirt and then we have our design files These are 10 design files and we have

five templates We want to add this design file in all those templates and create mockup So

five templates 10 designs that is around 50 mockups If you do it manually it may take you

30 to 40 minutes We have three folders set up PST template folder browse and select the template

template and browse and select the design file That's it I'll put this side by side You can see how fast

it is So I'll click on start generating and the magic will start It will open the template It

will start adding designs So we have 50 mockups in just maybe one minute I guess If a customer

customer had to do it manually that would have taken somewhere around 30 to 40 minutes So that is

how Bulk Mockup works If there's any way to boil down a good business idea is does your tool make

people more money Does it save them more money or does it save them time For anyone watching this

that's a great way to think about hey do I have a good business idea Well this is a great example

of something that saves you time Saves you a lot of time if you're doing this sort of specific

thing inside of Photoshop which is super cool I want to change the topic slightly and talk about

tech stack What tools did you use to build this What tools do you use now What's the tech stack

for your app So I use Komodo Dex It's a loom alternative to record all the tutorials for

customers I got it very cheaply on AppSumo lifetime deal for 19 Then I use Boldesk It's for my

customer support ticket management that cost me around 15 a month Then I have Senja to showcase

reviews on my website I use Zoom for the support calls that cost me around 20 Then obviously I

pay for Adobe 40 a month And then I discovered Boromi It's a screen recorder that I have been

using to create YouTube tutorial videos And then Notion is 12 a month It has all the content

system And then I use Cal com that is 0 for scheduling calls Okay well thanks for sharing

that Lots of cool tools Last question that we ask all founders who come on Starter Story

If you could go back in time and talk to young Vikash before you had the successful idea before

you grinded on Upwork finding business ideas what would be your advice to young Vikash or anyone

watching this that wants to do something similar I have two advice The first one is do not ignore

your health I had been grinding 14 16 hours a day in my past and that resulted in a spine

surgery last year So if you're grinding hustling please do not ignore your health And the second

one is be obsessed about your customer's problem Listen to them create solution The solution

could be a product a video anything Just be obsessed with your customer's problem All right

well thanks for coming on and sharing everything sharing those YouTube videos and the whole

business you built It's amazing It's going to keep growing I think and be huge So thanks for

coming on and sharing Thank you Pat Thank you for having me Okay Gus producer of the Starter

Story channel what'd you think about this one Man that was awesome It was just cool to hear

about his system That's what I was most impressed by I've heard of like content flywheel before

but it was really down to earth and practical Like how I find comments and then how I turn those

into videos Something you said during the call was like a lot of people are afraid to talk to

customers or kind of hear from customers That really stood out to me I hope people will see

when they watch this is that by talking to customers you are accessing this multi million

dollar gold mine of information You're crazy to not talk to customers Like imagine all of the

ideas and marketing and content you get just by having one conversation with one customer Well

I made the classic mistake where I didn't really do that for a long time And once I started doing

that once I started just getting over my fear of talking to customers and talking to people

then everything changed Then revenue went like crazy because then I understood the uncertainties

the pain the struggle of the customer which helped me create better content that sort of

of addressed those things or was what they were looking for I can just remember very specific

months where I said okay I'm just going to talk to customers That's all I'm going to do

And I can't say enough how much that impacted me which is why I wanted to make this video

Are you actually talking to customers Have you talked to these customers Because I think

think everything will change when you do The other thing that I thought was a little bit of secret

sauce that if you're watching at this point then you're in the right place Google SEO is like

struggling a little bit right now He had this little hack that I think that works for him is

actually people are still searching stuff for Google but Google is ranking YouTube videos

highly If you search something in Google search now what Google does is they will rank videos

first because they know that people that are searching want to watch a video tutorial on how

to do something in Photoshop They don't want to read a blog typically So by creating YouTube

videos he's catching people on YouTube search and Google search And that's like a tiny

hack that maybe he didn't even realize but it's super super big

Yeah And then just the last thing the product is so niche right It's like a plugin for

Photoshop for Etsy sellers And when he showed the demo I was like this is clearly awesome

You've talked a lot about like building pointy feature apps kind of thing And that was really

cool to see You can call it micro SaaS You can call it one feature apps pointy features

because it does just one thing and does it very specifically I think that's a great place to

rather than building a SaaS that boils the whole ocean as you build a SaaS that does just one very

very basic thing Like we did this interview with someone recently who just has an app that uploads

uploads bank statements and then converts the bank statements So I think that's a great place

to start If you are looking to start and build something similar to that you should definitely

check out Starter Story Build We will walk you through the process of finding an idea

specifically one potentially with a pointy feature building it and then getting it in

the hands of real users just like Vikash did talking to those users and then building something

even bigger But starting simple That's what Starter Story Build is about I'll put a link

in the description You can get started right now and build something and have it in the hands of

real users thanks to AI in just a couple of days So check that out I'll put the link in the

description Thank you guys for watching We'll see you in the next one Peace

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