I Make $1M/Year Hosting PDFs on the Internet

About this episode

👉 Try Distribb for Free: https://distribb.io?utm_source=yt-elston Elston started Tiiny Host in 2019 as a weekend project to learn marketing. A $30 domain, no co-founder, no investment. 6 years later, Tiiny hit $1M ARR. 2M+ users. 100K+ monthly visitors from SEO alone. All bootstrapped. In this episode, Elston Baretto breaks down the slow-and-steady playbook that turned a side project into a $1M/year startup. What you'll learn: → Why side projects beat full-time builds → The exact SEO playbook that ranks Tiny for 100+ keywords → Why YouTube tutorials are underrated → The bootstrapped advantage → Founder-market fit: stop trying to be Steve Jobs Find Elston on X: https://x.com/_baretto Try Tiiny Host: https://tiiny.host?fpr=florian Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:43 Meeting Elston in Bali 02:19 What is TiinyHost? 05:14 From software engineer to founder 07:42 Why TiinyHost was just a side project 09:16 The biggest mistakes new founders make 12:13 Why I stopped chasing multi-product 14:01 The first users (and first dollar) 16:26 Finding the right marketing channels 17:05 Why YouTube is underrated 18:49 From 1 customer to 100 22:10 The SEO playbook that scaled to 70K users/month 29:36 The journey from $0 to $8K MRR 31:30 Breaking through the next ceiling 35:43 The bootstrap advantage 37:32 Riding the AI wave 42:18 Saying no (and ignoring competitors) 47:31 Distribution with features 50:56 Don't try to be Steve Jobs 54:02 The mentor strategy that actually works 59:09 How to find the right mentor 1:01:54 Would I buy or build today? 1:04:15 The truth about being a founder