$25,000/Month With Link-in-Bio Tool
Hello Tribe,
Welcome to another exciting edition of Moneymint! We're more than just a newsletter—we're a community of go-getters, dreamers, and doers.
Ever wondered how a simple idea can turn into a $25,000/month business?
Meet Charlie Clark, the solo founder behind Liinks, a link-in-bio tool that’s carving out a niche in a competitive space.
Let’s see how Charlie built his business, his tips for founders, and why slow, steady growth beats the hustle culture.
How a solo founder built a $25K/month tool in a crowded market
In a crowded market, Charlie Clark didn't try to out-innovate his competitors. Instead, he focused on keeping costs low and delivering an exceptional user experience with his link-in-bio tool, Liinks.
The result? A profitable niche generating $25K in monthly revenue.
Here's how he did it.
From Side Projects to Serious Business
Charlie started his journey into coding as a self-learner, building fun Flash apps during his school years.
What began as a hobby eventually led to his first job building marketing websites for brands.
This is where he picked up the basics of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. But back then, the sites were mostly static and didn’t require much back-end work.
Things changed when he discovered React—a framework that opened the door to building real products for users.
Even though Charlie had a lot of side projects, being a Canadian living in the U.S. meant he couldn’t legally make money from them.
While this was frustrating, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It taught him how to create and launch things just for the love of building.
In 2016, after finally getting his green card, Charlie shifted his focus to building something bigger.
His first real business idea?
Selling posters that displayed the colors of movies, a project he called The Colors of Motion.
It wasn’t a massive business, but it generated enough revenue to reach the upper five figures—a sign that he was onto something.
Inspired by that success, Charlie took a leap of faith in 2019.
He quit his job to focus on building VSUAL, a print-on-demand marketplace. While it achieved six figures in GMV, the margins were slim.
During his time at VSUAL, Charlie noticed that many of the artists he worked with were using link-in-bio tools to promote their various platforms.
That observation sparked a new idea—a tool of his own.
This led to the creation of Liinks, a platform designed to help people better manage and promote their online presence.
What started with small Flash apps had grown into something far more significant—a full-fledged entrepreneurial journey, with Charlie learning, building, and evolving at every step.
He Avoided the Hustle
Charlie isn’t your typical “hustle and grind” entrepreneur.
He prefers small, calculated risks over big, bold moves.
While building Liinks, a link-in-bio tool, he invested heavily but with a clear goal: to maintain full ownership and build something sustainable.
His success didn’t come without sacrifices—weekends, hobbies, and sleep took a hit. But for Charlie, it was about creating a life of flexibility, especially now as a new dad.
Returning back to 9-to-5 Routine
Shortly after launching Liinks, the pandemic hit, and financial anxiety set in.
"Liinks was ramen* profitable by that point, but I live in an expensive city, and never really wanted to live off ramen," Charlie says.
Ramen meaning: A ramen profitable individual or company is making just enough money to cover basic living expenses.
He briefly returned to a 9-to-5 job while continuing to work on his side projects.
In August 2024, about 4.5 years after launch, Liinks hit $25,000 in monthly revenue. This success gave Charlie the confidence to quit his job and focus on his projects full-time.
No overnight success, just consistent growth—on his terms.
Nothing Flashy: A Tech-Based Startup Success Story
Liinks isn’t an AI-powered startup; it’s built on simple, stable tech. Here’s the stack Charlie used to outpace competitors:
AWS S3 + Cloudfront
Digital Ocean VPS + Managed MongoDB
NodeJS (Express)
React
How come they are making it successful?
Instead of chasing the latest tech trends, Charlie stuck with stable, proven technologies, avoiding the trap of perfectionism.
How did he stand out?
Powerful customization
Affordable pricing
Niche functionality
Clean UI
By offering $4/month for Premium and $10/month for Pro, he provided a compelling, cost-effective alternative to competitors.
Competitive Pricing Strategy
Charlie knew the link-in-bio tool market was already validated.
He says, "I saw folks using similar tools. I made the bet that I could provide enough of a compelling alternative to the existing tools to carve out a small amount of a very large addressable market."
His bet? Providing a compelling alternative to carve out a small piece of a large addressable market.
Using a SaaS model, he priced Liinks as follows:
$4/month for Premium
$10/month for Pro (with advanced features and up to 5 profiles)
Note: Additional profiles can be added at $10/month per 5 profiles.
Charlie intentionally started with a low price to undercut the main competition. He experimented with different price points like $2.99, $3.9,9, and $5 before settling on $4/month for Premium.
"I preferred the simplicity of a round number, and when I tried pushing higher than $4, I noticed a significant decrease in conversions. I think it's a fair price since my product offers fewer features than the competition," Charlie explains.
Avoiding Freemium Offers
When Charlie first launched Liinks, it was a free tool. A few months later, he introduced a Premium plan, but eventually dropped the free tier altogether.
The reason? It wasn't just about the money.
The Dark Side of Free Users
As Liinks grew in popularity, Charlie noticed a disturbing trend. While most free users were harmless, some were using the platform for questionable purposes:
Attempts to hack SEO with backlinks
Spammy content
Phishing scam attempts
The phishing scams were the final straw.
Charlie tried blocking the bad actors, but they always found workarounds. False positives were also a concern.
The solution?
Manually reviewing profiles.
But with the platform's growth, this became overwhelming, especially without the help of Large Language Models (LLMs), which weren't available at the time.
Removing the free tier seemed like the best option. It would create a higher entry barrier and reduce the number of profiles requiring manual review.
An interesting side effect? The UI became significantly simplified without the need to restrict premium features.
Was it financially beneficial?
The results were surprising. While the total number of new active users fell, the number of paid users reached a new high.
However, Charlie wasn't sure how this decision would affect long-term network effects. Free users might have eventually converted into paid users.
Eventually, with LLMs now everything is easy and Charlie can now implement more robust automatic detection for bad usage with AI.
"Maybe I'll test a free trial again after I do that," he says.
The $1,000 MRR Milestone
Just four months after launch, Liinks hit the $1,000 MRR mark. Charlie introduced several new features and a 14-day free trial for users to enjoy premium features.
Achieving $15,000 MMR Milestone
Achieving $20,000 MRR Milestone
What is his mantra for growth in such a competitive market?
Charlie Clark's approach to growing Liinks in a saturated market is a masterclass in lean, focused entrepreneurship. Here's how he did it:
Cold Outreach: The Early Days: During the freemium era, Charlie targeted Instagram users without link-in-bio pages. He then build pages for them and did cold outreach asking them to try Liinks.
Product-Led Growth: Customer social media promotions drove significant organic traffic to Liinks.
Data-Driven Development: Charlie built a custom admin dashboard to track user-created pages. He leveraged tools like FullStory and Amplitude to gain deeper insights.
User-Centric Feature Design: By understanding how customers used Liinks, Charlie developed features based on real user insights.
Simplicity is Key: Charlie's focus on UX resulted in a product so simple, he receives less than 5 customer support requests per week.
Strategic Ad Management: After iOS14 made Instagram ads less effective, Charlie pivoted to Google Ads, achieving $1/click and $30/conversion rates.
Advice from Charlie "I am by no means an expert at ads. My advice for ads would be to experiment until you've got something that works, and then stop touching it!"
Always Ask, "Then What?"
Inspired by 'The Tourist and the Fisherman', Charlie always asks himself, "Then what?"
He says, "It's a quick read, but a life-changing one.”
The moral is basically asking yourself, 'Then what?' every time you make a decision, whether in business or life."
It is easy to chase more revenue and growth but do you know your real goal? This is what Charlie asks.
This approach led him to avoid VC funding, realizing that "go big or go home" didn't align with his goals.
Words of Wisdom by Charlie
Charlie has 3 pieces of advice for everyone:
1. Ship early: He spent 6 months on his 1st personal project without any users. But he launched Liinks just after 2 weeks after starting off.
Although the product looks very different from when first launched. But that is okay with Charlie as he is receiving real users' feedback. It served as beneficial in shaping the product.
2. Go with the flow, but know where to focus. It is an important tactic in understanding how to work through it.
3. Acknowledge luck's role in success. According to Charlie, luck plays an important part in success, but most successful founders cease to admit this. He is not asking us to be superstitious but believing in luck is not a bad idea.
Success Tips for Founders
Validate Early: Test your ideas before fully committing.
Good vs. Bad Customers: Know who adds value and who drains resources.
Explore Ideas: It’s okay to take breaks and try new things.
Cut What Doesn’t Work: Regularly review and remove features that clutter your product.
Monitor Users: Stay vigilant to avoid abuse and improve user experience.
Refactor Mindfully: Only make changes when truly necessary.
Delegate Wisely: Build self-reliance while improving delegation.
Embrace Slow Growth: Focus on sustainable growth with low costs and high margins—don’t chase hypergrowth.
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Thank you for reading. See you next time.
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