A running log of what I actually try to get candidtools.com noticed, updated as things happen - including what doesn't work.
July 22, 2026
Bought candidtools.com and moved the tools over from an older domain. Starting from zero backlinks and zero history.
July 25, 2026
Posted on r/SideProject. Zero comments.
Same day, viberank.dev emailed asking to list the site. Added it - a free backlink. Maybe they have scraper in place to actively watch r/SideProject for outreach.
July 26, 2026
Commented with a link on a "share what you're building" thread on r/indiehackers. Thread itself was popular; my comment picked up a couple upvotes, nothing more.
Found TinyLaunch mentioned in one of these threads and scheduled a free launch for August 24, 2026.
July 30, 2026
Replied on a comment in r/SaaS - the founder of a lead-gen tool (app.makesmores.com) had offered to pull active users complaining about the problem your product solves. I'm trying it out to see if I'm getting new leads or not.
July 31, 2026
Saw a thread on r/saasinvestors about struggling SaaS products. A commenter mentioned SeoLoupe; ran its backlink profile through Ahrefs and found neeed.directory as a source - free tier trades a dofollow link for adding their badge. Added the badge to the footer and submitted for verification.
August 3, 2026
Got a promotion email from SitePatent saying we rank on viberank.dev and offering a spot in their collection. Added their badge to the footer and got listed.
August 8, 2026
Paid for an SEO agency audit and implemented everything from it that was actually code, not outreach: sitewide Organization/WebSite structured data, FAQ + SoftwareApplication schema and a real "how to use" section on every tool page, rewritten meta titles/descriptions, and an About and Privacy page (had neither before, despite the whole pitch being "your files never leave your browser"). Left backlinks and the audit's blog-post suggestions out of this - the posts are scheduled into a dated calendar instead of written all at once, since a sudden batch of posts on a small site reads as spam to Google, not authority.
August 10, 2026
Got banned from r/SaaS for replying to a comment with a link back to this very log - not even a product link, just this page. A mod flagged it as self-promotion anyway. r/SaaS is evidently stricter about any outbound link than r/SideProject or r/indiehackers were, where similar comments went untouched.
While googling "ilovepdf reddit" to see how competitors get discussed, found a 2-year-old r/indianstartups thread about iLovePDF's business model. Replied anyway, pointing out iLovePDF uploads the file to a server even for simple operations and linking candidtools.com as the client-side alternative. Old threads still rank for exactly the queries I want, so a genuinely relevant reply is worth leaving even years after the fact.
Got an inbound email from PeerPush about listing the site there and launched on their free tier. Their own estimate is up to 27 days in queue before a free launch actually goes live - noting the date now so the eventual launch is traceable back to today's submission, not a mystery bump in traffic a month from now.
Checked the site analytics for the first time since starting this log. /blog/organic-marketing-log is the second most-visited page on the entire site (62 visitors, 78 views) - behind only the homepage (79 visitors) and ahead of every actual tool page, including /draw-arrow's 109 views.
Referrer breakdown: $direct leads, but www.reddit.com and com.reddit.frontpage combined are the single largest identifiable source - I'd guess most of this article's traffic so far has come from Reddit, which lines up with every comment logged above linking straight to it (some of that $direct bucket is probably undercounted Reddit too, since mobile app browsers often strip the referrer).
August 11, 2026
While doing backlink analysis on tinywow.com, one of the bigger PDF/image tool competitors, found it listed on lachief.io's tool-posts directory. Submitted candidtools.com there too - competitor backlink profiles keep turning out to be the fastest way to find directories worth submitting to, same pattern as the SeoLoupe/neeed.directory find above.
Also created a Product Hunt launch, scheduled to go live today.
August 18, 2026
My Reddit account got banned - not the subreddit-level ban from August 10, this time it's the whole account. No reason given and no clear pattern I can point to. Noting it here as-is; will update if Reddit ever explains it or if an appeal goes anywhere.
August 23, 2026
Checked candidtools against a fellow indie hacker's public post about growing their site to 35k+ organic clicks/month on Google - six rules: good meta title/description, hierarchical headings, clean slugs, uncluttered navigation, tight internal linking with breadcrumbs, and backlinks. Five of six were already true here, mostly from the August 8 audit and this log's whole backlink history. The one real gap: no breadcrumbs anywhere, visible or structured. Added a Home / All Tools / [Tool Name] trail sitewide - both the visible nav and BreadcrumbList JSON-LD - derived from the existing tools catalog in one shared place (app/root.tsx) instead of touching every tool page individually.
September 1, 2026
Writing down where this project actually started, as a matter of record - the July 22 entry above ("moved the tools over from an older domain") undersells how far back it goes.
The older domain was straightandsimple.com, registered November 16, 2024 through NameCheap and set to expire November 16, 2026. Checked it with this site's own Domain Info tool, which seemed like the honest way to do it - that link re-runs the lookup live, so the dates below aren't just my screenshot:
Tools went up almost immediately after. The Wayback Machine's first captures of my version of the site are November 20 and 24, 2024, and by the December 22, 2024 snapshot it was already running six tools - Domain Info, Blur Brush, Rotate Image, JSON Formatter, LinkedIn Image Editor and PDF Merger - plus a "More | Coming Soon" placeholder, under a "Straight and Simple" panda logo:
My history on it starts November 2024 - which is still eight months before candidtools.com was bought, and that's the point of logging it. straightandsimple.com now redirects to candidtools.com. The chain is apex 308 to www, then www 301 to candidtools.com - so the old domain's links resolve here, and Ahrefs is picking it up.
I'm not continuing that domain though. It lapses November 16, 2026, and when it does the redirect goes with it, along with whatever authority it was passing. Noting that here so a drop in referring domains around that date reads as an expected consequence rather than a mystery.