A Modicum of Success · Leslie Mathys

In mid-April 2026 I launched a side project called BuildOnDomains. The idea was to find expired domains that met specific characteristics:

Dot com only
Less than 15 characters
No numbers
No hyphens
No other special characters

And the most important thing: they had to be generic, exact-match names that were descriptive of a whole niche or industry.

A seed of an idea

I was in the Small Bets community and watched a talk from Peter Askew where he explained how you can use expired domain auctions to start businesses off the back of. Peter is a shrewd operator, he owns onions.com, that he uses to run his vidaliaonions.com e-com store.

His point was simple: You could eradicate the need to come up with ideas on businesses to start. The domain was the idea. If you could find a domain that described its niche exactly, you could often leverage type-in traffic. These exact-match domains also gave the public just a little bit more trust by virtue of the fact that you’re were running your business on that domain. All these little things helped one stack the deck in your favour.

Armed with my newly-acquired outlook, I started browsing GoDaddy auctions daily.

Shaping the idea (late 2024)

Trawling through GoDaddy everyday is time consuming. More than that, I felt as though I wasn’t getting maximum visibility on what was coming through. GoDaddy allowed a .csv download, which produced a list of 10k names, based on the filters I had set. Scrolling through 10k names in Excel is a lot easier than doing it on a webpage, so I was able to cut time spent browsing.

Then, I had a brainwave: if I could come up with a way to shortcut the prospecting process, this might be something people are willing to pay. Lord knows, I would.

In true does-what-it-says-on-the-tin fashion, I found a domain: ideasfromdomains.com. I wanted to test whether the idea had any legs before committing to a full build-out, so I decided to sell access to a Notion database that I curated on Gumroad. I’d list the names, it’s word split, and also a business idea.

True to form, I started procrastinating and finding reasons why I couldn’t launch. I left the idea behind.

A voice in the back of my mind (2005)

I put the idea on ice for the entirety of 2025. I’d see Peter’s tweets every day about expiring domains that were at auction, and ideas on how you could monetise. These ideas were what has become known as ‘sweaty startups’. Ideas that a solo operator could get up and running with a bit of grit and determination.

These posts got my brain working. How was I going to go about making this idea in my head a reality? The idea would pop up in my mind all the time. Usually this is a sign for me to take action, because my mind hasn’t let it go.

Leaning on LLMs (March 2026)

I’d been trying to learning to code for as long as I could remember. But I was at the point where I was married with a child and another on the way. I didn’t have the time.

So I surrendered to our machine overlords.

In March 2026 I started going back and forth with Claude to put build a data pipeline that could break down that list of 10k domains and return domains that met this very fuzzy requirement.

In time, I got a script working reliably. This was the first tweet I put out after reigniting the project. After some tweaking and prompt optimising, I sent the project live in April 2026 with a new name: buildondomains.com.

Getting the word out (April/May 2026)

I leaned heavily on people in the Small Bets community, and got my first subscribers there after offering them a lifetime deal. Peter happened to be on that list. I had a tool that people paid money for. And they liked it. It felt good.

My marketing plan was the route most indies take. X. I posted daily about progress; about things like increasing the number of registrars the tool got data from, new features etc. This didn’t really work until people started making their own posts about domains they found using my app. Signups to monthly subscriptions started rolling in. I couldn’t believe it, I was living a bite-sized version of the indie hacker’s dream.

Hitting a wall (July 2026)

Things were going okay, I was making low three figures of profit per month. Not bad for a little tool that only required my input about 10 minutes every day. But I felt as though I had taken the tool as far as I could go.

Not all projects have the potential to be big. And there is only so much room for manoeuvre. This was one of those things. Another thing; I felt like I had to be on X posting constantly to keep eyeballs on the product. I’d become a slave to the algorithm.

I made the decision to put the tool up for sale. A TrustMRR listing and an email to my subscribers later, I had multiple offers. Highest of which was for $5k, I tried to push them for $6k. They didn’t respond.

After speaking to my wife and friends, I talked myself into keeping hold of the tool and trying to grow it further. A decision that I regret in hindsight.

Attempts to grow (September 2026)

After taking time to examine how I could provide more value and counteract some of the churn that started. People were churning, but there weren’t enough new subs taking their place.

I tried a free tier. That didn’t work. I implemented a ‘Pro Tier’. Got one sign up. One.

By this point, I had lost my momentum. Running the tool stopped being fun. Everywhere I looked, AI is eradicating products and tools like this. I just didn’t see a future for this as a public-facing product.

Winding down (October 2026)

I decided to reach out to one of the subscribers who previously made an offer. He was still interested, but at a cut price.

I accepted.

As I write this, I have started the process of moving accounts over to the new owner and will be keen to see how things develop in the future.

What next

My priority is clawing back some mental bandwidth. Working on multiple ideas is something I've never been good at. Looking at the landscape, it is clear to me that going down the SaaS/micro-SaaS route just isn’t viable unless you’re trying to solve a very hard problem. From what I’m seeing, if I want to do my own thing, it’s going to need to be in services of some kind. What that is, I’m not sure just yet.

Even though I didn’t receive the amount I wanted, there aren’t many indie builders who can say that built something that people paid for on a monthly basis, and got great value out of. Above all, I’m grateful for the opportunity to give people something they found a lot of value from.