My solo side project just crossed 6,000 signups on the way to 10k. Sharing the real dashboard and the 3 things that actually surprised me

Building OTTASIA, a free "where can I watch this" app that's accurate for your country across Asia (India, Pakistan, Philippines, the Gulf, etc.), where Google and the big guides usually give you the US answer. Solo, non-technical-ish, shipping daily.

Real numbers from my own dashboard (attached):

• 6,011 / 10,000 signups, ~250-day right now
• 9.2% visitor-to-signup (target was 5%)
• 18,736 sessions in 7 days, ~6 min average engagement
• Mostly India (76%), then Pakistan, Philippines, US

Three things that genuinely surprised me:

1. AI assistants are a real acquisition channel now. A chunk of my daily sessions come from AI tools calling my data directly (I exposed it as an MCP server). I optimized to be citable by AI, not just ranked by Google, and it's quietly working.
2. Instagram out-drives search on some days. My top referrer is often Instagram, not Google. For a visual, regional audience, short video beat SEO effort-for-effort.
3. The wedge was accuracy, not features. I stopped trying to compete with the big trackers and just did one thing they do badly: local streaming services in Asian markets. That's the whole reason people stay.

The honest hard part: it's a low-frequency use case (people check "where to watch X" occasionally, not daily), so retention is my real battle, not signups.

It's free, no signup needed to use it: ottasia.com. Happy to answer anything about the build, the AEO/AI-assistant channel, or per-country data.