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I tried building SaaS for 300 days and I think it's about time somebody tells you the truth. Let's go back to day one. I was sitting at my computer trying to figure out ways to make money without going back to a software development job. I tried freelancing but I didn't enjoy having clients. I tried selling a course but I quickly grew bored of the topic and stopped updating it. And I even wrote books for developers but I didn't like...
like selling information that was already available online. That's when I found something called SAS, software as a service. There were all these developers who were building small software products and selling them to consumers, all while living their ideal lifestyle, which quite often seemed to be in Bali. The fact that I could use my software development skills to actually build something useful, become an independent developer.
and make $10,000 per month or more sounded like the ideal opportunity so this is what happened for the next 300 days this is my unfiltered take these are my real results well first thing I needed was an idea for a software product to create at the time I'd been mixing with a group of people interested in YouTube I decided to create a YouTube thumbnail comparison tool and my hope was that this group of
Group of people might decide to buy it problem was my front-end development skills were very basic It took me a while to get up to speed with dynamic JavaScript frameworks But once I did it was pretty easy to create a web page that showed YouTube thumbnails just like on YouTube and after a month I had a prototype that I sent to the group of people I mentioned well They all seemed to like it after great feedback. I assumed I was on to a winner
No. Problem was, at this point the product was free, so it wasn't generating me any revenue. I spent one more month adding new features behind a one-off payment, and when I told all those people that they could now pay for all these extra features for the product that they said they liked so much, well, only one person bought, and even though it was a bit disappointing that I only made $29, I had to remind myself this was the first SaaS.
best product I had ever made so was ready to move on to the next one there's this indie hacker who builds SaaS that I'd been following at the time and he talks about the benefit of creating a free product and put an advert on it to push people towards his paid product around that time I was watching a lot of daily YouTube uploaders they publish a vlog every single day and I wanted an easy way to discover those
So I created a blog ranking tool BlogRank. This tool was a lot simpler I finished it in five days but once I hit the launch button I wasn't really sure how to market it. In fact the only people that I thought might be interested were the daily bloggers themselves and I only knew one of those and he ignored my message. Well even though my site didn't get any visitors and still doesn't get many visitors today.
I at least had a tool that I could use myself so I told myself for my next product it was going to be another paid product guess what the topic was yep YouTube again around this time I was struggling to come up with ideas I was excited to build and the only one that was of interest to me and potentially of interest to someone else and easy to build was a tool to automatically overlay text on your YouTube
You channel banner thing is I was a little bit lukewarm about this product, but I managed to entice myself to build it by first of all building the landing page And that actually got me a bit more excited to build the product which I did within the next seven days once I launched it I had another problem I didn't really know anyone that would want to use this product and I realized I didn't really want to use it either I felt like
Like I'd gone backwards from my first product to thumbnail tool because at least I wanted to use that one. That's when I got a bit demotivated because I felt like time and time again I couldn't hit that sweet spot of a product that I wanted to use myself, other people might want to use and would be willing to pay for. So yeah, not all of those 300 days were spent working on SaaS. Some of it was just spent thinking what am I going to do next?
Next, one thing I hear the online gurus say is to take what's already working and build your own version of it. One product I'd seen that I thought was really clever was this same indie hacking influencers bootstrap project which is a shortcut to starting a web app quickly and even though I'd only built three web apps I still had a lot of experience from all the software development jobs I've done so I thought I could build my own version.
But first of all, I had to go to Japan.
Of course I packed my tiny laptop with me and after recovering for jet lag I thought well what am I going to do in the morning. Before I knew it every morning I started building my own bootstrap project and by the time I got back from Japan it was almost ready to launch. I felt like this time I had a product that I wanted to use and it was potentially something that people who watch my YouTube videos might want to use. Well I launched this product.
I subscribed to my email list and I created several YouTube videos where I mentioned it and it's got three sales for a total of $177. So actually this is my most profitable SaaS so far. But I'm still not hitting the numbers that make all this effort worthwhile. Having built four products, I still see this as a big opportunity because there are so many problems that could potentially be solved with software. If you can find one that's...
That's painful enough and solve it in an efficient way, then I don't see how you can't make a lot of money from that. As long as you've got your laptop with you, you could live your ideal lifestyle from anywhere in the world. That's the path I'm still following, but here are five things I'd wish I'd known from day one. Number one is to solve a problem for someone or a group of people you already know. For my second and third projects, I kind of made up a problem.
But a better approach is to identify a problem first that a real human being actually has, and then build a solution for that. Number two, not to build something that you're not in. That's too many negatives. Only build something you're excited to use yourself. The YouTube banner automation tool I created, I literally have not used since I built it. Nobody else has signed up to the tool either. It's not valuable enough. I think the answer to that is rather than do something that you're not in, I think the answer to that is rather than do something that you're not in.
Something that you think is cool is to do something that solves a problem in your life and then you're going to be more tempted to use it. Number three is to take the quick and dirty approach. It's really easy for perfectionists to get caught up in making all the code perfect when all the customer really cares about is the experience they have using the front end through the browser. As long as that works, that's all that really matters. So focus on getting something done rather than perfect.
effect. Number three is to launch and move on. When you launch a single product and it doesn't get the attention that you think it deserves, it's easy to get emotionally caught up in that. Tell yourself you're on completely the wrong path and take a few weeks off from building software. Whereas a better approach is the peter levels approach when he did 12 startups in 12 months. If you give yourself just one month then you know as soon as that month is up
up you've got to move on to the next project. Fifth point is don't go in with the wrong expectations. It's very unlikely you're going to make it with your first product and in my case not even your second, third or fourth but rather than giving up when this happens instead go in with these expectations. Every project you build is a small experiment, one where you're increasing your skills. If you can increase a specific
To speed with which you build products, you're basically running more small experiments and you're learning more along the way. The faster you iterate, the more chance you are of seeing success. The fact is there are people out there who are building SaaS products and are earning a very good income from it. Question to ask is given you already have software development skills, could you do the same thing to earn an income completely independently of a job?
job live anywhere you want in the world and ultimately gain your independence that's been my experience of following this path so far hope it was useful and I'll see you in the next one
I tried building SaaS for 300 days and I think it's about time somebody tells you the truth.
Let's go back to day one.
I was sitting at my computer trying to figure out ways to make money without going back to a software development job.
I tried freelancing but I didn't enjoy having clients.
I tried selling a course but I quickly grew bored of the topic and stopped updating it. And I even wrote books for developers but I didn't like...
like selling information that was already available online.
That's when I found something called SAS,
There were all these developers who were building small software products and selling them to consumers,
all while living their ideal lifestyle,
which quite often seemed to be in Bali.
The fact that I could use my software development skills to actually build something useful,
become an independent developer.
and make $10,000 per month or more sounded like the ideal opportunity so this is what happened for the next 300 days this is my unfiltered take these are my real results well first thing I needed was an idea for a software product to create at the time I'd been mixing with a group of people interested in YouTube I decided to create a YouTube thumbnail comparison tool and my hope was that this group of
Group of people might decide to buy it problem was my front-end development skills were very basic It took me a while to get up to speed with dynamic JavaScript frameworks But once I did it was pretty easy to create a web page that showed YouTube thumbnails just like on YouTube and after a month I had a prototype that I sent to the group of people I mentioned well They all seemed to like it after great feedback.
I assumed I was on to a winner
at this point the product was free,
so it wasn't generating me any revenue.
I spent one more month adding new features behind a one-off payment,
and when I told all those people that they could now pay for all these extra features for the product that they said they liked so much,
and even though it was a bit disappointing that I only made $29,
I had to remind myself this was the first SaaS.
best product I had ever made so was ready to move on to the next one there's this indie hacker who builds SaaS that I'd been following at the time and he talks about the benefit of creating a free product and put an advert on it to push people towards his paid product around that time I was watching a lot of daily YouTube uploaders they publish a vlog every single day and I wanted an easy way to discover those
So I created a blog ranking tool BlogRank. This tool was a lot simpler I finished it in five days but once I hit the launch button I wasn't really sure how to market it. In fact the only people that I thought might be interested were the daily bloggers themselves and I only knew one of those and he ignored my message.
Well even though my site didn't get any visitors and still doesn't get many visitors today.
I at least had a tool that I could use myself so I told myself for my next product it was going to be another paid product guess what the topic was yep YouTube again around this time I was struggling to come up with ideas I was excited to build and the only one that was of interest to me and potentially of interest to someone else and easy to build was a tool to automatically overlay text on your YouTube
You channel banner thing is I was a little bit lukewarm about this product,
but I managed to entice myself to build it by first of all building the landing page And that actually got me a bit more excited to build the product which I did within the next seven days once I launched it I had another problem I didn't really know anyone that would want to use this product and I realized I didn't really want to use it either I felt like
Like I'd gone backwards from my first product to thumbnail tool because at least I wanted to use that one.
That's when I got a bit demotivated because I felt like time and time again I couldn't hit that sweet spot of a product that I wanted to use myself, other people might want to use and would be willing to pay for.
So yeah, not all of those 300 days were spent working on SaaS.
Some of it was just spent thinking what am I going to do next?
Next, one thing I hear the online gurus say is to take what's already working and build your own version of it. One product I'd seen that I thought was really clever was this same indie hacking influencers bootstrap project which is a shortcut to starting a web app quickly and even though I'd only built three web apps I still had a lot of experience from all the software development jobs I've done so I thought I could build my own version.
But first of all, I had to go to Japan.
Of course I packed my tiny laptop with me and after recovering for jet lag I thought well what am I going to do in the morning.
Before I knew it every morning I started building my own bootstrap project and by the time I got back from Japan it was almost ready to launch.
I felt like this time I had a product that I wanted to use and it was potentially something that people who watch my YouTube videos might want to use.
Well I launched this product.
I subscribed to my email list and I created several YouTube videos where I mentioned it and it's got three sales for a total of $177.
So actually this is my most profitable SaaS so far.
But I'm still not hitting the numbers that make all this effort worthwhile.
Having built four products,
I still see this as a big opportunity because there are so many problems that could potentially be solved with software. If you can find one that's...
That's painful enough and solve it in an efficient way,
then I don't see how you can't make a lot of money from that.
As long as you've got your laptop with you, you could live your ideal lifestyle from anywhere in the world.
That's the path I'm still following,
but here are five things I'd wish I'd known from day one. Number one is to solve a problem for someone or a group of people you already know.
For my second and third projects, I kind of made up a problem.
But a better approach is to identify a problem first that a real human being actually has,
and then build a solution for that.
not to build something that you're not in. That's too many negatives.
Only build something you're excited to use yourself.
The YouTube banner automation tool I created, I literally have not used since I built it.
Nobody else has signed up to the tool either.
It's not valuable enough. I think the answer to that is rather than do something that you're not in, I think the answer to that is rather than do something that you're not in.
Something that you think is cool is to do something that solves a problem in your life and then you're going to be more tempted to use it. Number three is to take the quick and dirty approach.
It's really easy for perfectionists to get caught up in making all the code perfect when all the customer really cares about is the experience they have using the front end through the browser.
As long as that works, that's all that really matters.
So focus on getting something done rather than perfect.
Number three is to launch and move on.
When you launch a single product and it doesn't get the attention that you think it deserves,
it's easy to get emotionally caught up in that.
Tell yourself you're on completely the wrong path and take a few weeks off from building software.
Whereas a better approach is the peter levels approach when he did 12 startups in 12 months.
If you give yourself just one month then you know as soon as that month is up
up you've got to move on to the next project.
Fifth point is don't go in with the wrong expectations.
It's very unlikely you're going to make it with your first product and in my case not even your second, third or fourth but rather than giving up when this happens instead go in with these expectations.
Every project you build is a small experiment,
one where you're increasing your skills.
If you can increase a specific
To speed with which you build products,
you're basically running more small experiments and you're learning more along the way.
the more chance you are of seeing success.
The fact is there are people out there who are building SaaS products and are earning a very good income from it.
Question to ask is given you already have software development skills,
could you do the same thing to earn an income completely independently of a job?
job live anywhere you want in the world and ultimately gain your independence that's been my experience of following this path so far hope it was useful and I'll see you in the next one