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Hey Jason,

Amy Hoy says the best way for solo founders to start off is with in info product. Just to cut their teeth at marketing and such.

One thing, now that you have got that ball rolling I think you might consider another saas product in the future because you have so much learning about that.

The one good thing about a saas product with good market fit is that you will get years of recurring revenue from the same customers.

With pluggio I had some customers hitting $3.5k over time (and higher).

That is the real power of saas and why it's worth considering in the long run.

Edit: I guess it may be useful to note we have a bunch of articles here - https://blog.nugget.one/ - about how to avoid the kind of issues you spoke about in your blog.

http://blog.plugg.io/2016/12/18/blog-let-walmart-delivery-dr... published draft?

Word. I started my current SaaS with the goal of working 10hrs a week and making 15k a month. I'm getting close to my monthly revenue goal but if I'm not sleeping, I'm working. I don't regret it. I'm enjoying the challenge now but it wasn't what I had thought I was getting myself into. I truly underestimated the gravity of emails and support requests. As a one man shop, it can grind entire days to a halt.

Passive info products do seem to be the easier path to a more leisurely success.

Edit: missed a word

Have you considered the cause of the e-mails/support requests and tried to streamline your process or at least provide additional instruction in order to quell the high volume?

My experience has been that support requests can be near zero if you actively work on some kind of automated solution for the highest frequency problems.

I'm trying to work towards this. There are just a ton of problems that can occur since I'm dealing with recording/uploading audio in the browser. Network dropouts, OS audio settings, varied browser capabilities / versions, microphone selection issues, limited hard disk space, browser storage quotas, etc.

My new goal is to have every single error or notification have a built-in link that takes them to a solution article. This seems to be effective so far.

That's pretty impressive actually! Have you considering hiring one or two people (e.g., freelancers) to remotely help with support? Also, a virtual secretary would be immensely helpful I'd imagine.

I have a couple of ideas I've been wanting to work on, but time is quite scarce as a grad student. I guess it's partly because I tend to overthink (and over-design) my ideas, and end up getting overwhelmed before even touching a line of code! What's even worse is that the majority of my ideas are intended for my home country (EST+6 timezone), since I think it's much harder to be successful in an over-saturated market like the US.

For example, one of my ideas is designing an Uber-like service for my home country. The current roadmap (which I haven't started on) is as follows:

1. Design a basic placeholder site with some info on the app/service

2. Run a limited ad campaign to gauge interest and ideally collect emails (Google, FB, local radio, local newspapers)

3. Try to get interested users to fill out a survey

4. If the results from 2) and 3) are promising, start developing a barebones MVP

5. The MVP will target one city, require manual signup for drivers, and only have a simple web client

6. If successful, start hiring local developers, optimizing server-side, and designing an Android app (iOS is a very small market)

Any advice for someone in my position? I'm open to all types of feedback from any HNer - it's always good to get an opinion before working on something like this!

Thanks! I'm trying to hire right now. (web audio and/or webrtc devs call me) :)

I've thought about a virtual secretary but I'm not so sure how helpful it would be. They would need pretty specialized knowledge to be able to help much with support requests. I don't have so many meetings that I can't schedule my own.

As far as Uber for your country. Does Uber not exist where you are yet? There was another one in Malaysia called GoTaxi or GrabTaxi that I thought was interesting. It connected you with 'real' taxi drivers for a pre-arranged flat fee for the ride. One guy told me he used it just so he had a record of what taxi he was in incase he got robbed by the driver.

Edit: latent thoughts

No, not yet! There is one service that is doing something similar to Uber, but it's not a good service imo.

That sounds interesting actually. One of my biggest concerns is push back from the local taxi union, so that may be a better way to approach it. I'll definitely look that service up.

I am not exactly qualified to gauge the viability of your idea but I believe an Uber-like service is pretty ambitious of a venture, especially given the fact that you'd go for it solo. Consider the fact that you need to fill both the demand-side and supply-side, and match them almost in real time for it to be useful. I feel that it's often underestimated how challenging this task is.

I am not sure if a web-client would do the job. From my knowledge, interacting with maps on a mobile browser can be an aggravating experience. If an app doesn't do the job, isn't immediately useful, people discard it without further consideration which makes B2C things tenfold hard.

The surest way I see for it to work is to start as boring-taxi company that has a phone number and a person at the end. Then, slowly move into automated app-like way. I am guessing that's how OlaCabs, India's Uber, got started. Automation is awesome but there are so many points of failure in Uber-like venture that it's better to be safe by doing manual tasks.

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that it is in fact non-trivial to get automated ride sharing working end to end.

Didn't you mix up the goal and the result?

As a fellow (though happy) SaaS owner I'm trying to imagine being in your shoes. My goal is spending my time on something (~a problem) that interests me and hearing that customers benefit from what I offer. I think that is the awesome part of it.

This results in freedom and earning money, among other things. I don't earn as much as you but I care very little as long as I can do the above. Obviously you need to be able to cover your expenses, but that's another story.

I couldn't imagine starting this with the goal of working as little as possible while getting paid as much as possible. I don't know if that is what you are saying, but I hear this sometimes.

Am I getting too philosophical about it?

Perhaps I have. I started this business after learning I was going to be a dad. My broader goals were financial, location, and time independence for my family and I. I suppose I take it for granted that I enjoy the building part. As long as I can use tools that I like, I can get excited about building almost anything. So far the time independence has been elusive but I'm still just getting started. Moved to paid plans just a month ago. I think it will get more manageable as the product and I mature. Also bringing on some dev help is in order.

I know support, especially good support, is a hard problem to solve. However have you explored documenting processes in extreme detail in order to outsource that part of the business? The upfront investment would be great, but the returns in time alone would seem worth it.

Certainly worth the time investment when i can get to it. My biggest problem at the moment is that I have no admin interface. I have to dive into the db to make fixes/changes for people. Once I get an admin panel built out I'll be able to bring on help easier. The other issue is that I actually get so much great info about my users needs from the support requests that I cant detach entirely.

For sure. I definitely underestimate the advantages of an admin panel with proper permissions and reporting. Working primarily with an e-commerce platform day-to-day, I do feel the hit of subpar solutions when using rails or similar.

> I truly underestimated the gravity of emails and support requests. As a one man shop, it can grind entire days to a halt.

Same boat - You can make the most detailed image based walk through FAQ tutorial documentation what have you and you'll still have days filled with customer support.

You'll wake up one morning with multiple emails from billing to product support. The more you grow, the more they come.

PS: You're product hit the nail on the head. I've recommended it to a few podcast clients in the past.

Yeah, its a tough problem because it makes it hard to stay solo. I really like being in full control of everything as long as it stays manageable. Perhaps this is a weakness.

Thank You! I'm relying entirely on word of mouth marketing at the moment so that really helps!

BTW - What's your project?

Why don't you hire out support? Sounds like $15-20/h type of work which you shouldn't be doing if you can gain more value building features or marketing.

Starting with an info product is a common suggestion (Amy Hoy is one advocate as a sibling comment noted). But in order to be able to offer an info product don't you need to be really knowledgeable about something? If you hadn't your experience with your SaaS would you be in the same position to write (and sell!) your tutorial?

I still battle with my inner dialog about "not being an expert" at anything. This is something I get caught up on but all you really need to be is more knowledgeable than your target audience. So sell something you already know to people who want to know it. There are still people out there that are basically beginners in web development. There are people one or more rungs down the ladder from you. You don't have to sell them some complex guide to intricacies of angular. How many non-technical people want to sell things only? People serve them all the time.

One example I heard recently on a podcast was cssanimation.rocks. Basically his thought process was: I want to teach people something regarding CSS. I can't teach people ALL of CSS in a book (too much work). I like making animations. I'm going to focus on practical animations (forms, list boxes, basically things all sites do). He started posting some useful blog posts that taught people some of the basic concepts and captured emails. Now he has paying subscribers to an email course.

Disclaimer: I fail to do everything I'm telling you to do.

CEO of One Month Rails Mattan Grieffel taught himself to code (mind you his co-founder was teaching others to learn to code at General Assembly.) I think this post from Scott Adams will help you understand how you can be gain more confidence http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...

I am quite interested to know how you got into the business of making software for hair salons when you're not a "domain expert in the beauty industry" - did you start out building this for someone else who was involved in this industry, and then decide to give it a go yourself?

There's some great advice in your post about your ill-fated Snip (strong name!) product, anyway!

(I'm not sure I agree about product businesses - I think it depends on the industry and your connexions - but certainly no one should think that going it alone will be easy.)

My wife got a job at a hair salon and their software sucked. I didn't have any exposure prior to that.

I went after the hair stylist market for three months as part of The Foundation. I quickly came to the realization that it was not a good market for the simple reason that the owners of hair saloons like to cut hair. Because of this they are very hard to get on the phone.

One key for any potential SaaS market is to make sure you have a way to reach that market. Make sure they are on email or social media in large numbers.

I too pivoted to information products. Good luck with your course.

Thanks. Yes, it's not enough for there to be a need. You also have to think about how you'll reach prospects. Stylists and salon owners aren't on the computer all day every day and they don't like to take phone calls from salespeople. They're very expensive and/or time-consuming to reach. A solo bootstrapper almost by definition has very little time or money, so salons are a very bad match for the capabilities of solo boostrappers.

Funny, two years ago I built an MVP for the same market/problem with a couple of friends. It helped us understand the problem and was very MVP (3 man weeks of work all in).

We concluded very quickly that the problem is reaching the audience. We did have a strategy, but the impending arrival of babies means that the entire thing was put on ice.

It's tempting to revisit the niche because, at least if our numbers are correct, we have a real chance of being able to reach the niche whilst keeping the CAS manageable.

We have some of the same problem (buyers of our software really want to be out in the kitchen), and have found a lot of leverage building a community of existing owners/managers where they can all share experiences.

So, not sure if there ks a forum for salon owners, but if there's not, that's the first thing I'd look at building. And if there is, well, there's your marketing strategy. (At least a big component of it.)

Info products can be a good source of relatively passive income. How are you marketing your info product?

For myself, I'm writing desktop software for developers which is a market I know and something that really interests me. On top of that, there is no need for continuous uptime

I'm marketing it by writing blog posts, usually long, definitive blog posts that spell out the details of solving problems as opposed to "Top 10 Ways to Wipe Your Ass" or whatever. From there, I get people to subscribe to my email list by offering a free guide as a lead magnet. Most of the sales I've made have been via my email list.

How do you address the piracy / license problems? I'm starting also a desktop version but piracy is main concern.

Thanks for this. It's some really good insight for me. I've had a few ideas bouncing around in my head for SaaS products to serve a few different small business niches where the existing software sucks badly. I think all of those markets would have similar difficulties to the ones you found in salons. On the one hand, it's really frustrating to know that I can build a product which would make peoples' lives and businesses better, but that I'm unlikely to be able to make it financially viable. But on the other hand, I'm grateful to realize this before pouring months or years of my life into it.

Hey Jason thanks for the thoughts on your blog post. Just curious, how long did it take you to write the angular on rails book? And I'm assuming it is a PDF?

Shhh, dont give away the secret sauce. ;)

Truth is that info products are perfect for solo founders as a way to start generating revenue for bootstrapping something else (or simply as additional income). Marketing them is easy. You just have to put samples online, work the SEO, and share it on social (inbound). Building one is also simple. No need for anything fancy. Ive sold info products using a static page and a paypal button.

Absolutely. Info-products, even the really cheesy looking ones with the spammy VSL's (Video Sales Letter) work insanely well.

Depending on your niche you can do some pretty big numbers.

If you are not creating your own info product, what is the viability of a decent monthly income stream from selling an info product that someone else created?

I understand that some people do do this. Affiliate marketing/joint ventures.

how did you go about marketing this, and what in your opinion would be a good way for a tech guy to start learning basics of marketing your product??

Would you recommend against buying a SaaS that is ~$2-3k/MRR?

I don't think I'm really qualified to give a recommendation on something like that. Even if I were, I think there are a lot of factors that would need to go into such a decision. What I might recommend is for you to look up what Rob Walling has to say on build versus buy.