Edit: If anyone is wondering my MVP is: https://sentimentscanner.com/- google play analytics/statistics/reports of comments by chatgpt Edit2: I was inspired by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21332072
I initially thought "it was about the tech" and tried remaking levelsio's remoteok as a serverless app, and was surprised that no one cared what I built it in, and that traction/marketing was everything.
I wrote up an article each year about the journey:
- https://maxrozen.com/2018-review-starting-an-internet-busine...
- https://maxrozen.com/2019-further-reflections-trying-to-star...
- https://maxrozen.com/indiehacking-3-year-review
I do all of the marketing, product development, finances, sales & customer success.
Do I recommend it? Probably not. I am very tired of doing everything myself and am excited to grow it to the point of hiring more team members. I recommend that when starting a startup to plan to build it big enough that you can afford not to do everything solo. It's stressful and lonely, but also strangely rewarding.
A note on "offshore" team members: I hear a lot of people say offshore workers are low quality or don't care about the work yada yada. I have found the opposite to be true - offshore folks are the same as any other people you employ: pay your people well, treat them with respect and invest in their future and they will do great work. My support and ops team members have been with me for 3+ years.
IME it's just like everything else - you get what you pay for. Bulk offshore TCS consultants will be as bad as you'd expect (again, in my direct experience), but that doesn't mean any/all offshore labor should be instantly discredited.
Can vouch for what the OP says, if you take care of people, pay a decent salary for their region, people will be loyal and quality is very good. You will need to learn a bit about the local region and culture though if your hiring directly.
This is especially true now as the local tech scene is loosing good senior folk through redundancies and forcing people back into the office.
Here's a picture of my Stripe account from last month: https://cloud.scottscheper.com/3k3Yry2V
Happy to share how this model works. There's a lot of subtleties to it.
I wouldn’t be surprised that he posted that page here to understand how he can create a page more appropriate for colder audience or someone very early in the conversion funnel.
Which I actually break-even on and even lose money on (even though it took me a year and a half to write). I break-even on the front-end and monetize via the physical monthly newsletter on the backend.
They understand my use of old school font/letter. Otherwise to a cold audience (like yourself) it's definitely cringe.
The people who get that page have just purchased my book Antinet Zettelkasten. It's an upsell essentially.
People don't subscribe to the newsletter because they want the newsletter; they subscribe because they want the free gifts. And they stick around through another special mechanism I don't even advertise on the backend. Again, subtleties.
His revenue is just rich people forgetting what they subscribed to. Yeah it makes you some money but this is providing no value. Zero. Zilch. Nada. And that means you're not growing this.
Basically it's a knowledge-base fully integrated with Microsoft Teams.
- I'm working on it alone for the last 3 years
- I don’t raise any investments
- I achieved this number only by organic growth
To get more details on how I achieved it you could read my AMA on r/SaaS. https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/15tnt60/i_built_micro...
P.S Small self promotion -> I created a Telegram channel where I share tips & tricks on how to build SaaS for Microsoft Teams. Join me here -> https://t.me/teams_development
> Only 4 out of 70+ projects I ever did made money and grew
> >95% of everything I ever did failed
> My hit rate is only about ~5%
> So...ship more
Great, great advice IMO!
Without marketing/outreach, your hit rate will be much closer to 0%.
Which doesn't make its success less impressive though but people might want to know that
Nice, I almost forgot about it, however for after a few months. Jquery always resulted in huge mess with one insanely long file
My personal preference is certainly using a reasonable folder structure.
People love debating the merits of one JS framework over another, debating back end languages/frameworks, etc. and in the end, for most solo SaaS none of that makes a difference in success as defined by MRR. I think, myself included, so many side-projects with the intent of revenue get lost in the SeaOfShinyThings™ and never find a port.
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/my-product-has-been-launch...
That site also has a products page where you can search for solo founders making > $XXX revenue. There are tons of profitable solo SaaS.
But I'm tired of being solo, so I'm merging with other people that are more on the sales part. One of them also has a profitable company (not saaa - involves people transportation) and needs a tech to make everything smoother (insurances contacts etc)
We'll see how it goes because we come from VERY different perspectives and need to bend our habits to be able to work together
Having a profitable SaaS is awesome (I can work on it something like 2 days a month if I want to, just managing specific invoices) but you just get nuts working from home alone after a while. It was fun during COVID-19, can't say it is anymore
Php, jQuery, running as a SPA technically with php server side rending the html I have jquery squeeze into whatever div makes sense.
Runs on a $4 a month namecheap server, only because I ran into a stupid limitation on the $2 server.
Faster than most modern SPAs or websites you find on the internet.
Currently have 34 paying companies with about 300 employees total using it daily. I probably don't charge enough but then again I barely support it and barely on board people.
A marketplace aggregates the best possible products of an industry into one place. To do so, they have to find and attract the best vendors (individuals and/or businesses) to bring rarer products on their platform.
Another type of e-commerce store is drop-shipping, which instead bring value by finding a new market (or a new branding) to a product.
Traditionally, an e-commerce store is an online store of a brand managed by the maker(s) of that product.
Marketplace are now trendy because it's an efficient solution for customers that are looking to shop local and second-hand products.