From Zero to $200 in 2 weeks: My Micro SaaS Pre-sale Secret
The Idea Stage:
When I was building my first product, I didn't have much marketing knowledge. I focused primarily on development, which led to zero traffic on my site. I soon realized I needed to market effectively to generate leads and sales. So, I hired an SEO/SMO analyst to promote my product on social media and search engines. However, the analyst didn't have extensive knowledge about my SaaS product or the niche. With limited followers on Twitter and LinkedIn, I realized promoting my product solely on social media wouldn't drive significant traffic. Since I lacked SEO knowledge, I thought writing blogs and sharing links across social channels would bring massive traffic. I created high-quality blogs and shared them, but only saw 1-10 visitors. This led me to share the core points in the form of infographics. Here's where things changed: my existing followers paid attention, liked the posts, and I gained new followers while engaging with the existing ones. This experience sparked an idea, and I discovered that this might be a new marketing strategy many businesses could benefit from.
How I Validated My Idea?
To validate my idea, I used both free and paid tools (which I'll detail in a future article). Building a landing page felt outdated; a waitlist page could be more effective for capturing leads. I created my waitlist page using a no-code tool called momentum.page. The landing page had a catchy tagline in the hero section, an option to join the waitlist, and clear use cases. I then shared the landing page on subreddits, requesting feedback on the idea. This generated significant traffic – around 1.4k page views within 24 hours – and over 150 users joined the waitlist, a first for me. Most of them provided valuable feedback, helping me understand what features to prioritize in development.
How I Started Generating Revenue?
Before building, I wanted to ensure user willingness to pay. During interactions on the subreddits, I directly asked if they'd pay for such a tool. Some responded with "maybe, if it meets our expectations." This gave me hope that I could build a valuable tool and generate revenue. However, I craved more convincing data before diving into development. I added a pre-order option to my waitlist page, offering discounts to early supporters. I then informed a select group of waitlisted users about the pre-order option – and some started buying! Here's the landing page that worked for me: https://infography.in