Why I failed in $1,7k monthly revenue in my first SaaS? | Hacker News Reader

Why I failed in $1,7k monthly revenue in my first SaaS?

7 pointsevganin21 comments

I was pleased to achieve $3k in revenue with my first SaaS. I had never experienced this before, and I believe it's a good result for a first attempt.

But....

However, I'm facing a pressing issue with a staggering churn rate of 52%, which is causing my monthly revenue to stagnate. This is a substantial hurdle that I'm urgently seeking to overcome, and I would greatly appreciate your insights and assistance.

Customers - 62

Active customers - 29

I have a few hypotheses:

My clients (small and medium business owners) don't need subscriptions. They want to take one-time 100,000 emails and go out to use it.

Solution: change the client's profile to lead generation specialists (they need a considerable amount of different emails)

2. I need to catch long-term attention on my platform

Solution: add email warm-up and prospecting like in Apollo or Instantly

3. It may be okay for my SaaS.

4. My service is worse. I don't think so because I don't have any negative feedback or refund requests from all 62 paid clients. Additionally, many users upgrade their subscriptions.

What should I do to understand better why my churn rate is high?

My results after 4 months from scratch:

Website: SocLeads

Product: Email scraper tool from Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, and YouTube by keywords, hashtags or followers

Revenue (total): $3,8k

MRR: $1,7k (hasn't moved in a month)

> What should I do to understand better why my churn rate is high?

A lot of products include some questions as a part of the cancellation flow to get more feedback from customers about why they're leaving. General startup advice is always "talk to customers", so at a small scale, you could also do things like offer a $25 Amazon gift card for them to get on a call where you could chat with them about why the product doesn't meet their needs.

Good luck!

Thank you! I'll try it with a gift card.

Going after a more profitable segment as your ideal customer makes sense as you learn more but have you talked to people in that niche to learn about their needs? Are you changing your marketing to reach them?

I agree this seems like a tool somebody will use and cancel and then later come back to when they need it again.

also how long are you in this? It takes time to ramp b2b saas

I started this 3 months ago. Now I'm thinking of changing ideal customer profile

Do you see heavy usage for a bit and then they cancel?

(Are they getting the value and then they are done; or do you still have an issue with pmf and they are not getting the value you are aiming for yet?)

They fully utilize their entire plan and go off to try and use the mail they received.

Put a limit of emails per month then, more leads, more expensive.

Do you mean a hard limit that can't be refilled?

So you built a tool to make spamming people easier?

Why not price it purely per email?

Let them start small, then "upsell" on more emails.

Also I guess for many users this is not an "ongoing activity" more like a one-time, let's run this campaign.

Also 100,000 /month is really a lot no, how many month could I really find that many dental clinics?

The subscription-based model is more convenient in terms of revenue forecasting. It very depends on the subject matter. You won't find 100,000 dentists, for example. It's possible to find around 30,000

Talk to your paying customers about their experience and what they need.

Thank you! I'll pay attention to it.

It depends on how long you've been in the business. Sometimes you need some time for SEO, etc, to kick in.

How does SEO impact the churn rate?

It might get you more motivated customers.

Thank you! I'll give it a try. I'm just working on my SEO

You have pretty good SEO presence already so there must be something else going on

Why? I'm not in the top 10 for any keyword right now.

Have you asked exiting customers?

Yes.I got a response from a few clients. They got enough emails and left to try it.

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