My main business (a bootstrapped SaaS startup) generates more than that, but the profits are mostly being reinvested back into the company, so I don't think it qualifies as passive income.
My main business (a bootstrapped SaaS startup) generates more than that, but the profits are mostly being reinvested back into the company, so I don't think it qualifies as passive income.
This little known tip can net you a lot more money, it has worked for me... https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/t2/a...
Top-notch design.
One of her friends is a professional photographer and gave her some pointers when she first started which helped a lot. Even still, if you look at her older posts, you can tell that the photos weren't nearly as good back then as they are now. Practice makes perfect I guess.
I definitely think the SaaS startup is relevant here. I just used the same title as the last thread, but personally I'd like to hear about any sort of recurring revenue. And as someone who's developing their own SaaS product right now, I need all the motivation I can get from others' success stories.
I don't wish to pressure you about your metrics, but how long did it take you to get your SaaS startup to where it is now? And are you working on it solo?
For now, here are some things you might find interesting/motivational:
-My brother and I started the company about three years ago. We launched an MVP in January 2010.
-After 6 months we had about 10 paying users (at $10/user/month). After 12 we had 50, after 18 we had 200. Since then things have picked up and we're adding >100 paying users each month now. Both my mom's blog, and the SaaS business took a long time to ramp up, but both had their tipping points after about 1.5 years.
-About a year ago we hired our first employee to help out with customer service and other random things. We plan on adding four more over the next couple of years, two of whom have already started working part-time.
I hope that helps. There's nothing better than seeing thousands of people passionately using a product you created, so stick with it!
Over 100 new paying customers per month is incredible in my opinion. Especially for what I would guess is one of the most competitive SaaS markets out there. If I can reach that many total customers on my cheapest plan I will be ecstatic.
If you don't mind me asking, what user acquisition channels have you found most effective for selling to small businesses?
When we started we spent ~$3,000/month on AdWords to get our initial customer base. Once we had enough users, we stopped advertising and word of mouth took over. We basically don't do any marketing right now, but that we're going to change that soon.
I have a few questions:
* Are you building on top of a blog platform, or is this mostly custom? (The BuiltWith page makes this site appear full of tech [1]).
* What % of the revenue comes from Amazon referral links?
* Are there other revenue sources?
* Can you discuss your visitor distribution (first time vs. repeat), and traffic sources?
1: http://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fwww.theyummylife.com%2fRe...
Until recently, Amazon made up almost all of our revenue. Now that we're doing slightly better with advertising, Amazon makes up about 60-70%. We also sell a $1 eBook, but we only sell about one per day, so that revenue isn't significant. This information isn't up-to-date, but you can read a blog post about our monetization: http://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/articles/259/How_I_monetized_...
Visitor information:
-65% new, 35% returning
-1.7 pages per visit
-1.2 million page views last month
-Most traffic comes from Pinterest or direct. We get ~3000 visitors from search each day. My mom (understandably) hates link building, so we don't have many inbound links meaning there's not much referral traffic, and we also have weak SEO relative to other blogs our size.
-Almost all traffic comes from the U.S.
Also, I'm curious about the platform your site is built on, the affiliate links are cool because they seem to all be related to the recipe; I'm curious how you handle the organization.
Thanks for the feedback.
Most of the revenue comes from the Amazon Affiliate program, but recently we've been making a decent amount off of display ads from the BlogHer ad network. Google AdSense contributes a little bit as well.
As for SEO, I wrote the blogging software from scratch (I don't like Wordpress) so the SEO is entirely under my control. I'm no SEO expert though, so I'm sure there are many things I could be doing better.