Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 376 posts

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#81

Post by davidbanham »

ackbar03 wrote: post #45
davidbanham wrote: post #14

I run two SaaS products. Both are entirely my work and both are modestly profitable. I split my time about 50/50 between the the SaaS side of my business and consulting. The consulting revenue stream is much larger than the SaaS one but it's growing. https://takehome.io And https://clubman.app

As one commenter said this is very specific, how do you go about finding and marketing to your clients?

First paid client is my own club. I've also had a few enquiries from people googling it and word of mouth. From there it's direct approaches to clubs and advertising through Google and industry associations.

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#82

Post by deforciant »

I have been running https://webhookrelay.com/ as I side project for the last two years and since last March it's quite profitable. Environment is highly automated, running on GKE, builds and testing on drone.io while deployments are rolled out by keel.sh, some alerting goes through Node-RED so I don't have to interfere.

Still doing full-time consulting but hopefully in the next year or two I will transition full-time to it (if it's ever needed). I do plan to hire someone for marketing or sales, maybe on contracting terms and not full-time.

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#86

Post by marketgod »

mark-ruwt wrote: post #22

I founded Are You Watching This?! ( https://ruwt.tv ) in 2006 and have been profitable since 2013. It's a Sports Excitement Analytics firm, licensing real-time data about the excitement of games by analyzing pitch-by-pitch and shot-by-shot data, to sports properties and cable companies. I'm happy with where I'm at, but there's a lot I would've done differently. Holler if you'd like to chat about it at all: https://ww…

Way cool. I remember when this site had scores for games posted and it would show you what channel each game is on depending on your location/provider. Great work!

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#87

Post by _Nat_ »

lynnetye wrote: post #40
alphagrep12345 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really good website. However, I'm wondering as to why this is a full-time business. Is most of your time taken by marketing and sales?

Yes, I spend a good amount of time doing marketing and sales, but I also spend a lot of time working w/ each engineering team, helping them to articulate and express their values. Culture is really hard to pinpoint. Companies (and especially eng teams) struggle to identify and convey what's actually unique about them, and many don't even realize they're different from other companies! People sometimes ask me how I sc…

If you're making 30 kUSD/month without any employees, it sounds like you could reasonably hire someone to take some of those responsibilities off your shoulders, freeing you up to do more stuff.

Have you considered hiring an employee or two to help with some of the basic responsibilities? Or do you feel that there may be some nuance to the work that you're hesitant to trust to someone else? Or, do you simply enjoy it too much to want to do something else?

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#89

Post by luminati »

lynnetye wrote: post #62
tinktank wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how are you monetizing it? Is it ads or paid job advertisements or something else?

Companies pay a yearly subscription fee for content creation and listing their profile on Key Values. I never charge software engineers and I don't charge companies any placement fees for the engineers they hire through Key Values. Having a contingency model is definitely the more lucrative path, but I'm against it for two reasons: (1) I'm a dev, not a recruiter, and (2) I think placements fees are part of what's bro…

^^The incentives are misaligned among recruiters, candidates, and employers when recruiters only want to place someone just long enough to hit the 90-day mark.

Precisely! That's why I think Triplebyte.com is such an overrated company. Behind all their new-age silicon valley spin, they are nothing but an old-school scheming recruiter, charging $10K++ per hire.

Think of about it - it's the ultimate rent-seeking industry out there. I feel that the $10K should go to the candidate who is actually going to do all the work and/or be re-invested into R&D (actually adding value to the world rather than paying fat recruiters).

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#90

Post by marketgod »

I have an edge in the market and it can work with larger portfolios than mine so I setup a system where my entries/exits are automatically posted for others to follow. Also, my algo generates the plan at night and that gets posted before the market opens so people can get in when I get in and make the same profits. In trading, most services aren't as transparent/don't get into all their recommendations, so this helps me take advantage of a niche. It's not nearly as profitable as I expected, but it will be soon once I create more awareness for it. It's not really a side project because I do trade full-time, but it kind of is a side project as I don't spend too much time marketing/advertising/adding features. Finding a niche is important, in my opinion.
Post reply on HN