Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I understand you correctly: You whip up a bootstrap page that describes the product with a 'beta sign-up & pay' button, and if enough people sign up and pay, you build it? - What sort of demo do you have on the website? Or is it just a basic description of the product and a list of features? - Does this mean you get payment processing setup before development every time? - How do you manage returning money if you…
I usually just do believable screenshots and a call to action like, "Request a trial" or "Buy now" it depends on what it's for. I never take any money I just log the actions people took on the site. If it's a buy button, then you can just say, "Thanks for your interest. We are launching soon."
Making your first dollar from a SaaS project
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Re: Making your first dollar from a SaaS project
#22That looked like failure to me at the time - "that's a trickle of money - extrapolating maybe $25,000 per year? Not enough to pay my bills. I need to get a job".
Today that sort of start looks like a whopping success.
I've been trying to replicate that start ever since.
The upside is that I did go and get a job, and through that job met the woman who I had kids with..... if that's that path to getting my fabulous kids then I don't regret it.
Re: Making your first dollar from a SaaS project
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I usually just do believable screenshots and a call to action like, "Request a trial" or "Buy now" it depends on what it's for. I never take any money I just log the actions people took on the site. If it's a buy button, then you can just say, "Thanks for your interest. We are launching soon."
But it can also have the opposite effect: people get put off as they think the product is vaporware (rightfully).
Re: Making your first dollar from a SaaS project
#24To share our experience (we sell SAAS in financial services): our first solution took us 6+ months of development (one person) to get our MVP launched and another year to get people to use it actively without active outbound selling (that is to say it was sold but we had to hold your hand the whole way through). Some thoughts: internally we consider the "V" in MVP to encompass not just what is the minimum you need to…
I'm currently doing customer development on such a product. I've burned my fingers previously building nice-to-have products and don't intend to repeat my mistake. With this one, I'm validating the market before I build anything.
There are ways people do this thing (inefficiently and poorly IMO) today. Their business isn't likely to suffer if they don't adopt my product but I'm hoping to prove a factor of efficiency improvement if they adopt it.
What would your advice to me be (aside from don't do it)?
Re: Making your first dollar from a SaaS project
#25I've crashed and burned on SaaS enough that I'm very into the landing page approach -- don't build the product, but convince people you have so that they can click the "buy now" button. That way you feel more confident that the market exists while you're actually building it. After all the projects I've failed at, nothing is harder for me to do than spend 200+ hours on something without having a clue whether it will…
Re: Making your first dollar from a SaaS project
#26Re: Making your first dollar from a SaaS project
#27To share our experience (we sell SAAS in financial services): our first solution took us 6+ months of development (one person) to get our MVP launched and another year to get people to use it actively without active outbound selling (that is to say it was sold but we had to hold your hand the whole way through). Some thoughts: internally we consider the "V" in MVP to encompass not just what is the minimum you need to…
On vitamins vs painkillers: conversely, do you think if you are able to build a vitamin product that does make your worklife better/easier, wouldn't it be a harder barrier to entry for newcomers? i.e., greater entrenchment? I'm currently doing customer development on such a product. I've burned my fingers previously building nice-to-have products and don't intend to repeat my mistake. With this one, I'm validating th…
Assessing a service as a painkiller vs a vitamin is not totally black and white - generally I would say a service qualifies as a vitamin if there is no immediate perceived benefit to its use (ie it doesn't meaningfully save me time in aggregate, does not enable me to do something else that I can directly ascribe value to, doesn't reduce a painpoint I feel at this moment). A mental test I use is if someone goes from using my service for two months to immediately not using my service, how will their workflow change? If it doesn't change meaningfully, you are likely a vitamin. Note that I recognize that by this definition Facebook is a vitamin. Vitamins can make money.
So back to you. If your service does improve work/life or actually provide a "factor of efficiency improvement" over whatever their alternative is (e.g. Doing nothing) you may have a painkiller on your hands instead of a vitamin. The problem is you aren't the ultimate judge of what is a painkiller or a vitamin (you are operating on a hunch) until you go out there and try to sell it. The market will tell you.
So my advice is to spend as much time thinking about how you will package and sell this service as you are designing the service. Create a few marketing materials, hone the pitch and sit down face-to-face with as many people as makes sense and pitch them. In fact, I am 100% happy to genuinely consider purchasing this from you so you can try it on me. At the end of the day, the customer decides if you are adding value by voting with their time and dollars so developing a sales strategy early is important. You may discover you have a great service for a specific type of buyer profile but finding that buyer profile is too expensive. It happens.
I often remind myself of Ali-G's pitch to Donald Trump of a glove to prevent ice cream from getting on your hands (if you haven't seen it please watch - hilarious). Anyone who loves ice cream has this problem and the potential market of people who eat ice cream is huge. You could probably find someone willing to pay $1 for it but there is no way anyone can build a real business off this. Of course, you never know.
Re: Making your first dollar from a SaaS project
#28Took a look at the site https://www.placecard.me/ and went through the flow of making a card and couldn't see a single place to pay for the template or order prints. Its possible I hit some kind of A/B test but i think the call to action might be buried too deep in the process.
I agree it's way too many steps and am trying to figure out how to make it easier and more seamless without delivering people something they don't actually want.
Re: Making your first dollar from a SaaS project
#29I don't want to hear about the first dollar you made. I want to hear about how you went from $40,000 to $80,000 MRR. That's the key area. This post is just an ego stroke for a guy who made $1.00 ($.96 after fees).