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Ask HN: Surprised by your revenue? Easier than you thought?

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Ask HN: Surprised by your revenue? Easier than you thought?

#1

Post by route3 »

I'm slowly hacking away at a niche B2B SaaS product after work and on weekends.

I'm looking forward to the prospect of some extra monthly cash. I get a kick out of thinking, "At $30/mo, I only need 200 users to bring in a cool $6000 a month!" (gross, of course)

...but wait. Will I get even 200 subscribers? Maybe I'll struggle to reach 10. What if I'm underestimating my market here - what if I get 2,000?

I bounce ideas around in my head: "Of course I'll get 200 subscribers. 1.3 million people live in New Hampshire alone, and we're just one small state in the USA!" Even though my product is for a niche market, my local Yellow Pages confirms there are a dozen likely candidates for my application. I sometimes think I could secure 200 subscribers from just New York City alone, never mind the rest of the country, world.

I'm genuinely interested in the product I'm working on and the experience developing and marketing it is invaluable. I'm excited to see how my projections line up with actual revenue, good or bad.

What revenue goals did you have when launching and did you hit them? Were your pre-launch market analysis/projections correct or way off?

(Patrick, writing about BingoCardCreator on his blog, said that his initial goal was $200/mo. His very next sentence? "The business has been successful beyond my wildest expectations and has made it possible to quit my day job at the end of this month." Makes me smile every time I read it!)

Re: Ask HN: Surprised by your revenue? Easier than you thought?

#4

Post by exline »

It has taken longer to get to where I am that I thought. I have a number of spreadsheets I've made of the time showing cash flow based on number of customers. The growth has been much slower than I wanted. Part of that is the software aspect is much easier to me than the marketing. I would say that software is absolutely critical, but it is only the first 10% of the business. The rest is sales/marketing etc. That is what is going to get you the 200 customers you want. Its not the software by itself.

Even for Patrick, he did't get there over night and he is very good at his marketing. But the good news is that you can get there. I'd focus on the first customer. Getting that first customer is one of the best feelings ever. And the good news about SaaS, is that they stay with you. I still have my first customer paying me every month.

My thoughts were similar to yours going into it. I only need 500 customers and I'm set. I'm a long, long way off. The problem is not that there are not enough customers, the issue is reaching them. I have a ton of competition in my market, some good, some bad. I'm somewhere in the middle product wise and somewhere near the bottom half marketing wise. At my current rate of customer acquisition, it will still be a few years until I get there. But I keep plugging away.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Surprised by your revenue? Easier than you thought?

#5

Post by prpon »

Guy Kawasaki had an article where he mentions doing a bottom up approach to financial projections. "How many biz dev meetings can I attend, how many people can I reach out every single day and add in the conversion rates for each one of them". It's probably better than saying my company will get 1% of a 10 billion dollars market.

Re: Ask HN: Surprised by your revenue? Easier than you thought?

#6

Post by Asa-Nisse »

Most everything I ever did has been totally random. Things that I thought was safe bets went out the window. Stuff I did when hacking on beer and booze over a weekend has netted me $100/yr.

Key is to not spend to much time thinking about it, just do it. The more you play the higher your chances of winning are.

Re: Ask HN: Surprised by your revenue? Easier than you thought?

#7

Post by mahmud »

This morning I shopped our idea to 20 potential users. Cold-called them. They have been extremely nice and supportive, but it's been 4-5 hours since I sent them links and I am sitting on the edge of my chair staring at a blank tail -f /var/log/access :-|

-- Edit:

They have come! it's been 50 minutes since I wrote the above and already got two beta users. My other startup went for 43 days before I got a 2nd client, and the first was my former employer.

I had to warm them up with a phone call but so far 8 of them have followed the links and 2 signed up. Twelve more to go.

This is my first B2C, I think it's gonna be a different experience.

Re: Ask HN: Surprised by your revenue? Easier than you thought?

#9

Post by kadavy »

Making revenue projections is useful when you have something concrete to work with, but otherwise it gets in the way of actually making money.

The most important part is collecting your first few bucks. Something clicks the first time you get someone to take out their wallet. Like Jason Fried has been known to say "learning to make money is like learning to play the piano: the more you practice, the better you get at it."

Your product needs to be less perfect than you think. The hard part is getting your product under the noses of the right customers - and enough of them to actually make your first sale. After that, you can learn through trial and error - and start making reliable projections.

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