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Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project

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Re: Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project

#11

Post by petercooper »

iopuy wrote: post #9
rabidonrails wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how so many of the top comments are people telling him to make changes and that this isn't what they want. 100k users later...

Oh Ycombinator, such a bastion of encouragement you can be. Check out the top comment dropbox received when it debut on Ycombinator. "...you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Don't forget the Slashdot response to the iPod - https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i... :

    No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Re: Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project

#12

Post by oblio »

iopuy wrote: post #9
rabidonrails wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how so many of the top comments are people telling him to make changes and that this isn't what they want. 100k users later...

Oh Ycombinator, such a bastion of encouragement you can be. Check out the top comment dropbox received when it debut on Ycombinator. "...you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

It's nothing new, that's how we get cute quotes, such as:

* the one misattributed to Bill Gates, about 640k of RAM being enough for everyone

* the one by Thomas Watson about the worldwide computer market needing only 5 computers

* or more recently, the Commander Taco quote about the iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

Hindsight is funny :)

Edit: Oh, and I have to tell BrandonM, if he's still around: in no way is your solution trivial for non-developers, even 10+ years after your comment :)

Re: Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project

#13

Post by mullen »

oblio wrote: post #12
iopuy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh Ycombinator, such a bastion of encouragement you can be. Check out the top comment dropbox received when it debut on Ycombinator. "...you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

It's nothing new, that's how we get cute quotes, such as: * the one misattributed to Bill Gates, about 640k of RAM being enough for everyone * the one by Thomas Watson about the worldwide computer market needing only 5 computers * or more recently, the Commander Taco quote about the iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." Hindsight is funny :) Edit: Oh, and I have to tell BrandonM, if he's still around: i…

Mark Twain's thoughts on the telephone when Alexander Graham Bell asked him for an investment to start AT&T. Twain thought he, his lawyer and couple of rich people would be the only ones to need such a device and he passed on being an early investor.

Re: Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project

#14

Post by throwaway2016a »

Congratulations. I'm not sure if the actual author is on this thread or this was posted by someone else but maybe someone can answer...

One problem I have bootstrapping my SaaS is that I have no money to market. I can tweet and do direct marketing but that is slow and time consuming. Any recommendations from the crew on HN with how I can market to a large audience without needing a huge budget to spend on Adwords and things like that?

Re: Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project

#15

Post by whymsicalburito »

This seems like it would really help solve my time tracking needs at work, but having this sending that data to their servers makes it a non starter. Time tracking is my #1 pain point at work right now and would signup today and pay if an offline version was made available.

Re: Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project

#16

Post by samfriedman »

oblio wrote: post #12
iopuy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh Ycombinator, such a bastion of encouragement you can be. Check out the top comment dropbox received when it debut on Ycombinator. "...you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

It's nothing new, that's how we get cute quotes, such as: * the one misattributed to Bill Gates, about 640k of RAM being enough for everyone * the one by Thomas Watson about the worldwide computer market needing only 5 computers * or more recently, the Commander Taco quote about the iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." Hindsight is funny :) Edit: Oh, and I have to tell BrandonM, if he's still around: i…

I think a big part of taking product criticism is understanding if the critic is commenting on the product for them, or for everyone. If the former, you can ask yourself if you're really building the product for that person, or if you can look elsewhere for more targeted feedback.

Re: Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project

#17

Post by albertgoeswoof »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #14

Congratulations. I'm not sure if the actual author is on this thread or this was posted by someone else but maybe someone can answer... One problem I have bootstrapping my SaaS is that I have no money to market. I can tweet and do direct marketing but that is slow and time consuming. Any recommendations from the crew on HN with how I can market to a large audience without needing a huge budget to spend on Adwords and…

Affiliate marketing might work, depending on your SaaS. e.g. this is what drove convertkit to 600k MRR

> Once we hit about $20,000 MRR (through direct sales and word-of-mouth) we added an affiliate program. That worked exceptionally well because bloggers — our target market — are used to using affiliate programs to generate revenue. Also, if a small business owner loves your product they might tell 2-3 friends. But if a blogger loves your product, they'll tell 20,000 readers! So we had a very natural distribution path built in.

> We decided to pay a 30% recurring commission each month, rather than a large upfront commission, mainly because we didn't have any cash and couldn't cashflow anything up front. That turned out to be a great decision since many bloggers want a predictable, recurring income source.

> Later on we started doing webinars with our affiliate partners as a way to help them drive more sales. This not only grew our email list significantly (up to 50,000 subscribers in a year), but also drove a ton of new revenue. Today we pay out just over 10% of our revenue each month to our affiliates."

Re: Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project

#18

Post by ballenf »

Be careful what you measure, because you will get more of it. I don't think # of seconds editing a file is a good proxy for measuring bug free and understandable code. But if you want more # of seconds with files open and being edit, this is your tool it seems.

Am I missing something about this product in that it measures anything related to code quality?

If a company relies heavily this tool to measure its devs productivity, that would be a red flag about what developer attributes the company rewards. I guess it could be combined with other measures, but the leaderboard and gamification will incentivize behavior not closely tied to getting things done, in my opinion.

And, yes, the success is inspiring and despite my negativity I'd be curious to hear how the tool has been used to improve a team's productivity. I spent some time on the product's web page, but it doesn't really address how time spent in a file relates to productivity.

Re: Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project

#19

Post by ejcx »

whymsicalburito wrote: post #15

This seems like it would really help solve my time tracking needs at work, but having this sending that data to their servers makes it a non starter. Time tracking is my #1 pain point at work right now and would signup today and pay if an offline version was made available.

That's what people have said about passwords with password managers, private keys with keybase, their servers and legal documents with AWS and docusign, their banking with online banking, etc etc. The list goes on and on.

This kind of thing doesn't stop people. I think it just means you end up with fewer good products to use.

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