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Thank HN: My SaaS paid my rent this month

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Re: Thank HN: My SaaS paid my rent this month

#161

Post by wikibob »

mduerksen wrote: post #47

Pardon my complete speculation, but I bet your success factor is "I built ... my girlfriend a tool." My only successful product to this date is an app I built because my wife asked me to. It is in an non-technical domain which I knew nothing about. I thought it was rather non-promising, but, since it was a pet-peeve of hers, I gave it a try. It was an awesome (and very bonding) experience - she explained me the probl…

Yep.

eBay started as a website to sell Pez dispensers for the founders girlfriend.

https://time.com/4013672/ebay-founded-story/

Re: Thank HN: My SaaS paid my rent this month

#162

Post by whalesalad »

frits1993 wrote: post #6
tckb wrote: post #2

congrats! mind sharing your story?

Sure. Last year June, I built a small online tool for me and my girlfriend to manage our IPTV playlist. I bought a domain name and put it online because our IPTV player needed to access it through a URL. A couple of months later, and 7 users found the tool and were actually using it (keep in mind that that's pretty impressive for a tool as not-user-focused as it was back then). So I then decided to spend more time re…

So it’s software people pay for to make managing their pirated tv content easier to browse?

Re: Thank HN: My SaaS paid my rent this month

#163

Post by delouvois »

wikibob wrote: post #161
mduerksen wrote: post #47

Pardon my complete speculation, but I bet your success factor is "I built ... my girlfriend a tool." My only successful product to this date is an app I built because my wife asked me to. It is in an non-technical domain which I knew nothing about. I thought it was rather non-promising, but, since it was a pet-peeve of hers, I gave it a try. It was an awesome (and very bonding) experience - she explained me the probl…

Yep. eBay started as a website to sell Pez dispensers for the founders girlfriend. https://time.com/4013672/ebay-founded-story/

Yeah. That really was some PR story, completely fake. Omidiyar admitted it later on. I think the first thing to ever be listed on eBay was a broken laser pointer.

Re: Thank HN: My SaaS paid my rent this month

#164

Post by [deleted] »

mduerksen wrote: post #47

Pardon my complete speculation, but I bet your success factor is "I built ... my girlfriend a tool." My only successful product to this date is an app I built because my wife asked me to. It is in an non-technical domain which I knew nothing about. I thought it was rather non-promising, but, since it was a pet-peeve of hers, I gave it a try. It was an awesome (and very bonding) experience - she explained me the probl…

[deleted]

Re: Thank HN: My SaaS paid my rent this month

#165

Post by tomaszs »

seanwilson wrote: post #12

Have you thought about increasing your prices by a lot? I'm not the target market but $1 per month for the cheapest plan and $5 per month for the most expensive one sounds insanely cheap to me.

I actually like the pricing model. Because it is very cheap for the user and the creator can make a lots of money by scaling. I am a strong oponnent of high prices for SaaS for so many reasons. First, it discriminates citizens of poorer countries. Secondly, a lots of SaaS make this model that aims to heavy users only. Users who can spend a lots of more money as a single person. So there are great services, but a lots of occasional users just cant use it (and pay).

Re: Thank HN: My SaaS paid my rent this month

#166

Post by mcv »

mduerksen wrote: post #47

Pardon my complete speculation, but I bet your success factor is "I built ... my girlfriend a tool." My only successful product to this date is an app I built because my wife asked me to. It is in an non-technical domain which I knew nothing about. I thought it was rather non-promising, but, since it was a pet-peeve of hers, I gave it a try. It was an awesome (and very bonding) experience - she explained me the probl…

It makes sense that building something that other people want to use is going to be more successful than building something primarily for yourself. Particularly if "other people" means "non-technical people", because anything you can build for yourself, any other technical person can also build for themselves. (Just look at the crazy number of javascript build tools and dependency managers.) But building for non-programmers, well, that's a potential customer base.

Re: Thank HN: My SaaS paid my rent this month

#167

Post by rotterdamdev »

sinni800 wrote: post #42

First thing I thought when reading "M3U Editor" was music playlists for local music... Man, definitions sure changed. I don't personally like conflating terms very much, but that happens a lot nowadays. The following isn't feedback, just personal rambling: Also I can't feel but somehow I would be unable to make a software that has that kind of "playlist protection" as a feature that needs a higher tier of monthly pay…

Same here, having grown up in a time when I could purchase software and own it, SaaS feels bad and I avoid using it wherever I can. That said, I DO like making money on the side, and I understand why people prefer many smaller purchases to one big one.

Re: Thank HN: My SaaS paid my rent this month

#169

Post by ClikeX »

amelius wrote: post #140
DBYCZ wrote: post #61

"build something that scratches your own itch." Awesome advice.

I'm not sure this is solid advice. As a programmer it would mean I'd have to build my own compiler and editor, but the low-hanging fruit has already been taken in this area, so perhaps it's better to scratch someone else's itch in some niche area that nobody has explored yet.

If you only do programming, sure. But there's probably more in your life than that.

It could just be any household task. In this case, OP's iptv playlists.

Re: Thank HN: My SaaS paid my rent this month

#170

Post by [deleted] »

frits1993 wrote: post #6
tckb wrote: post #2

congrats! mind sharing your story?

Sure. Last year June, I built a small online tool for me and my girlfriend to manage our IPTV playlist. I bought a domain name and put it online because our IPTV player needed to access it through a URL. A couple of months later, and 7 users found the tool and were actually using it (keep in mind that that's pretty impressive for a tool as not-user-focused as it was back then). So I then decided to spend more time re…

[deleted]
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