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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

#171

Post by rutthenut »

seanwilson wrote: post #90
vineyardmike wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren’t those the customers you want? Each additional customer costs 0 more (since its software), and it’s a side project, so maximizing revenue isn’t necessarily the OP’s chief objective. He made a cool thing, and people like it!

More customers means more support requests (especially if it's a cloud service) and customers that only get the product because it's cheap tend to be the noisiest and most unreasonable. The post mentions paying the rent with the earnings so I'm assuming more revenue is wanted too.

>>> Why aren’t those the customers you want?

Agree with this - they may be the long tail.

So long as overheads/support costs are low, having a cheap entry point has to be a good idea, if there's volume to be had. Especially if you have higher-cost options too for up-selling.

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

#172

Post by rutthenut »

dordoka wrote: post #91
armstrong wrote: post #83

Can I show off a bit about my project too? We make a huge database of user manuals you can check it here https://manualsbrain.com/en/

Honest suggestion: you should submit your own Show HN post for that. I reckon you are being downvoted for "hijacking" another post, not based on the merits of your project.

Should be down-voted doubly then - for hijacking another post and also for promoting copyright abuse...

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

#173

Post by rimliu »

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…

  > Pardon my complete speculation, but I bet your success
  > factor is "I built ... my girlfriend a tool."
The first unicorn in my country was born the same way.

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

#174

Post by michaelmior »

whalesalad wrote: post #162
frits1993 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

IPTV is not necessarily pirated content. Many countries have commercial offerings although I don't know of any company doing so in North America.

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

#175

Post by namelosw »

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…

> "I built ... my girlfriend a tool."

This also strikes me - After I live with my girlfriend for a while, I (or she surprisingly) found I have no interest in social media apps, discounts, traveling, eating tasty foods, mainstream movies/TV series...

Being immune to popular things is nice sometimes. But not being able to have empathy with most people is a great disadvantage for product development, since markets which are too niche mostly cannot easily afford rents or just don't worth it at all. It's much nicer to "build ... my girlfriend a tool" TBH.

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

#176

Post by sprocket »

subhro wrote: post #80
mduerksen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/veggie-garden-planner/id132992... Suggestions are always welcome. My friend is also working on an Android version, though it doesn't have feature parity (yet).

There’s no ‘e’ is potato

Dan Quayle has entered the chat.

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

#177

Post by sosuke »

wink wrote: post #121
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…

Lucky you. I tried to make a game with my (then-girlfriend, now-) wife and it kinda fizzled out. Sure, took on too much, I'm not the best with bringing projects to launch, but whatever. I really can't say who spent more time (she did graphics, I wrote code) but to this day it's a bit of a sore point to talk about, just that we were both absolutely not happy with the outcome and see it as completely wasted time.

I'm sure you've tried but you might want to try and find another perspective. I did a similar joint project with my wife. At more than one point we butt heads. It was pretty tense to say the least I don't want to embellish. On the other hand we did create something and learned much about each other along the way. If you finished something that is a success.

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

#179

Post by mambojumbo »

dang wrote: post #159
mambojumbo wrote: post #137

Very nice! I think i will write a free open source alternative to this.

Please don't be a jerk on HN. We're trying to be kind to each other here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is there something wrong with open source? I think it would be pretty cool to take this idea and turn it into a foss tool.

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

#180

Post by momozaur »

bflesch wrote: post #31

Congrats for getting from zero to one! It seems like you have some product market fit, that's really great. As others have pointed out, I'd recommend: - please rename "amateur" to something more positive. no customer wants to be called an amateur - Increase prices for the pro tier - Improve your "pricing plan" page, take a look at other (more successful) SaaS products and change button labels accordingly. Just take t…

Does it really need to be a mobile app? I mean, does a mobile app would realistically really get him more clients?
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