Running a profitable SAAS has been my dream from the moment I wrote my first line of code.<p>Here on HN and IndieHackers I've always looked up to the people who pay their bills with recurring revenue from their tools.<p>I've tried, many times, to do the same, without much success. A couple of rather successful HN pitches, but none of my projects ever even paid me a beer (let alone my rent).<p>Until this month! Last year I built myself and my girlfriend a tool. Even though I did build it for other people to use it, I had never thought someone actually would. Long story short, half a year later I provide my service to more than 5000 (fully organic) users.<p>This month is the first month in which revenue is high enough to pay my rent with it. Disclaimer: I share my rent with my girlfriend, but it does sound cool to say.<p>Looking back at the proces, it does match with a lot of other success stories I read over the years in the HN community. The main lesson which I can now confirm: build something that scratches your own itch.<p>So... Thanks you guys, for keeping me motivated and inspired.
Pardon my complete speculation, but I bet your success factor is "I built ... my girlfriend a tool."<p>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.<p>It was an awesome (and very bonding) experience - she explained me the problem(s), and I tried to simplify and structure it (didn't think gardening could be so complicated). Both of us were in their respective element, and from back and forth an app was forged.<p>To this day I only half-jokingly call her my product manager.
The app has brought in 5 digits last year and is rising.<p>Last week, she briefly mentioned another problem, in another hobby domain of hers...
I guess this is the tool, from OPs submission history: <a href="https://m3u-editor.com/" rel="nofollow">https://m3u-editor.com/</a>
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.
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.<p>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 payment. I seem to come from times where things like this sure warranted a one time payment but not an ongoing one. Though it might be that I have my head stuck up my, well, you know and I need to get with the times of SAAS
Fellow solo SaaS founder here. Congratulations! This is a fantastic milestone to reach, and not an easy one, in spite what many people think.<p>I am doubly impressed, because your product is B2C. I honestly don't know how to make money on B2C, it always turns out to be a money-losing proposition unless you have a huge market. I hope you will be able to make it work!
Congrats for getting from zero to one! It seems like you have some product market fit, that's really great.<p>As others have pointed out, I'd recommend:<p>- please rename "amateur" to something more positive. no customer wants to be called an amateur<p>- Increase prices for the pro tier<p>- Improve your "pricing plan" page, take a look at other (more successful) SaaS products and change button labels accordingly. Just take the best things from their landing pages!<p>- create a proper comparison matrix / table for all the plans<p>- visually de-emphasize the free tier, and focus on the 3 paid plans in your comparison table. people will always buy the middle option, so you can increase the price of the "best" option by a lot in order to anchor your value<p>- add features which are available only in "pro" and "pro plus", e.g. support, direct email to developer, etc!<p>- maybe build a mobile app for this? it seems like something that could be nicely integrated into a mobile-first experience. you could make it exclusive for pro users
> The main lesson which I can now confirm: build something that scratches your own itch.<p>Honestly, can we agree it is 50/50? The "Mom test" is a good way to make sure you are not wasting your time. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hla1jzhan78" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hla1jzhan78</a> (3:16)
Can I show off a bit about my project too?
We make a huge database of user manuals you can check it here <a href="https://manualsbrain.com/en/" rel="nofollow">https://manualsbrain.com/en/</a>
Congratulations!<p>Two small comments<p>- Adjust your pricing. The difference between 1, 2.5 and 5$ is almost nothing. I'd suggest free - 5 - 20, or something along those lines.
- The buttons in the screenshot below: the ones on the second row should have some spacing above them. It's a typical responsive layout thing.<p><a href="https://m3u-editor.com/img-new/playlists.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://m3u-editor.com/img-new/playlists.jpg</a>
Congrats! I wish we could do the same but with full time employee(s) being covered. But I'm terrible at marketing and just want to build the oss products. We have over 1k stars in multiple projects for .NET but the developer market is hard to get paying customers (we all want everything for free ;-)). It also doesn't help we have massively funded companies competing against us...
Based on your landing page, you default to yearly subscriptions.<p>Does that mean you would need to get an equivalent number of new users to pay your rent next month? Or is your monthly recurring revenue now high enough to cover your rent?<p>Either way, an exciting day for you I'm sure. Good luck going forward!
"Build something you would use" is going to be replaced by "build something a non-technical person has requested." The latter has a higher likelihood of not already existing and a proven appeal outside of the tech monoculture.
> 5000 (fully organic) users.<p>It'd be more newsworthy if they were like half organic, half machine. Cyborgs are an up and coming niche market!<p>Kidding aside, congratulations, that's impressive!