How to make SaaS

 📗 Intro + Hook

I've been in software development for over 10 years, and along the way, I learned that selling a traditional IT company is tough, but building and exiting with a Micro SaaS is much easier. After studying successful examples, I launched 3 Micro SaaS products, and they started generating profits almost instantly, on autopilot. That's why today, I'm excited to walk you through 6 simple steps to building a Micro SaaS as a solo founder.

Let’s GO!

📘 1. STEP ONE - Just start!

First, don't waste time looking for some unique ideas - just start! None of us are unique and we won't come up with something new. Your ideas are 99% already on the market. You just haven't found your competitors.

Launching something new is entirely about luck—so don’t even think about relying on it.

Launch quickly – build an MVP in 1-2 weeks, using services that help you get to market fast. Focus on the core feature. Over 95% of the ideas you launch won’t succeed, and at that point, you’ll need to accept the failure and move on. Even if your product doesn’t take off, you'll gain invaluable experience in the process.

I know 95% of my ideas will fail, which is why I need a system — basically a framework I can plug into any of my ideas. You can rely on no-code tools. But I really hate these tools. They are not scalable and will cost an arm and a leg at the end of the day. So, I created a MicroSaaS Fast tool that lets me focus only on coding the idea while skipping over things like building a landing page, setting up Stripe, email integration, and all that. And yeah, this product is a clone, nothing original. But it has a unique value that helps me and my clients ship products super fast. You can find the link in the video description.

📕 2. STEP TWO - Find an idea!

Next, identify a problem in your routine, create your first micro SaaS, and along the way, you'll encounter numerous new challenges that you can turn into additional micro SaaS solutions. This was the focus of my latest video.

You can create solutions, but you can’t create problems. Identifying problems is directly tied to researching a group of people and understanding their pain points.

The formula is simple: identify your problem or the problem of your audience. Narrow it down to a micro-niche, let's say you want to help people write highly engaged tweets. So, what can you do? Just create a simple next.js project using this command. Then go to ChatGPT o1-mini and ask it to create a GPT assistant for you. Then add this code to your next.js project. Just don't forget to add the OpenAI API key. And boom, you have a tool that you can modify and enhance till it shines and solves the real problems of your tweets or your audience's tweets. Just play with prompting, your assistants instructions, cycles and assistants memory. 

Another great example of identifying a problem is the story behind Ken's product — JobMate. The idea came to Ken while he was job hunting and found himself exhausted from sending out his resume and filling out numerous applications each day. To handle this issue, he decided to automate the process, ultimately saving his users 12-15 hours on these tasks. As a result, he now earns up to $10,000 MRR.

So, once you've pinpointed a problem, take some time to brainstorm 5-10 possible solutions. After evaluating your options, pick the simplest one and start making tests with the real audience.

As you develop your solution, keep this key principle in mind: most SaaS and Micro SaaS projects fail because their founders keep the focus on development and not on identifying, solving, and testing their users’ problems.

Great story, Jonny Boyarsky shared his journey. In 2021, Jonny embarked on his project as a solo developer with no technical background. He asked for help from a development studio and ended up spending $95,000 to create his product! The project, Star Sync - offered fans the chance to spend time with their idols online. Unfortunately, he skipped the crucial steps of creating an MVP and testing his idea beforehand. As a result, most people weren't willing to pay $500 or $1,000 just to hang out with their idols. The development costs ballooned to nearly $100,000, while actual revenue barely reached a few thousand dollars over time!

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📙 3. STEP THREE - Validate your idea!

Step 3. You are solo founders so use your superpower. Start chatting with your audience one-on-one! Big companies can not use this strategy because it is not scalable but in your case, this is the best way to learn and grow.

Make Zoom meetings and ask questions such as: where their time is spent?; what do they hate having to do?; what is their standard routine flow? Finally, don’t forget to ask for introductions so they can connect you with their friends or colleagues, giving you the opportunity to gather even more valuable insights.

By the way, during these calls, I realized that negative experiences can really hold people back from moving forward and trying new things. You can only uncover these insights through personal one-on-one interactions.

When I created MicroSaaSfast, I thought that my audience was only software developers. However, I soon discovered that it also included AI engineers who hadn't worked with web technologies, other developers, and even individuals without any coding experience who were looking for quick no-code solutions. So it helped me improve my product and add more easy-to-use features and super fast launch focus.

Here’s a simple tutorial for quickly testing your idea: Create a basic landing page with a waiting list form, just use the next.js project and a few prompts on Claude AI to GPT o1-mini. Then gather an audience of 200-300 people, and start selling the product directly by communicating with them. For payments, I will show you a cheat code, just use a Stripe link. And another cheat code make the service manually instead of developing a complete product.

Nobody knows what will succeed and what won't. Your idea and your code are the only flexible elements; user problems are not.

📗 4. STEP FOUR - Marketing matters!

Many of us are not big fans of marketing & distribution, but it is a huge huge mistake. We typically enjoy focusing on product coding and development instead. But if you want to make money with your micro SaaS you have to become a full-stack entrepreneur. You have to do a few things simultaneously. First, you have to learn how to do the SEO, second, you have to learn how to use AI tools in your daily routine and adopt these AI tools with your micro SaaS. Also, you have to learn how to do personal branding on YouTube or X. And of course, you have to learn the code.

My YouTube channel and my Telegram channel are helping me to test my products fast and then focus on SEO and other distribution strategies.

Look, an average product with a strong distribution will always outperform a great product with a poor distribution.

But you can say, hey Dennis, what if I'm just starting this journey and I do not have a YouTube channel or X. That's fine.

Just reach out to your YouTube creators and share with them your product for free, teach them how to use it and if they like it ask them to promote it. For example, I'm testing a few projects right now and I'm planning to make a free video about these tools in the future because I like the product and I think that the product will be relevant and interesting for my audience.

Or you can use platforms like Product Hunt or Launching Pro to find Product Hunt alternatives, Indie Hackers, Hacker Noon, and many many more free alternatives where you can launch your micro SaaS.

You’ll need approximately 2,000 visitors to your site to identify whether there’s interest in purchasing your product. Expect your conversion rate around 0.5%. For example, my conversion rate varies from 0.21% to 0.41%

Also, as a solo entrepreneur, you can take advantage of your unique position. Larger companies struggle to engage with their customers one-on-one, but you have that capability. Focus on your cold outreach. Create 500 to 1,000 personalized Loom videos—just like Jeremy Redman, the creator of TaskMagic—and send out hundreds of emails to your audience on LinkedIn. Connect with potential customers, listen to their pain points and objections, and refine your product idea based on their feedback.

Always ask your audience questions. It's crucial to get answers that might be tough to hear!

By the way, if you want more useful material for building your micro SaaS, follow me on X where I share my personal observations with clients and host live chats with my community.

📒 5. STEP FIVE - It's product time!

Next, limit yourself to one week for developing an MVP that highlights the key feature of your solution and run the test. If you're comfortable with coding, go ahead and build it that way; if not, leverage No-Code solutions to get it done.

Another cheat code, you can start selling your product even if it's just a Figma design file, Google Spreadsheet, or a GitHub repository. This approach will help you to understand if the market is really interested in your solution or not.

For instance, I received tons of positive feedback about my design and animation and I created a micro SaaS Designfast2. Which is selling my Figma, Adobe After Effects and Houdini files!

Here’s another case I’d like to share. One of my clients developed a service that allowed users to upload a CSV file and receive additional information about their leads. Initially, he gathered data manually from anymailfinder, fullcontact, exportcomments and many others adding this info to a spreadsheet. After successfully validating the idea, we built a platform that fully automated this process using API. Now, users can upload a CSV file, and the system automatically retrieves information like emails, social media profiles, business details, and so on.

📘 6. STEP SIX - Launch and sales!

Next, a fast and smart monetization strategy. B2B will always be better than B2C. While B2C typically asks, “Can your product be cheaper or free?” B2B focuses on value, asking, “If this helps me make money or saves me time, I’m willing to pay for it!”

Guys, please try to avoid offering discounts or free plans. You’re not a startup with millions in funding; you’re a small indie hacker. Even if you’re not ready to set your monthly price at $100, consider stating that your service costs $10 a month but requires payment for the entire year upfront. Another effective approach is to implement a one-time payment model for your initial audience. This way, you won’t waste time developing subscription management systems. Many people are tired of subscriptions, and setting up a one-time payment in Stripe is much quicker than managing a subscription model. Right now, there’s a huge fatigue with subscription services. As a solo entrepreneur, you have limited resources, and you need cash flow quickly and in larger amounts.

If customers start paying, it means you’ve successfully addressed all the key factors! However, if they’re not willing to pay, it’s time to pivot and focus on your next idea!

On top of that, please polish your main offer on your landing page. I've seen so many offers that address no one and nothing so I can not count. Look, the framework for your main offer is super simple. The result that users will get first, then by using what and then add for whom this service. That's it. [Result] by using [your feature] + for [whom]

📙 The End

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