How do you make sure your bootstrapped SaaS will absolutely fail?
In this post I will go over some lessons I learned along the way of building, marketing, and growing my SaaS product. For context, I’m currently running my own SaaS called Blog Recorder, which is about 3 months old. It’s got around 18 paying customers and is bringing in about $250 a month. I’m really happy with that, but there is definitely room for growth!
Now, let’s get to the good stuff. Here are some foolproof ways to make sure your SaaS never sees the light of day (or at least never turns a profit).
1. Spend way too long building before launch
Want to guarantee failure? Easy! Just spend a year or more building your product in complete silence. Don’t validate your idea, don’t talk to potential customers, and definitely don’t show anyone what you’re working on. After all, you want to make the best first impression, right?
What to do instead: Validate your idea early and often. Talk to potential customers, show screenshots of your work-in-progress, and start building an email list. Trust me, it’ll save you a lot of heartache (and wasted time) in the long run.
2. Stop marketing after launch
You’ve launched your SaaS. Congrats! Now it’s time to… stop marketing entirely? Yep, that’s the way to go. Just focus on building more features. Surely that one extra feature will bring in hundreds of customers and make you rich overnight. Right? Right?? 🤔
What to do instead: Keep marketing consistently, even (especially!) after launch. Don’t tie all your marketing efforts to product updates. I made this mistake with Blog Recorder, focusing too much on a complex new feature and neglecting my marketing while I building the feature. Learn from my fail and keep promoting. I definitely saw a drop in signups when I was spending more time head down and building over marketing.
3. Ignore your users’ feedback
You’re the founder. You have the vision. You know best. So why bother listening to your users? Their suggestions probably aren’t as good as your ideas anyway. (Can you hear the sarcasm dripping from my keyboard?)
What to do instead: Listen to your users! They’re the ones paying for your product, after all. The users of Blog Recorder have given me some fantastic suggestions that I’ve implemented. It’s made the product better and kept them happy.
4. Limit your marketing to just one social media channel
Put all your eggs in one basket! Stick to just posting on Twitter or X. Those short-lived posts are definitely the key to long-term success. Who needs SEO or blogging anyway? 🤷♂️
What to do instead: Diversify your marketing efforts. Don’t rely solely on social media. Invest in long-term strategies like blogging and SEO. It might take longer to see results, but it’ll pay off in the long run.
Final thoughts
Alright, let’s get serious for a moment. If you’re building a SaaS (or thinking about it), here’s what you should actually do:
- Validate your idea before spending too much time building
- Market consistently, even when you’re deep in development
- Listen to your users and implement their feedback
- Use a mix of marketing channels, including long-term strategies
And remember, it’s okay to make mistakes along the way. I certainly have with Blog Recorder. The important thing is to learn from them and keep pushing forward.
So, are you spending enough time on marketing your SaaS project? If you’re looking to start blogging without spending a ton of time writing the posts, then I know an AI-powered voice blogging tool which can help, check out Blog Recorder! Who knows, it might just be the tool you’ve been looking for. 😉
Now go forth and build something awesome – just don’t follow the “advice” in the first half of this post!