I recently hit a milestone with my first ever SaaS application, Blog Recorder. It’s been about 6 months since launch. As we’re wrapping up 2024, I want to take a moment to look back at the progress, challenges, and lessons learned along the way.
The launch of Blog Recorder
Blog Recorder went live in mid-June 2024. It’s a SaaS that lets you record blog posts with your voice. As a first-time SaaS creator, I’ve been figuring things out as I go. It’s been exciting, challenging, and sometimes a bit overwhelming, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
Improvements and new features
Since launch, I’ve been working hard to make Blog Recorder better for its users. Here are some of the key updates:
- Quality of life improvements (like custom post statuses)
- New exporting formats for better tool integration
- Personalized AI models (the biggest feature since launch!)
- Enhanced content editor with code blocks
The personalized AI models feature is something I’m particularly proud of. It analyzes your writing style from existing content and creates a processing model that produces blog posts sounding more like your own writing.
Meeting users face-to-face
One of the most rewarding aspects of this journey has been meeting Blog Recorder users in person. In July, I attended a conference called THAT Conference in Wisconsin. It was an amazing experience!
I actually met my first paying customer there - Kent C. Dodds, who was a keynote speaker. I’ve been a fan of Kent’s work for years. He had been part of the early testing group for Blog Recorder and became the first official customer. Talk about a confidence boost!
Other Blog Recorder users and friends I met at conferences are Ellie, Shashi, Chris, Tessa, Danny, Ryan, and Dominick. If you’re reading this post, I want to thank you again for your support! It truly means a lot.
Marketing experiments
At THAT Conference, I also had a sponsor booth. Was it worth it financially? Probably not, considering the travel costs from Europe to Wisconsin. But the learning experience was incredible. I got to talk face-to-face with potential users, understand their doubts, and get immediate feedback. It’s something I might do again in the future when the product is making more money.
I’ve also tried my hand at “engineering as marketing”. In December, I launched a free tool called OG Image Maker (ogimagemaker.com). It’s a simple tool for creating open graph images for blog posts. The idea is to generate some traffic back to Blog Recorder. It’s too early to tell how effective it’ll be, but I did notice a small spike in signups for Blog Recorder after launching it.
The numbers so far
After about 6 months, here’s where Blog Recorder stands:
- 17 currently paying customers
- 5 churned customers
- Over 250 signups
- $250+ in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
- Over $2,000 in total revenue
For a first-time SaaS creator, I’m pretty pleased with these numbers. Many SaaS applications never see a dime, so crossing the $2,000 mark in total revenue feels like a real achievement that I am really proud of!
Lessons learned
The biggest lesson I’ve learned? Consistent marketing is key. If you build something, people will not just come check it out. When I was heads-down working on the personalized AI feature, I wasn’t promoting the product as much. The result? A noticeable drop in user signups.
As it turns out, relying on product updates for my marketing was not the best idea. There will always be times where I’m either working on a bigger feature which isn’t ready to show to people yet, or when I’m working on other things than smaller features.
I’ve realized that I need to allocate more time to promotion, even when I’m deep in development. It’s a balancing act, especially since I’m still working a 32-hour week as a software developer alongside my work on Blog Recorder.
You can see clearly in the MRR graph that after the initial launch, the MRR didn’t develop as much. I suppose that is a testiment to how much consistent marketing matters.
Plans for 2025
Looking ahead to 2025, I’ve got some plans cooking:
- Redesign the website and update the messaging
- Improve the SEO for Blog Recorder
- Implement consistent marketing strategies
- Experiment with paid ads for the first time
- Continue improving the product
- Add teams/organizations functionality
The goal is to take Blog Recorder to the next level. Not just to make more money, but to have more resources to reinvest in making the product even better for users. But if I’d have to put a number on it, I hope to achieve at least $1000 in MRR in 2025, so 4x the current MRR.
At the current growth rate, that is not going to happen. So I need to change my approach and focus more on marketing.
Conclusion
These first 6 months of Blog Recorder have been crazy. From a simple idea to a product with paying customers, it’s been an incredible journey. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished so far with this bootstrapped, part-time project.
There’s still a lot to learn and improve, but I’m optimistic about the future. Here’s to seeing where Blog Recorder goes in 2025!
Thank you for reading this post. I hope you have a fantastic 2025.
If you haven’t tried Blog Recorder yet, please do (it’s free to try).
- Eddy