Did you sell an info product before building your SaaS?

One of the most common paths I see with IHers is to actually go full circle:

1. Try building SaaS, fail.
2. Switch to info products, succeed, build audience.
3. Go back to building SaaS, succeed.

Recently, a lot of people are leaving out step #3 and just charging for step #2.

This was my approach for IH. I spent years working on SaaS products that never made more than $3-4k/month, because I got bogged down writing code and didn't focus on marketing or distribution. Then I built IH, which I'd categorize as an info product, and in very little time it was bigger than anything I'd done in the past.

The one qualm I'd have with the term "info product" is that very often it's interpreted as meaning you need to launch a book or a course, but that's not really the point. There are many other ways to provide valuable information to people, as we're seeing with newsletters, podcasts, communities, etc. nowadays. It's easy to get over-focused on a particular content format, but the format doesn't matter so long as it fits in with your business model, your distribution channels, your customers, and the problem you're solving for them.

In other words, think problem first, solution last.

Compared to SaaS products, info products take much less work to put together, and thus they free us up to think more about the problem instead of having to spend all our time working on the solution. That's a huge advantage. So it's a minor tragedy when people go into it with a solution-first mindset anyway, thinking things like "I have to make a course" before they know what problem they want to solve and who they want to solve it for.

I would love to live off info products forever. The entire business is a perfect match for my lifestyle. And compared to a SaaS business, info products are easier to create, easier to market, come will almost no support obligations, and you capture the entire lifetime value upfront. I'm amazed there aren't more people in tech doing them.

Amy Hoy has a really nice way of putting this:

Alex and I teach our students to create an educational product first.

What’s an educational product, or infoproduct? Anything small that teaches (which isn’t software): an ebook, a report, a white paper, a screencast, a video series, a workshop.

Most of us are (or work with) software engineers and can take this on a whole other level. We can add interaction and turn a blog post into an interactive website...something not many people are able to do.

I've also been doing some research about this (see the link in my profile bio) and selling information was a major jumping point for many founders (38+ in all IH interviews).

It's a bit tough to come up with a right name for this. "Info product" is usually associated with something paid (because of the word "product").

Many founders didn't start with "selling" information, rather, they provided it for free.

I think a right phrase would be the fact they "got an audience because they provided content". Courtland = wonderful interviews. Ghost founder had a pretty big Twitter following of around 15k people when he launched the platform.

I went backwards, trying to build several Saas products and largely failing, only ever making one subscription sale. I have made three buy-once products which made sales:

1. Just after Google launched the Google Play store I released a music making app that made a total of about $2.5k across its lifetime. It actually only took a couple of weeks to make. In hindsight I should've doubled down on it and made 5 more apps.

2. A small SVG animation program which has made about $75 over its lifetime.

3. The product I recently released just made its 3rd sale in the first month last night while I was asleep, hooray!

So in my limited experience one-off product purchases are indeed much easier to sell.

This is an interesting question! I actually followed this very trajectory with One Word Domains (https://www.oneword.domains/), where I built a database product, launched it and got to #2 on Product Hunt and the front page of Hacker News. Then, after getting significant amount of traction from a user and revenue perspective, I slowly rolled out a few premium features that require a subscription and eventually got more and more paying customers through that!

However, one downside to this is you'll end up spending too much time building your info products that you won't have time to focus on your SaaS, which is a problem I faced (and still am facing) - and that's tough especially if you're a solo founder. So I guess you gotta figure out a good transition/balance between the two, where you spend time growing your info product but also dedicate enough time to building your SaaS. Good luck!

This is something I have been pondering and attempted. Its still not 'easy' in terms of selling an info product. I think you need to establish crediability first, which contributes to success.

The way to frame it is, would you listen to someone who randomly posts here is an info product about ABC vs my history is in ABC and this info product helps solve this specific issue in the ABC field.

I think the latter helps you tremendously. So alhtough the overall workload may be less than building a sass for instance. You still need to put in the work in a different direction but still work.

I like the approach someone commented about giving away free advice buidling up your audience that way first. I think this establish credibility and create a community around you and whatever problem you are trying to solve. Then, after providing value, engaging with memebers etc can you then say here is a product I am selling that address this issue in more detail.

Take it from someone who's doing it backwards in many ways: do it the way Stacking The Bricks advises. It shortens the development time, accelerates iteration, and reduces SaaS risk as much as is possible (or even eliminates the need for a SaaS at all).

I've created unnecessary challenges for myself by not taking this route.

I've never really heard of this approach but am bumping because I am interested in other people's experience. I went the opposite direction personally. I've built several SaaS's, the latest one called Mailward and they were very hard to grow & market. I am now working on an online course and just the idea itself has been much easier to market & get leads from.