From failed SaaS to $14k MRR software-enabled service

Tyler Scionti built a SaaS that no one wanted. Then, he talked to potential customers, learned the real problem, and provided a software-enabled service to solve it.

Now, Centori is at $14k MRR (and counting) with a one-man shop.

Here's Tyler on how he did it. 👇

From SaaS to service

I have a background in marketing and product management.

I began my career at HubSpot in their Customer Support department in 2016, and made the jump to Product after a year and a half or so, and that is where I spent the bulk of my career until going full-time on Centori in 2023.

All the while, though, I've loved writing, marketing, and publishing on the web. I originally built Centori to be an SEO SaaS, because like many folks in the 2010s, I had the SaaS bug and wanted to build a million-dollar business from my laptop. But it just never took off. I'm not a programmer, and I'm definitely not a designer. I was pretty effective at getting people to the site, but building a product they were willing and happy to pay for was another story.

I finally took some smart founders' and marketers' advice and talked to my prospective customers. I realized that no founder wants to do SEO and most have had bad experiences with SEO agencies and freelancers. I realized that, while the market is crowded, there is no real winner — I could build a business there.

So, I pivoted into providing strategic guidance and coaching. That gave me a nice boost in revenue and allowed the business to take off, but things really accelerated when I offered writing services to clients who needed a writer — and not just advice.

Today, Centori offers full-service content marketing and SEO services. I write blog posts, pillar pages, landing pages, and emails and have adapted my methods to cross over to GEO as well.

We're around $14,000 MRR. Due to some extra projects I take on, there are some months where we make a bit more than that.

Indie hacking is not always about products

I wanted to build a product. That's a mistake I see a lot of indie hackers make. They fall in love with the idea rather than the problem.

I wanted to build my own SaaS because I thought I knew better than the market. I'm sure that there are ways my SaaS really was better than Ahrefs and SEMRush, but it wasn't better enough to be a financial success.

Then, I began to fall in love with the problem. That problem was that SEO is treated as a black box that allows dishonest people to run wild with jargon when, in reality, they probably don't really know what they're doing. Defining that problem allowed me to position my business — honest SEO with a uniquely strategic approach — and that has helped me finally grow.

Start small

What I should have done was to build a simple landing page to gauge interest, but instead, I took the time to learn HTML, CSS, JS, and Python and built the app from scratch using Django and MySQL, and hosting on PythonAnywhere. I also use DataForSEO for SEO-related information like keywords, keyword data, and competitor insights.

It took a year or so to learn and build it, and as you might expect, that showed. The original product wasn't SEO software so much as it was software for bloggers to come up with ideas based on what's trending and evolved into SEO later on.

Still, I learned to code and now consider myself a halfway-decent programmer. I learned a lot of tough lessons about product development and marketing too, which has paid dividends in my business and the work I do for clients.

And today, I still use that software internally.

As far as my service stack, I use Trello for managing clients, Slack for communication, and HubSpot to run marketing, sales, and client relationships.

Productized services

We offer two main products:

One is a productized service for content creation. You're essentially hiring me as a fractional content marketer to run your entire content marketing and SEO operation. I write 5,000+ words of content every month, manage the strategy, and monitor performance to see what we should do next. For most of my clients, it's the first real marketing hire they make and often one that allows them to scale to building a full-time team.

The second is our 6-month growth sprints, where I guide you through my strategic framework in the first month, and then guide you on implementation for the following five months. I used to offer this as "coaching" and priced it month to month, but I find that having the 6-month time limit gives us a sense of urgency to implement the strategy and get to work.

I charge a subscription for the first service. The second is a one-time fee.

Don't market to the wrong people

Finding customers is always the hardest part of any business, even when you have a good product or service.

I made the mistake of thinking that because I am a very good marketer for my clients, naturally, I should be a good marketer for myself. I did the usual things I would do for clients: I invested in my own SEO, collected leads via lead magnets, and ran Google Ads. This worked VERY well! I had a list of almost 1,000 people who regularly engaged with my content... except they were the wrong audience. Founders of $1M SaaS companies do not care about learning SEO — only freelancers do.

This is the cardinal sin of marketing: doing marketing without thinking about who you are trying to reach.

I've ironically cut SEO from my own business as it never drove valuable traffic, and now, I focus on LinkedIn, email, and running ad experiments to build buzz.

But I'd say I've grown mostly by word of mouth and good old-fashioned prospecting. I've learned to ask for referrals and build my network, which has helped a ton. Since realizing how important this is last year, I've almost doubled my MRR.

Beyond that, connecting with people and creating value for them, whether on social media or in niche communities, has helped me build connections and book calls.

A crash course in marketing

I read a lot too. I have an entire bookshelf in my home office with two rows dedicated to marketing and business books. My favorites are:

• Fanatical Prospecting

• Marketing Made Simple

• Hey Whipple, Squeeze This

That's a great crash course in marketing, sales, and copywriting.

Focus on the problem and the customer

Focus on the problem and the customer first. Obsess over it. Throw out your own ideas. In fact, talk to 100 people before you even come up with an idea.

The path to making money is so much shorter if you prioritize finding problems that people really care about solving. In my case, the problem wasn't "SEO is hard, I want a tool that makes it simpler," it was "SEO is hard and finding good help really sucks, I need someone I can trust to do this for me."

What's next?

My goal used to be to quit my job and work on Centori full-time. I'm very fortunate to have been able to do that — I have been full-time on Centori for over two years now.

Looking ahead, there's a world of possibilities for where I could go. I could keep things as they are and make a pretty good income, or I could scale things a bit further to make more than I ever would as an employee, or scale things even further to build out a team.

I think for now, I'm quite happy with where things are and where they are progressing. I have financial goals in mind for the next few years, but while I know my limit is while doing all the work, I'm not sure what Centori's limit is. I know this is terribly vague, but it's mainly because I hit the big milestone of quitting my job and then crossed $10K MRR... Now, I'm left looking back and thinking, "Now what?"

There's another piece of advice: Have a plan beyond the first milestone. I'm figuring that out as I go, and the answer will shape the next five or ten years of my life. No pressure, though!

You can learn more at Centori's website. Or follow me on LinkedIn.