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I don't have any SaaS ideas. Should I do something in content?

I don't have any SaaS ideas with a USP. I have not discovered any pain points that are not solved.

However, I'd like to do something in the meantime to come up with ideas and build an audience. I was thinking of developing a newsletter or some other content base.

Does IH have any suggestions on what I can do in this limbo?

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    Yes. Starting a SaaS is a mammoth task and so hard.

    Most of the time it makes sense for indie hackers should start with something small, build up their knowledge, their network and keep an eye out for opportunities.

    A newsletter. A blog. An ebook. A Twitter account. It will all help you towards your goal end goal.

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      @rosiesherry and @Pharlap, checkout appcafe.com, we are building this platform to make it easy for developers to offer SaaS products. We take care of user management, subscription management, billing and variety of other items, while all a developer need to do is build a product.
      It is not launched yet, we are targeting a launch around 1st Nov. We would love to hear your feedback and of course love to have you as our customers.

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      This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

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        @pjrvs is a great example. And actually his last email was relevant, not sure if there is a web based version somewhere, Paul?

        A snippet from it:

        It took almost three years, but I transitioned my income completely from client work to product work. The idea I was working towards was that I’d stop doing client work if my product income became higher than my freelance income, despite spending fewer hours on products. So I had to make more and work less, otherwise I wouldn’t make the switch. Luckily, I suppose, that happened around the release of my third book. I still actually miss client work sometimes, as in some ways it feels easier to have 12 or so clients a year versus thousands of customers.

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          This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

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      This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

  2. 2

    Newsletters are hot right now and a are a great way to gather a following until an idea will come along BUT only if you are ready to put in the work. It may be time-consuming to promote, research and write an attractive newsletter. I'd recommend this if you have a fair amount of time(and money) to research and write(and promote) or if you are an industry expert in some sector and can provide insightful content on a regular-basis.

    If you are looking for a more lightweight way approach I'd definitely work on increasing your online presence on social platforms and forums. Especially on Twitter and Facebook groups. Having a strong online presence on social media can sometimes 'make or break' your launch day when you start working on your big time Idea.

    You could even take this one step forward and create your own Facebook group(Again you may face some competition) but once you form a community creating content is basically in the hands of the users but you have an almost 100% free hand to promote your products without fleeing the community you created.

    *Of course the big plus of a newsletter is that you can sponsor it and receive compensation the downside is that it may take a lot of work.

    Best of luck

  3. 2

    I personally think it is a great idea to provide some sort of free service like a newsletter.

    Maybe you will learn from your subscribers that they have a certain pain? And if so you will already have a user base generated when you launch your landing page/ MVP. So, yes, I would do a newsletter, start blogging, etc..

  4. 1

    FWIW I've currently been taking the approach of not having any ideas, but instead seeking out problems that need solving, for groups of people that are willing to pay for solutions.

    If you check out the approaches in the Start From Zero book, or Amy Hoy's Sales Safari method, they're based around discovering demand first, that way you know there's a need for the product.

    Full disclosure I haven't launched anything this way just yet, I'm still in the learning and practicing phases. But it seems like a wise way to get started, and both camps I mentioned above have a lot of successful case studies to report.

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