My First 500$ MRR - Learnings

I WILL keep this super brief and only share what I've learned on building my SaaS.

This is the 4th Project I build, but the first one where I have meaningful revenue, and still you could consider 500€MRR as little revenue. I'm not here to say that this is a lot, just here to share my thoughts on how I got here, what I learned. I know I still have a lot to learn.

1st: FitMe - Failure (Built for 6 months, launched, 0 user feedback, was so tired and sick of it, extremely technically challenge. I built something that was "cool" not that I wanted)
2nd: Pickpocket Alert - No revenue, Failure. 32,000 users. (Didn't know how to monetize.)
3rd: Nationality Guesser - 9€MRR, Failure. 22,000 users. (terrible pricing, feel kind of guilty the app is a bit racist so I stopped.)
4th: AEO Checker - Current project AEO Checker 3,000 Users - 500MRR€

1. Finding Ideas

Go on Google Trends/Tiktok trends, what's growing, what's being talked about, are there some but not too many competitors? Are the keywords on Google low competition? Ok go for it.

2. Launch ASAP, just build 1 feature.

That's all you need, 1 feature. Are people paying for it? Yes -> continue. No -> Go next idea. Build something in 1-2 weeks and see if someone buys.

3. Build for MRR not for users

Do not chase more users, chase more PAID users. I got 32k users in my Pickpocket Alert app, yet I made 0 money. Nationality Guesser got 22,000 users yet only 3 paid. Don't waste your time chasing the increased users. Don't even track it. Only track paid users. AEO Checker has way less yet it pais 500x more than any other project I've built.

4. Pricing

Raise your prices. Just do it. I started with 3€ a week or 9€ a month and got a few subscribers. Then I raised prices 9-25-55 and got two people who bought 55€ which equates to 6 people getting my previous highest 9€. The rich users will buy your highest tier ANYWAYS, so just price it higher. I'm even thinking of pricing even higher, my competitors already are..

5. Free Trials

Remove them. People who need your product will buy it anyways. People who don't need it will just use the free trial and not convert anyways. Unless your product is so insanely good that even users who wouldn't pay end up paying, don't do it. If you're building a saas its not worth imo.

6. Onboarding/Conversions

Have some sort of flow or onboarding where users need to commit to something your site offers, then at the end give them what they want behind a paywall.

7. SEO

It's so hard, there are so many experts and competitors will buy ads anyways. The most important instant SEO boost IMO is your domain name. Stop using stupid domain names, just straight up name your domain/project what it does or what users search. (i.e. for me, I know users will search AEO Check hence my domain aeochecker.ai )

8. X

Twitter/X is so powerful, start posting on there with your own account about build in public, random 2-3 posts a day and you get referrals from there.

9. Reddit

Use reddit to promote but do it smart, do not plaster your product you'll get instantly banned and its pointless. Find super niche and super small sub-reddits. "Oh but not many people will see it' Actually, the right people will see it, and even more importantly posts that perform well in one sub-reddit are actually shown outside of that sub-reddit as well. That's how I got 18k views on a post in a sub-reddit with 5k members.

Other topics I need to learn more about: Ads, UGC, Pricing (need to improve), X shitposting