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My Micro-SaaS Product Just Made $1K+ MRR and Paid My Rent

For the first time last month, my micro saas product made $1K+ in MRR. I spend about 2 hours a month on customer service, about $100 a month on marketing, and there is only one person on my team — me. This product is a chrome extension that helps Etsy shop power sellers collect customer data. Below is a screenshot of revenue from September.

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Below is a screenshot of revenue for this product YTD. Number are a little different from above because of refunds etc.

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I wanted to document what I’ve learned so far from owning a micro-saas company.

Media Before Product

I wrote a blog post in 2015 that taught Etsy sellers how to do manually what this product now automates. This post now drives the majority of traffic to the chrome extension landing page. It was also the catalyst for why I built the software — I had Etsy shop owners reaching out that were looking for a faster solution that the post talked about.

Fast forward to today and I now run an entire blog dedicated to marketing tutorials for Etsy sellers. Below is a screenshot of the Google Search Console data, graphed in Data Studio, showing the organic growth of the site over the last twelve months.

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On each landing page I put a call to action to learn more about the micro-saas product which drives traffic to the chrome extension landing page.

Make Your Product Stupid Simple

When I first launched this product, I had a large portion of it automated. Think click one button and it does the rest. I found that my initial customers were getting timeout errors and it took a ton of my time to provide customer service.

On the next version, I made it less automated, more hands on, and it reduced my customer service time needed. The learning from this is that the coolest solution isn’t always the best business decision.

Don’t Use Google Chrome Store for Payments

The benefit of Google Chrome Store for payments is that it is super easy to set up, you don’t need a database, and there is trust built into the checkout because it is Google affiliated.

This downfall is this simplicity though. For example, I can’t see customer contact information so I can’t handle customer service, do email nurture campaigns for churn, or build lookalike audiences.

If I had to do it again I’d do payments through Stripe and have an API key they enter to user the software.

Final Thoughts

Solving little problems is super profitable now. If you solve one thing, for a big enough audience, there is enough of a market to sustain the product, build a customer base, and as I’ve shown above pay your rent.

If you have questions hit me up on Twitter - https://twitter.com/codyschneiderxx

Read more growth marketing stuff from me here - https://codyschneider.com/

  1. 7

    Thats really awesome! , how long did it take to reach 1k MRR?

  2. 3

    This is so good. Congrats

    How do you plan to make the move these isers to a new payment provider now that Google has announce the deprecation these payments by Feb 2020?

  3. 1

    Paying rent with your project has to feel amazing! Huge motivational boost for sure. Happy for you!

  4. 1

    Congrats Cody!
    If you don't mind me asking, How much time do you work on this a week?

  5. 1

    Pretty inspiring stuff. I'm looking forward to making my rent. Congrats on the progress and pretty good content on how to handle micro saas. Definitely learnt something here.

  6. 1

    "Media Before Product" seems like such a great way to start for people who aren't sure what to work on.

    Put out articles/videos/media etc about what you know and learn and see what gets traction over time

  7. 1

    That's beautiful my friend!

  8. 1

    Congratulations, Cody! That's a huge achievement. Looks like you had a pretty big spike between March > May. Do you know what caused that? More marketing? 🤔

  9. 1

    Congratulations! That's awesome!

    The learning from this is that the coolest solution isn’t always the best business decision.
    Reminds me of…
    The best part is no part. :)
    Thanks for sharing this with us all!

  10. 1

    Congrats on the success! It's awesome to hear a micro-saas working out so well, since that is my goal too!

  11. 1

    👏👏👏 congratulations!

  12. 1

    Congrats! Great milestone to hit 🙂

  13. 1

    Great work, your post has encouraged me to keep working on my chrome extension MVP.

  14. 1

    Amazing work. great inspiration

  15. 1

    Congrats on the success so far Cody 👏 What's the chrome extension called?

  16. 1

    Congrats!

    Question - aren't paid Chrome extensions going away in the near future? What's your plan to transition in that case?

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