Running Multiple SAAS Apps

Nothing beats the euphoria of building a successful SAAS. When you get to the stage where you get net income with minimal effort, you bask in the glow.

It's very short-lived though.

Soon you start chasing the dragon. Time to build another product. You want that feeling again - like an addiction. And more revenue is not a bad thing either.

I'm now on my 4th major product, one of which I sold. So that leaves 3 big SAAS apps, and a handful of little ones.

I didn't count the little ones because I thought they're set-it-and-forget-it sort of apps. I didn't expect them to take any more than maybe an hour a year to maintain.

But reality is a bitch.

As a coder, I like to write code. Not marketing, not customer support, not maintenance. But writing new code to solve new problems. I want to live in a world where that is all I do.

However, the reality is that customers need support, and if you want to get paid, you need to do a LOT of marketing.

These are understandable concepts, and I think most Indie hackers acknowledge these necessary evils. And they're relatively easy to hire for, or at least get assistance with.

One thing no-one seems to talk about though, is the impact of landscape changes.

I cannot count how many hours, days, and weeks, I've lost because some API was deprecated or changed significantly. Or some open source library got decommissioned and no no-one is maintaining it anymore, yet you've got bugs that need addressing. Or a major player you rely on is changing how their platform works - yes, I'm looking at you Google and your manifest v3.

At the end of the day, the more products you have, the less time you have to work on any one of them.