First lifetime deal sold!
by VictorAfter almost a year of working on Pingr I've finally managed to sell first lifetime deal!
I found the customer on hacker news. Even though the post didn't get much traction, HN still gives you much traffic.
I posted a couple of times and each time I got like 200-300 uniques. First time user has paid monthly subscription, second time a lifetime deal was sold.
The only thing which confused me is VAT. If we talk about monthly subscription which costs 10$, it's not that painful to pay $2 of VAT. But for LTD, for example 20% might be a lot.
So I'm thinking of excluding VAT from price. Even though it might hurt a bit, I don't think it will decrease conversion drastically. But I'm still in doubt.
Keep on working 💪
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From my similar side project I looked into VAT in detail so hopefully this will help...
VAT is a special case in a lot of countries for SaaS (where no physical item is sold but a digital one is). Normally VAT is charged at source but where countries have a different rule for SaaS then it is charged at the country where the customer is based.
This varies country by country so e.g. if they are in France you're liable for VAT in France but there is a 'de minimus' (a threshold that you need to reach before you need to charge VAT) which depends on your location. For example, if you are based in Germany you would not have to charge VAT until you have a large income from French customers. If you're making EU sales this is worth checking out as there may be no 'de minimus' depending on where you are located.
The US does this on a state by state level but again there is a 'de minimus' which is different for each state - in some states this is based on the number of sales rather than a dollar amount and each monthly sale counts as a single sale so if you're making sales to the US you should check this out.
There are some countries without a 'de minimus' where you'll need to charge VAT on every sale. I just don't accept sales from these countries as it's too much paperwork.
Other countries don't treat SaaS differently from e-commerce sales. For these countries VAT is charged at the country where the company is based (i.e. where you main servers are located) so you would only have to charge VAT based on the rules in your country.
I hope this helps - it's worth looking into because if your SaaS takes off you don't want the tax-man in a bunch of different countries chasing you for unpaid taxes.
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Thank you for such a detailed answer, REALLY appreciate it!
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Amazing Job! Hard work pays off! You are true inspiration buddy. :)
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Congrats dude. Even in this crowded market you managed to make sales. You have some great skills.
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Congratulations! First thing I thought of when I saw your product was: "Hey, it's the same thing as uptimerobot!" (and I see that you were inspired by uptimerobot, but you didn't like the UX).
The fact that you managed to take something that exists for free (I know that there are a lot of "website down" notification services), improve it, and sell it is insanely impressive!-
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Thank you ! :)
By the way, uptime robot has paid features, so in order to get full advantage of it, you'll still need to pay. But yeah, I'm yet faaar away from uptimerobot but I'm going to catch up with it!
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From a Victor to an other: Awesome!!
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Congrats! You can use Quaderno to do your tax / VAT calculations see https://support.quaderno.io/article/285-how-to-use-any-payment-processor-with-quaderno
Have not used it myself but I hear good stories about it. Either use their API or if you use stripe they have an integration with that and a few others.
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Congratulations, Victor — happy to hear that things are going well and that you’re seeing more traction! Keep up the awesome work 🙌
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I'd get advice from an accountant on VAT. My understanding at least on a UK level is that as soon as you are earning over £70k you are required by law to charge VAT.
Also, this means you have to do all the relevant submissions. LTD in the UK means limited company, which a lot of which are setup for VAT where they can claim back most VAT they spend as a company. So I don't think that point is relevant in terms of your subscription cost.
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Thank you for this information!
I honestly know nothing about laws. For now I think it's okay for me to just don't think about this till I have small revenue, plus I live in another country. For solo founders which barely have MRR of $1000 I hope it won't matter if I exclude or include VAT.
But this info is very useful since in the future it might count.
By the way here "But for LTD, for example 20% might be a lot." I meant LTD = Life time deal.
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Gosh!
At first I thought I have to just ping a site and this is my project.
Now I think that soon, apart from being backend-developer, frontend-developer, designer, QA, CEO, marketer, I'll also become an accountant :)-
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Or just hire one once the revenue is there. Much safer option in my experience.
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Congrats! Like you said - keep on workin'!
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Congrats, man!
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Excited and super happy! Keep grinding, bro!
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Same for Appliku, GO GO GO! :)
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Amazing! Congratulations 🎉💪🏼🚀⭐
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😊thank you
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How did you calculated LTD price? And were the next HN posts same or you changed something about them?
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To be honest I checked out http://simpleops.io/ LTD which were successful on HN.
Then I decided to take my average subscription plan and multiple on 10 months. That's it.
I changed titles, yes. I plan to post it few times in the future, since looks like it's possible. Every time I posted I got like 200-300 uniques, which is good.
I also will try to do it on the business days, not on holidays, as an experiment
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Oh, so content was the same? No one minded that? I'm thinking myself to post it second time, but I don't want to come off as a spammer :D
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Content = Link. So the link was the same.
Let me give you something: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24170546I had some problems with second post. First and third were okay :)
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Thanks for the link - very insightful! Will do that then for sure :)
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I think you should exclude it and say what difference it does.
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What is the current MRR?
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Oh, not much. After PH launch it became better but I didn't calculate it. Like Selling 1 LTD may result in $200 MRR, but it means nothing since the next month I may have 0.
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