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🎉 $7,000 MRR in 3.5 months!

Software Ideas has hit $7,000 MRR from over 350 amazing readers! The growth has continued to climb due to efforts from a few places:

  1. Twitter - I'm sharing daily updates and talking about business in general, which is attracting people who don't know me from Indie Hackers

  2. Indie Hackers - My goal is to write more high-quality posts like these to share what I've learned in creating this project, so others can see rapid success as well.

  3. Word of Mouth - This one is new. As the number of people who know about the newsletter increases, the amount of new people who are finding out about the site through friends is also skyrocketing!

I've long been a fan of this talk, "How to negotiate the long slow SaaS ramp of death", where Gail Goodman talks about how growth for Constant Contact wasn't like a hockey-stick, but a slow, steady grind upwards.

That has definitely been the case for Software Ideas, even though it may not look it from the outside. Growth has been linear for the ENTIRE lifetime of this product, but the "slope" has slightly increased every time I found a new marketing channel that worked.

So if there's one lesson to learn from my growth, it's that you shouldn't expect a hockey stick, exponentially increasing MRR. Instead, plan around something more linear, but that has spikes in growth as you find and unlock effective marketing strategies.

It's a very exciting time for Software Ideas, and I'm so close to the "magic number" of $10k MRR - at which point I'll be seriously considering going full-time on this project.

Here's to the next 3.5 months!

  1. 3

    Kevin, love the simplicity of your website and videos as well. Can you share what’s website built on and also the course you are building ?

    1. 3

      Thanks and sure!

      The website is currently built using Landen.co, I highly recommend them for getting a nice-looking website up-and-running. However, I'm currently working with @benmann to give the website a facelift and enable some integrations that Landen doesn't enable by default. That's coming soon!

      The Foundation Course is going to be explicitly around how to take an idea (such as from the newsletter) and run with it. I'm specifically going to focus on:

      1. How to discover ideas using the same market research I use for Software Ideas
      2. How to find your first reliable channel to find new customers
      3. How to pre-sell a product, to prove that there is market demand even before you build a full MVP

      I think these three things are still pretty murky for most founders, and they are the things that I feel qualified enough to talk about, since I've done each of them.

      The course will be included at no additional cost in a Software Ideas subscription!

  2. 2

    Congratulations Kevin, great progress...

    Interested to know, what's your main focus/priority at the moment?

    1. 1

      Thanks Stefan!

      I'd say I have a marketing main focus and a product main focus.

      The marketing focus is exploring a couple new channels, notably some opportunities with SEO and content marketing.

      The product focus is to release The Foundation within the next 30 days! Getting this course out to members of Software Ideas has been a big goal of mine since this project started a few months ago, and I'm really excited to have it finally released.

      1. 1

        Excellent.

        The Foundation seems like such a good fit with Software Ideas... excited to see how the release goes!

        1. 2

          Thanks! I'm beyond pumped to get it released. Just finished the full course outline and I think it's really going to be something unique!

  3. 2

    Nice one Kevin! That's some nice growth you got there. Onwards and upwards!

  4. 1

    Congrats Kevin, really great numbers.
    Why is it that more and more people are trying to get their own SaaS ideas up and running?

  5. 1

    That's impressive, congrats! I love the concept as well (and signed up to the newsletter).

    I'm building something that requires a lot of time/analysis as well and currently turning it into a community so very much looking forward to seeing how you got to this kind of results!

  6. 1

    Hey Kevin, congrats!

    Can you share how many people unsubscribe from the newsletter, what's the rate?

    Thanks

  7. 1

    $7000 in 3.5 months is pretty impressive, it take years and a lot of work to get that much income using blogging.

  8. 1

    Congratulations 🎉🎊. Love your growth story.

  9. 1

    Congratulations Kevin! That's amazing growth over the last few months

  10. 1

    Yes, the MRR growth is surprisingly linear until you figure out a good way to market your product to the blue ocean of untapped users. Don't know of anything out there other than organic search and paid search.

  11. 1

    Very cool... Congrats!

  12. 1

    Great job ! I just read the free issue and really liked the way it is written. Maybe I'll subscribe soon :)

    Keep up !

    1. 1

      Thanks for the kind words!

  13. 1

    Very inspiring! Congrats, Kevin!

  14. 1

    Brilliant! Great stuff Kevin :)

  15. 1

    OMG , congrats!!

  16. 1

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 1

      Thanks for subscribing Nic! Glad you've been getting lots of value from the archive.

      Micro-SaaS opportunities have been the most popular by far, so expect to see a higher ratio of those types soon!

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