MRR.report (005) | Roadmap to bootstrapping Designjoy to 100k MRR
MRR.report 5th week's update, 20240707
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I. Featured Long Read
1.1 The 220,000 Mistake That Launched a 16k MRR SaaS Empire: A Brutally Honest Guide to Failing Your Way to Success
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Angel Match: $11,178 MRR — CRM-focused platform — Allows direct emailing to investors — Tracks investor communications
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Investor Hunt: $4,414 MRR — Categorized database of angels and VCs — Helps founders raise seed rounds — Shares database with Angel Match
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Pitch Deck Database: $753 MRR — Started as a free resource for lead generation — Evolved into a paid SaaS within Angel Match — Contains 1,400+ successful pitch decks
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Journalist Hunt: Currently at $0 MRR — Database of journalist information — Aimed at helping startups gain media exposure — Still in development despite initial setbacks
1.2 Indie Makers: The Worst Audience for Your SaaS
The second big problem of selling to indie makers: they do not re-invest much because they have nothing to reinvest. An average indie makers makes $0. Yes, indie makers are poor. Someone had to say it. Sorry.
II. Interesting Discussion
2.1 How do you protect your SaaS from free tier abuse?
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Credit Card Requirement: "Require a CC. Offer free trials instead of free tiers."
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Technical Measures:
- IP Tracking and Device Fingerprinting: "Also device fingerprinting helps."
- Captcha and Advanced Verification: "A simple Captcha or a more sophisticated blueteam cybersecurity solutions can work here."
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Limiting Free Tier Features:
- Basic Features Only: "Free tier? Offer a few basic features in the free trial. Then for more features, ask them to pay."
- Restricting Usage Metrics: "Limit the free tier by identifying relevant metrics, i.e., limiting your core usp."
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Eliminating Free Tiers:
- No Free Tier: "Easy, I don't offer a free tier lol."
2.2 What’s the most straightforward path to $5k MRR?
The most straightforward path is to get a job.
Second to that is to buy a SaaS or website already making $5K. (This would be first, but there's a learning curve to buying an existing operation.)
The third is to provide service (agency, freelancer, productized service, etc.) based on your current skills.
The fourth is to buy leads and sell them to multiple people. I know a guy on Twitter doing 9K selling subscriptions to leads (He makes 8K profit.)
The fifth is to learn to code and make a SaaS that makes 1.5K MRR and sell it for 63K. (this will average out to $5K for 12 months.)
You're starting from zero.
Making your own SaaS that gets up to $5K per month could take you multiple attempts and fails over 3 years.
TLDR: get another job; work on your SaaS on the side.
2.3 People who are doing 10k+ MRR, what does your SaaS do?
2.5 Lifetime Subscription vs. Monthly Payments
Keep in mind that there are several other pricing models out there that aren't just monthly/yearly subscriptions, such as pay-as-you-go pricing (think AWS charging you
0.005 per hour) or fixed usage pricing (buy 1,000 email send credits for50). Not every model works for every type of SaaS. But if you take nothing else away from this post, it should be that lifetime subscriptions are a terrible idea and you should find something more sustainable.
III. Helpful Youtube Videos
3.1 June 2024 Blog Income Report / Sale of Arts and Crafts Niche Site with Heavily Edited AI Content
About The Domain /Site
。Purchased Domain in January 2023 (Fresh Domain)Site Launched in January 2023Accepted into Mediavine Feb 2024
。Sold June 2024
。Niche: Arts & Crafts
。Posts:~600
Mediavine Earnings
April 2024 Earnings 639.16
May 2024 Earnings 411.86
June 5, 2024 Earnings $543.74
Revenue:~S2.239.64 Expenses:~S800 Profit: ~S1.958.38
Site is Sold! Creative Financing Payment (25k Total)15k Up Front, $10k in Seller Financing
3.2 The easiest way to get a LOT of money fast.
the offer was this um itwas we will do all of your marketing for you
and we'll do it for 100 grand and if you don't make at least 300,000 back
we will give you back your 100 Grand Plus 300,000
so it was like a crazy ass offer
3.2 How Brilliant Creators are Making Money in 2024
Inactive 4.7% Twitch 3.4% Instagram 6% YouTube 38% TikTok 46%
IV. MRR Updates from X
4.1 ResumeMaker.online
Fernando Pessagno @Fer_MOMENTO · Jul 11
4.2 supergrow.ai
Utsav @utsavpm · July 7:
15 months of building a SaaS 🚀
→ $11K MRR → Fully bootstrapped 💪 → 2-person remote team → No VC pressure
4.3 Docsium.com
Damon Chen @damengchen · July 9:
just hit 833 MRR, a small project I bought last year for 7k.
The growth purely relies on its listing on Google Workspace Marketplace, with nearly no maintenance effort.
4.4 🎨 Designjoy.co: 145K MRR ✍️ ProductizeYourself.co: 12K MRR
Brett@ Designjoy @BrettFromDJ · July 13,2023:
Roadmap to bootstrapping Designjoy to 100k MRR 👇
→ 0 - 10K: 3 years 😅
→ 10k - 20k: 2 months
→ 20k - 40k: 8 months
→ 40k - 60k: 3 months
→ 60k - 80k: 8 months
→ 80k - 100k: 1 month
4.5 pmfm.ai
Aditya Saxena @adi808080 July 7:
After 6 months of building and growing my AI app development platform, I've finally hit this major milestone. Interestingly, it took 5 months to go from 0 to 500 but less than a month for 500 to 1k 😮
Oct. 2023 - Dec. 2023 (Idea & Getting users) Dec. 2023 - Jan. 2024 (Launch): Jan. 2024 - Current(Growth):
What has worked:
- Meta ads with a clear messaging about the product and a CTA. I've spent close to $200 on Meta ads so far and the conversion rate has been 2x!
- Affiliate marketing: I'm rewarding affiliates with a 35% commission on all paid sales. It costs me $29/mo to run the program but it makes up for 2% of my subscriptions.
- Testimonials: I use another service for collecting text + video testimonials which costs me $19/mo, so far I've collected almost 20 quality testimonials from customers and featured them on the home page. Testimonials help build trust - people like to use products that are trusted by others.
- Organic growth: majority of the customers discover my platform organically or by word of mouth, which is the best form of marketing.
- Product demo videos: I started screen recording myself building AI apps and shared clips on YT, X, and LinkedIn.
- Reddit: This is the ultimate, unbiased validation imo. if you can get ppl to appreciate ur product there, then it definitely has some real potential! For me, what seemed to work was to show how creators were making money for real on the platform.
- Blogging: I've written several articles discussing how the platform works and the problems it can solve. It costs me $0 to maintain the Medium blog and has brought me a lot of traffic.
- Network effects: this is a product advantage, most of the apps built through my platform have a "powered by pmfm" label and link to the platform.
- Building in public and sharing progress updates (like this) which attracts creator and other founder customers. More importantly, it helps me remain accountable as a solo founder!
4.6 1000.tools
David Gutiérrez @dgut_ July 5:
From sharing every growth chart to facing life's tough breaks
In the first 4 months post-launch, @1000_tools hit $15K in total revenue
Then life threw a curveball—my son was diagnosed with OCD, pulling me away from work
May saw our lowest MRR at $1.1K
4.7 GridStats.pro
Zacharie R. @zacharier_18 July 10：
I JUST MADE MY FIRST SAAS SALE! 🚀
4.8 AskCory.ai
Vítor Soares @Vitor_pvsoares July 8:
4.9 blacktwist.app
Luca Restagno 🐢 shipped.club @ikoichi July 2:
The first MRR of a new SaaS always hits differently
4.10 sublaunch.com
Julien | Sublaunch 🏴☠️ @sublaunch_com July 11:
$100k profit in 70 days for my SaaS Sublaunch.
70 consecutive days with more than 1k profit per day. 19 cost per day.
So, 98.1% net margin.
4.11 revid .ai
Tibo @tibo_maker July 8：
Crossed $150,000+ ARR with revid .ai 🤯
On my way to create the Tweet Hunter of short videos 😈
4.12 Backlinker.AI
ennett | Build In Public | AI SAAS SEO Founder @influencer_seo July 8:
4.13 basedlabs.ai
Michael Aubry — BasedLabs.ai @michaelaubry July 11:
These are the mental components I’ve been using to get to $27k MRR
4.14 foundersowl.com
Jordan M @DevMolone July 11:
Exponential growth: initiated 🚀
✅ 6.1k total revenue
✅ 2.6k MRR
Partnered with a new founder today. Will be targeting high ticket clients.
V. MRR Highlights from reddit
5.1 After 2.5 years of hard work and a loss of €35,000, this is my second attempt and the result
If you're really that tired then my advice is to sell. Put your business on acquire.com , I would expect that you could easily make USD 25,000 - 30,000 (maybe more) and close the sale in less than a month if you ruthlessly sift the genuine buyers from the tire-kickers and loonies. What you have is a great, relatively simple product with great potential in the AI niche: there are many investors who will be interested; I think you will get flooded with offers.
You could go the indie-hacker route but you need to learn - at a minimum - your metrics (LTV, CAC, churn, etc.) and analytics and what they all actually mean. If I was in your position, I would take maybe USD 1,000 and try to establish a positive marketing feedback loop: that your CAC is less than your LTV so you make profit which you put back into marketing; make more profit, etc. Someone mentioned Linkedin which sounds like a great idea to me. You could do this quite quickly to see if you have product market fit and you can shortcut your way forward. Otherwise you're in for a long grind: SEO, social media marketing, newsletters, etc. but these involve a lot more time and effort (and uncertainty).
5.2 How do I go from 3k MRR to 10-20k MRR
Every podcast I listen to, they get to $40k MRR after a month selling a shopping widget
Every consultant I speak to expects clients at $100k a month
Every Google Ads specialist wants to manage $30k in ads per month
5.3 Mailead.io
MVP took 2 months. There is no final product yet, we are constantly improving it and adding new features.
Check bad reviews of products on G2 and try to solve them I guess
First customer took 2 weeks.
We haven't tried ads yet.
Growing steadly now since we still rely on outbound.
Bubble is mostly reliable. Let's see how far it scales now lol
5.4 How I Added $12,488 MRR in 2 Months With a 3-Step Onboarding Plan
Why don’t we just call everyone in the free community and help them join the paid group?”
That’s how my 3-step plan unfolded:
Quit my closing job – I didn’t have any recurring commissions.
Pitch Max on the idea – Create a new role: Skool Specialist.
Start taking calls – Give everyone the push they need to get started with Skool.
Summary
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