Ask HN: First $100 in a SaaS app?

[arthurdent]

My partner and I are about to release our first SaaS app and I'm starting to get worried that there's really no market for it.

How long did it take you to get your first $100 and first $1000 in rev, and what strategies did you use to get customer flow?

[exline]

Way to long. First customer took forever. I almost wrote it off. Then I went from 0 customers to 3 in 1 month. A little blogging and google ads is all I've done so far.

All told say 12 months from building it to the first $100. Say another 4-6 months to hit $1000. Obviously its a side effort and I'm not getting rich off of it. But I don't put a lot of effort into it either. If you ignore the development time costs, its pretty profitable right now.

I'm going to start doing some real marketing and hopefully it will start gaining more traction. One thing I still find strange is how customers come in bunches. Nothing for a while then a bunch all at once.

The monthly cost will be a big difference in when you hit your revenue goals. I have an idea I'm toying with right now, that if I implement it and it works, would be $300-500 a month per customer, so I would be able to hit those numbers a lot quicker. But then again it would be a longer sales cycle.

What is your app?

Good luck and enjoy. That first customer is a very rewarding experience.

[asimjalis]

Just release it.