Ask HN: 57 sales totaling $1,539 for micro-SaaS? Is the idea dead?

[ilyaovchinnikov]

Hi friends, I'm making a small web service based on GPT4 for non-English speaking audience. It creates marketing strategy for marketers and business owners.

4 years behind, 9 ideas with 0$ mrr, thousands of hours on my ass, living on credit, dreaming and here I have my first 57 sales (one-time payments) for 1539$ in just 2 months. I was happy, but not for long.

I learned an interesting detail, making the first sales doesn't mean that the idea will eventually survive and work in the long run. It just shows that the idea is proven.

All my sales came from non-scalable channels (telegram chat with marketing strategists). I started looking for the same segment online:

- Buying promotional posts on telegram. - Wrote articles on local startup sites. - Did search advertising in yandex.direct, google ads - I did sms mailing.

Nothing. Not a single sale. Absolutely the same offer.

I have a question. Could it be that it was just a mirage? These sales confused me and gave me faith in an idea that is dead? Or should I dig further, test hypotheses, spend time looking for a segment?

Friends, please share your experiences. Thanks in advance.

[mike_d]

One of the hardest pills to swallow when you are doing a startup is that there are customers you don't want. A customer that takes a week of grinding to close and makes you $27 IS NOT A CUSTOMER YOU WANT. You should pretend that sale never happened. It is just as much validation of your idea as a car salesman who manages to sell a brand new car to someone for 10% of what it is worth.

My honest advice is to get a job and stop digging yourself into a financial hole by living off credit. Work on your project one day a week. Try to take what you have and pivot it to a problem more people have and you can solve. Your goal should be to make something that you can spend 1/3 of the selling price on ads to acquire a customer. If you can't sell it with ads and you need a human involved to close people, you need to be selling your product for however much it would cost to cover a full time sales person (not you).

[AussieWog93]

>Work on your project one day a week.

I have successfully bootstrapped several online business and absolutely, 100% this.

It'll either fail, stay a side project forever ($1k/mo isn't bad if you only need to put in 30 mins work per week on maintenance!), or reach the point where quitting your job becomes brain-dead obvious (for me, it was when the one day a week side hustle was pulling in 33% of the income as the 50 hour a week day job).

If you already have a decent job, there's no real need to risk everything and eat shit for years so you can have a crack at the big time.

Your idea is either good or bad, and part of business savvy is evaluating the idea without dumping millions of dollars/thousands of hours into a pit.

[basisword]

My understanding is that the whole point of SaaS (software as a service) is that users pay you an ongoing fee for use of your software (i.e. a subscription). What you're doing is selling a product and will probably need a much more significant ongoing sales effort whereas with SaaS, past a certain point, you only need to sign up enough new subscribers to cover your churn. You mention 9 prior ideas with $0 MRR - this idea also has $0 MRR (monthly recurring revenue) as one time payments are not recurring. You need to decide what you want - to build a product you sell for a one-time fee, or to create a subscription based product.

[pryelluw]

So you’re building a product to help others with their marketing strategy and you don’t know how to develop a successful marketing strategy to sell the product? Am I reading that correctly?

[jacknews]

lol, yes I don't know why they are asking this on HN, they should ask their AI what to do.

[bastawhiz]

> I'm making a small web service based on GPT4 for non-English speaking audience. It creates marketing strategy for marketers and business owners.

What problem are you solving? Someone can sign up for gpt-4 for $20 and do this themselves just by asking it to write them a marketing strategy.

[tucaz]

To me it seems like you solved the first problem when building a company which is building something that at least some people are willing to pay for. The next problem you have to solve now is figuring out if there are more people who want it and how you get to those people.

Your idea is not dead. It passed the first step. Now you move to the next one.

[yaj54]

Based on your data your ideas have 1/10 odds of $1539 revenue and each idea takes on average 5.3 months to execute.

You can:

- Spend the next 5.3 months on a new idea. The expected value of this is $153.9 in 5.3 months.

- Spend the next 5.3 months doing your existing telegram strategy. The expected value of this is $4078.35 in 5.3 months.

This assumes your existing telegram strategy is reproducible. If it is - then double, triple, quadruple down on that. It's working, get after it. New channels are like new ideas, you may need to try 9 of them before you find one that also works.

If your existing strategy is not reproducible (I.e., in addition to the new channels not working your existing channel is also drying up) then I'd take a hard look at why.

And since this is HN: https://paulgraham.com/ds.html

[HorizonXP]

Of those 57 sales, were there any that truly loved what you built? That couldn't live without it?

Focus on making 10 people really love you, make their problem your problem, and you'll likely figure out the answer to your questions, eventually.

[scyzoryk_xyz]

This is a distinctly American way of thinking this whole “love” language and romance and enthusiasm. We do have a way of saying “wow” that is quite confusing to people outside of our culture. Especially us Slavs have an allergy to this.

However, the merit of what you’re saying - make their problem your problem - is absolutely on point. I would argue that for non-Americans it’s not as much about “love”, and more about raw necessity and need. We’re looking to build something that our targets find so useful that they feel enough enthusiasm that opening that meager wallet will feel better.

[saintmichel]

talk to the 57 that paid, did it actually generate value for them? did anyone repeat buy? what would make it a recurring sale. consider also that that maybe its not product market fit, but market product fit. a lot of startups changed their product to fit the market, not the other way around.

[ikoichi2112]

I think your product is validated. The fact you weren't able to make any other sales might be a red flag, or simply a numerical issue. Are you sure you were reaching out to the right people via the other channels? Were those people ready to buy your service, right then?

You have a niche of marketing strategists, who are willing to pay for your service. Marketing is harder than one can think, even when you think you found the right user persona.

Keep leveraging the telegram chat and maybe look at high-quality search intent (SEO traffic from Google), it takes time but it rewards in the long term.

[nivertech]

How many of those 57 who purchased it, are actually using it?

The fact is that most (all?) of the sales come from the same channel/community and that the price is low enough ($27 on average) might indicate that people are simply wanted to support you, or they liked you or your content, not your product. That's the problem with builing in public trend.

You need to reach out to those who purchased, and try to do user interviews with them. Learn how to do user research, i.e. prepare questions, interview script, record them, etc.

[reso]

Over what time period did you get 57 sales? If it was in a month or two, that's still excellent growth starting from zero.

Do you have any insights about the type of people who paid money for it? I would start from that image of your customers, and then think about where you can find more of them.

If you're generating marketing strategy for non-english speakers, I would figure out a particular vertical that you know exactly where to find those customers, and blast the crap out of it.

[deadbabe]

Some ideas are like an abusive relationship. Make a little bit of money, keep you on the hook. But it will never truly take off, just keeps stringing you along.

[gamerDude]

You may have also found a market, but don't have the right product. If you are chatting and building a relationship with 57 people, is there something in common for them that they would be willing to pay continuously for? Or more for?

Sometimes your idea isn't worth scaling, but rather just focus on serving the people you've found and give them more and more value.

[hatsix]

Seems like you need a marketing strategy that will reduce the CAC... Does your GPT have any suggestions?

[nicolas_17]

Ask your product how to improve your marketing strategy.

[lagt_t]

One-time payments and SaaS?

[Fischgericht]

So, you have a tool that "creates marketing strategy for marketers and business owners". But you are not getting sales.

Suggestion: Use a tool that "creates marketing strategy for marketers and business owners". That should solve your problem.

scnr.

[alangibson]

It feels like you just falsified AI.

[CyberDildonics]

Sounds like selling snow to an eskimo.

[4star3star]

Bingo

[rand1239]

Sums up human existence.

[erikson]

How did you initiate the first 57 telegram chats? Can you scale that?

[mike_d]

That is called spam.

[mattlondon]

That is the startup idea right there. Pivot!

[moralestapia]

This, remember there's GPT4 now, and Telegram bots are free. Go wild!

Also, show HN, everything is a sales channel.

[duskwuff]

Telegram bots cannot initiate conversations. The platform doesn't allow for that, and it aggressively limits or terminates non-bot accounts which are used for automated spam.

[gorkish]

Thanks for posting this; it helps explain the rationale behind the SMS-to-telegram pivot that is common to see in phishing scams.