Building a browser extension empire

[Tau Ceti]

You could try to offer some incentive for staying a certain period of time. Give them something like a gift or a special deal to look forward to.

JMO.

My payment processor (Paddle) already does this. When a user is about to churn or become delinquent, it starts an automated email sequence with coupons codes and different incentives.

In exchange, if they manage to keep the customer, they take a cut of the earnings, not sure how much.

In the last 4 or 5 months, I think it managed to keep about a dozen of users who would have churned otherwise. It's pretty efficient.

I don't have a problem with churn itself, it's inevitable, but churn coupled with low growth is not a good combo.

 

[Tau Ceti]

Exciting stuff!! Would love to see how you navigate the execution in those 6 months.

By the way, what do you use to monetize your extension? I looked into extpay, paypal, paddle, stripe.. but i'm going to go with extpay as that's the easiest way to start monetization for my extension.

I use Paddle because I dont want to deal with sales taxes.

They take care of everything. At the end of the month, the send me the money.They pay the taxes on the sales to the various governments around the world.

I send a copy of the wire transfer to my accountant, and they report it to the Swedish tax office. It literally takes 2 minutes of my time each month.

I have a Nextjs web application that receives the payment notifications from Paddle. The extension talks to the Nextjs app to know which user is paid or free.

 

[Tau Ceti]

I've been following this thread from the beginning, and it's really inspiring. Thank you for sharing your journey. I recently bought a course on HTML/CSS to learn how to code websites, and I'll be taking the JavaScript one next. However, reading the first few lines of this thread has sparked a huge desire in me to create extensions as well. Can I do that, considering that to design your extensions, you use JavaScript, React, JQuery (which are languages also used in website development), or should I focus solely on creating websites?

Hey man, I am glad that it inspires you. As for creating an extension, well i guess it depends if that is something that interests you. There are many examples online on how to get started.

Once you understand how they work, the sky is the limit.

I don't think anyone can tell you what you should focus on. It depends on your goals.

 

[Tau Ceti]

I just read through your whole thread for the first time.

I'm really inspired by your relentless progress and patience. You started this thread in Oct 2022 and now you have 2500+ MRR. That's amazing.

Curious if you ever implemented the email marketing to free users that you talked about. Also, you mentioned a rebrand. Is that completed?

Wishing you all the best!

Thanks for your message.

I am happy you found the journey so far entertaining.

The email marketing is not yet operational but I am thinking about getting it started. I just haven't had the time yet.

The rebrand is also still in the works, I simply prioritized feature request and other bug fixes and therefore it got pushed back a bit.

March so far has been a gangbusters month, but I don't want to spoil my next monthly update.

 

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[Ismail941]

HOLY SHIT! I am following this thread for knawwledge!
FASTLANE Forum rocks since 1999

 

[football4life]

Current status

After posting my introduction post, I thought it was time to create an execution thread.

I have two browser extensions currently live.

Extension #1

This extension is dormant, as in I haven't updated it in a while and it is very niche browser extension. I have looked at monetizing/selling it but I don't think there is way to currently do that. It sits at around 150 installs and does not grow much as the market it is serving is relatively small. Nonetheless I consider it a success and used it to build the foundation of extension #2. At this stage I am going to focus on extension #2 exclusively and leave this extension to be. It doesn't require any maintenance fortunately.

Extension #2

This is the focus of this thread. This extension has potential to become a source of income. It is growing steadily and my SEO efforts are starting to payoff. It has about 300 users currently and gets about 30 to 50 new users every week.

At this stage the extension is free and voluntarily limited and could do a lot more. But so far I have not been providing more value to my users because I wanted to keep some functionality hidden to be able to release a paid plan with these extra functionalities.

Before spending more time on this project, I validated the idea in several ways bay asking myself the following questions:

1. Is this a problem that people are willing to pay for?
   
   Yes, because there are other competing extensions that are quite popular ( around the 5000 users mark) and charging users around $30 per month to use the full extension's functionality.
   
2. Can I provide a better experience than the competition?
   
   Absolutely. I currently receive emails from my users every few days, and exchange with them regularly. I understand their problems and what they are trying to accomplish. I can build what they need. I do things that don't scale and treat every user very well by responding to each and every question they have in timely manner and spending as long as it takes with them until their issue is resolved.
   
   
   
3. Can I outrank the competition in Google search results?
   
   Yes, I am currently in the process of ranking many articles and blog posts above the competition's results which leads me to having a steady flow of users visiting my landing page every day (currently I have 10 to 15 organic clicks on the website).
   
   
   
4. Can this business be scaled?
   
   Yes, this business can be scaled. The plan is to have the extension as a middle of the road solution. User's get all the benefits of the extension but they still have to do some of the work themselves.
   
   The fully automated solution to their problem can be created via SaaS platform that will do everything on their behalf. This solution is not hard to build, I already have a prototype working.

Whats is the expected conversion rate between free users and paid users?

After reading a few articles on this issue, I have come to the conclusion that the conversion rate is between 5% to 10% usually. I follow this guy who has an extension whose made up of 30% paying users. This is the exception and not the rule but one can dream.

Current goals for the next 30 days

• release the paid plan for the extension
• convert at least 5 users to the paid plan
• finish the MVP the SaaS platform and find at least 2 beta users

good stuff buddy.

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Hi Tau,

thanks for your in depth answer. Really appreciate it!

200/250$ per month seems to be quite a lot for a chrome extension. Do you mind elaborating a bit regarding your the use-case of your extension?

I'm sorry to hear, that users are uninstalling but maybe it's just a tracking issue as well.

1. Can you tell a little bit more about your "from idea to implementation to marketing process"?
2. Why this app (how did you find the problem you are solving?
3. Why chrome extensions as the first touch-point and the SaaS as the Up-Sell
4. Why Chrome Extensions at all
5. How long did it take you to develop your app in total?
6. Do you follow anyone else in the SaaS industry?
7. Are there any other monetization opportunities besides the paid plan that you would/wouldn't consider? (like ads for example)

I'm looking forward hearing other updates from you!

Hi circleme.

Thanks for your questions.

I want to preface that I am not an expert so the answers I will give are simply my own and do not indicate in any way that this the right way to do things.

Do you mind elaborating a bit regarding your the use-case of your extension?

I can't really elaborate more on this topic as my niche is quite small. But regarding your comment on the price, what I can tell you is that my product aims at turning a process that would take many hour each day into a 10 minutes process.

The savings in terms of time would pay off for the users within a week.

Other platforms charge double what I am asking for less functionality. So I think my pricing is on point. It may be slightly under-priced at this point tbh.

Can you tell a little bit more about your "from idea to implementation to marketing process"?

There is really not much to it. I found a small gap in the market, created a simple extension and released it on the chrome store. Then I created a marketing website with a blog. I publish 3-4 new articles every months that are highly targeted for my potential customers. That has allowed me to get the SEO juice going. I am getting around 500 organic clicks from Google and couple hundred more from Bing for free each month.

All posts are written by hand by me. No AI or Chatgpt. I use the google search console to find topics and key words. I keep the process simple.

I don't do paid ads nor guest posts. I haven't posted anything on Reddit. I use to share on Twitter some things but my customers don't use Twitter so I stopped.

I have a contact form on my marketing website and I respond and engage with all the users who message me. That's how I found the beta testers for the Saas.

Why this app (how did you find the problem you are solving?

In my introductory post I talk more about how I got the idea. I wont spam this thread since all this info in the other thread. If something is not clear in the other post, please let me know and I can elaborate a bit more.

Why chrome extensions as the first touch-point and the SaaS as the Up-Sell

Because it is easier to market and target users on the Chrome store. There is relatively low competition and it is good medium for a freemium app.

Why Chrome Extensions at all

Because I could get it out quickly and move on if it did not work.

How long did it take you to develop your app in total?

Impossible to say because I don't track my time but if I had to guess, hundreds of hours between the development, debugging and research.

Do you follow anyone else in the SaaS industry?

I follow a few people on Twitter. I am also part of a small Slack group of saas builders.

Are there any other monetization opportunities besides the paid plan that you would/wouldn't consider? (like ads for example)

Yes, I don't like ads, so I will never monetize with ads. That is the line I am not willing to cross.

 

[circleme]

Thank you so much for your response.

my product aims at turning a process that would take many hour each day into a 10 minutes process.

The savings in terms of time would pay off for the users within a week.

My software idea also aims for process cost optimization. How do you market this? Like for example: Before your chrome extension people had to spend 10 hours per week, now only 30 minutes, or something like that?

That has allowed me to get the SEO juice going. I am getting around 500 organic clicks from Google and couple hundred more from Bing for free each month.

That sounds awesome. Especially if the niche is really small. Can u tell how many installs come through SEO and how many through social media like Reddit?

I use the google search console to find topics and key words

Do you mean Keyword Planner? If so, do you target only long-tail kewords or just focus on traffic-rich keywords?

Thanks

 

[Tau Ceti]

I see.

I'm curious: What did you do with programmatic SEO that did not work? What was your initial goal with programmatic SEO?

It was in hindsight a waste of time. It took me a while to get the programmatic pages out of the door and the search indexes had issues indexing them. I tried to fix the issues but some errors were too esoteric to work out what was going wrong.

In the end I gave it a few months but as it was taking time away fro more productive work I decided to shelve it and move on.

The goal was to create thousands of pages with data collected and create use cases for the extension. The lesson here is: don't fix it if it ain't broken.

In any case, I kept the code and will try to re-implement it later (maybe next year) when I have more bandwidth and have reached PMF.

For now I am sticking with what I know.

 

[Simon Angel]

Another quick update.

I got a few customer churning last week (as expected) and got a bunch of new customers.

MRR is sitting at $600.

Total revenue is $2250 so far.

I am releasing more features each week. I really want to get the Starter plan finished before the end of April, so I can start working on the Pro plan.

The goal is to reach $1000 MRR by the end of April. It seems a bit ambitious but i like to set myself some ambitious targets.

I also need to get back into publishing more blog posts to maintain my position SEO wise.
Things have been a bit slow during the last few days with the Easter holidays but I think it will pick up again soon.

Same thing happened at Christmas time.

Good stuff! Your growth is mega even if it doesn't feel like a lot of money yet.

Just continue doing what you have been until now and the chance of you growing exponentially will be pretty high.

B2B is probably the way to go if your extension can service anything from small businesses to large corporations. You mentioned that the niche is fairly small, so gather emails for businesses that your extension will be of value to and message every work email for each company you find.

Also, email your existing customers with the weekly update (but unless your users are nerds too do it in plain, simple language) if you aren't doing that yet.

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Good stuff! Your growth is mega even if it doesn't feel like a lot of money yet.

Just continue doing what you have been until now and the chance of you growing exponentially will be pretty high.

B2B is probably the way to go if your extension can service anything from small businesses to large corporations. You mentioned that the niche is fairly small, so gather emails for businesses that your extension will be of value to and message every work email for each company you find.

Also, email your existing customers with the weekly update (but unless your users are nerds too do it in plain, simple language) if you aren't doing that yet.

Thanks for your response.

I need to start emailing my current users with the weekly updates. I need to get on with it as soon as possible.

I will keep doing what I am doing and keep iterating and improving the product.

 

[Tau Ceti]

@Tau Ceti

The majority of your users are free customers. How is your offer differentiated for free customers and premium (paying) customers? Freemium model with more features?

I myself have to start thinking about the right pricing model and thought that at the beginning I would like one thing above all: to make my solution available to as many users as possible. How do I achieve that? By giving away the software for free. In general, I think a lot of the subscription model, but not necessarily at the start of a new SaaS. Especially if my server/hosting costs per new user are within limits, I think to myself, why not just go 4free?

I'm still at the beginning of the topic of price model + SaaS and don't really know any other besides the classic subscription model and freemium. I would still be interested in which versions you still consider generally useful (far from exactly your product).

Somewhere I have the feeling that the subscription idea is actually not always the right one. Once I have enough users, you should always be able to capitalize on it in some way, shouldn't you? e.g. reselling the data, or forming partnerships, etc.

I'm curious about your opinion and maybe other SaaS founders would like to comment.

Yes the majority of my users are free users.

It's a freemium model. I offer some well designed and useful functionality to the free users, and offer more functionality to the paid users.

I think having a subscription model is essential in order to build recurring revenue at the beginning but I am thinking more and more about adding "day" and "week" passes which would be 1 time payments to access the premium functionality for a given amount of time.

This type of billing would enable casual users to use the extension and not have to worry about recurring charges.

However, i will not implement this straight away. Most likely towards the end of the year. I want to keep things simple for now.

My only advice is to not price your product to low. My monthly price is $49. Nobody ever comments on the price. Not one person has said anything about it which makes me think it is actually too low but that is a story for another time.

I see too many indie-hackers/ solo-entrepreneurs pricing their services at $5 or $10 per month and having to deal with raging/annoyed customers because their price is supposedly to high.

In my case, people pay and don't complain at all. I even have on my pricing page in big bold letters a coupon code that gives new customers 50% off the first month of their subscription and its only been used a couple of times.

When you provide a lot of value, people are happy to pay so don't be afraid to raise your prices.

As for other ways to monetize the extension:
- Ads are a no go. I don't like them and I wont subject my users to that.
- Reselling user data, that's a no go as well as I am a staunch supporter of privacy.
- Partnerships => maybe in the future if the partner's product and mine share some common attributes and values and if we are complimentary.

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Is your freemium model time-gated as well? e.g. 7 days free, than continue with the free and restricted version or switch to the premium (paid) version.

How is customer support effort for those free users so far? Do you offer any at all or do you have a FAQ or knowledge base?

The way i make it work is:

No account => free version
Create an account => get access to premium features for 7 days , no credit card required then revert back to free plan at the end of the trial if the user has not purchased the premium plan.

This is good because I collect email addresses and can use the addresses to send marketing emails( I haven't done that yet, but the whole infra is setup now to do just that)

Also I only allow users to create an account with Google at the moment, I will probably add Facebook and/or Twitter logins at some point though. Which means that I get few fake email addresses.

Paying users get priority email support, for them I wake up in the middle of the night and fix their issues. For the free users, I usually respond within 24 to 36 hours from the time the email is received.

I usually get between 0 to 5 emails a day.
It really varies.

 

[Tau Ceti]

And a few more questions:

Why did you decide to go the Chrome Extension route, even though it kind of restricts Control in CENTS? Are Chrome Extensions the only way to deliver your solution to your customers or have you had any other reasoning behind it?

I do love the "simplicity" of Chrome Extensions or any other plugin-orientied apps (like Shopify Apps or Wordpress plugins) compared to a full-stack web app (where you basically have to do everything yourself and don't rely on a "marketplace") but still went the route of the latter.

I'm really looking forward hearing about your reasoning for Chrome extensions and also your opinion on other types of SaaS (like other plugins, Desktop apps or classic Web and Mobile Apps).

Thanks in advance and keep going, your journey sounds awesome!

I went this route because marketing a SaaS directly is really hard.

With the Chrome extension, all I have to compete with is a few other people/companies making the same product.

SEO and discovery is taken care of by Google and I don't have to give Google it's cut when I make a sale.

Once I have a decent install base, it gets some recognition and growth becomes easier.
Also I can upsell my extension's customers to my SaaS offering.

In this case the extension is just an entry point for the next goal, getting the full Saas up and running. This is where the money is at as I will charge considerably more for my product(with a lot more functionality).

 

[Tau Ceti]

I love your thought process behind this.

So the bottom line is, you start with a MicroSaaS that doesn't necessarily meet the control and barrier to entry imperative, for example, but you later get control of a standalone SaaS app that is similar or the same as your Chrome Extension?

I always think of things like this a bit too complicated and should that be the case, I think your "strategy" is really great. I am, as you noted, facing challenge after challenge after having to do everything myself and no one knows my standalone SaaS. Since my solution could also be mapped via a Chrome Extension, I've been thinking about going that route for a few weeks now. This way I could make progress much faster and get the first user feedback and scale (albeit 4free, which I wouldn't care about either).

If I understand correctly, the Chrome Extension is considered the option for you with the highest chance of success, since you already have on demand traffic in the Chrome Store, right? Would you recommend the same approach if you were programming for an eco-system like Shopify, for example?

With my solution, I actually have the problem that I would have a lot of options to launch it (standalone app, chrome extension, shopify app, etc.).

Also, do you have any references for me from other people who have taken or are taking a similar path as you? I've been following Rob Walling and Rick Blyth for a while now (I highly recommend the latter, he specializes in Chrome Extensions).

Thanks again for your input. It helps me more than you think.

I guess my approach can be summarized by one simple sentence: go after the low hanging fruits.

The extension was basic when it came out, now it is becoming more complex.

When that complexity grows too much, I will start pushing the users to the SaaS in order to deliver even more value.

Then the user can choose:
- stay on the free extension, get the basic functionality,
- buy the subscription, use the extension to get more functionality.
- move to the combo saas and extension to get the most value and run complex workflows

As for the highest chance of success I cant say but in my head I picture it as a funnel.

Free extension => paid extension => paid saas users

Each step of the way, the leads/customers become more valuable.

building on top of another platform is double edge sword. It can provide good traffic and discovery mecanisms but the downside is that you don't own the platform which means you can be banned/black listed.

That is why the SaaS option is the safest in the long run but I need to nail the extension first before moving on to the saas.

 

[Pranav_Banerjee]

Great progress, mate!
I decided to build a Chrome extension business before I move onto a full-blown SaaS app, which I believe to be 10x more complex than extensions.

Following your thread.

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Great progress, mate!
I decided to build a Chrome extension business before I move onto a full-blown SaaS app, which I believe to be 10x more complex than extensions.

Following your thread.

Thanks for the follow.

i don't necessarily agree that building an extension is any easier than building a SaaS.

In fact depending on the kind of extension you are building it could be a lot harder as an extension requires to learn new paradigms like:
- what does a background script do?
- what does the content script do?
- how does messaging work between the scripts?
- async/await confusion

and many more.

One thing I am going to recommend is to use Typescript. This will provide you with best DX and will catch many mistakes you will inevitably make.

Good luck to you!

 

[Tau Ceti]

Thank you Tau for the advice!

Tau, is it really not possible to collect your users email addresses? When they download your extension can't you redirect to a page to collect their information? I think you can use this to get more 5 star ratings as well. Please double down on this I think this is something that will open up more possibilities for you...

I read somewhere that if you are charging $1 for a product, make the product worth atleast $10 better yet worth $100. This way your customers will promote your product themselves. If you can get them to be really impressed with the value they will be free promoters of your brand. This is key to expanding business as this way as you scale you won't have to worry about marketing.

Also Tau why don't you create an Instagram account for this extension and promote it? 1 post a day. Comment on posts relvant to your niche. Post memes (if feasible). Post dumb videos that gathers attention. That's what I would do.

Also Twitter!

No it is not possible to collect email addresses from users directly.
When a user installs an extension, only the Chrome Store knows who they are.

The Chrome web-store does not give this data to the developers and for good reasons.

As a developer you know how many people install your extensions, but if you want to know more about your users, then the users themselves have to create an account on your platform and then, you can talk to them.

This is what I currently do.

My users don't hang around on Instagram, most of them have private Slack/Facebook groups that are closed off to outsiders.

So any advertising on Instagram is a waste of time at this stage. Same with Twitter.

 

[Andy Black]

No I don't . I mostly talk to my users via email or video.

Ha. I do the same.

 

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[Andy Black]

work itself is bad but because of the loss of freedom.

When I am at my day job, I build someone else's dream, I make them money instead of me making money. I have to attend meetings and reach consensus and be available between 9 to 5.

When I work for myself, I can start the day at 5am and work until 9am, then go for a walk, or read a book for an hour, then get back to work or not if I want to.

You'll get there.

It reminds me of this:

MINDSET - Freedom as an entrepreneur (Amusing PM w/Freelancer)

Thought you guys might find this amusing.

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[ValueSystems]

Middle of the month update.

I am now closing in on the first big milestone $1000 MRR with 93% profit margin.

The churn has really gone down in the last 2 weeks and I got a bunch of new customers.
I hope to finish the month between $1100 and $1200 MRR.

It's not a lot compared to some of you who are making 10K or 20K a month and still a far cry from reaching the fastlane levels of $50K to $100K per month but to me it is awesome.

Now that I am back at work full time, progress has been slower but I won't let that get in my way.
My goal is/was to reach $10K MRR at the end of the year.

If progress continues at the same pace, I am actually on track to reach $2.5K to $3K MRR but I am not giving up, I will keep going until I am free.

That is my motivation.

Congrats on hitting 1k MRR !!

Massive progress from your first post at 0 to now $1k per month. Love to see it.

Keep going!

 

[Tau Ceti]

Congrats, is there any specific database/tool you use for cheap deployments? I am a SWE, just figuring out a proper UI/UX for my idea, probably I guess, I just need to start working on it. However, I would appreciate to know if there are good places where I can deploy things cheaply.
Thanks

It depends on your needs.

For the marketing/web app I use vercel => $20/month
For the node app I use fly.io which cost about $5/month
I use mongodb Atlas for the DB, which is another $3-$5 per month

 

[mojorisin]

Great thread, excellent progress, I'm rooting for you to hit your goals!

I''ve completed MVP phase on my SaaS, now moving to a full production release (next 60 days of dev). My subscription is a freemium model, similar to yours. I'm thinking through the base vs. paid models, I've decided to keep it to 2 for simplicity out of the gate.

I'm excited to have the product polished up and ready, like you so I can spend time on marketing & sales vs. development! I like how you use the marketing site to drive interest.

I came across a site for sale in my domain, which I'm considering purchasing to drive traffic to my SaaS. The site would cost 20k, it does generate 1k per month, with 20k hits per month.

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Hi, Lol, I am back at this message.
Ok so I was building my backend with MongoDB Serverless as well. However, I found it extremely slow after creating the initial backend in python with mongo. 1.5 seconds - 2seconds to just register a user? No way.
So I am gonna go for other alternatives.


Dunno if I am being an action faker as I do not have any users either atm, but I am gonna try some crazy combination.

No worries I hope it works out for you.

 

[Absar]

Finally passed the 1K MRR goal.

I am so happy. A few months ago I would never have thought this would be possible.

Now back to work!
Next goal is 5K MRR

Congrats on the great progress!

Been Following your thread.
I'm also brainstorming on building a chrome extension, currently I'm researching on finding a problem I can solve by creating one... I think the market has good potential.

 

[Tau Ceti]

Wanna bet? Lol

I've been playing a lot with ChatGPT Plus & the new plugins. Super powerful. Using a free plugin might get me to pay $100/mo for Zapier. Wonder if that makes sense with your business model.

I am not really a betting kind of man but look, I am not saying it won't just that it is unlikely. I will push as hard as I can no matter what.

 

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[oneac]

Just read through this whole thread and wow.

Seeing the action you've been taking is sobering. I applaud you for your effort and thank you for mentioning Josh Comaeu, I'm going to pour over his stuff.

How influential has he been in your indie hacker journey? Do you have any other SaaS figures you look up to?

I'm following your journey and relate so much to your path. I'm in the process of leaving my hometown (saving money, clearing obligations, etc. I plan to leave in late December)

 

[Tau Ceti]

Just read through this whole thread and wow.

Seeing the action you've been taking is sobering. I applaud you for your effort and thank you for mentioning Josh Comaeu, I'm going to pour over his stuff.

How influential has he been in your indie hacker journey? Do you have any other SaaS figures you look up to?

I'm following your journey and relate so much to your path. I'm in the process of leaving my hometown (saving money, clearing obligations, etc. I plan to leave in late December)

I don't really look up to anyone, I follow some people on Twitter who are a few steps ahead of me.

Good luck with your move.

 

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[for]

September update

The MRR grew by $625 this month.

The current MRR is sitting at 2K currently but will most likely reach 2.5K by the end of October if everything goes well.

I hired an accountant to do my taxes. It's real PITA to do your taxes in Sweden if you are not an employee.
The state takes 50% of the gross revenue. It hurts just to think about it but it is what it is for now.

You would think that for this amount of taxes, you would get some world class health care and solid infrastructure but that is not the case, far from it. What does the Swedish government do with all that cash, I have no idea.

Anyway, I don't really care at them moment since my focus is on increasing the revenue not optimizing my taxes. That will come later once I reach 30K MRR.

I will be going on leave for 6 month from my job in January which means that I will be able to spend 6 months full time building the extension and the web app.

My wife will start working in January as well as she will graduate in December and is pretty much assured of getting a job since she works in healthcare.

So between my wife's income and the income from the extension, our standard of living will remain the same(we are not big spenders and we don't foresee any kind of massive expense in the next 12 months)

But until January, I have to keep working before work, after work and on the weekend. I know that I am pushing myself pretty hard and I don't think I will be able to keep going like this for too long so this leave will be welcome in order to keep my sanity.

I have about 20 to 30 users waiting in the wings to use the new features I am currently developing so I think I will be able to reach between 4k to 5k in MRR before the end of the year.

I am confident I'll be able to maintain an healthy gross profit margin of 85% to 90%.

The affiliate program I started hasn't yielded any new users so far. Oh well! It was a small investment of time and now the infrastructure for it is set up so if I want to onboard a new affiliate it should just work.

But I don't have any plans to do that just yet, the product is not mature enough and still has a lot of bugs.

That's it for now. Good luck to you all out there who are just starting. it's a tough journey but very rewarding.

Why haven't you incorporated so you can leave the profit in the company and avoid paying income taxes?

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Why haven't you incorporated so you can leave the profit in the company and avoid paying income taxes?

Because this is just the start of the journey, I still don't know if this business if entirely viable.

Also I am moving to another country within the next 18 months and I don't want to keep creating new companies in each new country. Seems like a PITA to me.

Eventually I will hire an accountant to do this stuff but until then I want to keep things simple.

Most countries have a sole-tradership set-up that can be used very easily, so I prefer to go with that for now.