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- May 31, 2021
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After 10 years (!) of my first post on this forum (read my intro), I'm back on my business journey.
As the title says, I created a SaaS some years ago that didn't get much traction with the market segment I was targeting at the time. I got a handful of clients but was challenging keeping them long-term. Over time all of them ended up not renewing their subscription.
I thought this could be a good opportunity to target the e-commerce space, and Shopify looked like the best place to offer the product:
- Merchants are used to paying for apps
- There are competitors in my category, which means people is already paying for solutions like mine
- I work as a Shopify Developer for small and big stores, and all of them are using a competitor app
- My co-founder (he joined me in 2019) is a marketing expert and works for a company that acquires SaaS companies
Why is my goal to sell my software?
Well, although there is still a (growing) need for this product, it's been years since I have this project running but with the constant financial pressure to make ends meet I always ended up overloaded with freelance projects.
Last year I decided to specialize in Shopify Development and raised my hourly fees significantly. This helped me to get hired by a multi-million Shopify merchant where I can work 3-5 hours per day.
That's enough to cover my expenses and have more time (and mental capacity) to make this project work.
In summary, this is where I'm at now:
By the way, here's a great thread by @jakobgreenfeld about finding opportunities in the Shopify space:
As the title says, I created a SaaS some years ago that didn't get much traction with the market segment I was targeting at the time. I got a handful of clients but was challenging keeping them long-term. Over time all of them ended up not renewing their subscription.
I thought this could be a good opportunity to target the e-commerce space, and Shopify looked like the best place to offer the product:
- Merchants are used to paying for apps
- There are competitors in my category, which means people is already paying for solutions like mine
- I work as a Shopify Developer for small and big stores, and all of them are using a competitor app
- My co-founder (he joined me in 2019) is a marketing expert and works for a company that acquires SaaS companies
Why is my goal to sell my software?
Well, although there is still a (growing) need for this product, it's been years since I have this project running but with the constant financial pressure to make ends meet I always ended up overloaded with freelance projects.
Last year I decided to specialize in Shopify Development and raised my hourly fees significantly. This helped me to get hired by a multi-million Shopify merchant where I can work 3-5 hours per day.
That's enough to cover my expenses and have more time (and mental capacity) to make this project work.
In summary, this is where I'm at now:
- MRR: $0 (LOL)
- Expenses: $15/mo
- DigitalOcean (servers): $10
- Tutanota (email service): $5
- The app is not listed/public yet (rejected a couple of times because of some stupid non-sense reasons given by the reviewer)
By the way, here's a great thread by @jakobgreenfeld about finding opportunities in the Shopify space:
WEB/DIGITAL - Shopify Apps are great businesses; here's how you can find profitable opportunities
Last week I got the chance to pick Daniel Sim's brain on the opportunities he's seeing related to Shopify apps. And what he shared is pure gold. Even if you don't care about Shopify apps you should keep reading because most of the frameworks and strategies he shared are directly applicable to...
www.thefastlaneforum.com
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