Ask HN: One-man SaaS, how do you attract customers?

9 points by skwee357 7 hours ago

11 comments

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I'm struggling with attracting customers to my SaaS, while having to navigate the bullshit advice thrown around by so called "indie-hackers".

Paying for ProductHunt, or building a Twitter audience, probably works if you sell to other indie hackers. But when you have a product that is designed to solve a problem, like I do, I believe a different approach is needed.

I tried to build content around the service, to hit popular keywords, and while it works to some extent, it seems to die off quickly. I tried ads, but the CPC is too high, and since I don't operate on a subscription model it doesn't make economic sense. I also tried so-called passive marketing, i.e., monitoring keywords related to my service on, say, Reddit, and replying with a real (not-AI generated) reply with a link to my service, needless to say, I was banned.

So, one-man SaaS owners, how do you attract customers?

codingdave 3 hours ago

Forget ads, SEO, and social media. Everyone is so used to low-value content and spam that they won't pay attention. And even if your intent to sell your SaaS is legit, it is still spam when you are sending it into web sites that aren't interested.

Instead, think about who your audience really is - where else do they read, listen, and talk? In my experience, the best marketing happens when you can answer that question.

My favorite anecdote is that one of the successful SaaS companies I worked at grew in part due to radio ads on NPR. That worked because our market was education, and people who are professional educators tended to listen to NPR.

It can be that simple - if you reject online ads and presence as a marketing tool, what else is left? That is probably where to invest marketing dollars and energy. Be different, not part of the online noise.

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achempion 3 hours ago

The main problem is that as software engineers we start with product first and figure out distribution later once we built it. In order to build successful products you need to have an insight into the distribution to win customers, so it makes sense to figure out customer acquisition plan in advance.

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aristofun 5 hours ago

If you’re alone you basically have only 2 options:

1. Be on a fresh wild and growing market where everybody grows (like ai as overhyped as it is).

2. Be soo good at something, at least in a single critical feature, that every customer you have feels a relief and becomes your word of mouth channel. It’s not always hard, since most b2c products suck. But its not that easy too, because solo founders tend to have b2c mentality where they see for instance a better UX a killer feature. That is often not the case for b2b.

Anything else means basically competing with bigger players for customers. Guess who has more money to win the game?

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vhodges 6 hours ago

Is it b2c or b2b? imo/experience, b2b SaaS are the only ones that ever succeed. If not subscriptions, how do you generate revenue? Really it's either build an audience or cold calling. Note: I've never succeeded with any of my startups (for a bunch of reasons) so take with a grain of salt.

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  • skwee357 6 hours ago

    It's both B2C and B2B. And it's a one time payment.

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    • vhodges 5 hours ago

      So a marketplace kind of app? (if so, you now have to build two audiences!) Do they self host after the sale? (Friction for b2b side). Is it enterprise (eg high touch sales - leads to long sales cycles)? Pay per post?

      At the end of the day, it comes down to marketing and sales. Marketing:

        - Craft the messaging around the pain point you're solving
  - word of mouth
  - advertising (there are different kinds, not just cpc/google adwords: guest posts, external content sites/blogs/channels in your market/demographic, etc)
  - organic search (content marketing - this takes time - AND you have to promote the channels you are publishing too)
  - cold calling
      I follow a fee for service financial adviser on YT and they have content marketing down: 2 videos every week and a newsletter. These channels show they understand the needs of their potential customers, demonstrate domain expertise, etc
      Reply View 1 reply
    • ezekg 4 hours ago

      Why is your SaaS a one-time payment? That's very atypical for SaaS.

      Reply View 2 replies
      • skwee357 3 hours ago

        Because that's the model that works best, and in-fact that is THE one feature that is different from all other similar products in this market.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • throwaway48540 2 hours ago

          I'd be very nervous if somebody told me they will host my business data or otherwise provide a service to me forever for a single time payment. Maybe that's what makes your customers go away.

          Reply View 0 replies
Lionga an hour ago

If you say you solve a real problem, you know it is real because you know people who have that problem right?

Go talk to them to see if your solution actually solves their problem.

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