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Passive income is a myth, right?
Correct.
Unless you have a huge amount to invest up front, it really is.
But before I sold it, my Yep.so SaaS was making $750 a month for roughly an hour of work.
That’s about as passive as any income I’ve ever made.
I spoke to a developer friend yesterday who has a SaaS earning a similar amount and he admitted he hasn’t thought about it in months.
Hang around on Twitter/X long enough and you’d think $750/month wasn’t anything to brag about.
But when I told my parents they couldn’t believe it.
In the real world $750 a month for basically no work is unheard of.
And that’s why I’m addicted to searching for my next SaaS idea and beating that amount.
And to be honest, I think a lot of other people should be doing the same.
Let me explain further.
Wait, rewind, what is SaaS?
If you’re old enough, you might remember the days when you bought software in a box containing CDs, or even floppy disks.
You physically went to the shop to get it.
And it was expensive. I remember paying £700 for a copy of Logic Pro for my music career that went nowhere.
As the internet got faster, it became possible to download software.
And as it became faster still, it became possible to run software in your browser.
Along with this came a new business model: SaaS. Software-as-a-service.
Instead of buying software once, installing it, and using it until it stopped working, you paid a monthly fee to use it and got continual updates to it.
It’s the difference between buying a car and running it into the ground (large initial outlay, no updates), and leasing a car on monthly payments which you can swap for a newer model every couple of years.
The benefits for the buyer are good:
- No big up front cost
- Continual improvements to the product
The benefits for the seller are even better (we’re talking SaaS now, not cars):
- Predictable recurring income every month
- Release an imperfect product and improve/iterate as you go
- Can increase price over time
- Costs stay low as revenue scales
- Marketing efforts compound
Building a software as service product is about as compelling as a business model gets.
Having predictable income stretching indefinitely into the future is any business owner’s dream.
And software scales like nothing else. Your cost to service 1 customer, 100 customers, 1000 customers, probably won’t change much. But your revenues will.
This is why I’ve been wanting to build SaaS products for a decade. I just couldn’t.
I can’t build a SaaS, I can’t code!
A few years ago I would have completely agreed. It was an impossible dream.
But in 2024, no-code makes it legitimately possible to build SaaS products without being able to code.
Some examples:
- David Bressler built an AI SaaS with Bubble which is now valued at over $1 million.
- James Devonport built a Shopify app in Bubble and was able to quit his job to work on it.
- Andrew Vernon - built a photography SaaS in Bubble and now has two incomes.
The amazing thing about these stories is they worked in regular non-technical jobs before they built their SaaS projects.
This is why I think no-coders actually have a strong advantage over coders when it comes to SaaS products.
Coding is hard.
To learn it, you have to devote a serious amount of time.
That’s why most coders do it for a career. You can’t just do it as a hobby. You need to be constantly learning new languages and frameworks, staying up-to-date, and honing your skills.
Building with nocode is much faster to learn, and less work to keep up with.
Almost every nocoder I know learned it on the side while working a full-time job.
And it’s these other jobs and careers that present the opportunities.
We have exposure and in-depth knowledge of niche sectors that career developers don’t have.
- Maybe you’re a teacher who realises the software your school uses is not fit for purpose.
- Maybe you’re a personal trainer who’s cobbling together a makeshift CRM with Google sheets and looking for a better way.
- Maybe you’re an architect who spends hours reading through building regulations and thinks it’s a waste of your time.
- Maybe you work in any traditional industry and are fed up using outdated software.
But how do I get ideas for a good SaaS to build?
In my next post I’m going to break down the 5 steps you can take to escape your day job via the SaaS exit door.
Be ready 👊
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