Why your side project makes $0
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- Опубликовано: 14 июн 2024
- I went from $1K/month to $83K/month in 2 years. Here are 5 mistakes I made as a developer building micro startups (SaaS, AI tools, boilerplate & habits tracker)
🔗 All my startups - www.marclou.com
⚡️ Ship your startup in days, not weeks - shipfa.st/
💡 Newsletter for solopreneurs (14K readers) - marclou.beehiiv.com/
📸 Instagram - / marclouvion
💼 LinkedIn - / marclouvion
🐦 Twitter - / marc_louvion
00:00 - Intro (from 25% to 100% profitability)
00:30 - Mistake 1
03:30 - Mistake 2
04:33 - Mistake 3
07:10 - Mistake 4
08:11 - Mistake 5
09:56 - Outro (the difference between devs who earn $) 
Наука
I'm putting all I learned from entrepreneurship into videos, but my channel is still quite new.
You can find more content on my blog - especially about marketing & mindset - marclou.beehiiv.com
Keep shipping ⚡
Hi Marc
Can you make a video about your marketing strategies🙌🏻
hey, Marc With lots of projects,I don't know how you find time for reading people's comments but I would love help you out with your newsletter and I want to write you a free email for your newsletter. What do u think? lmk
Hey Marc Lou,
your videos are amazing and really insightful
How do creatives/developers intern for you?
would love to be of service to you and learn how to be an indie hacker at the same time
Would love a video where you recommend how to learn how to code.
I am a good web designer but I have only used CMS systems and cant code. I want to start a project that requires coding and I dont know wether I should buy help or code it myself
"Users don't care about the invisible. Users only care about one thing: they want a solution to their problems" -- facts
They sure don't care about my invisible channel name.
I don't entirely agree with his points after, I can't count the amount of times I've opened a website in light mode and since it doesn't have or support dark mode I instantly clicked off because it killed my eyes. I think some small easy to implement features like that can help with retention
Yes. And someone to sue when it goes wrong.
Mistake List:
1) Free plan
2) Shiny Tech Syndrome
3) Subscriptions
4) Bad headline
5) Over engineering
To do list*
Free plan is not a bad thing for kinda major projects which you come up with new idea. You might even have similar apps already exist on the market free plan brings customers and feedback in early stages. Than you can refactor app according to user feedbacks and new features. Than it is better to go premium features after some popularity and taking feedback stage.
@@selimmidikoglu5534 yes free plan or demo is a must, or at least money back
@@selimmidikoglu5534 No Free plan is bad. But it might be too late to change this mistakes in the industry.
Ayo its my man coding papi
I feel a read a 600 pages entrepreneurship book in 10 minutes. So much knowledge in this video. Having the certainty you are sharing everything based on your own experience with proven results makes it even better. Keep going. You are killing it man. Congratulations.
Haha I agree with all the points, building a product is more fun than marketing, but earning a profit is even more fun! Great video as always.
💯
nice videos man, maybe i should make some too lol
@@mr.objective7703 Thanks! You should!
HAHA Ship to production!
The definition of "F**K IT, we're doing it live"
I love it
I dont usually comment on vidoes but honestly this video was great really informative and didnt feel like i was being sold bs, just honest information based of your experience. Keep up the great vids man and gd luck on future projects!
Thank you. This is really helpful for us who are just starting.
Marc, this is golden! Discovered your channel thanks to the youtube algorithm a few weeks ago and can't stress enough how valuable your insights are for the fellow solo devs out there. Huge thanks!
Amazing advice. All of your latest videos have been packed with value. Thank you so much
Another great video Marc! You show failures and what you learned from it. That's the way to go!
Great video! Thank you for sharing your experience, I can definitely relate
Marc growing on social media like a 🚀
Love the content Marc. I am working on a SaaS now using your advice.
You had me at "I do not use typescript". Subbed !
Thank you Marc, that is so well explained.
Awesome video. Your advice is perfect for me. I'm launching my SaaS this month! Wish me luck!
I save time by not making a non-dark mode. It's always dark mode. Always.
Love the content Marc! Thank you these videos are great insights
This advice is gold! I often find myself guilty of doing some of these things. I still have a very hard time believing you launch fully functional software businesses in a few days. Would love to see some of your live streams recordings.
hi marc, thanks for sharing this amazing knowledge, I was very confident about selling my sass as a subscription model but not sure anymore after watching you, thanks a lot
I'm working on a side project right now and this video is perfect timing for me as I'm trying to figure out how to monetize it. Thanks for the insight!
Thanks for sharing your SAAS experience
Hey Marc, great video!
I also want to start building things on my own, but I have a really hard time coming up with ideas. Maybe it's because most of the time I just build stuff for other people.
Maybe you could do a video on that? How you come up with ideas about a project/startup you want to build?
Hi, thanks for sharing all this. It is very insightful and your content is very inspiring.
Amazing! Having launched few weeks ago, I almost did the exact same mistakes! I really like the content and format!
Marc, this is damn good piece of content. Inspirational. Love you.
Thanks for the tips!
Super helpful
Very much valuable information. Thanks for sharing ❤
Loved your explanation, man!
Thank you for the video Marc!
Amazing video, straight to the point ✅
finally a geniune video. love ya man
Amazing video Marc🔥
Solid advice, thanks so much!!
That was crazy helpful. Thank you
Thank You sir.. I need to write these things down in my github online portfolio. These insights are gold.
Thanks for the video brother 🤘🏽
Great stuff Marc!
Love your videos Marc!
great tips bro, keep it up. merci
Wow, thank you for #3. I was wondering how I was going to implement the one time payment for an OpenAI wrapper. I will definitely use the pay per use model.
I will investigate more about it.
watchign this video makes me thing I need to shift my mindset so much, sound exciting
Thank you this was really insightful and helpful. By the way I just subscribed
Great stuff. Crucial value
Just because all of the software industry wants to move to subscriptions doesn't mean it makes sense. If it is a service that has compute and storage around it... and you provide a justifiable value, subscriptions make sense. If you're making an app that you ship which has usage not dependent on a backend... release it like traditional software. Accept a one-time payment for that version with updates for a year, or some reasonable time. When a new version comes out... a new charge, and it can include a discount for existing customers.
What a great video. Thank you!!!
Excellent tips! I agree with everything you said.. Sadly learnt the hard way!
This video is so valuable that I created a new playlist for videos like this one.
Love the video Marc.
00:02 Offering a free plan can kill your revenue
01:19 Free plans may hinder profitability for solo entrepreneurs
02:34 Provide free tools for users to try before purchasing
03:55 Users prioritize solutions over aesthetics.
05:14 Subscriptions have drawbacks for both business owners and users.
06:34 Implement a pay-per-use system for fair user pricing
07:53 Craft an excellent headline for your project.
09:12 Remove anything not directly valuable to the customer.
Crafted by Merlin AI.
Glad we have Marc sharing his gems
Pretty sound! Thanks!
I clicked on this video, because of the typescript logo crossed. Typescript is total crap. I've tried it first time on my new fulltime job enterprise project and I couldn't believe everyone in the team was happy with it. It slowed down development speed so much compared to what I did in the previous company. Can't agree more that if you have your tech stack, don't even think to update unless you feel updating would give you much benefits to development speed and experience.
Thanks a lot @marc-lou these are amazing lessons I am learning quite a lot.
Very nice video man. Learnt a lot
great content Marc!
It was helpful. Thanks Marc
Hmm, this is insightful. I guess I will put a few unnecessary features on my app on hold for now. And also try the pay for what you use model. Thanks again for the insight
Amazing content, thank you for sharing
Awesome video Marc! I'm thinking of getting rid of my free plan on my app for a while, this might be a solution to unlock some revenue!
Very good video thank you for sharing your experience
Excelent video, educating and for some reason even motivating😂
Very valuable video. Thanks!
amazing advice, thank you very much
Thanks Marc for these tips ! They are very valuable!
Could you please tell us about how you started your journey on twitter ?
Salut et super contenu merci. Je regarde un peu car j'essaye de voir des opportunités d'apprendre et éventuellement d'en dégager un revenu afin d'être indépendant sans pour autant gagner des sommes astronomiques. Et puis quand je vois un autre surfeur ca fait plaisir.
Moi ce qui m'intéresserait ca serait de connaître ton parcours plus en détails, et surtout ton cheminement pour l'apprentissage. Je m'intéresse un peu aux possibilités du nocode/lowcode actuellement. J'avais tenté un début sur les bases html et java de mémoire mais je n'ai pas continué.
En ce moment je check la formation de base gratuite sur contournement et donc j'abord airtable, zapier, softr etc... J'aime bien. A voir si je persiste. C'est pour ca que c'est toujours intéressant d'avoir des pistes et vu que tu sembles partager volontiers ton parcours.
Enfin je cherche de quoi apprendre et progresser. Idem j'ai une petite chaîne sur les jeux de société (rien à voir) mais je pense possiblement ouvrir une nouvelle chaîne youtube sur un autre sujet, pourquoi pas mon apprentissage en la matière. Mais je n'aime pas trop montrer ma tête même si elle est normale 😅.
Aller merci à toi et à bientôt. J'aurais pu l'écrire en anglais mais bon on va faire exception :)
Thanks. Very usefull information!
Like always, a Great Video. Cheers.
I agree with all points, amazing content 🔥I think without a free plan they will just not use it and there will be the same 3% that bought or maybe a bigger percentage. Trials a way to go anyway
Love the unique content.
Hey Marc,
Kinda curious, you said that you stuck with the one time payment plan for your landing page generator, just wanted to know how do you keep up with the expenses? I assume internally the app utilizes openAI APIs to keep up and stuff, so do you provide the source-code and the user is. asked to self-host? I mean, keeping up with open AI usage, hosting, database usage for LIFETIME doesn't sound very sustainable
Thank you for this great content. Please can you teach your marketing techniques ?
Man, can you make a video about how do you sell? I`m stuck in it. Great work bro! Thanks a lot!
Reset password is vrry important, i was able to bring back some user who tried my app 2 years ago when its very simple and the app is very good i email them back and they came back and reset the password
So to sum up the positive:
- Use one-time payment or pay-per use
- If you have recurring external costs, use pay-use (credits)
- Alternative 1: very limited trial / free time with either 7-days time or some free credits.
- Alternative 2: Make some simple part of the app free, make the main part paid
- The should be MVP minimal and shipped to the customer
Great video very nice tips!
Unfortunately I couldn’t agree more. I did all the mistakes you mentioned and much more on top. But what doesn’t kill me right…🎉
I watched your video and immediately changed the H1 of my website. 😅
Really cool editing. Do you edit your own or do you have an editor?
can you do a video on how to get legal information for your startup? like do i need to buy lawyer services for terms and conditions and other legal things that may need to be specified in my website.
Love the T-Shirt! Where can I see the full graphic?
Love it ! I'm currently developing a SaaS this month with your advice : same tech stack, no typescript, no test, no subscription but life time payment and no free plan. Just keep it simple with one main functionality and launch in one month maximum
What's the plan for the lifetime membership when you decide to close your product in 6 months' time? No offence intended, that's just what happens with most products and I am genuinely curious
Something that isn't addressed in the video (because it's probably not important for the solo entrepreneurs??) is that subscriptions are a good method for an ongoing exchange of value. As a user I like this because my regular payments are incentivising the developer to continuously deliver me value, meaning 1. they won't shut down and 2. they will keep improving the product to stay competitive. One-time "lifetime" payments offer neither of those.
Why no typescript?
All the BIG pitfalls. So well explained
so good, thanks!
Excellent content 👏
Amazing advices ❤
Another reason why companies like Vercel can offer a free plan is that the free plan is limited enough to keep someone from using it in large scale. And since you get used to it for your side projects and see the benefits, you are more likely to consider it for your large scale projects, e.g. at your 9-5 job. What I'm trying to say: Free plans might work, it highly depends on the product you want to bring to the market.
Thank for your force my dream back again. I came from Thailand but I love you.
Great stuff, but what I'm really interested in is how do you market yourself? I've created a couple of side projects which ended up making 0 profits simply because I suck at marketing and there was no real traction there.
What do you do for licence agreements? Like who is liable if your servers are down or you sell the ownership for something you charged a one-time only fee for?
I about indiepage just now... so wish to follow this path!
Marc, How do you calculate the relationship between new visitors and monthly visitors? 1:32
only practical wisdom that really works.
Can you make a vid on how you learned the necessary skills to build a product in just days?
Your channel is amazing
Amazing and practical
The problem I have with one time payments is that I can't decide to stop with the project in a few years if some users still use it, cause they paid for a 'lifetime'..
Another great video!
Cool, thank you very much!