Open Startup Report - July '24

If you want to get rich, don't build a startup..

Who knew free tools marketing would be such a hit. The free pdf invoice generator from last month worked pretty much instantly. Which was surprising because I’m used to my SEO efforts taking months to come to fruition. The invoice generator was the 4th most viewed page on our site in the last month and it’s definitely driving signups.

I’m not the only one who thinks free tools are a great marketing tactic.

Slowly slowly, catchy monkey

This month has been a bit slow in terms of dev and marketing activity. I’ve kept up with support and we’ve had a couple of new customers. Interestingly we’ve had some Pory.io users come onboard since I added a detailed guide to the help centre (reminder to myself to add guides for more website builders).

I’ve also picked up a bit of Stripe freelancing which is working quite well along side the SaaS business. I added a Stripe consulting link to the website in February more out of hope than any expectation that people would be interested. But I’ve had 6-7 calls already and this freelancing has also come out of it.

Ironically the freelancing is earning much more for the business than the software (thank you generous freelancing rate).

I noticed the potential for freelancing when I kept getting such varied feature requests for the product. After turning people down or trying to shoehorn features in I eventually decided that freelancing might be better for these bespoke requests while the software can handle the standard use-cases. I never expected it to take off.

While freelancing isn’t something I want to do full time, it keeps me in contact with potential customers and increases my network. I think of it like paid customer interviews, but they pay me.

Moving forward

I’m still sure that I need to pivot the product for it to really take off but I’ve made zero progress on that so far. I’ve also been working on a couple of unrelated microsaas ideas. I’m not in the multiple small bets camp by any means but these ideas help me scratch my itch to build and AI product without trying to force it into PriceWell. The first idea is a step one business (using the stair step approach by Rob Walling). This means it’s built on an existing marketplace which should take care of user acquisition.

My second microsaas is one to scratch my own itch (in fact both I’ll use even if no one else does) in the SEO space.

Let me know if you want to know more about my microsaas ideas.