Why your side project makes $0

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)

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 $)

[marc-lou]

I'm putting all I learned from entrepreneurship into videos, but my channel is still quite new.


Keep shipping ⚡

[VincePolston]

"Users don't care about the invisible. Users only care about one thing: they want a solution to their problems" -- facts

[deryckoe]

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.

[jarostaz]

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.

[Tomjnes]

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!

[tisaconundrum]

HAHA Ship to production!
The definition of "F**K IT, we're doing it live"
I love it

[mchuatak]

Thank you. This is really helpful for us who are just starting.

[fabianschwarzfritz]

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

[shramini]

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!

[nicolasdiot]

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

[chrismixlist]

Amazing advice. All of your latest videos have been packed with value. Thank you so much

[santoshkumar-wqqd]

Thanks for sharing your SAAS experience

[PretendCoding]

I save time by not making a non-dark mode. It's always dark mode. Always.

[dusdnd]

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.

[FlorinPop]

I'm calling it: 200k subs by the end of 2024

(if you continue to ship videos like this!)

[Silbtic]

Another great video Marc! You show failures and what you learned from it. That's the way to go!

[Glowdragon]

This video is so valuable that I created a new playlist for videos like this one.

[TheCoding]

You had me at "I do not use typescript". Subbed !

[comedyclub]

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.

[volimsir]

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?