The effort to build a SaaS is immense, and I imagine building a SaaS to be like building an app on easy-mode. While building a SaaS, you're in full control of the entire customer journey - from discovery and getting their email, to convincing them to trial, to converting to a paid customer. While building an app, you're stuck with whatever your walled garden lets you do.
The learning curve to convincing people to spend a recurring sum of money with you is very steep compared to getting them to pay for something once. Consider writing what you know about a topic for a blog, then use that blog as marketing while you write a small book on how to solve a thorny problem for that topic. Significantly lower time investment for a decent pay-off (a few thousand bucks if its your first time, and it's a valuable problem to solve).
That being said, the part that makes it "worth it" for me is how much I've learned about running a business, marketing, sales, and product management. Things I never get a chance to explore as part of my day job as a frontend software engineer. If I purely measured hours spent vs money earned, no, not worth it, but sometimes things are worth doing for reasons other than money.
- https://onlineornot.com (a SaaS)
- https://maxrozen.com (info products)
- https://deploywithflags.com (another SaaS, started recently)
The effort to build a SaaS is immense, and I imagine building a SaaS to be like building an app on easy-mode. While building a SaaS, you're in full control of the entire customer journey - from discovery and getting their email, to convincing them to trial, to converting to a paid customer. While building an app, you're stuck with whatever your walled garden lets you do.
The learning curve to convincing people to spend a recurring sum of money with you is very steep compared to getting them to pay for something once. Consider writing what you know about a topic for a blog, then use that blog as marketing while you write a small book on how to solve a thorny problem for that topic. Significantly lower time investment for a decent pay-off (a few thousand bucks if its your first time, and it's a valuable problem to solve).
That being said, the part that makes it "worth it" for me is how much I've learned about running a business, marketing, sales, and product management. Things I never get a chance to explore as part of my day job as a frontend software engineer. If I purely measured hours spent vs money earned, no, not worth it, but sometimes things are worth doing for reasons other than money.