How I Sold My SaaS for $2,200 Instead of Shutting It Down ❌

It all started 2 months ago, at the end of December 2023.

I was shutting down my failed SaaS after 6 months of hard work.

This was the 5th failed SaaS business of mine.

And I was thinking,

How can I make sure I don't fail next time?

And then it hit me.

Why search for a "ground-breaking" idea and hope for the best when you can just look for already existing profitable SaaS products, see what they're doing wrong, and fix it?

I searched the internet for SaaS products, looked at their reviews on G2, Canny, anywhere I could.

Eventually, I found it: a social media management tool.

The market is big, the UI/UX is mostly bad, and that's where I can step in.

My post exploded, so I decided to pursue this and start building in public!

That's exactly what I did...

For one month, I posted daily about my updates and got lots of engagement.

For the first time, I was actually feeling like I'm doing something right.

I shared the bad and the good - people loved it!

After one month of mainly fighting with Meta and TikTok to let me have their API access, I was finally able to launch the product.

The launch went kind of terribly.

Made it to #15 in day rank, with only 114 upvotes, which was really disappointing.

Got like 40 sign-ups from the launch, but mostly from people who just wanted to test out the product.

Tried Google and Meta paid ads, reached out to hundreds of people through cold DMing, tried launching an affiliate program, but nothing worked!

That's where I realized I'm targeting the wrong audience.

How am I supposed to get any customers if (A) I don't have much money to spend on ads, therefore it cannot work, and (B) I don't have any TikTok or Meta audience?

That's where I realized I must have an X integration too, because that's where my audience is.

The problem is, the X API costs $100/mo for minimal rate limits.

I don't have that kind of money.

I haven't worked a 9-5 since I started this indie hacking journey (2.5 years ago).

I had like $200 left in my bank account.

I said f*** it, and went for it anyway.

Paid for the X API, and told myself I have one month to bring in at least 10 paying customers.

I was posting about it non-stop on X.

Eventually got to like 200 free users, and 1 paying customer, it was better than before, but still was not worth it.

I even found out later that this paying customer only paid because he wanted to make me feel better because he saw how hard I was working without making any money.

At this point, I had to give up. I didn't have any money left, even if I wanted to continue with SocialKiwi, I just couldn't...

I was bummed. I didn't know how to continue from this point. Wanted to start another product, but I had $0 in my bank account.

Started asking myself, what should I create next? How would I market it? and so on.

Suddenly, I got so many offers to buy SocialKiwi landing in my X DMs.

I was shocked! People actually wanted to buy that.

It all started from one person who said "$600 and I'm paying you right now!"

Since I got so many messages, I decided to hold on to him because I might get a higher offer.

Which I did! Someone came around and said $1,500! I was about to sell to him, and then someone emailed me and said he's willing to pay $2,200 🤯

I decided to sell.

And this is how, instead of shutting down my product and making -$282 in revenue, I was able to flip the table, not shut it down, and make money off of it!

If you guys loved this story, make sure to follow me on X! I've learned a lot from this project.

Watch how I'm gonna hit $10k in MRR by the end of this year.