My SaaS Product has made $3,650 already 🤩 But there's a flip side to the story...

Simon Hoiberg
6 replies
So, I released FeedHive in public beta 6 weeks ago. I think it's a good time to look at the total profit of my product at this very moment. And there's a flip side to the story 😉 In total, FeedHive has made: $3,650 That's great. But let's take a look at some of the expenses. We got a UX Engineer involved, and he's currently building a new marketing website. It's really cool 🔥 But we also had to pay him for his hard work. -$3,500 For FeedHive, we're using Crisp chat. It's really adding a lot of value. But of course, we need to pay for a service like that. It's $30/month, and we've been using it for 3 months. -$30 * 3 = -$90 In order to develop professionally, we're using a GitHub Organization on the paid plan. On GitHub, you pay $4 pr. member / month. Since we have paid yearly for 4 members, we spent around $300 on GitHub so far. -$300 FeedHive runs on AWS. We architected the solution really well, but of course, there are still server costs. On average, we have paid around $1.6 / month in 3 months, so: -$5 NB: It's worth noting that the average price of $1.6 included two months of closed beta. The price of February (the first month of public beta) was $3.74 Now, stuff gets heavy! I canceled all contracts with my clients to go full-time on FeedHive. I'm only gonna look at the current month. I typically invoiced my clients $20K-$25K in total, pr. month. Let's make it an even $20K, for the argument here. I stopped working as a consultant on the 10th of March, so I'm estimating a loss in profit of $20K / 3 * 2 = $13K. So, let's break down the total expenses: -$3,500 -$90 -$300 -$5 -$13,000 = -$16,895 So, we can now calculate the total profit of FeedHive at this very point in time: $3,650 -$16,895 = -$13,245 Yup, that's right 😎 We're down with around $13K. Whenever you see people posting their MRR, remember: There's more to the story 😉 Do I still believe in FeedHive even though I've lost money so far? Yes, I totally do 🚀

Replies

Alex Casillas
For me and OTPfy it's been the same since I've started the development back in September 2020. There's a lot of investment with no return at all during the development process and during the first year of the company lifetime, this is a reality for everyone who's running a company for the first time without any VC investment or any other type of funding. I've been checking FeedHive recently and I'll definitely schedule all of my twitter campaigns though it because it's a great product and I hope nothing but the best for you @simonhoiberg and for FeedHive!!
Simon Hoiberg
@alex_casillas Thank you so much, Alex 🙏 That makes me really happy to hear! I just checked out OTPfy and it looks great! The best of luck to you as well.
Przemek Szustak
There's no gain without an investment :)
Alexa Vovchenko
Absolutely agree that stories about MRR are a bit overpromising :D But sometimes it's so important to know you generate revenue, even if the maths says it's not enough to upkeep