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Free Resources for Indie SaaS Devs
Free Resources for Indie SaaS Devs

Free Resources for Indie SaaS Devs

Tags
Saasify
SaaS
Published
January 18, 2020
Author
Travis Fischer
A breakdown of the best free resources I've found for developers bootstrapping their own indie SaaS businesses in 2020. 🔥
 

Intro

I’m a software engineer through and through.
I’m also trying to do the whole indie entrepreneur thing.
And recently I've started to really appreciate just how important marketing is to building a real business.
After spending a lot of time leveling up on the marketing & strategy side of things, I wanted to share some of the best resources I've found for developers like myself who are also learning to bootstrap, market, and sell their own indie SaaS products.

Resources

Epic Guide to Bootstrapping SaaS Startups

The Epic Guide to Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch - By Yourself (Part 1)
No co-founders. No funding. No connections. No customers. No - you're not nuts. But First, a Digression... Are you like me and completely sick of all the patronizing startup advice out there? You know, the kind that goes like this: "Just collect emails! I make $50K MRR and only launched to 100,000 email signups!"
The Epic Guide to Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch - By Yourself (Part 1)
https://blog.gettamboo.com/the-epic-guide-to-bootstrapping-a-saas-startup-from-scratch-by-yourself-part-1-4d834e1df8c1
The Epic Guide to Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch - By Yourself (Part 1)
Simply put this is the best overall resource I have found so far. It's down to earth, practical, the author doesn't take shit too seriously, and most importantly it's filled with very actionable strategy and tactics for SaaS founders.
Marketing is anything that gets people to know that you exist and that gets them excited about what you have to offer. - Clifford Oravec
Broken into five parts:
  1. Setting expectations & validating ideas
  1. The No-BS Approach to Building Your SaaS Startup’s Launch List
  1. Make It Rain: Building an MVP for Fun and Profit
  1. Ewww — Your Startup Funnel Is Leaking All Over Me!
  1. Real-World Startup Sales and Marketing for the Lost and the Clueless
 

Justin Jackson 🔥

How to get more customers
You've created a product. It meets a legitimate need. But how are you going to bring it to market? Rob Walling once told me: "making something people want isn't enough." It's true. Once you've launched a product, you need a steady stream of people lined up to buy it.
How to get more customers
https://medium.com/product-people/how-to-get-more-customers-54f64220e430
How to get more customers
Justin's writing and insights are extremely actionable. I'd also recommend checking out his additional content at Marketing for Developers and how blog posts on how to build something people want.
Bootstrapping reality
An honest look at bootstrapping and building a business online
Bootstrapping reality
https://justinjackson.ca/bootstrap
Bootstrapping reality
A developer who knows how to code and market a product is basically unstoppable. I want to help my developer friends to be unstoppable: to build, market, and sell their own software. - Justin Jackson
So so soooooo sooooooooo much 🔥in here – Justin Jackson's content is way better than mine. Seriously. Please stop reading this and check out his stuff.
 

Encharge Marketing

SaaS Ideas Validation - A Guide for Marketers
Competition in SaaS is spreading like wildfire. Which makes SaaS marketing and validating new SaaS ideas harder than ever before. Crunchbase boasts over 100K company records, and a quick Google search estimates more than 2M company pages on their site.
SaaS Ideas Validation - A Guide for Marketers
https://encharge.io/validating-saas-ideas/
SaaS Ideas Validation - A Guide for Marketers
These guys know the shit out of marketing. Like for reals.
Some of the best and most well organized content out there. I also ended up having a free consultation call with one of their founders to discuss marketing for my use case without it being sales call-y. Awesome sauce.
  1. How to Validate SaaS Ideas
  1. Pre-launch Marketing for SaaS
  1. How to grow your email list via engagement posts
  1. The essential guide to marketing automation for SaaS
  1. How to generate traffic with $0 marketing budget
  1. From idea to exit: how I launched, marketed, and sold my first SaaS
 

Micro SaaS E-Book

Bootstrapping a profitable SaaS Business. - Tyler Tringas
Welcome to the ebook on Building Micro-SaaS Businesses. What's Micro-SaaS? It is a software as a service business owned and operated by one person or a small team. These businesses are location-independent, high margin, low-risk with predictable recurring revenue. They are the lifestyle business of the future.
Bootstrapping a profitable SaaS Business. - Tyler Tringas
https://tylertringas.com/micro-saas-ebook/
Bootstrapping a profitable SaaS Business. - Tyler Tringas
"All the stuff I did wrong building a six figure Micro-SaaS business and how to do it better yourself. Anecdotes, pseudo-philosophy and self-deprecation." - Tyler Tringas
This free e-book is all about bootstrapping a profitable SaaS business. I really enjoyed the authors writing and found his concept of Micro-Saas businesses very analogous to what we're building at Saasify.
  1. What is Micro-SaaS and Why Should You Read This?
  1. What Makes a Good Micro-SaaS Idea?
  1. Finding Micro-SaaS Ideas
  1. From Idea to Building a Minimum Viable Product
  1. Getting Your First Customers
  1. Thriving in the Long, Slow, SaaS Grind
  1. Retention & Customer Support as a Solo Founder
It's also worth checking out the author's relatively new seed fund, Earnest Capital.
 

19 SaaS Marketing Strategies

There are lots of great posts from successful SaaS founders on SaaS Hacker, but this extremely focused summary of how Ahrefs bootstrapped itself to $40m ARR is definitely worth your time.
 

Marketing Examples

Marketing Examples - The finest real world marketing examples
A gallery of real world marketing examples from successful companies. Want to perfect your cold email, boost referrals or improve SEO? Browse the case studies or filter by category. See something you like. And get inspired. It's like Dribbble, but for marketers.
Marketing Examples - The finest real world marketing examples
https://marketingexamples.com/
Marketing Examples - The finest real world marketing examples
Awesome. Focused. Free.
 

Growth Design

Growth.Design - Better Products, Better Growth.
Level up your product skills with bite-sized tips. Learn the growth & design strategies used by the top product companies in the world.
Growth.Design - Better Products, Better Growth.
https://growth.design/
Growth.Design - Better Products, Better Growth.
Great set of case studies from larger companies around growth & UX. Their comic book format was really approachable, but maybe that's just cause I'm an anime / manga fan... 😂

Conclusion

It's really amazing to me the quality & quantity of free resources out there these days to help SaaS bootstrappers like myself level up our game.
Whether it's general product strategy, marketing strategy, specific tactics, examples to learn from, or just other like-minded founders venting about their experiences, 2020 is a really great time to be bootstrapping your own indie SaaS business.
If you're as interested in this stuff as I am, give a quick look-see at Saasify. We make it simple for developers to earn passive income from SaaS APIs.
And lastly, what other resources have you found the most useful for leveling up your SaaS game?? Hit me up & lemme know.
Cheers! 🙏
 
👉
Follow me on twitter for more awesome stuff like this @transitive_bs
Copyright 2022 Travis Fischer