How to start your own online SAAS business and make passive income.
Just like me most of the people online want to start a side hustle or an online business that makes passive income. They are many online gurus that explain various different hack or ways to make money online or like they say in their words “build an online empire” which sound very attractive but could also lead you towards their advantage. You often end up taking up their thousand-dollar courses to learn and make money online overnight but all those who commit this mistake should learn one thing that all that these online gurus teach you through their course, the same or more information is available online on Google and YouTube.
Let me help you out with just one of the most trusted and reliable way to start an online business, which will definitely put money in your pocket every month but the only thing stopping you is the effort and time you will need to invest. SAAS business involves a lot of promoting and this usually takes a few days or months to reach your first customer, but once you reach that first customer it will be very easy to scale from there onwards.
WHAT IS SAAS?
SAAS simply stands for software as a service. To make things simpler let me explain with an example. We have some online platforms like Netflix, ahrefs, Canva etc, these are examples of SAAS services. With these examples, we know now that a SAAS business or a SAAS website or a SAAS service is nothing but a platform or a website where you can subscribe to avail the services offered by the website. You will pay a monthly or yearly fee to get the services, just like Netflix where you pay 10$ per month to watch series and movies of your choice. Users pay a monthly fee to use the SEO tools from ahrefs and Semrush and similarly, you could pay Canva to utilize their designing tools to create some great artwork or attractive content.
DOES SAAS REALLY WORK?
Usually before starting any online business people have many doubts and questions in their minds. The most asked question is “Will the product/service I’m providing work?”, “Will I be able to make money with the business?”. The main advantage of a SAAS business is the ability to generate passive income. This is possible because you are selling your services online to customers for a fee every month which means you will earn an amount every month without having to worry about maintenance, inventory or anything. All you need to do is build a SAAS website and market it to your niche-specific customers and then reap profits every month through website monetization as well as monthly subscriptions.
For instance, when you subscribe to Netflix or Prime video, you will have to pay Netflix on a monthly basis in order to enjoy the entertainment available. Similarly when you promote your services to someone online and they subscribe, usually customers subscribe to your services for multiple months if they enjoy what you are providing. You just need to promote your service once and the customer will pay in a passive manner and you can enjoy recurring payments for doing nothing, this is basically like making money while you sleep.
HOW TO BUILD A SAAS BUSINESS?
- Hire a person to do the work for you. You can head over to freelancing websites like Fiverr or Upwork where there are thousands of developers who are experienced and professional. You could hire anyone based on your preference and ask them to build a SAAS website for you within 2 days.
- Using ready-made application/scripts. There are many websites where you can buy a pre-built SAAS application and host it as your own SAAS business. This is the easiest method in creating your own SAAS business online. Buying a ready-made SAAS script might cost you from 30$-90$ depending upon the type of service you are going to buy. On codecanyon.net you can search for and buy a SAAS service among the hundreds of options available.
HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR SAAS BUSINESS?
After you are done buying and setting up your SAAS website, we now move on to the most important part which is how to market your SAAS services. This is the core work that has to be done, setting up the business is the easier part and can be done within hours but promoting the services you offer will cost you time and effort.
The top 6 simple strategies to promote your SAAS business for free are:
- Sell as a gig: One of the easiest strategies to promote your services for free is through freelancing marketplaces. These days everyone knows about freelancing and freelancing websites, many of us are also interested in making money freelancing on these websites. What you could do is simply sell your services as a gig on Fiverr. This is also useful because if you get customers by selling your services as a gig on Fiverr then you will be able to avoid buying the extended license for the SAAS application which is usually expensive for most beginners. Later on when you have around 20 or 25 customers and you have the money to invest and buy the extended license you can go ahead and activate your membership inside your service.
- SAAS listing: Listing your SAAS business on any SAAS listing website is a great way to start for beginners. Popular websites like producthunt.com, appsumo.com, discovercloud.com, stacksocial.com, saasmantra.com, saasgenius.com and many more. On these websites, you can create your account and list your SAAS script here for other people to see them and rank your services. NOTE: Not all of these websites allow you to post your SAAS business for free, some websites may charge you for listing your services. But you need to make sure to do the research for all these websites and select the one that makes more sense to you and your business, be it free or paid.
- Video tutorials: YouTube is a very important platform that could be used to promote your business through a video format. If you are a beginner you could utilize YouTube to create videos based on the services you offer. Make sure you provide value in the form of your videos and the main motive is not just to promote your online business. Let them know how the services that you are offering will help them in their business or help them in their daily life, make sure the videos you create and post give out benefits that could be used by your audience. If you provide value and knowledge to your audience they will love to interact with you and ask you to help them solve their problem.
- Create e-books: You could make your own e-book or get one for free on the internet. It is easier to get a free e-book of your niche for download on websites like freeplrdownload.com and plrfreeonline.com. Inside the e-books, you could add your own links which will direct the reader to your services. In this way, you will be providing the reader with an e-book full of value and also you will be able to promote your services with the help of links in the e-book. After you create your own e-book you could post this on various social media handles and provide value to your audience for free.
- Blog: Creating a blog is very important. You can either create a free blog on blogger.com or pay a small amount for hosting and create an actual website for your blog. Now you can post various articles on your blog and inside the articles you can promote whatever you want. Readers interest in the topic will surely click on the link you have mentioned inside your article. This way you will be creating content that will be full of value and also you will be able to grow your online business.
- Quora: This is personally one of my favourite platforms where you can promote your business. Quora.com is a free Q&A platform where you can search for answers and also ask people for answers. What you can do is answer questions related to your SAAS business and then promoting it by mentioning links. Make sure not to spam your links as this will catch the attention of Quora bots and you may be banned. All you need to do is provide valuable answers to your audience and mention your links in some answers.
Usually, the SAAS business models in the long term are very successful as they can generate passive income for you and who wouldn't want to make money in their sleep. It requires hard work to build your own SAAS business, it will take a couple of months but you need to be consistent and keep in mind that the main goal is to grow and never look back.
