Pivoting to SaaS?

[OnlineDopamine]

Hi guys,

after over 5 years of blogging, doing the classic "targeting low hanging fruits & monetizing via display ads" route, I was finally hit by the last two updates.

The party, especially considering the push of AI, seems to be nearing its end. I'm sure that there's still money to be made, but I make $15k/month working 20hrs/week as a PM freelancer, so the juice isn't really worth the squeeze for me anymore (I wrote most of the content myself).

I always wanted to learn how to code and with the rise of LLMs, it appears to be easier than ever. Google, thanks to those AI developments, also seems to favor real businesses, so SaaS and other companies seem to be prominently favored in the SERPs.

My idea was to learn how to code (wrapping up the WebDev Cert by FreeCodeCamp right now) and focus on building small web apps, only using my SEO skills as a customer acquisition channel. Maybe doing some building in public like the popular Twitter folks (I've met some of the more famous ones during my travels before, so they could potentially help as well).

Has anyone made the transition from SEO to coding? What was the journey like?

 

[CCarter]

only using my SEO skills as a customer acquisition channel.

So SEO will still be your life blood? How are you pivoting?

If you are going to do a SAAS find influencers that cater to the audience you are targeting, whether it be a blogger, vlogger, podcast, IG or TikToker, whatever and strike up a deal to get in front of their audience. Can be lifetime affiliate commission or straight up pay them for an email drop or mention to their audience.

Going to people that "build in public", I am assuming programmers are their audience, will only get you programmers seeing your SAAS, waste of time. You need your target audience to buy from you - Period.

If you operate and negotiate like there is no such thing as Google, the creativity will flow.

Otherwise you are just doing another SEO project, but you changed your monetize method from display or affiliate, and with a SAAS you now have to support and maintain the customers so they keep paying.

 

[BakerStreet]

Hi guys,

after over 5 years of blogging, doing the classic "targeting low hanging fruits & monetizing via display ads" route, I was finally hit by the last two updates.

The party, especially considering the push of AI, seems to be nearing its end. I'm sure that there's still money to be made, but I make $15k/month working 20hrs/week as a PM freelancer, so the juice isn't really worth the squeeze for me anymore (I wrote most of the content myself).

I always wanted to learn how to code and with the rise of LLMs, it appears to be easier than ever. Google, thanks to those AI developments, also seems to favor real businesses, so SaaS and other companies seem to be prominently favored in the SERPs.

My idea was to learn how to code (wrapping up the WebDev Cert by FreeCodeCamp right now) and focus on building small web apps, only using my SEO skills as a customer acquisition channel. Maybe doing some building in public like the popular Twitter folks (I've met some of the more famous ones during my travels before, so they could potentially help as well).

Has anyone made the transition from SEO to coding? What was the journey like?

My business partner is a LLM researcher. He says that even in coding LLMs, the LLM advancement is so quick that a lot of projects are obsolete when they're still in pre-seed phase. Crazy but that's how fast technology is developing.
In terms of financial security, I'd keep your day job definitely.

 

[OnlineDopamine]

So SEO will still be your life blood? How are you pivoting?

If you are going to do a SAAS find influencers that cater to the audience you are targeting, whether it be a blogger, vlogger, podcast, IG or TikToker, whatever and strike up a deal to get in front of their audience. Can be lifetime affiliate commission or straight up pay them for an email drop or mention to their audience.

Going to people that "build in public", I am assuming programmers are their audience, will only get you programmers seeing your SAAS, waste of time. You need your target audience to buy from you - Period.

If you operate and negotiate like there is no such thing as Google, the creativity will flow.

Otherwise you are just doing another SEO project, but you changed your monetize method from display or affiliate, and with a SAAS you now have to support and maintain the customers so they keep paying.

Hey mate, thanks for the reply & no, I misspoke: SEO is just going to be part of the traffic mix and I also don't plan on marketing to other indie hackers. That was just to give context on the types of projects I aim to build.

The general idea would be to copy successful products (e.g., talknotes.io) and tailor them to local markets (Germany, where I'm from, in my case) to learn coding, FB/Google ads, etc., then drive traffic via SEO, socials, and so forth.

My business partner is a LLM researcher. He says that even in coding LLMs, the LLM advancement is so quick that a lot of projects are obsolete when they're still in pre-seed phase. Crazy but that's how fast technology is developing.
In terms of financial security, I'd keep your day job definitely.

Oh yeah, definitely will continue doing freelance, the money is just way too attractive to give up. Plus, don't think that product managers will be replaced anytime soon by an LLM as the job is inherently human-centered.

 

[Steve Brownlie]

My business partner is a LLM researcher. He says that even in coding LLMs, the LLM advancement is so quick that a lot of projects are obsolete when they're still in pre-seed phase. Crazy but that's how fast technology is developing.
In terms of financial security, I'd keep your day job definitely.

Surely a lot of the SaaS they're seeing failing though are just the silly 'wrappers around GPT' things that people built - like 'chat with PDF' etc that were obviously just going to become part of chatGPT and gemini in the end directly anyway?

I do linkbuilding for a bunch of SaaS products/companies that seem to have products that are pretty far removed from the LLM hype (AI is often part of their product but their product is far removed from things likely to be taken over by AI in the short term - and if/when that time comes I suppose we'll have AGI and nobody will be useful for anything ).