A breakdown of the best free resources I've found for developers bootstrapping their own indie SaaS businesses in 2020. 🔥
I'm a software engineer through and through.
I'm also trying to do the whole indie entrepreneur thing.
Over the past year 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.
Epic Guide to Bootstrapping SaaS Startups
Simply put this is the best overall resource I have found so far. It's down to earth, practical, the author doesn't take things too seriously, and most importantly it's filled with very actionable strategy and tactics for sass 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:
- Setting expectations & validating ideas
- The No-BS Approach to Building Your SaaS Startup’s Launch List
- Make It Rain: Building an MVP for Fun and Profit
- Ewww — Your Startup Funnel Is Leaking All Over Me!
- Real-World Startup Sales and Marketing for the Lost and the Clueless
Justin Jackson 🔥
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.
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
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.
- How to Validate SaaS Ideas
- Pre-launch Marketing for SaaS
- How to grow your email list via engagement posts
- The essential guide to marketing automation for SaaS
- How to generate traffic with $0 marketing budget
- From idea to exit: how I launched, marketed, and sold my first SaaS
Micro SaaS E-Book
"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.
- What is Micro-SaaS and Why Should You Read This?
- What Makes a Good Micro-SaaS Idea?
- Finding Micro-SaaS Ideas
- From Idea to Building a Minimum Viable Product
- Getting Your First Customers
- Thriving in the Long, Slow, SaaS Grind
- 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
Awesome. Focused. Free.
Growth Design
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 (the author is the founder of Saasify). We're making it as easy as possible for indie developers to earn passive income from SaaS APIs.
And lastly, what resources have you found the most useful for leveling up in the wide world of indie SaaS businesses? Hit me up & lemme know – thanks! 🙏