
I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich - stets
https://blog.stetsonblake.com/thoughts-on-learning-to-design-build-and-launch-a-saas-business/
======
dvt
This is a pretty good atticle, and the product is actually quite solid (maybe
a tad overpriced), but _this_ right here is a rookie mistake:

> In January, 2019 I launched to HackerNews and some subreddits ...

Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks
and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most
cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and getting the word out is
half the battle. With such little effort put into the launch, OP could have
been selling a dollar for fifty cents and no one would've cared.

~~~
nmfisher
> Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred
> bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of
> the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and getting the
> word out is half the battle. With such little effort put into the launch, OP
> could have been selling a dollar for fifty cents and no one would've cared.

Eh, I tried exactly this for a "thought bubble" project I had. Figured a
landing page and $200 on ads would be the best way to gauge demand before
writing any code.

Seemed like a great success - 50 or so e-mail signups, time to roll up my
sleeves and start building! Until I looked closer and realized that every
single signup was from a _clearly fraudulent address_. There's absolutely zero
chance that they all just happened to be female, nicely formatted
[firstname].[lastname]@gmail.com addresses __.

Using ads to dip your toe in the water might have worked ten years ago, but
there's just way too much fraud nowadays. I think you're better off finding
your first ten users manually and asking very nicely for their time and
feedback.

 __That was a few years ago, but I launched my app on the Play Store recently
and noticed the exact same pattern. Definitely fake, too, because accounts
were created in Firebase without user profiles (i.e. the app was never
launched). I assume there are bot farms scanning new releases for certain
packages (e.g. Firebase) and creating fake accounts.

~~~
jmknoll
I know there’s a lot of this, but what is the angle? Who is running the bot
farms to click on Facebook ads and sign up for random services? And what are
they hoping to achieve?

~~~
probably_wrong
My wild assumption is that bot farms need to look like regular users, and
therefore keep clicking on things even when they're off the clock. If Facebook
has caught up on click farms that click on links but do nothing afterwards, I
would assume that filling in some random data goes a long way to make bots
harder to spot once your actual clients show up.

~~~
square_usual
When you set up an ad on Facebook (and many other ad services), you can define
a "conversion" (I'm more familiar with how google calls them, I'm not sure if
that's what facebook calls it.). You can read about it here:
[https://support.google.com/google-
ads/answer/1722022](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722022).
Then, you can set a target "Cost Per Action", which factors into your bids and
therefore how much you spend on advertising and where you advertise. That's
why if you're doing ad fraud, you'd want to take it all the way through to
whichever action "counts".

------
kumarvvr
To be fair, I would re-phrase the author's thought as

"I wrote an SaaS product because _I_ believed it would get me rich and _I_
went and scoured the internet for a well that echos _my_ thoughts"

The author speaks about exactly one example, that,I guess I can say inspired
him to get going with his idea.

No, The internet did not convince him. He convinced himself using the internet
to find evidence for a conclusion he already reached.

~~~
mellosouls
If you rephrased his thought like that you would take all humour out of it;
humour being clearly the intent of his chosen phrasing.

~~~
kumarvvr
Maybe I am wrong, but the article doesn't come off as satirical.

~~~
mellosouls
The title is just intended as a good-natured dig at his own experience ( _I
made literally TENS of dollars_ ) drawing on the gullible-get-rich-quick
trope, nothing more.

~~~
kumarvvr
Ohh ok. But I cannot edit / remove my original post, it has too many votes.
:-D

------
craze3
I thought this was a pretty good article that didn't over-sensationalize SaaS
products, while still explaining how they can lead to success.

It sucks that the OP's website didn't "blow up", but then again, most micro-
SaaS's are not meant to go viral like that.

One point I would add is that there should be more promotion other than just
posting on HN + PH. If that's where your launch stops, you may not be
realizing your full potential.

Another little nitpick; The domain they used (EarlyBrd.io) was kinda weird due
to the unconventional spelling. Yes, you don't need a dot com, but it should
still be something you can mention in conversation and have the other party
instantly understand & be able to spell, without you spelling it out for them.

Lastly, why does everyone here seem to care more about post titles than actual
posts nowadays?

~~~
stets
Thanks for your comments. I am OP :-)

My site went down for a bit while this is front-paged, but is back up now.
Definitely I think it could be more of a success if I put more effort in
(duh?).

Definitely there is a need to promote across multiple channels and ideally own
your audience/create your own content because then you have traffic generation
on demand.

The name is weird, I shipped anyways. earlybird.com and earlybrd.com were not
free. I have spelled it out many times. It's annoying and sucks.

~~~
cmdshiftf4
Hire people on upwork to promote it for you and when you've connected with
them sell them the same tool for their own needs.

~~~
stets
Inception! Love it.

------
jwdunne
Hrm, you identified your target market within the first tens of words:
freelancers working on UpWork.

But you launched on HackerNews. Why didn’t you seek out communities that
freelance, especially on UpWork? That’s where you plug your product, after
becoming a valuable member of the community.

And becoming a valuable member of that community IS something you can do: you
can give free advice on winning UpWork jobs, how to increase chances, etc.

~~~
stetsonator
I did indeed later launch to Upwork specific communities. Subreddits and
Facebook groups.

------
laurentdc
> Don't hire people for stupid things. Adobe cloud is 20 bucks a month, read a
> few books, watch a few videos and make simple designs yourself. If your
> thing takes off, you can always hire for better later.

This resonates so much. My company hires and outsources for the most stupid
things, like, we need to change colors on a design file or move some buttons
around? Let's go on Upwork or through our address book, write a RFQ, have a
meeting to evaluate the quotes, set up payment and contract, then in two or
three weeks the "refresh" is done.

I mean, just open Figma or whatever tool and do it yourself. Or ask a
colleague for 20 minutes of help. It doesn't take Van Gogh to pair two colours
and fonts.

~~~
mynegation
It is OK to contract things out, it is not OK that every time that requires
RFQ and the lengthy process.

~~~
SamuelAdams
But then how do PM's (or scrum masters) justify their 6 figure salary?

/s

------
sky_rw
People seem to have forgotten or not realize that SaaS is just a sales model
to sell a $2,400 software product for $100 on a payment plan without requiring
manager approval. If you can't find anybody who will pay you $2,400 for this
product, then you won't be able to build a business selling it for $100/month.

~~~
stets
You're right and wrong. It can be that but I think SaaS can be nice because it
puts some responsibility on the service provider to update things and add
features. Or maybe we are moving to an MRR world and everyone is evil...

~~~
sky_rw
The fundamental concept that is missing from this post is that it's not the
billing method that determines the success of the business, it's the value you
bring to your customers. The service provider isn't going to update anything
if they shut down 6 months after launch.

~~~
stets
100%.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I have not had _any_ success on Upwork.

100% of the “leads” I got there were scams.

Not 75%, not even 99%. 100%. Not one single honest job. Some were requests for
me to participate in scams, but I don’t roll that way.

I’m sure that my experience was unique, and that my profile must have had some
“scam flag,” so I won’t write off the platform in its entirety.

I heard good things about the site from friends, but every single person that
extolled its virtues had used it to find contractors. Not one had used it to
find work. The couple of people that I know that used it to seek work had
experiences similar to mine, and nothing good to say about it.

But that is small-sample anecdotal data. Not something that I would say should
be used to provide any meaningful recommendations or reviews.

But for me, the site is worthless. I was pretty appalled at the brazenness of
some of the approaches. No one seemed to be worried that I would refer them to
the FBI, so I guess I don’t come across as a snitch; just a chump.

A couple of years ago, I decided to “refactor” myself back to full-time
engineering.

My ultimate goal was to specialize in Swift development (what I do, now).

Until then, all my work was part-time, on open-source projects; equal parts
PHP server stuff, and Swift apps.

So the first thing I did, as a “self-training” project, was design and build a
multipurpose, secure application SaaS backend, in PHP, because I didn’t want
to waste time learning up on my JavaScript, which I planned to abandon. This
was just the first-stage booster.

This was what I wrote: [https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/open-source-
projects/#ba...](https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/open-source-
projects/#baobab)

It’s not something that folks are interested in, probably because it was
written in PHP, and doesn’t really tick many boxes on a “Buzzword Bingo” card,
but it accomplished its purpose.

I’ll be happy to never write PHP again, but I’m glad it was there for the
experience.

And I nuked my Upwork account months ago.

~~~
shp0ngle
PHP is still big in the publishing business.

WordPress alone is bigger than HN would lead you to believe. Lots of business
runs on PHP. And not just running Drupal from inertia; Laravel is a new shiny
thing.

~~~
XCSme
And there's a reason for that, it's so simple but it works. Get a shared
hosting for $3/mo, add WordPress to it by uploading a zip with cPanel and
you're done. It's cheap, you never touch a line of code, there are premade
resources for most niches (themes/fully fledged apps and platforms) and
tutorials on how to do even the most basic things.

This works great for small business owners, web agencies and professionals
(which is the majority of the people who actually need a website). When self-
hosting you also have a sense of ownership and power (and you actually have
them) compared to using dedicated platforms such as Shopify, Medium or Wix.

------
ilamont
> Solve a real need and research it prior to building. Either build something
> tiny and get feedback or get feedback before you even start building!

I've run into the situation of people eagerly _telling_ you they want
something, but when it comes time to pay for it they vanish.

~~~
pembrook
Read _The Mom Test_ for a quick overview of how to avoid this problem.

------
_bxg1
It's nice to see a more "normal" anecdote about this process. Usually you only
see the SaaS equivalent of unicorns.

~~~
stets
Thanks :-) Semi-failures are interesting as well

------
maltelandwehr
„Just ship it“ does not mean spending 9 months(!) building something that
should have been a no-code MVP built in 2 weeks max.

~~~
pell
I get the sentiment, but this was the first project of this kind for the
author. I think "just ship it" sometimes means "get it done despite all the
doubts".

------
zeroc8
The problem we have is market saturation of basically everything. The winners
take it all. If I had a chance to do it all over again, I'd probably just
learn a trade, like electrician, bricklayer or plumber. They don't seem to run
out of work.

~~~
eternauta3k
I'm not sure I understand. If you're a programmer, that's a trade and there's
work out there.

------
Ataraxy
Lots of people can write an app. At the end of the day you either have to get
lucky with organic traction or be a little less lucky but be a relatively
skilled marketer that has a good command of how to convert paid traffic.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
Fascinating. So, you don't think the quality of the product itself matters
much?

~~~
stets
Your product has to work and solve a real need. It isn't that hard to figure
out how to create an app. Communicating how that product creates value for
customers, marketing it and doing all of the rest of the grunt work is the
hard, difficult bit.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>It isn't that hard to figure out how to create an app.

I think this totally depends on the app, and the problem domain. CRUD apps?
Sure, those have very low barrier to entry. But they aren't the only type of
app out there.

~~~
stets
Sure -- definitely true. But you can cover a TON of ground for b2b
applications with basic CRUD operations.

------
HatchedLake721
“build and they will come”, a fallacy everyone falls into

------
Jack000
Some products are inherently difficult to monetize. I wouldn't give up yet,
but another approach is to make the product free and use it as lead-gen for
something else (an affiliate product, your own product in a separate niche, or
even ads)

if you corner the market for the free product it can bring a lot of valuable
traffic.

~~~
textread
I love your idea of using a free product as a marketing tool.

Are there any resources/case studies to validate: "if you corner the market
for the free product it can bring a lot of valuable traffic."

~~~
redis_mlc
Plentyoffish.com broke Google's Adsense payout system - the monthly checks
were too large to process!

(#1 dating site, monetized with Google ads. Ugly. Markus Frind later sold it
for $575 million.)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-
bootstrappe...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped-
plentyoffish-and-sold-it-for-575-million-2015-7)

------
rodolphoarruda
I was following this same path until yesterday, when I gave up. I have the
mock-ups and all the notes with me, but I won't go ahead because I know it
would be too much of an effort. Web dev has become rocket science for those
who started in this business in the late 90's, at least IMHO.

~~~
hckr_news
Hey, this isn't true at all. Reading up documentation/resources, watching
youtube tutorials, and even sometimes banging your head against the wall is a
normal part of the software development process. Don't let the frustrations
get to you. You mentioned the 90s but boy were people jerks back then (from
the horror stories I read). I think today is probably the best time to be
working on software with so many open source tools in addition to
collaborative and helpful people you'll come across. As far as tooling goes,
just keep a simple. Aim for a simple MVP. DB? Go mysql. Frontend? Choose a
templating engine like EJS and css. Backend? Node/Express ecosystem would be
my go to. Push it to Github. Host it on Netlify. There are some fantastic
tutorials around the net to get this far. Everything else like monitoring
tools, security, testing, containers are secondary to the initial MVP you can
build.

~~~
stets
This is good advice. Tech doesn't really matter. Yes, things will suck. But
don't introduce complexity until you're absolutely sure it needs to be or that
it will help you save time later on.

~~~
danjac
I've worked/consulted at quite a few places where the code quality ranged from
mediocre to abysmal. These companies were launched pretty much by people with
an "X for Idiots" book on their lap or who hired their teenage nephew/best
mate from college to do the coding.

And yet, these companies did quite well, became quite successful and
profitable businesses in their niche - and when they did hit the hard limits
of technical debt, they had the money to hire professionals. Unfortunately
there are limits to what professionals can do with just-about-working
spaghetti code and bizarre database schemas, when you can't just throw away
and rewrite software that's powering a growing business that needs more new
features than it needs a cleaner codebase, but nonetheless they got much
further than many SaaS companies started by developers with well thought out
architecture, beautiful code and the latest tech stack.

The reason they were successful is that the founders lived and breathed their
niche and understood the problems and their customers. They saw opportunities
as well as risks and blind alleys. The tech was just a means to that end, not
the end in of itself. That said, before people say "the tech doesn't matter",
I think that had they the technical skills to match their domain knowledge and
connections, they would have been far more successful and would not have hit
those hard limits that slowed them down and perhaps prevented them from
expanding further and seizing on new opportunities. It's interesting that some
of the real "unicorns" of the last few decades have had founders/leaders with
strong technical chops - your Gates and Zuckerbergs. They might not have been
the best in their field, but they had that relatively rare combo of technical
ability and business sense.

------
peterwwillis
Early 2000s: Remember when everyone wanted to try to build a business on the
idea that "internet + non-technical-business = $$$$$" ?

Early 2020s: Remember when everyone wanted to try to build a business on the
idea that "internet + some software a random person might pay $5 for = $$$$$"
?

------
Androider
Writing the software is the easy part of SaaS.

~~~
petargyurov
You're right. But that doesn't make it easy :P

I think a lot of devs think that project management, business sense and
marketing (basically everything but development) are easier. I used to think
that too. Until I had to start thinking about business strategies, sharing my
product and understanding my customers...

If only I could install packages for that kind of stuff IRL.

~~~
dragandj
But you can install packages for that, too. It’s just that you’ve used the
wrong terminology. Instead of “install”, it’s called “pay”, and instead of
“packages”, it’s “professionals”.

------
skc
I'm struck by two things as I mull over how I'll monetize my own SaaS app that
I've started ideating.

Firstly, the author says to rather sell to businesses than to individuals.
Fine.

Secondly, one of his links ([https://makebook.io/](https://makebook.io/)) says
monetize by asking users for money, and makes a point of saying don't use ads
anywhere.

But if my product is aimed at consumers, why not monetize with ads if it's
notoriously difficult to get users to pay 5 or 10 bucks?

~~~
pembrook
Advertising doesn't become viable until you're getting 50K+ visitors a month,
and in a niche where people will actually click ads. And even then, if it's an
unprofitable niche (like say, home cooking), you'd have to multiply that by
10X to reach a good six figure income.

By viable, I mean making more money than you would working as a software
engineer in a big city.

------
lamby
> Ferreira spent less time doing labour-intensive web design and more time
> searching for the cold fusion of internet marketing: "passive income."

— Corey Pein: How to get rich quick in Silicon Valley
([https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/17/get-rich-
quick-...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/17/get-rich-quick-
silicon-valley-startup-billionaire-techie))

------
slynn12
This: "Don't charge 5-10 bucks for your product. It's not really worth it and
the customers who pay that are generally cheap-asses anyway."

That ^!

Learned it the hard way myself.

------
novaleaf
Is there any "SaaS as a Service" that can be used to put up a MVP of your SaaS
idea?

Basically a whitebox SaaS open source that you can use? I only know of KongHQ
but that's a SaaS marketplace, I don't think that's a good idea because with
that you are treated as a vendor (no control of your users/ecosystem).

~~~
stets
There are a few templates and things if you google 'saas boilerplate'. Most
I've found are specific to languages and require a lot of setup. It's an ok
idea, just needs to be executed correctly. Laravel really handles a lot of
this well and they even developed a paid boilerplate that claims to do billing
and other things easily
[https://spark.laravel.com/](https://spark.laravel.com/)

~~~
novaleaf
thank you, I will check it out.

------
yoshyosh
Grats on shipping! Highly recommend testing positioning this as a B2B product
for monitoring companies that I could use as sales leads. For example it would
be great to get alerted from all the diff job boards when different companies
are trying to hire for what our product solves, similar to how Reilly is using
your product.

~~~
stets
Solid idea. I think he mentioned that to me and I didn't take it in fully that
other people could monitor WHAT people on Upwork wanted without wanting to
work for them.

------
asdf333
congratulations! that was quite an adventure you went on and it might feel
discouraging now but you are essentially set up for success the next time you
start a business.

just keep those lessons in mind and if you don’t make those mistakes again, i
think you will get to ramen profitability at least.

~~~
stets
I have a few other projects generating some revenue but nothing SaaS just yet.
My exp doing this will definitely help in the future

------
ozfive
It looks as though this ([https://earlybrd.io/](https://earlybrd.io/)) is
down. I was headed there to sign up since I see this as very useful after
reading the blog post. I use Upwork at times myself.

------
triyambakam
> Go for B2B if you can. Freelancers aren't rich.

I don't understand this... can anyone explain?

~~~
michaelbuckbee
B2B vs B2C aren't two starkly different things - it's a spectrum between them.

Freelancers are a notoriously difficult market to sell to as they perceive
every dollar spent as coming out of their wallet.

Compare that to a large enterprise company where the person making the buying
decision is going to take home the same salary at the end of the week whatever
the decision ends up being.

~~~
shkkmo
Even among freelancers, those who use upwork are probably far more strapped
for cash.

------
4444
Thanks for sharing it , really cool one, but

> Framework / Language really doesn't matter that much. Choose what you're
> comfortable with, "even if it's php."

I think modern php is able to manage almost anything, starting from facebook
as well.

~~~
stets
Yep! Php ain't all that bad. I'm migrating earlybrd to laravel soon and enjoy
it a lot. just poking a bit of fun because nerds like to hate on php.

~~~
petargyurov
I have never used Laravel, but I am an avid user of Flask. In fact my current
project is built in it. Do you mind expanding on why you're transitioning?

I hope you don't mind me saying, but it sounds like you didn't have the best
setup (i.e.: > raw SQL queries with psycopg2). With a couple of packages your
environment and dev process would be a lot smoother.

~~~
stets
Flask is great and could work fine. I just found that Laravel was easy enough
to scaffold things out a lot easier (like user auth). I'm new to web app dev
as well and have found MVC and other framework concepts making more since as I
develop more in Laravel. SQL queries worked fine for me but a lot of people
disagree with doing things that way. In contrast, though, eloquent is much
simpler once you learn.

------
tkainrad
Nice article, fun to read!

I think solo-founders should try hard to find a simple and efficient tech
stack - including hosting. Why use containers and EC2 when you could just use
a PaaS like Pythonanywhere and be done with it?

~~~
robertlagrant
I love PA, but I wouldn't say that using them is "being done with it".
Containers are pretty useful for all sorts.

------
AdriaanvRossum
> Reilly uses EarlyBrd to find folks who need help with Ubiquiti Wi-Fi gear
> and tell them about Hostifi.

This should be on your home page. It made me want to buy your product.

~~~
stetsonator
He is on my testimonials but we’ll be getting a refresh soon :-)

------
sokoloff
I enjoyed the article.

I'll point out that you've got links to about 12 different external tools, but
0 links to the SaaS product you're talking about...

~~~
stets
Thanks! Yeah, I messed up. I wrote this in about an hour and posted it a few
places not expecting the traffic I got!

------
mleonhard
If growth is slow, how about spending more money on marketing? Hire a part-
time online marketing specialist and give them money to spend on ads.

------
weaselpus
Nice article and have to agree:

> Go for B2B if you can. Freelancers aren't rich.

Even if freelancers have money they seem to spend less.

------
quidsentio
I like (and agree with) the learnings. I don't understand why the cynic(?)
tone at the beginning.

~~~
stets
how do ya mean? I don't put out a lot of content so any feedback is good.

------
mft_
Fun article - thanks.

The reference to Flask being a pain in the arse made me chuckle. I am a
hobbyist python author and have been using Flask for years, doing exactly what
you wrote about, with awkward front-end templates and handwritten SQL queries
and the rest.

I did some basic tutorials on Vue a few weeks ago and it was absolutely mind-
blowingly straightforward in comparison!

~~~
nonines
Excuse my naive question but how do the 2 compare? Flask == backend, Vue ==
frontend. Am I missing something here?

~~~
monocularvision
You can use Flask to render your friend-end HTML and handle form submissions.
JavaScript doesn’t have to be involved at all.

You can also render your friend end using JS and interact with services
written in Flask.

~~~
nonines
thanks

------
QuadrupleA
Has SaaS become a washed-out gold rush at this point, like the app stores?

~~~
stets
Nah, what makes you think that?

------
levig
Good article. Glad to see people doing what they enjoy in the it world

~~~
stets
thanks!

------
a_imho
How much did it cost you to launch? Did you manage to turn a profit?

~~~
stets
Hardly anything. $5/mo or so for a VPS, my time and energy. Maybe $100 in
programming courses. I made TENS of dollars.

------
codenesium
I think everybody has to learn this lesson. Treat it like a learning
experience and you haven't lost anything but time hopefully. Earlybrd.io is
currently down and I wanted to check it out. Hug of death.

~~~
stets
Yeah, I am getting pwned pretty hard. Thanks for your kind words -- putting up
a temp page now

------
andreygrehov
But why is the OP's website down? I get 403.

~~~
stets
Just redirected to a temporary signup...tl;dr is that I was doing some funny
stuff with Flask in a docker container...

------
jaequery
One of the better clickbait titles I've come across on HN

~~~
stets
Copywriting is one tool of many in a bootstrapper's arsenal.

------
the_dripper
is there any reason that my company blocked this website for "copyright
infringement" ?

------
doctorhouse1
SaaS is awesome. I too want to build one.

------
bdcravens
Editorialized title (even if OP is the author). Should be: "Thoughts on
Learning To Design, Build and Launch A SaaS"

~~~
bdcravens
Note that author changed the title on the website to match what they submitted
here after discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23344422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23344422)

~~~
stets
Correct. I stand by this decision.

~~~
bdcravens
No problem at all - just pointing out the context of my comment

------
throwaway391003
Sure, blame the internet, rather than yourself

~~~
stets
the internet is the reason I wrote it. My failures are my own :-) thanks
though

~~~
throwaway391003
Hmmmm maybe I should retract my previous comment then

------
polote
Going to be down voted for that but after all those discussions of HN readers
it is disappointing to see that click-bait titles works the same here than
everywhere else

~~~
bdcravens
Well site guidelines say to submit the original title, not a clickbait
alteration. Mods are good about enforcing that.

~~~
polote
Wait 1 minute for author to update the original title to the click-bait
version

~~~
stets
Done, actually. I just thought it was a good title, did not mean to mislead or
direct to something that wasn't relevant.

------
unnouinceput
Qoute: "In the Fall of 2017 I'd done a ton of freelancing on the (garbage)
website Upwork. Upwork is a bit of a grind. User's can search for a skill
they'd like to freelance in ( Cisco Networking, Python programming, Painting
Dogs, whatever) and apply for job's via proposals. The crappy thing about
Upwork is that once a job is posted, the heat is on to apply. The longer you
let the job sit, the more likely that other freelancers will apply for it and
get the work. Being early was an extreme advantage, even if you are the best.

After googling around a bit, I found that Upwork had no way for user's to get
alerts on new jobs, even though many user's requested it. "Hmmm, I thought, a
market need". There were, though, countless forum posts and low-quality
YouTube videos explaining how to set up alerts via IFTTT and Upwork's RSS
feeds feature. "

As a long time Upwork freelancer (12 years now) - short answer would be that
you're not cut for freelancer's market. Long answer is harder to stomach, so
skip next paragraph:

1 - Being early is disadvantage actually. Being early means your bid gets
dumped in job poster's email along with the others. You want to be 1st (hard
to be and you'll never have the guarantee even with a fast notification) or
let it sit for 24 hours.

2 - Rant about not having notifications then answering yourself about using
RSS. If RSS is hard for you to make it work then I'll have to wonder about the
rest of your skills as programmer. Personally I didn't like any RSS feed apps
out there so I wrote my own, customized to my needs. You could've done the
same, instead you made a Saas out of it thinking you'll strike gold.

~~~
stetsonator
1 - maybe you’re right, I don’t know. Freelancers can find success on Upwork
but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a garbage website 2 - I don’t think
I ever said RSS was hard to make work. My app is essentially a feed reader. I
am also a shit developer, covered that one already Thank you for reading and
your feedback, though!

~~~
unnouinceput
That garbage site is providing opportunities for millions of developers and
clients, and personally feeding my family for over a decade. I tried
freelancer.com, rentacoder.com, elance.com (before merging with odesk and the
2 of them becoming what is today's upwork), fiverr, peopleperhour and toptal.
Of them all upwork is the best. Maybe you can make a better one, huh?

where is dang when you need him, eh?

~~~
stets
I don't know who dang is. The site is fine but their ToS is atrocious. Have
you read it? Freelancers are expected to pay $3000 USD to take a client off of
Upwork. This doesn't refer to initial work being done on the platform. If you
do work for a client and get a call back, Upwork expects you to work through
Upwork. I'm sure that few do this but WHAT. They recently changed ToS so maybe
it is different now... I'm also not a big fan of the dog-eat-dog nature of the
site, which my tool ironically encourages. I'm glad it works for you. I don't
want to be a freelancer, I want to make tools/SaaS products.

