To make a short story even shorter; I was traveling and basically not working. A tiny bit of lingering consulting but mostly just spending money slowly and having a nice time.
It came up in a conversation with someone I met that I was a programmer, and that they were looking to get something built. Predictably the upper end of their budget is about a fifth of the bottom end of my estimate. They were going the elance route. I gave him some pointers on getting what he wanted and nt getting burnt and went on my way.
It occured to me later that this guy is in a similar position to lots (maybe.. ~1-2k identical small businesses in the world) and maybe there was something to this. I have never built a 'product' up to this point.
So, I asked him if he would be interested in instead of owning the software, if he would be fine with being a customer of a SaaS implementation. We had really good rapport and I offered to just build it and as soon as it was doing what he needed he would pay me. a few months of part-time work (and learning haskell) later, the 'minimum product' is built; and he pays me the agreed upon 1k and is actively using it, its solving his problem, and eveyone is happy.
Its a webapp; and for the 1k he gets it "forever". We have no contract or anything.
So, now what? After traveling so long cash is pretty low, like.. I need a gig or I can't pay July's rent low. I am pretty sure I just closed a deal today that will get me through the summer (my monthly nut is ~= 20 billable hours).
Where do I put my energy, how much more of this should I build out? This thing has zero chance of ever becoming an instagram or something. I think it could potentially grow into a high-dollar (10-20k a license) situation with a lot more features but in the same space; but for now, if I could get 20-50 paying customers at 100/bucks a month it would really change my life.
100/month sounds sort of a like a lot for what it is. But it is providing that much value for them easily; so I think that's fine. It's not polished is the main thing; and I am not a designer. I am using bootstrap which gets me pretty far.
It feels to me like the right thing to do is just try and get customers. It's a slow process because its 100% brick and mortar situation; and there isn't really too much interconnectivity between the customers.
I am sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place; I need a designer; but I can't pay for a good one. And I am scared that I won't be able to get the money to pay for a good one (at least from this project) until I have a designer.
For the record, I contacted one potential customer; they agreed to check out the software but never used the account I set up for them. However I am 95% sure the person I spoke to was not a decision maker. Also I am not a sales man; but I do know the business reasonably well.
I apologize for the rambling nature of this post.. it's admittedly something of a process of mental masturbation, but I am hoping nonetheless for some tidbit of wisdom.
As for pricing: 100 USD a months is peanuts for most businesses, if they get a real problem solved. Don't be discouraged by the low-ball pricing of many current SaaS offerings. They might be what you see most on sites like HN, but in other parts of the world, ugly, non-shiny, feature-poor SaaS software is sold for thousands of dollars a month. It's all in the value that the product solves for the customer.
My advice is don't invest any more time into it, before you have the next guy that says "sure I'll pay 100$ a month to rent, or 1000$ for a license". Since you've already proven that the software is valuable, there is no point in investing more effort right now , gold-plating your software.
What you need is sales, but you already have a valuable product. While it surely won't be easy, it's doable. You've already proved that yourself. Good luck!