I created a SaaS website builder for a small niche market. I've been running it for about 8 years. I gross a bit over $14,000 per month with about $500 in expen

I created a SaaS website builder for a small niche market. I've been running it for about 8 years. I gross a bit over $14,000 per month with about $500 in expenses for servers and third-party APIs. I work 1-2 hours per week answering customer support emails. Basically, I automated away my old job as a web designer :) The smartest decision I made was targeting a small niche market that larger businesses wouldn't bother with. I often get kind emails from customers thanking me for helping their industry. I kept things simple, didn't add features unless I really believed customers needed them, and didn't try to generalize the solution. I think those are the main reasons why the product worked. By far the hardest part was/is marketing. I'm still bad at it. I've tried may things. Most failed or were too hard to sustain. Some succeeded, like Facebook ads, but those successes were often hard to recreate. At this point it's mostly word of mouth. Working alone can be psychologically challenging. When I have a problem, there's no one to help because no one else knows how the platform works. With no one to bounce ideas off of, it's easy to get stuck in a rut going round and round the same set of possible solutions. And I really have to monitor myself to ensure that I don't get too isolated. This was an issue in the early years, but now I have a routine that gets me up and out and into the world every day. I would strongly advise anyone considering the solo route to carefully consider the social and mental health aspects of working alone. I feel very grateful to my former self for doing the hard work that pays my bills today. And I'm tremendously grateful for open source tools and resources like Stack Overflow without which I would never have made it this far alone.