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Improvely (https://www.improvely.com https://www.improvely.com) passed $10k/mo RR not too long ago and is about a year old. I run several other SaaS sites with

Improvely (https://www.improvely.com https://www.improvely.com) passed $10k/mo RR not too long ago and is about a year old. I run several other SaaS sites with a couple thousand a month in revenue each. It's enough that I never regret turning down the standing job offers I had at the end of college 3 years ago. Nothing really compared to the short-lived but very successful WordPress plugins I used to build and sell. A few days' work could turn into the equivalent of a year's salary. One had over $250,000 in sales in 18 months before I sold rights to it for another $90,000 to another company. I don't work with WordPress much anymore, and don't have much motivation to force myself back into that ecosystem to sell more plugins. It just wasn't as fun as running live services that handle lots of users and lots of data.

Omnipresent 13y ago
How do you decided on which product to build and the market to target?
peacemaker 13y ago
Hey Dan, I'm selling Wordpress plugins right now with nothing near the same success as you. Do you think it's a market that is too saturated to achieve the level of sales you saw? I'd also love to hear how you managed to attract the number of users to your website that gave you over $250k in sales? It's something I'm having trouble with right now and any pointers would be greatly appreciated!
- dangrossman 13y ago
  > Do you think it's a market that is too saturated to achieve the level of sales you saw? Not at all. There are thousands of plugins, but there are 72 million WordPress sites.
  - peacemaker 13y ago
    True. My thoughts too which is why I got into doing this about 6 months ago but since I've only had limited success I've had a few doubts recently. I wish I could find a really good online marketing guide. One aimed at developers would be perfect. It seems there is no shortage of "learn programming" resources out there but marketing courses always seem so scammy.
bilbo79 13y ago
^^ I bought your review wp plugin years ago. It was great and worked perfectly, I wish you all the success in the world
powertower 13y ago
> One had over $250,000 in sales in 18 months before I sold rights to it for another $90,000 to another company. For anyone interested, I'm guessing this is it... http://flippa.com/blog/dan-grossman-on-selling-wpreviewsite-a-wordpress-plugin/ http://flippa.com/blog/dan-grossman-on-selling-wpreviewsite-...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
QuasiAlon 13y ago
Improvely looks amazing. No wonder it's pulling $10K MRR. I'm curious - how many people are on the team?
- dangrossman 13y ago
  Just me
  - QuasiAlon 13y ago
    incredible.
codex 13y ago
This seems strictly worse than a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter assuming the same 40 hour week. Are there lifestyle advantages?
- dangrossman 13y ago
  What about a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter would be better? If you think they're strictly better, there must be some huge downside to my lifestyle I mentioned that I don't see. They offer worse hours, less pay, less autonomy, higher cost of living, and they're on the wrong end of the country if I want to keep close ties to relatives.
  - codex 13y ago
    The compensation at these is substantially better than what you've mentioned. Some offer regional offices around the country and world. I can see how the extra autonomy and reduced workload would be nice, but I'm not sure you can judge without trying both.
    - goldenkey 13y ago
      It's the freedom. You're a ball on a chain at pretty much any company.
    - dangrossman 13y ago
      Glassdoor/Salary.com say an experienced Google software engineer makes $150k/year (including benefits and bonuses). That'd be a big pay cut. So would paying more to rent a one-bedroom apartment out there than I pay to mortgage my 4-bedroom detached house. As for "trying both", I have. I did the internship rounds while in college. Spent 6 months on the west coast with Microsoft, and a year at two smaller companies, as a full-time software engineer. There's nothing about employment I miss. You could double the salary and I wouldn't trade lives with an employee at any of those companies. I wake up in the morning without an alarm, decide what I want to work on, program in my PJs, work as long as I care to, answer a few customer e-mails, and I'm done for the day. Some days I flip the schedule and shop/socialize/veg in the morning/afternoon, then work late at night. If I want a day or a month off, I just take it. If I'm building something new, like the two months or so I spent on Improvely, I probably work about 4 hours a day, which is the most number of productive hours I ever got while working for someone else 8 hours a day. That's 1300 hours a year of time wasted on commutes, meetings, endless e-mails, employee reviews, forced socialization with coworkers, and kissing up to managers so you rank well for bonuses and get better projects. Ugh. There is one downside to what I do. I'm on call to keep the servers running 24/7. That means I pay for some monitoring that can SMS me if something fails, and I carry a Surface Pro in the trunk of my car so that even if I'm away from home I can get to a computer. It's a once-a-year type responsibility. Had a hard drive crash in one server this year, and a power supply pooped out last year. Not a terrible burden.
TechboyUK 13y ago
How and where did you sell the WordPress plugins? Also, how did you market them?

Omnipresent 13y ago

How do you decided on which product to build and the market to target?

peacemaker 13y ago

Hey Dan, I'm selling Wordpress plugins right now with nothing near the same success as you. Do you think it's a market that is too saturated to achieve the level of sales you saw? I'd also love to hear how you managed to attract the number of users to your website that gave you over $250k in sales? It's something I'm having trouble with right now and any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

dangrossman 13y ago
> Do you think it's a market that is too saturated to achieve the level of sales you saw? Not at all. There are thousands of plugins, but there are 72 million WordPress sites.
- peacemaker 13y ago
  True. My thoughts too which is why I got into doing this about 6 months ago but since I've only had limited success I've had a few doubts recently. I wish I could find a really good online marketing guide. One aimed at developers would be perfect. It seems there is no shortage of "learn programming" resources out there but marketing courses always seem so scammy.

bilbo79 13y ago

^^ I bought your review wp plugin years ago. It was great and worked perfectly, I wish you all the success in the world

powertower 13y ago

> One had over $250,000 in sales in 18 months before I sold rights to it for another $90,000 to another company. For anyone interested, I'm guessing this is it... http://flippa.com/blog/dan-grossman-on-selling-wpreviewsite-a-wordpress-plugin/ http://flippa.com/blog/dan-grossman-on-selling-wpreviewsite-...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

QuasiAlon 13y ago

Improvely looks amazing. No wonder it's pulling $10K MRR. I'm curious - how many people are on the team?

dangrossman 13y ago
Just me
- QuasiAlon 13y ago
  incredible.

codex 13y ago

This seems strictly worse than a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter assuming the same 40 hour week. Are there lifestyle advantages?

dangrossman 13y ago
What about a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter would be better? If you think they're strictly better, there must be some huge downside to my lifestyle I mentioned that I don't see. They offer worse hours, less pay, less autonomy, higher cost of living, and they're on the wrong end of the country if I want to keep close ties to relatives.
- codex 13y ago
  The compensation at these is substantially better than what you've mentioned. Some offer regional offices around the country and world. I can see how the extra autonomy and reduced workload would be nice, but I'm not sure you can judge without trying both.
  - goldenkey 13y ago
    It's the freedom. You're a ball on a chain at pretty much any company.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    Glassdoor/Salary.com say an experienced Google software engineer makes $150k/year (including benefits and bonuses). That'd be a big pay cut. So would paying more to rent a one-bedroom apartment out there than I pay to mortgage my 4-bedroom detached house. As for "trying both", I have. I did the internship rounds while in college. Spent 6 months on the west coast with Microsoft, and a year at two smaller companies, as a full-time software engineer. There's nothing about employment I miss. You could double the salary and I wouldn't trade lives with an employee at any of those companies. I wake up in the morning without an alarm, decide what I want to work on, program in my PJs, work as long as I care to, answer a few customer e-mails, and I'm done for the day. Some days I flip the schedule and shop/socialize/veg in the morning/afternoon, then work late at night. If I want a day or a month off, I just take it. If I'm building something new, like the two months or so I spent on Improvely, I probably work about 4 hours a day, which is the most number of productive hours I ever got while working for someone else 8 hours a day. That's 1300 hours a year of time wasted on commutes, meetings, endless e-mails, employee reviews, forced socialization with coworkers, and kissing up to managers so you rank well for bonuses and get better projects. Ugh. There is one downside to what I do. I'm on call to keep the servers running 24/7. That means I pay for some monitoring that can SMS me if something fails, and I carry a Surface Pro in the trunk of my car so that even if I'm away from home I can get to a computer. It's a once-a-year type responsibility. Had a hard drive crash in one server this year, and a power supply pooped out last year. Not a terrible burden.

TechboyUK 13y ago

How and where did you sell the WordPress plugins? Also, how did you market them?