Issue#96: Building $1K-$10K MRR Micro SaaS Products around UI/UX, Design and User Onboarding
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Recent Micro SaaS News in 2 minutes
(This saves you hours of time and keeps you up to date on what's going on in Micro SaaS)
Simon shares in this interview with FounderBeats how he grew CartFox.io to $1500 MRR and 110 Paying Customers in 10 months
Audio based note taking app, AudioNotes, reaches $2500+ in revenue with 50+ paying users within 2 months of its launch
ThumbnailTest.com by Rox grew 30% in a week after Think Media made a video about ThumbnailTest. It’s now $8.7K in monthly revenue. Read an earlier interview of the founder here
Andrew shares how he sold his niche job Board for finding hospitality jobs in Poland for $13,500
salesforge.ai hits $2k MRR within a month of launch.
NotionForms by Julien Nahum crosses $23K MRR. See the founder’s earlier interview here on FounderBeats
Trimbox, a tool to unsubscribe from emails with 1 click founded by Jordan hits $54K in monthly revenue
Plunk, the developer-friendly email platform for SaaS, reaches $650 in monthly revenue
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No fluffy content. If your goal is to build a $100m ARR business, this is not the right post. Here I am NOT going to talk about building the next Facebook or Twitter. If your goal is to make a $1K to $10K MRR, continue reading.
This post will cover one SaaS area and talk about multiple niches in this space. This post also explains how to do tech implementation, do market analysis, how the current players are doing, and ends with a cost analysis to understand the overall cost for 100 users.
Let’s see some of the players around Micro SaaS products around UI/UX, Design and User Onboarding.
⛳ ⛳ Current players
Glorify: Graphic design tool for E-commerce. Currently at $2.3K in monthly revenue.
Frames X: Frames X is an easy-to-use, well-documented, and supported design system for Figma that includes a complete eBook.
Tailscan: A developer tool for Tailwind CSS to build, design and debug Tailwind website visually. Crossed $800 MRR with 250+ subscribers.
Galileo AI: Generative AI for user interface design. Turns natural language prompts into high-fidelity designs. Received $400K in funding.
SnipCSS: a design tool for developers that makes it easy to extract any web element's CSS/HTML on any website. Presently at $870 in monthly revenue
Honter Studio: Productized service for design. Reached monthly revenues of $20K
Blaze: The UI comopnents library powered by GPT-4 for Webflow, Figma, HTML, Tailwind, Vue and React projects.
The 80/20 Design Challenge: A design course by Nate Kadlac that reached $2500+ in 3 Months
Re:Form: A UI/UX book about forms by Victor. Reached $6K in monthly revenue.
Snappify: A powerful design tool for presenting code snippets. Reached $1,402 MRR and 9,681 registered users
Site Palette: a Chrome extension designed to simplify the process of generating color palettes from any website. Got 50 paid customers within 2 months of launch.
Overflow: Lets users create interactive user flows, stunning design presentations, and step-by-step walkthroughs to engage audience in synchronous or asynchronous design critique
Text To design: An AI-based Figma plugin to transform text descriptions into design elements
HotGloo: A UX, wireframe and prototyping tool designed to build wireframes for web, mobile and wearables. Hit $88.8K in revenue.
Root UI Kit: Wireframe & design starter kit, compatible with Sketch and Figma. Root has everything to create wireframes, prototypes, presentations and design system.
Befront: Lets users learn UX/UI design skills in practice with bite-size design exercises in the interactive Figma Plugin and get instant feedback. Received $100K in funding.
Ready UI: 200+ UI blocks for Developers, Agencies, Startups, Marketers, & Designers to create beautiful websites. Production-ready bootstrap code with well-organized figma files to design and develop websites faster.
User-Journey: Email Marketing made for SaaS. User-Journey takes care of delivering the right email to the right users at the right moment.
Sequel: Lets users run webinars and live events directly on your website for an integrated customer journey. Received $10.89M in funding.
CommandBar: AI-powered user assistance. In-app help + natural language search + non-annoying nudges, in one platform.
UX Playbook: Playbooks for career guidance in UX design—from building the first portfolio to being a design leader. Currently at $4K in monthly revenue.
UserGuiding: Lets users create interactive product tours, user onboarding guides in minutes without coding. UserGuiding's estimated annual revenue is currently $1.3M
Tailwind UI Kit: Accessible, fully responsive, drop-in-ready Tailwind CSS components.
Userflow: For building build customized in-app tours, checklists and surveys, without code. Hit $21.1K in revenue in 2022.
Designfly: An unlimited design subscription for startups. Currently at $4.9K in monthly revenue.
Trainn: Trainn helps SaaS companies accelerate product adoption with product walkthrough videos and training academies for users. Received $700K in funding.
Uizard: AI for UI design. Transform screenshots to designs, convert hand-drawn sketches to wireframes, generate UI designs with simple text. Received $18.6M in funding.
Encharge: Marketing automation platform built for B2B SaaS. Profitable with hundreds of paying customers paying $99/m and more.
LaudSpeaker: Open Source Cross-Channel Messaging. Works with Email, Sms, push notifications.
Vero: Send personalized mobile push notifications and emails to users based on what they do in your product. Profitable with hundreds of paying customers paying $99/m and more.
🙅♀️🙅 Pessimists
Negative Nancy says - “SaaS Products in UI/UX space are complex to build”
Me - Start small. Think small. You can simply create Info Products as well in UI/UX Space.
The 80/20 Design Challenge reached $2500+ in 3 Months.
Re:Form reached $6K in monthly revenue.
UX Playbook is currently at $4K in monthly revenue.
Or you can create starter kits like Tailwind UI Kit , Ready UI and Frames X that doesn’t involve a lot of SaaS functionality.
Negative Nancy says - “I am good at UI/UX but not interested in building SaaS/Info Products.”
Me - Productized Service for UI/UX is a good option. Most services in this model charge $1000/m-$3000/m.
Honter Studio reached monthly revenues of $20K
Designfly currently at $4.9K in monthly revenue.
💡💡 Deep-dive & Some niches
Micro-SaaS for Teaching UI/UX Interactively/with Gamification:
Gamified learning is an effective way to motivate users to learn and retain information, as it provides an engaging and interactive experience. Building a Micro-SaaS for teaching UI/UX interactively and with gamification is a fun way to teach people. The product can have modules that include interactive exercises, quizzes, and assignments. These tools will make the learning experience more interactive and hands-on. Gamification elements can be incorporated to engage learners and make the process fun. The product could include a variety of features such as interactive tutorials and quizzes that provide feedback and rewards for correct answers. The product can be improvised further with a leaderboard to track user progress and encourage competition with badges and achievements to reward users for completing tasks. For inspiration, see CSSBattle which helps people learn CSS with a gamified mechanism. CSSBattle crossed $1500 MRR. Befront is another examples in this space that received $100K in funding.
AI-Powered User Interface Design Tool:
An AI-Powered User Interface Design Tool can analyze user data, generate design recommendations, and automate repetitive tasks, saving designers valuable time and effort. With its ability to provide real-time feedback and suggestions, designers can iterate and refine their designs more efficiently. The tool's intelligent algorithms can also assist in creating accessible and user-friendly interfaces, enhancing overall user experience. Create AI-powered Micro SaaS tool that helps designers to create visually appealing and highly functional interfaces with greater speed and precision. Some players in this space has made some significant progress. Some examples are Text To design, Galileo AI, Blaze and Uizard.
Galileo AI got $400K in funding and Uizard received $18.6M in funding.
Productized Service for UI/UX:
This is another category that is getting extremely popular. Productized services offer unlimited work for a fixed price. Most people often think and wonder how can someone give unlimited services and still charge a fixed monthly price. The catch is simple - In most cases, only one of your requests will be worked up with a turnaround time of 3-4 days. During this time, the customer can still add his/her requests to the queue. So, technically, the maximum request that can be delivered in this case is only 7 requests per month considering the 4 days turnaround time. Most productized services charge a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars considering the time spent. Most of the current players like DesignJoy and DesignDash are charged $2K per month and at this price, all you need is 5 clients to hit $100K in revenue. Most customers who come for Graphic design/UI/UX designs could be interested in other things like web development as well. If you have enough bandwidth and resources, bundle both UI/UX/Graphic design and Web development as a package and propose to customers. But DesignJoy model could be a lot of pressure when you handle too many clients. Aim for quality and target a few number of clients and keep others on waitlist. If the waitlist kept on increasing, bring in someone to support you but never compromise on quality of the output and your mental health.
Honter Studio reached monthly revenues of $20K
Designfly currently at $4.9K in monthly revenue.
Info Product around UI/UX:
SaaS takes relatively more time and is not for everyone. Making a profitable Info product also gives you a good runway with a little bit of cash when you want to build your SaaS as typically SaaS needs more time and money. Also, not all info products are one-time revenue generators. Once you have enough audience for your info products, you can upsell other products, sell your consulting time and build a SaaS product too for your audience who purchased your info product. This way info product can act as pre-validation too for your SaaS. Some examples for inspiration are The 80/20 Design Challenge , Frames X, UX Playbook and ReForm. The 80/20 Design Challenge reached $2500+ in 3 Months. ReForm reached $6K in monthly revenue and UX Playbook is currently at $4K in monthly revenue.
Micro SaaS for User Onboarding tools:
With more and more SaaS services coming into the market, there is a great need for user onboarding tools. Think of this tool as something like a guided tour inside the web app that tells users about various options. This is specifically useful for complex apps with complex screens. Possible add-ons would be to add guided voice tours inside the web app. If you want to build a Micro-SaaS tool around this, first look at the IntroJS open source module and see how it fits. Make the tool intelligent enough to segment users based on the flow activity. This will help founders to follow up with their users. The process would be like a goal-based system to final a few goals by clicking certain buttons and following certain actions. Based on how far a user made progress in the goal, you can segment them. Tools like these are also often referred as ‘In-app user onboarding tools’ or ‘SaaS User onboarding tools’ or ‘SaaS Guided Tours’ etc. Some commercial players in this space are UserGuiding, Userflow, Trainn etc. Userflow hit $21.1K in revenue in 2022. Trainn received $700K in funding UserGuiding estimated annual revenue is currently $1.3M
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💻 💻 Technical chops
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📢 📢 Marketing chops
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💳 💳 Cost Analysis for 100 customers
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