Issue#11: Building $1K-$10K MRR micro saas products around Notion ecosystem
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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 are 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 more on how to do tech implementation, do market analysis, how the current players are doing, and also ends with a cost analysis to understand the overall cost for 100 users.
What is Notion and basics of Notion:
Notion is “All-in-one workspace” for individuals and teams. It's a mix of documents, tables, wiki, task manager, notes. There are so many possibilities using Notion - You can build simple internal help pages, write detailed documents, add data in a table format, create a task list, manage projects, manage budgets with templates, make notes. It works for both teams and individuals. There are templates for almost anything that you can clone, make your own and start using.
In 4 years, Notion grew to 6 million users with a valuation of $2 billion. This is one of the fastest-growing niches currently. There are a bunch of startups coming around Notion ecosystem - by building extra add-ons and capabilities on top of Notion.
Some current players around Notion
HelpKit: Easily build your Knowledge Base with Notion Turn your Notion docs into a hosted self-service Knowledge Base for your customers – no code required. Crossed $3K MRR with 130 paying customers in less than a year.
Super.so: From Notion to Website in minutes Turn your Notion pages into fast, functional websites with custom domains, fonts, analytics, and more.
Super.so is making 12K MRR just by connecting Notion docs to a custom domain with fonts and analytics. All this in 6months since the launch.
VizyDrop:Reports for Notion Supercharge Notion page with embedded charts and tables created from your CSV files, JSON links, custom sources, Google Sheets, Trello, GitHub and other apps with simple steps.
Notion2Site:Turn your Notion pages into Websites
ChiliPepper:Forms for NotionCreate beautiful forms connected to your Notion pages
Fruition: (Not a paid product) Fruition: Free, Open Source Toolkit for Building Websites with Notion
NoCodePages:Create websites and apps on Notion without coding. Add extra features and build a complete web experience with templates and integrations.
Notelet.so: Create a website or blog with Notion. Write in Notion, publish to the web. Custom domain, analytics, themes and more.
MinimalIcons: (One-time purchase, not micro-saas) Make your Notion uniquely yours. Customize your workspace with matching icons and covers for your Notion pages.
Newsletter OS: Janel built Newsletter OS completely on Notion. This is not a micro saas product but it is a profitable product built around/using Notion. Janel made $20K USD in 3 months.
Cloakist: Cloakist helps people set their notion pages to point to custom domains. Cloakist isn’t only for Notion but it supports a couple of other platforms too.
Negative Nancy says - “There is platform risk involved”
Me - All micro-saas products built on platforms have the same risk. But having a readily available platform brings a lot of readily available users.
Negative Nancy says - “There is no official API yet available from Notion”
Me - Notion already made it clear that an official API will be available in Spring 2021. Having early access to the API will bring in a lot of advantages for early API adopters.
Negative Nancy says - “Notion is only a tool that helps create documents. There cannot be any business built out of this ”
Me - There are already startups making thousands of dollars even without official API access. Notion grew to 6 million users.
Some niches
Connecting Notion page to the custom domain: This is the same as what super.so is doing. But considering there is a lot of market for Notion and everyone trying to jump to Notion, there is still a lot of market to address. There are multiple ways to build these micro saas. See FruitionSite on how a solution for this can be built using Cloudflare workers. Add more value to your micro-saas product by improving the SEO of the pages. Currently, Notion isn’t doing a great job with SEO for its users. If you can add extra capabilities to empower Notion content with SEO and custom domain, it would help a lot of Notion users and users would be happy to pay.
Convert Notion doc into a knowledge base: Build a micro saas around Notion pages that takes several Notion pages and builds a small searchable website out of the content/pages. This would be similar to what NoCode.works is doing for Google docs. NoCode.works is a service that lets you create your documentation using Google docs and then creates a website out of Google docs. Similarly, create a micro saas niche product around building an automated website from content in Notion.