Learning Web Development & Launching a SaaS in 50 days

Hey all,

I'm going to develop a website that offers an automated service (saas = software as a service). I want to launch it on February 1st, so 50 days left currently.

What I know already:

- Pretty good at programming with Java etc
- Decent knowledge about the product
- No experience in web development

How much time I have available:
- I will have about 2 weeks of completely free time over Christmas (will obviously spend some of that with family, but will try to get a lot done)
- About 4h a day otherwise, the rest is filled with university and other obligations

The Product:
- Digital
- Can be produced automatically
Can't say much more, sorry!

Promotion:
- SEO
- SEA

I want to have the website ready to be used until February 1st, if I can't produce the product automatically by then, I will just do it by hand for the first customers. That way I can cut my losses sooner if the demand for the product just isn't there for some reason. Also it will allow me to start with SEO as that will take some time too.

Current progress (I started about 3 days ago) :
Website is running locally and user accounts work as intended. Next steps: create and design all pages the website should have

For those interested I will be using Flask to develop the website in python as I already know some python from a few years ago.

Will probably update when the pages are designed.

Automation is good. Good luck man, stick to it.

Let's see how this pans out. Good luck.

DEFINE said:

Automation is good. Good luck man, stick to it.

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Thanks, still feel bad about abandoning my POD journey i started before, but I hope to pick that one back up and reuse the code from this website later on. So sticking to this one will be twice as valuable

Awesome, looking forward to seeing you achieve your goal. Creating a SAAS is not an easy thing but it's very lucrative.

Good luck , check the Brad Traversy courses on youtube , he has awesome crash courses and probably help you a lot

FarhadJeneral said:

Good luck , check the Brad Traversy courses on youtube , he has awesome crash courses and probably help you a lot

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Yea I watched some of his flask videos (among others), very helpful indeed!

Aulig said:

That way I can cut my losses sooner if the demand for the product just isn't there for some reason.

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I was actually going to quote on this, but good to see you thought of that already. If I were you, I would setup a sign up page for the product and test the market first - just to get an idea of what you could expect. Throw up a quick clean landing page with wordpress, send some Google/FB traffic (obviously at a "loss"), and get a feel for what demand will be.

Best of luck on your journey!

jadsn said:

I was actually going to quote on this, but good to see you thought of that already. If I were you, I would setup a sign up page for the product and test the market first - just to get an idea of what you could expect. Throw up a quick clean landing page with wordpress, send some Google/FB traffic (obviously at a "loss"), and get a feel for what demand will be.

Best of luck on your journey!

Click to expand...

Yea, I've thought about doing that. However theres like 5 competitors that do something similar, but I think I can outperform them all in one way or another (marketing, price or quality). Judging from the presence of competitors and the search volume for keywords that match my service exactly I think there's demand. Maybe I will still do such a test once my website is running (main missing point is an appealing homepage that lets the user order), but at that point I might as well just provide the service manually if i get orders and automate it step by step.

Just wandering, how did you find those digital product?

Is your SAAS B2B or B2C ..

falala_ said:

Just wandering, how did you find those digital product?

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I just thought of the idea and checked if there was someone providing this service already. There was, but I can do a better job.

HatArrows said:

Is your SAAS B2B or B2C ..

Click to expand...

It's B2B

Current status: still working on the main Website pages

Christmas days are over, hope you all had a great time if you celebrate.

I'm getting close to finishing the most important parts of the website. Im trying to implement a strategy of iterating quickly with this project. What I mean by this is that I will get a really basic version of a page done and later rework and improve it. This way I dont waste more time than necessary if I decide to scrap a page later on and I keep myself motivated by making quick progress instead of getting stuck on the details.

What's left for the website:
- Imprint, Privacy Policy and other small pages
- Dashboard for the user to manage their product
- Finalize order process

After the website is done I will have to host it somewhere (probably AWS for scalability), create the product and found a company.

Aulig said:

After the website is done I will have to host it somewhere (probably AWS for scalability)

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Just host wherever's easiest to set up, scalability concerns are only a problem if you get really big (i.e have employees), especially for a B2B product.

Also, five competitors in a niche field? Seems insurmountably tough. Have you verified that you have an edge/unique offering different from anything each of them have? Have you used their products as a real customer would?

Your starting point should have been the product itself. You could have skipped the learning web development part as you can not learn good design in 2 weeks and bad design doesn't convert or won't convert that well instead you should have opted for a template for 10 12 dollars. This way you can focus on what you offer rather than an arbitrary skill that you can live without.
Good luck!

Azure Spark said:

Just host wherever's easiest to set up, scalability concerns are only a problem if you get really big (i.e have employees), especially for a B2B product.

Also, five competitors in a niche field? Seems insurmountably tough. Have you verified that you have an edge/unique offering different from anything each of them have? Have you used their products as a real customer would?

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Yea AWS shouldn't be too tough to set up (I'll try zappa, which is specifically made to deploy flask websites like mine to aws). I'm mostly looking for good performance, which I should definitely get at AWS. Also I think it should be pretty good price-wise as you pay for how much power you use and not a set rate per month and I don't expect too many visitors to my page (once they've purchased the product they don't need to come back often).

You're very right about the competition, but my service will indeed be different. I can list some of the differences:
- Competitor 1 provides the service I will automate by hand, which puts his prices at a one-time payment of $800+ (I'm thinking about charging around $20 per month). His service also lacks a feature that is important to quite a few customers I'd say.
- Competitor 2 provides a very basic version of the service for about $80. But because it is so basic it often times fails to provide the feature that is most important to all customers (which can be read in customer reviews). Therefore that service is quite useless. They still pull in ~$200k in sales per year from my calculations (if the number of customers they say on the website is correct). Keep in mind that the sales volume is almost pure profit when the service is automated.
- Competitor 3 provides a service that requires a lot of effort from the customer and charges $30 per month.

Thinking about it now I might actually go up in the price, but I will see. I'm already using service unbundling to keep the base price low and offer addons at an extra cost.

Based on the prices of the competitors I did not try them myself, however I think I still did thorough research on what they do/dont offer.

Thank you very much for your questions though, I appreciate the insight!

cheva said:

Your starting point should have been the product itself. You could have skipped the learning web development part as you can not learn good design in 2 weeks and bad design doesn't convert or won't convert that well instead you should have opted for a template for 10 12 dollars. This way you can focus on what you offer rather than an arbitrary skill that you can live without.
Good luck!

Click to expand...

I'm obviously not starting from scratch as that's a waste of time, youre right about that. I use flask + bootstrap with which I'd say I can make a decent looking website. If you mean I should use something like WordPress thats simply not viable for a SaaS product like mine.

Aulig said:

Yea AWS shouldn't be too tough to set up (I'll try zappa, which is specifically made to deploy flask websites like mine to aws). I'm mostly looking for good performance, which I should definitely get at AWS. Also I think it should be pretty good price-wise as you pay for how much power you use and not a set rate per month and I don't expect too many visitors to my page (once they've purchased the product they don't need to come back often).

You're very right about the competition, but my service will indeed be different. I can list some of the differences:
- Competitor 1 provides the service I will automate by hand, which puts his prices at a one-time payment of $800+ (I'm thinking about charging around $20 per month). His service also lacks a feature that is important to quite a few customers I'd say.
- Competitor 2 provides a very basic version of the service for about $80. But because it is so basic it often times fails to provide the feature that is most important to all customers (which can be read in customer reviews). Therefore that service is quite useless. They still pull in ~$200k in sales per year from my calculations (if the number of customers they say on the website is correct). Keep in mind that the sales volume is almost pure profit when the service is automated.
- Competitor 3 provides a service that requires a lot of effort from the customer and charges $30 per month.

Thinking about it now I might actually go up in the price, but I will see. I'm already using service unbundling to keep the base price low and offer addons at an extra cost.

Based on the prices of the competitors I did not try them myself, however I think I still did thorough research on what they do/dont offer.

Thank you very much for your questions though, I appreciate the insight!



I'm obviously not starting from scratch as that's a waste of time, youre right about that. I use flask + bootstrap with which I'd say I can make a decent looking website. If you mean I should use something like WordPress thats simply not viable for a SaaS product like mine.

Click to expand...

Great research. Hoping for your success since you did the work and didnt just leave it up to chance. That being said, as a programmer I’ve hated not being a decent designer and feel like it’s what’s held back some of my apps, which I made up for in marketing efforts. Never liked bare bootstrap

Aulig said:

Yea AWS shouldn't be too tough to set up (I'll try zappa, which is specifically made to deploy flask websites like mine to aws). I'm mostly looking for good performance, which I should definitely get at AWS. Also I think it should be pretty good price-wise as you pay for how much power you use and not a set rate per month and I don't expect too many visitors to my page (once they've purchased the product they don't need to come back often).

You're very right about the competition, but my service will indeed be different. I can list some of the differences:
- Competitor 1 provides the service I will automate by hand, which puts his prices at a one-time payment of $800+ (I'm thinking about charging around $20 per month). His service also lacks a feature that is important to quite a few customers I'd say.
- Competitor 2 provides a very basic version of the service for about $80. But because it is so basic it often times fails to provide the feature that is most important to all customers (which can be read in customer reviews). Therefore that service is quite useless. They still pull in ~$200k in sales per year from my calculations (if the number of customers they say on the website is correct). Keep in mind that the sales volume is almost pure profit when the service is automated.
- Competitor 3 provides a service that requires a lot of effort from the customer and charges $30 per month.

Thinking about it now I might actually go up in the price, but I will see. I'm already using service unbundling to keep the base price low and offer addons at an extra cost.

Based on the prices of the competitors I did not try them myself, however I think I still did thorough research on what they do/dont offer.

Thank you very much for your questions though, I appreciate the insight!



I'm obviously not starting from scratch as that's a waste of time, youre right about that. I use flask + bootstrap with which I'd say I can make a decent looking website. If you mean I should use something like WordPress thats simply not viable for a SaaS product like mine.

Click to expand...

No I meant a plain HTML template hence the lower price and you could expand that into a custom CMS setup or integrate with your backend when the time came.

Really nice plan, looking further for your updates.
I was always been interested into SaaS and the work needed to make the front-end.

Good luck.

Mr Schneebly said:

Great research. Hoping for your success since you did the work and didnt just leave it up to chance. That being said, as a programmer I’ve hated not being a decent designer and feel like it’s what’s held back some of my apps, which I made up for in marketing efforts. Never liked bare bootstrap

Click to expand...

Yea I'm not the most talented designer either, but I do a decent job if I take my time. Once my business is up and running I will outsource stuff like design because professional designers can do the work quicker and probably at an affordable price too. I'm fine with the way bootstrap looks, I think as long as I have a consistent and somewhat modern design on my whole website everything is in order.

Fynesttrish said:

Following and bookmarked. Good luck on your project

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Thanks!

cheva said:

No I meant a plain HTML template hence the lower price and you could expand that into a custom CMS setup or integrate with your backend when the time came.

Click to expand...

I did start out with a free & open source flask saas template that included a bunch of pages and the basic structure already

aurim said:

Really nice plan, looking further for your updates.
I was always been interested into SaaS and the work needed to make the front-end.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

Thank you, so far the front end is going pretty well as I can find lots of bootstrap samples I can use as inspiration. I find I learn the quickest just working on a project and modifying and combining code snippets I find on the internet.

Thank you all for keeping me motivated!