SaaS Guide

STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO
Building a
Profitable
SaaS
With No
Experience
BY JORDAN KILBURN A.K.A THE

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO
BUILDING A PROFITABLE SAAS
What You'll Discover in This Guide
Why to Start a SaaS and Why NOT to
Finding a Market to Fit the Product
Ensuring a Profitable Launch on Day 1
Building The Darn Thing
Cashing Out or Cashing In? (Planning

a Massive Exit)
"It's not about learning how to code. It’s

about building a profitable business."
- Jordan Kilburn
© Millionaire Millennial 2
Ready to Change Your Life?
I'm thrilled you decided to grab this completely free

guide that will show you how to start making real, high
margin income using SaaS.
Throughout this guide I'll be asking you to do some

simple tasks - check out a page, write down your dream
goals, etc.
All I ask is that you read attentively and follow through

with my instruction. That is - if you want to be a success
with SaaS...
Let's dive in!
WHY TO
START A
S.A.A.S.
Benefits You Can Get Behind
The Realistic Drawbacks
"Doing a SaaS is too expensive"
- You before reading this guide
I hear it all the time:
"SaaS costs $10s of thousands to start - I can't afford

that!"
"I can't code so there's no way I can build a software
startup"
Well as you could guess, I am going to show you a way to build a

software, find consistent paying users, and even sell your SaaS
for hundreds of thousands - all without spending any money OR
writing any code (if you don't want)
But first - why would you want to start a SaaS? Well aside from
the obvious answer above involving massive $$$...
1. You have substantial freedom to make things how you and

your customers want.
No more bending to the will of a faceless corporation that can

perma-ban you overnight (e.g. Amazon FBA). Everything is
controlled by you.
How does...
A 99% Margin Sound?
That's a probable margin on a web software application.

Sound too good to be true? Let me show you a little
math. 🤓
Let's take a simple customer relationship management

(CRM) software. There are a lot of them and there are
always more popping up.
The costs to operate a small tool like this could be

around $20-$50/month for servers. If you charge
$30/month to your customers and have 100 customers:
100 * $30 = $3000 ➡️ $50 / $3000 = 1.6%

Your costs are only 1.6% of your revenue - a 98.4%

margin.
OK so it's not quite 99%...
There are really only a couple downsides of starting a
SaaS - in my opinion:
1. Upfront time/money investment

2. Making many executive decisions
Although the cost to start has come down exponentially,

if you can't code (and don't want to learn) you will have
to spend at least a little bit on no-code tools to build your
V1.
There is also a mandatory time investment - the more

time you put in up front, the less you'll have to spend
fixing things down the road. It's a balancing act.
Lastly, you're 100% in charge - which sounds like a good

thing, but having been there, you will have to make many
hard decisions.
Which business to partner with? Which tech stack?

Should I fire this customer for taking too much of my
time?
The list goes on... But if you're ok with spending a little

time & money and making decisions - let's keep going!
FINDING A
MARKET
TO FIT
THE
PRODUCT
Look Where You Are
Squeezing In
"The only thing that matters is getting to
product-market fit" - Marc Andreessen
Everyone speaks of 'product-market fit' like it is the holy

grail of the startup world.
Well - if kind of IS. But what I believe many people miss is

they take the product and try to find (or even make) a
market to for it.
The real first step in building a successful SaaS is to find

a market and then fit a product into it.
This is orders of magnitude easier than the other way

around.
OK - but how do we find a market? What even is a

'market' really?
Simple.
A market is merely a group of people that have common

interests and buy/sell things within the group.
As far as finding a market - that's a little more involved.
The best place to start is where you're already at. What

blogs do you read? What kind of people do you follow?
What kind of content do you consume?
Answering those will help in finding the market you're

already apart of. Once you understand that, look at what
other people are offering in your market.
This does NOT have to be a SaaS product.
What are other people selling?
An example. Let's say I'm a car enthusiast and I follow a

lot of car Instagram pages and watch car rebuilds on
YouTube.
What I might find is many people are selling car parts,

wheels, courses, merch, etc.
Well, I am looking to start a SaaS, not sell physical

products or courses. What can I take away from this?
Well - there's actually several SaaS' lurking in plain sight.
Take a look at this screenshot from a wheel shop:
Notice the 'affirm' at the bottom. Affirm is a Fintech

company in SanFran. That's a SaaS right there.
Not necessarily 'automotive' enough for you? Look at this

one. Go to carid.com/iconfigurator.html
This is a SaaS tool built right into the site. Since CARiD is
a car mod company, they likely pay a SaaS company to
have this tool on their site.
In fact, after just a bit of digging, the creator of this little
app is iconfigurators.app. A small B2B SaaS app that
shows what wheels fit what cars.
This company then signs up users to use their SaaS in

their own page. You can even see CARiD is on their
homepage indicating they are one of their customers!
They don't have any pricing on their site so we can

assume they charge a lot for their SaaS. Probably in the
thousands since their customers are large businesses.
But honestly, this little app is not even that good... The
user interface and experience is lacking and could use a
lot of improvement. There would be plenty of room in
this market to squeeze in a better wheel configurator
SaaS (if you're in the automotive market).
BTW - I do teardowns like this on my YouTube channel all

the time!
ENSURING
A PROFITABLE
LAUNCH
ON DAY 1
Pregaming the Market
L.T.D.
Pregaming is the act of drinking before you go out
drinking...
Sounds silly, but tons of people do it for a big reason:
It's cheaper than buying drinks out. Well, turns out we

can also pregame the market before we launch our SaaS.
This is also cheaper & will result in an explosive launch on

Day 1. Let me explain...
If we can get the market a little intoxicated on our

product (and maybe build a little dependency as well)
BEFORE we even get the the launch, we will have
customers lined up ready to buy the top shelf stuff.
You see when you pregame the market you get potential
users hyped up before you even launch. But how exactly
do you do that?
Once you've found your market (see prev chapter), you
can then begin interacting with the people in it. Start
making a name for yourself.
Be helpful.
Ask and answer questions.
Socialize.
Anything to get your name (or your brand) out there. You
can note in your bio or mention in conversation the SaaS
you're 'working on' to see how interested people might
be.
This is called polling the market and it works much better

than trying to prod the market.
See which direction people want to move in and just

make it easier to do so with your SaaS product. Then on
launch day you just hit up the people that seemed
interested and...
Boom
...Big Sales.
One thing you might do to supercharge
your launch is offer what is called a
'lifetime deal' (LTD). This LTD is simple
- it allows lifetime access to your SaaS
for a single fixed price.
It's an amazing deal for your customers and you get a

boatload of cash upfront. There isn't many downsides to
doing a LTD especially early on during an initial launch.
So maybe you're planning to charge $20/mo for your SaaS,

but instead of doing that, you could charge $100 for a LTD.
Odds are your early customers won't stay on for longer

than a few months so getting $100 up front is like 5
months worth of revenue immediately. Pretty sweet.
Plus your customers get the benefit of having access to

your SaaS for as long as it may live. By the way, your LTD
does not have to be an 'all access pass'; maybe you only
allow limited access to certain features. Rytr.me did this
quite well.
They offered a LTD for $40, but you only got 50k credits
per month. The equivalent plan is $9/mo so they
essentially sold 4 months as a LTD but it wasn't unlimited!
BUILDING
THE
DARN
THING
Insource Instead of Outsource
At Least Learn the Basics
Building the thing is what most people seem to fear most.
"Ah man I don't want to learn to code"

"I don't want to spend $40k for devs to build it for me!"
And although I encourage everyone to learn to code -

there are inexpensive ways to get your SaaS built...
Starting for free, you can use a tool like bubble.io to build
a relatively basic SaaS. You could also go with WebFlow.
Bubble's no-code user interface
Now, I'll be honest, you can only get so far with no-code
tools like Bubble or Webflow. They are getting better and
better everyday, but they are still limited in what they
can do.
So if your SaaS idea is decently complicated, you will have

to get some custom code written for it. I (again)
recommend learning how to code yourself.
Not only will you save 10s of thousands of dollars or

more, you will have direct control over your SaaS. Early
on, you need this level of involvement to fix bugs, add
features, and interact with customers.
And you don't need to fear - learning to develop web

applications is substantially easier than it was even just a
few years ago. You really only need to learn JavaScript
along with HTML and CSS.
You can build almost any SaaS with that combination.
There are plenty of courses out there and I have one

myself if you're looking to learn. Just spend a few
weeks/months learning the basics and you'll find yourself
ready to get crackin' on an awesome SaaS.
CASHING
OUT OR
CASHING
IN?
Build To Sell (Even if you don't)
Easiest Exit Ever
How'd you like to see this transaction in your checking
account?
Well, that was a real transaction I received when I sold my

SaaS: Go-Atlas. I screenshotted it because it was the
largest sum of money I had ever made at one time.
It was awesome.
The reason I was able to sell it for so much was because I

built it with the intention to sell. I always recommend
doing that even if you plan to never sell. Why?
Because running the SaaS will be significantly easier! If

you plan to sell from the beginning, you will be more
organized, have SOPs in place, and work outside of the
business, not inside.
Think about it - if you were looking to buy a business, you
would want it to be organized, well built, easy to operate,
etc. And you'd likely be willing to pay even more if it had
all those things.
Make your SaaS as sellable as possible. This will make it

easier for you to operate AND when/if you do sell, you'll
be able to charge a premium.
Most SaaS companies sell for 40, 50, even 60+ times the
monthly profit. So if your SaaS is making $3,000/mo
(maybe from 100 customers @ $30/mo), you could sell it
for:
$3,000 * 60 = $180,000

Or maybe you have only 30 customers paying $100/mo?

Either way you could be cashing out big time.
But only if you build to sell. A business that is

unorganized, complicated to operate, and just generally
messy will fetch a lower (~40x) multiple. That means
you'd miss out on $60,000 in the above example...
Now you might be wondering how to actually go about
selling your SaaS. How do you find someone interested?
How do you know you won't get scammed??
Well there are a couple fantastic brokers that will do all

the work for you.
Although there are several marketplaces for selling SaaS,

I find Empire Flippers and MicroAcquire the top notch
ones. Flippa is also OK, but it's not my favorite.
Empire Flipper's SaaS Listings
WHAT'S
NEXT?
Hopefully you've got a good understanding of SaaS and
now it's time to get out there are start building!
There's a lot of great resources on my YouTube channel

and website if you get stuck along the way.
This might not be the easiest thing you ever do, but it will
be the most worthwhile - I can personally guarantee that!
I'll see you out there!
© Millionaire Millennial Inc. 24

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What are some of the benefits of starting a SaaS business?

What are some of the benefits of starting a SaaS business?

What are some potential downsides of starting a SaaS business?

What are some potential downsides of starting a SaaS business?

STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO

BY JORDAN KILBURN A.K.A THE

Why to Start a SaaS and Why NOT to

Finding a Market to Fit the Product

Ensuring a Profitable Launch on Day 1

Building The Darn Thing

Cashing Out or Cashing In? (Planning

"It's not about learning how to code. It’s

I'm thrilled you decided to grab this completely free

Throughout this guide I'll be asking you to do some

All I ask is that you read attentively and follow through

Let's dive in!

The Realistic Drawbacks

I hear it all the time:

"SaaS costs $10s of thousands to start - I can't afford

Well as you could guess, I am going to show you a way to build a

1. You have substantial freedom to make things how you and

No more bending to the will of a faceless corporation that can

A 99% Margin Sound?

That's a probable margin on a web software application.

Let's take a simple customer relationship management

The costs to operate a small tool like this could be

100 * $30 = $3000 ➡️ $50 / $3000 = 1.6%

Your costs are only 1.6% of your revenue - a 98.4%

OK so it's not quite 99%...

1. Upfront time/money investment

Although the cost to start has come down exponentially,

There is also a mandatory time investment - the more

Lastly, you're 100% in charge - which sounds like a good

Which business to partner with? Which tech stack?

The list goes on... But if you're ok with spending a little

Everyone speaks of 'product-market fit' like it is the holy

Well - if kind of IS. But what I believe many people miss is

The real first step in building a successful SaaS is to find

This is orders of magnitude easier than the other way

OK - but how do we find a market? What even is a

A market is merely a group of people that have common

The best place to start is where you're already at. What

Answering those will help in finding the market you're

This does NOT have to be a SaaS product.

What are other people selling?

An example. Let's say I'm a car enthusiast and I follow a

What I might find is many people are selling car parts,

Well, I am looking to start a SaaS, not sell physical

Notice the 'affirm' at the bottom. Affirm is a Fintech

Not necessarily 'automotive' enough for you? Look at this

This company then signs up users to use their SaaS in

They don't have any pricing on their site so we can

BTW - I do teardowns like this on my YouTube channel all

Sounds silly, but tons of people do it for a big reason:

It's cheaper than buying drinks out. Well, turns out we

This is also cheaper & will result in an explosive launch on

If we can get the market a little intoxicated on our

This is called polling the market and it works much better

See which direction people want to move in and just

It's an amazing deal for your customers and you get a