Side Project of his Side Project Earns $75,000+ a Year

Check out Micro SaaS Idea, a freemium newsletter that likely makes $75,000+ per year.

A recent free edition 👈

The newsletter makes money in two ways…

• Paid subscriptions at $150 per year.

With around 500 subscribers, this should be bringing in $75K annually.

• Sponsorships on the free newsletter.

Based on sponsorship prices, I suspect this is bringing in an additional $1000 per month.

The newsletter is run by Upen, who originally launched a Google Sheets website builder called Siteoly in 2020 as a side project.

After getting his first customers and reaching $1000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR), Upen created 👉 this directory showcasing similar startups that were making $1,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

(I think the idea there was to get more eyes on Siteoly, since that’s what he used to build the directory.)

Upen planned to launch a Substack newsletter called Nextidea alongside the directory.

But then the directory went viral 📈 hitting the front page of Hacker News before the newsletter launched.

That exposure led 132 people to sign up to Upen’s not-yet-active newsletter.

His journey since then 👇

• Renamed Nextidea to Micro SaaS Idea.
• Started collecting feedback on Twitter before sending out the first issue.
• Also posted on Reddit beforehand and got lots of upvotes due to thorough research and attention to detail.
• Sent out the first edition of the newsletter in Nov 2020.
• Just 2 months after launch it was generating $350 MRR.
• In Feb 2021 it made $1k+ after launching on Product Hunt and getting to #1 product of the day.
• By May 2021 it had reached $10k in revenue.

Now ~3 years later Micro SaaS Idea has over 25,000 free subscribers, a community of 500+ paid subscribers, and is earning more than $75,000 per year 🤑

A few months after launch, Upen shared some of his key learnings via Indie Hackers….

I started lean on this. No domain. No web page. Just nothing. Starting with a simple substack but with super high-quality content. Only after I crossed $250 MRR, I bought a domain name two weeks before.

Interesting how this business grew out of something completely different. 

Upen was initially trying to gain traction with Siteoly when he stumbled across the idea and opportunity for the newsletter 💡

Goes to show the power of taking action: even if you don’t have a great idea, get working on some not-so-great ideas and you’re likely to stumble across something better once in motion.

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