Money Maker 💰

Hello friends!

This week I've renamed the newsletter to "Serial Maker". I hope you're enjoying it! If you missed any of the past editions, make sure to check them out! And if you know someone who might enjoy what I write about, please forward this email to a friend :)

Passive recurring income is how you build wealth. This is the holy grail of any entrepreneur— to make money while you sleep. It beats grinding out an hourly wage any day. 

As a software developer, the opportunity and the tools to create something infinitely scalable and profitable have never been more readily available. Build something people want, and they will pay you for it.

This issue focuses mainly on software as a service, but there are many non-technical means of generating passive income as a maker. Make sure to check the links at the end.

Ding, there's another Stripe payment notification.

Let's talk about passive recurring income. 💰
 

TLDR

3 thoughts on monetizing your work

• Keep it simple, then automate, then scale

• Let your users do the marketing

• Customer service is everything

Get To Market

Thanks to the popularity of The Lean Startup, you probably already know that getting a minimum viable product to market as fast as possible is incredibly important. Too much time is wasted building every possible killer-app feature when first launching your product. Get to market, listen to your customers, analyze usage, and iterate... again and again.

Don't automate things right away. Send a manual welcome email to customers in the beginning. If you gain 10 new customers a week, this isn't going to take much of your time. When it starts to become unmanageable, automate that email. This will keep costs down as you go. Stay profitable. Get to market, and automate features as you need to.

Most likely you don't need those 4 load balancers and that follower database when you launch if you only have 2 paying customers. Get to market, and start building your scalable infrastructure as you grow, not before. Scaling problems are good problems to have. It means you've achieved product-market fit. Keep it simple, then automate, then scale!
 

Organic Growth

Chances are you use Dropbox. One of the more brilliant growth tactics I've seen is how Dropbox provides extra storage space when you invite someone to sign up. This provides a simple mechanism to incentivize you to share the app with your friends, who in turn invite more, and so on.

I made sure Link My Photos had this baked right into the product. Each user's Instagram profile is an endorsement of the product because the product name is right in their URL. On top of that, there's a link at the bottom of each landing page that provides an easy way for a new user to set up their own account. The overwhelming majority of new subscriber acquisition for LMP is from existing customers' followers that click on this link. Let your users do the marketing!
 

Talk To Your Customers

Be available to your customers. They're using your product! Be open and transparent. Don't use a do-not-reply email address. Make sure anyone can respond to the emails you send them. Include a chatbot. Don't make it intrusive, but having it available as another communication channel keeps the customer frustration level at a minimum.

And be kind. Always. I've seen my share of raging, cruel, frustrated customer messages. And each time I've responded politely, professionally, and as helpful as possible. It's amazing how the tone changes when the customer sees they're talking to a real person that's available to help. Don't be surprised when that unhappy customer on your free plan upgrades to a paid subscription.

And your customers will not hesitate to tell you what they want, what they find confusing, and what could be better. Listen to them. I've found multiple opportunities to automate and improve parts of LMP based solely on a few repeated customers' questions. Customer service is everything!


Good Reads for Building Passive Recurring Income

• How to Get Rich (without getting lucky)

• Ask HN: Best passive income methods for a solo developer?

• Passive Income Strategies for Web Designers

• 34 Passive Income Ideas for Developers

• MAKE: Bootstrapper's Handbook

• Stripe: The business of SaaS

• The Rise of "No Code"

Hit reply to tell me what you're doing to make passive recurring income. I'd also love to know what you thought of this issue, and what you want to hear about in the future. Thanks for reading! 🙌

Until next week,

Craig