My SaaS made $300,000 with lifetime deals. Here's what I've learned

I've worked with Simon (he helped us with launching on Product Hunt).
This is incredible stuff he is sharing... however...

❗️Here are maybe some things to take into account. Simon is really great at Twitter (100 K followers + contact with other dev-rels and influencers in tech on Twitter).

❗️ He also has 20K subscribers on YouTube.

That's right now, but I think he had similar numbers when he launched.
So he built up his brand first and then launched the product.

Don't get me wrong, this is not easy, just the opposite, say goodbye to your life in the next year (probably more) if you want to build your personal brand up to have similar numbers.

I just wanted to point this out because it sounded to me like "Just launch on AppSumo and hope for the best" - in reality, it's not like that. Simon knows what he is doing from the growth marketing side. Just launching might give you really great results, but if you want the odds to be in your favor as much as possible, you'll need to dig a little deeper into the "growth marketing" subject... Just my 2 cents. 🤓

He says that AppSumo Select deals aren't a sustainable strategy for growth.

Agreed there. Especially not when your margin is 30%.

However, I wonder what he thinks about AppSumo Marketplace deals (evergreen deals that run forever) as a strategy for growth, where the margins are anywhere between 70-90%.

I personally know many founders who sell subscriptions AND lifetime deals at the same time, with the lifetime deals bringing in anywhere from $2k/mo to even >$10k/mo.

Month after month after month.

So I don't see why it cannot be a legitimate revenue stream/sales channel.

Maybe it will lead to some MRR cannibalization (because people would rather pay once than pay forever), but if you judiciously price your lifetime deals > LTV of your subscription user, I fail to see the downside, and I still think you'll come out on top.

Anyone has experience/insight on this dilemma?

To run lifetime deals or not?

Interesting stuff Simon!

his 20k youtube followers helped a ton

What is the meaning of lifetime deals, the customer has a perpetual right to use their service? In that case, Simon took 90K$ in return for promising to continue providing the service for N years/decades; I wonder how the numbers will turn out, and also the calculus of the purchasers.

He basically says that the fee AppSumo took was worth it.

I Love Simon,
I came across his videos when I was researching SaaS & Micro-SaaS. Super informative, and I love how openly he shares his experience, and mistakes. This was a great feed of information.
Thank you for sharing.
Cheers!

Amazing story. What is the biggest contributor to the success? Influence marketing or specific program?

Influencers know how to monetize their audiences :)

Imagine building community and user base for this type of product - it would take a year or two to reach this goal.

lifetime deal is better then monthly deal or it's depend on the project type?

Thanks for sharing

Thanks for sharing, @Darko 🙌

thanks for sharing! I got an offer from Appsumo a year ago, but hesitated. Now I'll see how we can sell LTD for our tts app on it. BTW, as Patric Camplell explained once, LTD is a compromise when you need cash now and don't want to sell equity:)

LTDs can be a good idea to use once in the very beginning. That's the only time I would do it. They are best used to A. get word-of-mouth momentum and B. get a cash influx that you can reinvest into the company. "Reinvest" is the operative term here — that is how you sustain the benefit of a lifetime deal. If you pay yourself with the cash, it's essentially a wasted opportunity IMO.

AppSumo is great to get some runway! We did an LTD deal with them for one of our smaller products and we managed to do $10k.

Awesome. You recommend lifetime deals on services such as https://uptime.do.

Is it worth foregoing all future payments to get a one time boost of cash? It could be a good way to get users to give feedback.