Twitter makes solo SaaS look like a dream.
Shipping fast. Making money while you sleep. Freedom. Passive income. Location independence.
I've been running 10 SaaS products solo for over a year now, and I need to tell you something: most of that is bullshit.
Not because it's impossible. But because nobody tells you about the other 90%.
Here's what actually happens when you run multiple products alone.
You Will Break Things at the Worst Possible Time
Last Tuesday at 11:47 PM, three of my products went down simultaneously.
Not because I deployed bad code. Not because of a hack. Because I forgot to renew a domain that was linked to my DNS provider, and Cloudflare decided that exact moment was when the cache should expire.
I was already in bed. Phone buzzes. Email alerts. Status page pings. Discord messages from angry users.
You know what "passive income" looks like at midnight? It's me in pajamas, laptop balanced on my knees, SSHing into servers and manually updating DNS records while half-asleep.
There's no team to call. No devops person to ping. It's you, the problem, and Google at 2 AM hoping Stack Overflow has the answer.
The reality: You're always on call. Always. Vacations don't exist — they're just "working from a different location with worse WiFi."
Context Switching Will Destroy Your Brain
People see "10 products" and think it's impressive. What they don't see is the cognitive load.
One minute I'm debugging a Stripe webhook issue in Product A. Next minute, a customer emails about a UI bug in Product B. Then I need to update the landing page for Product C, push a security patch for Product D, and oh wait — Product E's API quota just hit the limit and I need to upgrade the plan.
Every product has its own:
- Codebase (different versions of dependencies)
- Database schema (Postgres, Supabase, SQLite — yes, all three)
- Hosting setup (Vercel, Railway, self-hosted)
- Customer support email
- Pricing tier
- Tech stack quirks
By 3 PM, I've opened and closed 40 browser tabs and I can barely remember which product I'm currently fixing.
The solution that saved me: I keep obsessive documentation in Notion. Every product has a workspace with common issues, deployment steps, and customer FAQs. If I don't write it down, future-me will hate past-me.
Customer Support Never Stops
You'd think with 10 products, most would be "set and forget."
Nope.
Every day, there's at least 5-10 support emails. Some are bugs. Some are feature requests. Some are just people who didn't read the documentation.
And here's the trap: you WANT to help everyone. You built this thing, you're emotionally invested, and every user feels important.
But replying to "how do I reset my password?" for the 47th time when the reset link is literally on the login page? That's not building. That's babysitting.
What actually works: Templates. I have canned responses for 90% of common questions. Not robotic — personalized — but templated. I also use Tally forms for bug reports so I get structured data instead of vague "it's broken" emails.
And honestly? Some products get better support than others. The ones making money get priority. That sounds harsh, but it's reality.
Try Tally for structured feedback
You'll Ship Half-Finished Products (And That's Fine)
Every single product I've launched has been incomplete.
Product A launched without user authentication (just email login). Product B launched without a proper dashboard. Product C launched with placeholder copy on half the pages.
I used to feel guilty about this. Like I was ripping people off by shipping "incomplete" software.
Then I realized: nobody cares about the features you didn't build. They care if the core thing works.
One of my most successful products has exactly one feature. One. But it solves the problem so well that people pay $49/month for it.
The mindset shift: Shipping fast beats shipping perfect. You can't improve what doesn't exist. Launch the MVP, iterate based on feedback.
I use Cursor for rapid prototyping now. The AI-assisted coding means I can go from idea to deployed product in a weekend. Not production-perfect, but good enough to validate.
Revenue is Wildly Uneven
Out of my 10 products:
- 2 make real money (like, "pay my rent" money)
- 3 make beer money ($100-500/month)
- 5 make basically nothing
That means 80% of my time goes to the 2 products that actually matter. The rest? They exist, they run, but I'm not optimizing them.
Some months I make $8K. Some months I make $2K. There's no stability. No steady paycheck. Just chaos and hoping the Stripe notifications keep coming.
What I wish I'd known earlier: Don't spread yourself thin. I should've built 3 great products instead of 10 mediocre ones. But you only learn that by making the mistake.
SEO is a Waiting Game (But It's Worth It)
You write a blog post. Publish it. Check Google Analytics 3 hours later.
Zero visitors.
Check the next day. Still zero.
Check a week later. Maybe 5 visits.
SEO for SaaS is brutal because it's slow. You write content, optimize it, and then... wait. For months.
I used to write random blog posts and pray. Then I started using Outrank to actually plan content strategically — targeting keywords with real search volume, structuring posts properly, filling content gaps.
Three months later, organic traffic started trickling in. Six months later, one of my products gets 80% of its signups from Google.
But those first few months? Crickets.
The reality: If you need traffic today, SEO won't help. But if you're building for the long term, it's the only thing that compounds without paid ads.
Marketing Feels Like Shouting Into the Void
I post on Twitter. I write blog posts. I share on Reddit (carefully, without being spammy). I make demo videos.
Most of it goes nowhere.
You know what I learned? One viral tweet will bring more traffic than 50 mediocre posts. But you can't predict which one will hit.
So you just keep shipping. Keep posting. Keep showing up.
I started using Revid.ai to turn my product demos into short-form content for TikTok and Reels. Some videos get 100 views. Some get 50K. There's no formula.
Try Revid.ai for video content
What actually works: Build in public. Share the process, not just the wins. People don't care about your product launch announcement. They care about the story of how you built it.
Loneliness is Real
No co-founder to brainstorm with. No team to celebrate wins with. No colleagues to vent to when things break.
Just you, your laptop, and the feedback loop of customers who email when things go wrong but stay silent when things work.
Some days I ship a huge feature and have nobody to tell. Some days everything breaks and there's nobody to help.
The fix: Find your people. Twitter DMs, indie hacker communities, Discord servers. Even if you're solo, you don't have to be alone.
The Honest Truth
Running 10 SaaS products solo is not a flex. It's a survival strategy.
I didn't plan for 10. I planned for 1. But that one didn't work, so I built another. That one kinda worked, so I built another. Some died. Some stuck.
Now I have 10, and most days I'm not sure if that's smart or stupid.
But here's what I know:
- You'll work more hours than any 9-5 job
- You'll make less money than you expect (at first)
- You'll break things constantly
- You'll question everything
And somehow, you'll keep going.
Because as chaotic and unglamorous as it is, it's yours. The wins are yours. The failures are yours. The 2 AM fire drills are yours.
And that's worth something.
I'm Kapil — solo SaaS builder, professional fire extinguisher, and occasional writer. Follow the chaos on Twitter.
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