My little script turned into a Profitable SaaS

I made my first SaaS a few months ago, getting the first users has been super hard, I tried posting in Facebook, discord, reddit and more communities, in places where I know my target audience is, knowing my SaaS solves a real problem they have.

Posts were removed by mods, ignored due to self promotion, and gained no traction generally.

I switched strategies, I started actively engaging with the target audience, offering advice not strictly related to my SaaS and pitching it where it fits, this actually worked I got my first users from reddit, and as redditors are they were passionate about their niche and therefore my product.

I kept at it for a few weeks but it was time consuming, endless scrolling, searching, sifting through threads to find ones I fit in to.

So as a dev, I saw the problem, broke it down, and automated it. I made just a small script made it in a couple of days, let it run on my pc and collect leads while I'm at work and asleep, I took inspiration from F5bot which I tried using but gives poor results, I got email notifications throughout the day about people having a problem I'm solving.

This worked well, I started getting way more users and also paying users. but I loo at my little script and I think, this is super useful, surely others could use it too!

I set it to market itself, find conversations about struggling to market, quickly I get a few leads, message them, they are interested. I modify my janky script to be able to handle different users with different needs and this is my beta, users are happy!

behind the scenes, my computer randomly turns off or python exits, the "robust lead finding system" aka my janky script is down for hours because I am sleeping and didnt put it back up

But users are happy, they give positive feedback and say its something they would pay for!

Fast forward a few months, CrowdWatch (Totally not cloud watch) is born! a truly robust system, microservices deployed on AWS, no longer a janky garage script.

Best of all, it practically markets itself! Meanwhile my original project, its still getting users even though I've neglected it long ago, my comments on reddit stay forever and people searching on google for help and finding those threads reach my solution

Anyway that's my story I hope it gives other Indie hackers some motivation!

If you want to check out the project its free to try here https://crowdwatch.tech

Feel free to ask any questions about reddit marketing or building a SaaS solo, I am not an expert but I got my hands dirty and I have some mild success that I am proud of, I'll be happy to help!