I Turned My Side Project Into A $90K/Year SaaS To Help You Focus
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Ben Bozzay and I'm the founder of Tech Lockdown, a platform that helps adults be more intentional with their internet use. The main offering is DNS Filtering services, which allow users to set a content policy that determines what is blocked, when it is blocked, and who it is blocked for.
In contrast with a parental control service, our target customers are adults who want to set up guardrails for their own internet use. Unlike digital wellbeing and screen time tools, we focus on adding a good bit of friction getting around these guardrails. Now, with an MRR of around $7,500 and 50,000 website visitors each month, I've been able to focus on Tech Lockdown full-time.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
As a self-taught programmer, I've been fortunate to work remotely for most of my career, often as my own boss. When the COVID-19 lockdowns forced millions of people to work from home, I saw an opportunity to share my experience and help others navigate this new reality.
In November of 2020, I released a YouTube video that got more reach than I was expecting.
I provided specific advice on how to set up content blocking and device management systems to help remote workers avoid developing compulsive internet habits. I was surprised by the response and this made me realize there was a real need for tools and resources to help people take control of their internet use.
With my programming background and firsthand experience with the challenges of remote work, I felt uniquely positioned to tackle this issue. I launched a basic website and continued writing about these challenges and specific ways to solve them.
I steadily gained a following and grew an email list. Compared to other business ideas I'd had, I initially viewed this as a hobby rather than a serious project and I genuinely just wanted to help remote workers navigate these new challenges.
Balancing this passion project with my full-time software development job and personal life was a significant challenge. As a lead on several projects at work and a newlywed, I had limited time to dedicate to monetizing my hobby. It took me almost a year to generate revenue from the audience I had attracted.
I started by creating courses teaching people how to use mobile device managers and configure DNS Filtering services to create more effective content blocking setups. The positive feedback and growing demand validated that I was on the right track. However, I knew that courses alone weren't enough - I wanted to create a product that would make it even easier for people to implement these strategies.
At the time, I was in a stable financial situation thanks to my programming career, which allowed me to invest time and resources into developing the Tech Lockdown platform, even if progress was slower than I would have liked due to my other commitments.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
When I first started monetizing my website, I utilized a headless content management system to manage the free and paid content. This allowed me to seamlessly integrate my content with a custom-built gated content system, which I developed using Stripe for payment processing and Nuxt.JS to generate a static site.
I spent a good bit of effort designing my CMS so that I could scale SEO efforts while also managing the monetized content. I embedded private YouTube videos to supplement the step-by-step written material. This approach kept my costs and maintenance overhead low, with monthly expenses of less than $50.
As my audience grew and I validated the demand for more comprehensive solutions, I decided to expand my offerings by creating a SaaS product. I used Stripe’s hosted pages to manage payment processing in a compliant way. PCI compliance is normally a huge headache, but the hosted Stripe pages made this easy to deal with.
Stripe also has a tax feature that simplifies sales tax collection and reporting. I switched from Google Analytics to a simpler, privacy-first analytics tool: Plausible analytics. This reduced GDPR risks and the need for cookie banners on my marketing website.
My initial prototype was a web application that integrated with an enterprise DNS Filtering service using the API they provided to managed service providers. I used TailwindCSS and TailwindUI to build the UI for my application and this significantly cut down on the initial development and design time. In the first release of the platform, customers could only link their home network, without the ability to customize their content blocking preferences or install the filter directly on their devices.
Adding the ability to link a home network was in addition to the paid courses I was offering, so it was an added bonus to the existing offering. Many customers were happy with this addition, but I also had customers who fixated on the lack of features. I was transparent with my followers about the product roadmap and made sure to respond quickly to their requests and feedback.
This approach bought me some time to iterate and improve the product based on user input. I worked diligently to add the most requested features, such as customizable content blocking, device-level filtering, and DNS logs. After a few months of work, it started to look like a real SaaS platform.
By continuously refining the product and responding to customer needs, I was able to build trust and loyalty within my user base. Now the current version is much more refined with the features I always wanted to have in my final product.
Describe the process of launching the business.
When I initially launched my marketing website, it was about as basic as it gets. The marketing site and paid content were mixed together. I had a simple login system using Auth0 and it would unlock access to the premium content on the website. This was the first release of the Tech Lockdown website:
When I launched my DNS Filtering SaaS product, I tried to stay focused by including the fewest number of features possible so that I didn’t incur too much technical debt or maintenance overhead. In fact, I didn’t even use a dedicated database initially. Most application logic was handled in the customer’s web browser and in the Auth0 user session.
This ended up being a good decision because I didn’t get complaints about the lack of optimization. My free time was limited, so limiting the scope of what I was offering was a good decision. I didn’t get too much push back on the lack of features since the SaaS product was an addition to the current paid content that I provided, so most customers were happy to get access to more at the same price.
However, even with the limited features, I would still receive urgent support requests that made it difficult for me to take time off. I learned to build in more effective error monitoring and testing so that I could get ahead of issues. I used Sentry to aggregate errors from my web application and eventually hired a part-time support contractor to field urgent requests.
My approach to this project has always been to stay as lean as possible without jumping ahead too quickly. This conservative approach allowed me to bootstrap the entire startup without taking on any outside investment or debt. Since I could build everything myself and knew a good bit about online marketing, I didn’t depend on outside contractors or agencies. Growing at a conservative rate made sense for my situation since my full-time job was my main priority and I was only able to focus on it early in the morning and late at night.
I didn’t see any noticeable changes in the customer base until early 2023 when my product had more attractive features and my SEO efforts had paid off in bigger ways. I also launched an annual plan that helped me raise more money by having customers prepay for a year at a discounted rate. This was a game changer and revenue shot up quickly without any significant change in traffic.
In the following screenshot, you can see my gross volume in 2023 was already quite elevated compared to 2022, but the release of an annual plan in March caused an immediate spike in revenue.
An annual plan lets you continue to bootstrap a project by getting more revenue up front while rewarding customers who want to stick with you long-term by discounting their subscription. It’s a simple approach that pays off so quickly.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Marketing through content has been my main source of customers. My content tends to rank well on search engines, so traffic to the site has trended up since I started the project.
This sounds cliche, but the key to good SEO starts with content that is actually useful and helpful to people. Search engine results pages are flooded with low-effort content, so you’ll stand out if you actually give away good content. You are more likely to gain good PR and natural backlinks when you use this approach. For example, Reddit provides a steady stream of referrals since Reddit users often use us as a source in the comment section.
Although I don’t do a good job keeping up with YouTube, the few videos I created still provide a steady stream of traffic.
The key to good content marketing is to give away valuable information that someone might pay a consultant for. I’ve found that this creates trust and reciprocity. Usually when I find a good topic, it starts with me having general knowledge about the types of problems and solutions people are searching for.
Then I use keyword research tools to figure out the associated search phrases. From there, I work on creating persuasive content, making sure to include supporting screenshots and images so that the reader isn’t overwhelmed with a wall of text.
I focus on creating original content, which means that I often grab screenshots from my own devices where I’m showcasing what I’m talking about. Sometimes I create a video version of the content and publish it on YouTube. Then, I create helpful posts on Reddit summarizing the video and include a hyperlink to the video in the Reddit post or comments section.
I also promote the YouTube video to my email list. The combination of Reddit and the email list helps to get initial engagement on the video, which can encourage the YouTube algorithm to suggest it to more people.
Backlinks are important for SEO and I’ve managed to gain a few backlinks by networking with complementary websites in my niche. I’ve also used Help a Reporter Out (HARO) services like Featured to gain some incredible backlinks. I’ve made attempts to utilize social media other than YouTube, but just didn’t see a good ROI on platforms like Instagram. On past projects, I’ve made the mistake of spreading myself too thin across many marketing different channels. I think it’s best to focus on a few channels that you can do well and that aren’t particularly draining on you.
I’ve tried outsourcing a few channels and just haven’t been impressed with the ROI, so I tend to double down on the channels that work for me instead. Online ads can get out of hand quickly from a budget perspective, so I only briefly experimented with them. I will most likely revisit PPC advertising on Google this year.
Don’t fall into the trap of working on too many channels of growth simultaneously. You have limited energy and resources, so pick a growth strategy that you can do regularly so that your effort compounds over time.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
Today the business is profitable and I have a high enough margin to hire a part-time contractor to handle customer support. This has been a major quality of life improvement for me since I feel like I can step away to take time off. My customer acquisition cost is near zero since all sales come through organic channels like search engines and YouTube.
I have quite a few new product ideas, starting with a browser extension and expanding into apps for iOS and Android. I plan to transition to a free trial system, which will hopefully grow my email list in addition to increasing paid memberships.
Historic gross margins on my SaaS product have been 70% since the service I previously integrated with charged per seat. With the newly released version of the platform, my margins are closer to 95% since the new integration cost is much lower.
Otherwise, the other costs to keep the web application online are predictable and fixed. My biggest recurring expense is a dedicated IP address for transactional email, which is $50/month. I use Supabase to handle Auth and Postgres as a service, but I utilized the benefits provided by Mercury bank to get Supabase free for a year.
One advantage of this type of business is that many customers want to stick around long-term, resulting in a high customer lifetime value is $94.
Churn rate continues to go down as I improve the platform, but it was quite high early on.
I’m not that great with social media platforms other than YouTube. Even with YouTube, I typically don’t have time to make videos on a regular basis. My subscriber and follower counts are low, but I make up for this by utilizing Reddit and my email list to promote any videos I do release. SEO, word of mouth, and direct referrals from backlinks are the main sources of customer acquisition.
Short term, I’m focused on supporting the release of the completely reworked platform. I’m interviewing customers and trying to improve the user experience as much as possible. From there, I plan to diversify where I acquire customers from by expanding into browser extensions and native applications on Android and iOS.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
On the marketing side of things, I think I’ve done a good job making sure that any time I create a video or write a piece of content, I’m doing everything possible to make sure I’m not wasting my time. For example, if I create a free guide, it also doubles as a helpful resource for current members.
I try to cut up and repurpose content into different topics as well, so even if an article doesn’t rank, it’s used to inform the creation of derivative content. If the content I’ve created doesn’t eventually get any traffic, I add it to my refactoring calendar. Sometimes all it takes is slight adjustments to the content to change how search engines rank it.
Adding a part-time support contractor was a great decision as well. It forced me to be more organized and to set up better systems for handling requests. As a founder, support requests can feel far more important than they are. You might get a support ticket from a difficult customer, which can impact your mood and cause you to lose focus on improving.
Sometimes customer feature requests can seem so important that you feel they are a higher priority than they are. Having someone else handle support requests helps me stay focused without so much context switching.
Since so much of my business is based on search engine traffic, there's a risk that algorithm changes impact growth. One of my biggest focuses right now is to hedge this risk. One way I’m doing this is by getting into more channels like browser extension stores.
Furthermore, I’m working on brand awareness to increase brand search traffic. I’m also considering PPC advertising after I implement a free trial system.
Although I think it’s important to communicate with customers about a product roadmap, this was also a major source of frustration. Some features ended up not being possible or took far longer to implement due to time and resource constraints. I’ve learned to be more conservative with sharing some of my future plans for extending the platform, but still provide open channels for requesting features.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
On the SEO side of things, Ahrefs has been an invaluable resource. I use it to identify content gaps and find keyword opportunities. I’ve been using the Featured HARO service to gain some brand backlinks. In 2023, I ditched Google Analytics for Plausible analytics. Unlike Google Analytics, I feel like I can quickly get insight from their analytics dashboard and easily track important metrics in a way that doesn’t slow down my website.
I heavily utilize the Strapi CMS to manage my content in a headless way. It’s developer-friendly, open source, and easy to self-host. Stripe has simplified payment processing in a major way. I’m utilizing their self-hosted pages to simplify the components I have to maintain in my web app and to stay compliant from a payment processing and tax standpoint.
I realized that you have to set constraints on yourself to avoid getting overloaded with too many priorities. Having a full-time job and limited free time can help you do this since you won’t have the luxury to work on things that aren’t high-impact.
Mercury bank has been an incredibly impressive banking solution for my startup. They provide you with tons of free perks, like credits for popular software, and also have powerful features like virtual credit cards that you can spin up as needed.
I’m getting a ton of value out of Canva. I’m not a designer and I often need to create basic images for my website and it’s way easier for me to do this with Canva than fumbling around in photoshop. I still use TailwindUI to simplify UI/UX, which I tend to struggle with. The Atlassian product suite has worked pretty well. I can consolidate internal documents with Confluence, project management with JIRA, and customer support intake in a common system.
I’m using Supabase to handle authentication and manage my postgres database. Vercel hosts my marketing website and web application. The serverless functions are ideal for my use-case.
I’m using ElasticEmail to handle my marketing mailing list. The nice thing about this service is that they have this automation workflow so that you can automatically drip out content based on a set of conditions.
MailGun is one of the best services I’ve ever used for Transactional email (like sending important emails related to a customer’s account). I use the free draw.io diagramming tool, which I use quite a bit to help articulate architecture concepts and even mapping out content relations on the marketing website.
Draw.io integrates well with Google Workspace, which I use for email and file storage.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I listened to this talk from Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine who talked about bootstrapping a business. His points about money back guarantees and using annual plans to raise funding helped me make some great decisions in 2023. I raised significant funding by offering an annual plan in addition to a monthly option and the money back guarantee allowed me to essentially offer a free trial without handling the complexity around trialing.
The How to Get Rich series by Naval Ravikant provided some insight I had never heard before. His points about gaining “specific knowledge” to make yourself harder to replace stuck with me. He talks about focusing on increasing your own leverage so that you get more output with your work inputs.
I look at my work priorities through this lens now and it gives me a good mental model for figuring out where to put my effort. He reiterates that “you’ll never get rich renting out your time.” I think about this often and try to make sure I don’t fall back into the trap of selling hours of my day.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Tech Lockdown isn’t my first attempt at an online business. In college, I co-founded a web agency and was dedicated to that full-time for a few years. This gave me exposure to the complexities around a service business and motivated me to work on products that scaled better. I attempted to build a few products, but failed to launch.
Now that I know better, I realized that you have to set constraints on yourself to avoid getting overloaded with too many priorities. Having a full-time job and limited free time can help you do this since you won’t have the luxury to work on things that aren’t high-impact.
For example, I’ve made the mistake before of spending way too much effort on logos, branding, designing the UI for an application, etc. before I’ve even released anything of tangible value. This inevitably led to burnout and decision overload, which took away from what actually mattered: going from zero to one (like Peter Thiel says).
This time around, I didn’t even launch with a logo, just some bolded text in the header of my website. I didn’t try to design anything myself or spend much time on UI/UX for the application. I grabbed components from a UI library and didn’t customize them at all. I published on platforms like Medium and YouTube before I even had a website.
It’s also important that you don’t fall into the trap of working on too many channels of growth simultaneously. You have limited energy and resources, so pick a growth strategy that you can do regularly so that your effort compounds over time. For me it was content writing and making the occasional YouTube and Reddit post. You might find Instagram or TikTok to be platforms you can sustain without tanking your energy levels.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
I’m mainly looking to hire developers who can build native applications on iOS/Android/Windows/MacOS. The apps I’m trying to build are less focused on UI and more focused on interacting with the operating system.
For example, utilizing the screen time API on iOS. Because of the uniqueness of these apps, it’s been difficult to find developers. Feel free to email me at [email protected] if you are interested in contract work.
Where can we go to learn more?
The best way to learn more is through the Tech Lockdown website or contacting me directly at [email protected]. You can check out the Tech Lockdown YouTube channel as well, but I have not been keeping up with it lately.
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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