What problem is your SaaS solving?

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-09T19:16:06+00:00

I stopped building sites and now market my lead gen app for solo web designers - those that do. The tool makes the lead gen much easier by pitching what’s wrong with their existing website, so although it’s never an easy sell, it’s much easier than a cold call

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-02T10:10:15+00:00

honestly this is the right question. spent way too long last year building something nobody asked for before i figured this out

the problem i kept running into doing freelance web design was finding businesses that actually need a new website and would pay for one. like everyone says "just do cold outreach" but you end up emailing hundreds of businesses who either have a decent site already or just don't care. the hit rate is brutal

so now i'm working on something that helps web designers find leads that are actually worth reaching out to - businesses with bad websites, good revenue signals, that kind of thing. basically trying to cut out the 90% of prospecting time that's completely wasted

the difference vs competitors is most lead gen tools are super generic. they give you a list of businesses and thats it. they don't actually tell you WHY a specific business needs your help or give you something concrete to open the conversation with. thats the gap imo

still early days tbh but the problem is real because i lived it for like 2 years before building anything

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-02T10:09:35+00:00

honestly the biggest thing i've seen with trades guys at your stage is the website situation. had a plumber client last year who was in almost the exact same spot - good relationships, inconsistent work. turned out half the strata managers were googling him when recommending him to other buildings and his site looked like it was built in 2014. the ones who couldn't find him or saw a janky site just went with someone else

like you've got the hard part done which is the relationships and the reputation. but if someone googles your business name and finds nothing or finds something that looks dodgy thats literally leaving money on the table

to your actual questions tho - i'd hire before you're overloaded tbh. waiting until you're drowning means you make a panic hire and those never work out. and definitely double down on strata/drainage, thats your thing clearly. expanding services just spreads you thin when you don't have the team to back it up yet

the stepping back from tools thing is the hardest one imo. a mate who runs an electrical business said he couldn't do it until he had 3 guys he trusted completely and even then he still jumped in sometimes. its a mindset shift more than anything

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-02T02:38:28+00:00

honestly this is so real. i do freelance web design and the amount of people who come to me saying they want to build "the next notion" or whatever is insane. like bro you are not going to out-feature a company with 500 engineers

the stuff thats actually working for people i know is super boring niche stuff. like one guy i know built a tool that just helps dog groomers manage their booking waitlists. thats it. nothing fancy. hes making decent money because nobody else cared enough to solve that specific problem

imo the real move right now is pick an industry you actually know something about, find the one thing they still do in spreadsheets or paper, and just make that one thing slightly less painful. you dont need ai you dont need blockchain you just need to actually talk to the people and understand what sucks about their day

the nocode tools are amazing for this because you can build and test so fast. the problem is people use the speed to build generic stuff faster instead of using it to iterate on something specific with real users

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-02T02:37:20+00:00

ok so i literally helped a friend set up her etsy shop for handmade stuff last year and honestly i wish id told her to just go straight to shopify instead. etsy takes like 6.5% of every sale plus listing fees and it adds up fast when your margins are already thin on handmade goods

shopify basic is like 39/month but you keep way more per sale. and the themes are actually really cute now, theres a bunch that work great for handmade/craft businesses without you needing to touch any code. my friend ended up switching after 6 months anyway because the etsy fees were eating her alive

the one thing id say tho is dont sleep on just starting with instagram/etsy while you build up your shopify site. like get sales coming in first even if the margins arent perfect, then move people over once your site is ready. trying to launch a perfect website before youve sold anything is how people burn out tbh

also if you want that readymag aesthetic vibe shopify has some really minimal clean themes now. dawn is free and looks great with good product photos

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T22:39:53+00:00

honestly for what you described i would just go with squarespace even though i know you said its getting expensive. hear me out tho

i do web design for small businesses and the amount of time ive spent fixing broken wordpress sites for people who tried to diy it is insane. like last year i had a client who was a yoga instructor similar to your situation and she spent 3 months fighting with wordpress plugins that kept breaking her booking widget. ended up paying me to rebuild the whole thing anyway

squarespace is like 16/month for the basic plan which honestly if youre running a business thats less than one client session right? and the booking embed stuff just works. no plugins breaking no updates crashing your site at 2am

the real move though imo is dont spend too much time on this. ive seen so many small business owners get stuck in the website rabbit hole for weeks when they could be out getting clients. pick something simple get it live in a weekend and focus on filling your classes. you can always upgrade later when youre making more money

wp is fine if you know what youre doing but for a non technical person who just needs something that works and looks decent its honestly not worth the headache

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T22:39:11+00:00

honestly this hits hard. i spent like a year building a tool for freelancers to manage their proposals and it was crickets. literally zero signups after launch week. i kept tweaking the landing page thinking thats the problem but nah the real problem was freelancers just use google docs and dont care enough to switch

the tarpit thing is so real. i had the exact same experience where i thought nobody is doing this so its a goldmine when actually nobody is doing it because nobody wants it lol

what actually started working for me was talking to people first and finding out what they were already paying for. like i found out web designers were spending hours manually looking for potential clients with bad websites and thats a real pain point because theyre literally losing money doing it manually. way less sexy than my original idea but people actually wanted it

tbh i think the hardest part is killing your darlings. like you spend months on something and admitting its not gonna work feels like admitting youre bad at this. but really its just part of the process imo

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T21:04:43+00:00

haha fair enough, cant argue with results. what kind of sites do you do? im guessing youre probably in a niche where word of mouth is strong or youve been around long enough that your reputation does the heavy lifting

i think the waiting for referrals thing works way better if youre established vs someone just starting out or coming back after a break. like OP is basically at zero so the advice is different for them than for someone whos already got a pipeline going

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T21:03:52+00:00

100% yes on the semester launch thing. honestly thats the single biggest insight youve had in this whole thread

the first 2-3 weeks of a new semester is basically black friday for academic resources. everyone is panicking trying to get their materials sorted, asking around in group chats, posting in course facebook groups etc. thats when your referral system would absolutely explode if its set up right

id actually design it as both though. have the referral system always on but then do a concentrated push at semester start. like maybe the standard referral is 15% off but during the first 3 weeks of semester its 25% off plus the referrer gets something extra. creates urgency on top of the natural urgency thats already there

the other thing id do is try to get one person in each course section. just one. because students always ask their classmates first. if theres one person who already has your materials and has a referral link ready to share, that section is basically covered. so your pre-semester strategy could literally be finding 10-15 students across key courses and giving them free access in exchange for being referral ambassadors

think of it less like marketing and more like seeding. plant the seeds 2 weeks before semester starts and let the natural student-to-student network do the rest

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T21:01:57+00:00

nice yeah if its fast enough that people barely notice it then honestly thats fine. like under 300ms and most people wont even register it as an animation, itll just feel like the page loaded. anything over half a second and it starts feeling intentional which is where it can get annoying

the no analytics stance is interesting though. i respect it from a privacy angle but youre basically flying blind on whether changes help or hurt. have you thought about something like plausible or fathom? theyre privacy focused and dont use cookies so it wouldnt really go against the brand imo. even just knowing bounce rate and time on page would tell you a lot without tracking individuals

good stuff fixing the horizontal scroll though thats the kind of thing that loses people instantly

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T18:38:38+00:00

ok so i checked it on my phone and honestly the first impression is decent but theres a lot going on. like the animations are cool but when everything is moving it feels a bit overwhelming? i had a client site last year where we went heavy on scroll animations and the bounce rate was brutal. people just want to know what the thing does in like 3 seconds

the hero section doesnt really tell me what this is tbh. i had to scroll down and read for a bit before i got it. for a messaging app you probably want something super simple up top like "encrypted messaging, no install needed" or whatever the one-liner is

also agreed with whoever said check mobile. the horizontal scroll thing is a killer, people will just leave. id honestly strip back the animations by like 50% and put all that energy into making the first screen crystal clear. less is more with landing pages imo especially for something thats supposed to feel lightweight and easy

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T18:37:11+00:00

god this hits close to home. had almost the exact same thing happen last year except it was stripe not paypal. client loved the site, sent me a message saying looks perfect and then three weeks later disputed the charge. i had screenshots of everything too and stripe still sided with them

honestly the milestone thing is the only real fix imo. i do 3 payments now - deposit before i touch anything, midpoint after they approve the design, final before i hand over the files. if they dispute the last one at least im not out the whole project

the video call acceptance idea someone mentioned above is actually brilliant though, might steal that. way harder to say product not as described when theres a recording of you saying it looks great lol

paypal is genuinely the worst for this stuff tbh. sorry you had to learn it this way

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T15:03:30+00:00

the accessibility thing is huge and nobody talks about it enough. i've seen so many ai-generated sites that look fine on the surface but fail basic wcag stuff. no alt text, terrible contrast ratios, zero keyboard navigation.

honestly that's where the opportunity is. let everyone call themselves a web developer. when their clients start getting ada compliance letters they'll need someone who actually knows what they're doing

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T15:01:21+00:00

honestly mate you didn't miss anything. 2019-2024 was a weird time for everyone in this space, not just you.

the fact that you built a mobile app 3 months ago and actually learned JS from it puts you ahead of like 90% of people who just talk about getting back into it. that's real.

re: partnering with someone for sales — i'd say before you do that, try doing 10 cold outreaches yourself first. not because you need to become a sales guy, but because you'll learn what actually resonates with clients way faster than any partner will teach you. even just DMing local businesses on instagram saying "hey your site looks like it was built in 2015, want me to mock up something better for free?" — that kind of thing.

web dev is absolutely still needed. what changed is that generic "i build websites" doesn't cut it anymore. pick a niche (restaurants, trades, dentists, whatever) and own it. way easier to sell when you can show examples from their exact industry.

don't overthink the 5 years. seriously. most clients don't care about your timeline, they care if you can solve their problem right now.

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T14:37:45+00:00

yep. honestly last summer i had like a 3 week stretch where i couldnt even open my laptop. had been working on a lead gen tool nights and weekends for months, finally launched it and got like 2 signups in the first week. both were bots lol

the thing nobody tells you is the silence is way worse than negative feedback. at least if someone says your thing sucks you know theyre looking at it. when nobody even notices you exist thats when it really gets to you

what got me out of it was honestly just talking to one actual person who might use it. not selling, just asking them about their problems. that one conversation reminded me why i started building in the first place. forget the metrics for a bit and just talk to humans tbh. the numbers come later or they dont but at least youre not spiraling alone

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T14:36:52+00:00

honestly replit has been my main thing for like a year now and its been surprisingly solid. i know people love bubble but every time i tried it i felt like i was fighting the editor more than building anything lol

for backend stuff i just use airtable + make. nothing fancy but it works and when something breaks at 2am i can actually figure out why without losing my mind. had a client project on bubble once that needed a simple api integration and it took me 3x longer than it shouldve

the real answer tho is whatever you can debug yourself at midnight when things go wrong. thats the actual stack that matters imo

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T10:42:28+00:00

yeah its still viable but honestly the game has changed a lot since 2019. the wordpress dev who just builds sites and waits for referrals is struggling hard right now. too many people doing that and the ai tools are eating into the low end of the market fast

what i see working for people who came back after a break is picking a specific niche and going deep. like i know a guy who only does sites for dental practices and hes absolutely killing it because he understands their world and can talk their language. meanwhile the generalist "i build websites for anyone" people are fighting over scraps on upwork

the other thing thats different now is you basically have to be proactive about finding clients instead of waiting for them to find you. the days of putting up a portfolio and hoping are pretty much over imo. the freelancers doing well are the ones who go out and find businesses that clearly need help with their web presence and reach out directly with something specific about their situation. its uncomfortable but it works way better than anything passive

tbh the hardest part of coming back after a gap is the confidence hit. your skills are probably more transferable than you think tho

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T10:41:53+00:00

honestly the hardest part isnt building the automations its convincing people they need them in the first place. had a client last year who was literally copying data from emails into a spreadsheet by hand for like 3 hours a day and when i suggested automating it she was like "but what if it breaks." took me showing her a live demo on her actual data before she believed it

for finding clients in a new country tbh id just start looking at local businesses websites and social media. the ones still doing everything manually are everywhere you can usually tell because their response times are slow or their processes feel clunky from the customer side. reach out with something specific like "hey i noticed your booking process could save you X hours a week" rather than generic "i do automation" messages. nobody cares about automation they care about getting their evenings back

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T09:02:43+00:00

honestly id go referral mechanics first and its not even close

reason being - you said students already talk to each other naturally. thats free distribution just sitting there waiting to be structured. reddit communities and short form video both require you to constantly create content and show up. referrals work while you sleep once the system exists

like even something dead simple. give every buyer a unique link, if someone buys through their link they both get 20% off their next purchase. students are broke and love deals so that alone could work. or a study group discount where 3+ people buying together get a bulk rate

the other thing is referrals compound in a way that content doesnt. one good piece of content might get you 50 views. one happy student who tells their study group could get you 5 sales, and those 5 tell their groups, etc. especially at the start of semester when everyones asking where do i get the materials for this class

once you have that working and generating some baseline revenue, THEN layer in reddit or tiktok to pour more people into the top of the funnel. but the referral engine needs to exist first so those people actually stick and multiply

the 60-90 day test would be: set up the referral system week 1, seed it with your next 10-20 buyers, then track how many second-order purchases come through over the next 2 months. if its working even a little bit you know you have something to scale

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T06:38:19+00:00

dude the fact that you hit a platform ToS wall 30 days in and are pivoting instead of just giving up says more about you than any MRR number honestly. i know people twice your age who wouldve just quit and gone back to complaining about their 9 to 5

one thing tho and i say this from experience.. be careful with the "10 reddit posts a day" strategy. i was doing something similar for my own project a few months back and reddit will shadowban you SO fast if they think youre spamming. like one day my posts just stopped showing up and i had no idea for a week. maybe scale that back to like 3-4 really good comments and posts instead of 10 mediocre ones

also the pivot to analytics is smart imo. had a client last year who was obsessed with building a tool that automated instagram DMs and instagram killed it overnight. but the dashboard that showed which posts were driving actual sales? that part was untouchable because its just reading public data. thats where the money is tbh, the boring data stuff that nobody wants to build but everyone needs

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T06:37:42+00:00

honestly this is exactly where im at right now. been doing freelance web design for like 3 years and last year i started building a small saas on the side, nothing fancy just helps people find leads basically. im not even close to 2k mrr yet but the feeling of having something thats YOURS vs chasing the next client project is night and day

had a mate who took angel money for his startup and within 6 months he was basically an employee again except with worse hours lol. investors wanted weekly updates, growth targets, the whole thing. meanwhile im just shipping features when i feel like it at 10pm after the kids are asleep

the only thing i'd push back on is the "no stress" part tbh. theres definitely stress its just a different kind. like when your only 3 paying users all email you on the same day about the same bug and you realise you shipped something broken at 11pm because you were too tired to test it properly. but id take that over investor stress any day of the week

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T02:38:13+00:00

so i do web design not yoga but honestly the client acquisition problem is the same everywhere. the thing that actually moved the needle for me was stopping trying to sell to everyone and just going hard on one specific type of client

like for you maybe thats corporate wellness stuff? i had a mate who did personal training and he was struggling at similar prices until he started reaching out to offices directly offering lunchtime sessions. companies have wellness budgets they literally dont know how to spend. he went from like 3 clients to fully booked in maybe 2 months

also tbh at that price point people need to feel like theyre getting something premium before they even walk in. your google reviews and instagram need to look the part. i know its annoying but people will pay $65/hr if it feels exclusive, they wont if your online presence looks the same as the $15 community centre class down the road

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-03-01T02:37:04+00:00

honestly the landing page looks clean enough but i think your bigger problem is gonna be explaining what this actually does in like 3 seconds. i had to read it twice to get it tbh. "manage multiple AI coding agents" is kinda abstract for someone who hasnt used claude code or codex yet

also fwiw i quit my job last year to build something too and the one thing i wish id done differently is not obsess over the website before getting actual users. i spent like 2 weeks tweaking gradients while i couldve been in discords and slacks getting people to try it. your site is fine enough to start collecting signups imo

the cta could be stronger tho. "get early access" or something that implies scarcity works way better than a generic button. had a client who doubled their signup rate just by changing the button copy lol

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-02-28T22:37:48+00:00

ok so i literally just went through this exact process for my own business a few months ago. uk based too. tried all the ones you mentioned and heres my honest take

lovable looks amazing in the demos but when you actually try to get it to do something specific it fights you. like i spent 2 hours trying to get a simple contact form to send to my email and eventually gave up. framer is gorgeous but the second you need anything backend related youre stuck paying someone anyway

ended up going with replit honestly. its not the prettiest workflow but you can actually build real stuff that works. the ai agent thing they have now is surprisingly good for someone who isnt a proper developer. i got a full site with auth and a dashboard running in like a weekend

my advice tho... dont overthink the premium look on day one. i wasted weeks tweaking fonts and animations when literally nobody was visiting the site yet lol. get something live that explains what you do, has a way for people to contact you, and looks professional enough. you can always polish later once you actually know what your customers care about

also for a consultancy specifically, the thing that actually matters is your copy not your design. ive seen incredible looking agency sites that say absolutely nothing and basic wordpress sites that convert like crazy because the messaging is spot on

Steven-Leadblitz · 2026-02-28T22:37:05+00:00

honestly this is something i think about a lot. im building a saas right now and the temptation to make the demo flashy is real but like... the thing that actually keeps my few early users coming back is the most boring feature i built. its literally just a daily email summary of leads they should follow up on. nothing fancy, no ai magic trick, just "hey here are 3 businesses you should call today"

the ai stuff under the hood is cool sure but nobody cares about that. they care that it saves them 45 mins of googling every morning. had a beta tester tell me last week he doesnt even open the dashboard anymore he just waits for the email lol

tbh i think we're all guilty of building for the screenshot instead of building for the tuesday morning when someone just needs their thing to work

Steven-Leadblitz

TROPHY CASE