Running A Micro SaaS Making $1,500 Monthly While Working Full-Time
How this full-time UI / UX designer juggles full-time work and running a profitable Micro-SaaS business on the side.
Hello! Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your business?
Hey! My name is AJ Picard. I'm grew up in a small town outside of Philadelphia called Harleysville.
I'm 32 years old and I'm currently building OneTap, which is a clipboard app that allows you to copy / paste photos, texts, links or files within one tap (pun intended) in any app (more on this later).
I try to work on OneTap as much as I can, but during the day I'm a full-time UI / UX designer and I also do freelance design work.
How did you start this business? Take us through the process.
Oh man I'm excited to dive into this question.
So I've been designing / building products since I 2017, none have been successful. It was 2020 and I had the idea for OneTap when I found myself constantly copy / pasting my startup at the times website / app link.
I thought to myself there has to be an easier way copy / paste things and I would need to be able to copy / paste what I need from within any app, I don't want to be forced to leave what I'm doing inside an app just to copy / paste something. I recorded the idea in my notes so I wouldn't forget about it.
In Jan of 2021, I decided to shut down my startup and take a break. My wife and I found out we were having a baby so it was time I find a job! I took a couple of months off but continued to get this itch to start a product again.
So I started looking at my idea list and the when I saw it the idea again my lightbulb went off. I spent all summer designing the MVP and from there I was going to figure out how to build it. I reached out to software development companies who were quoting me 44-80k to develop it which is something I wasn't going to do. I asked my buddies that knew how to code, but they weren't in love with the idea.
One day, I came across this Capstone Program at the University of Albany where you could pitch your idea and if students liked your pitch, they could decide to work build it. OneTap got selected, and from September - January a group of 4 students built OneTap, for FREE!
Now, the finished product barely worked, but the good news was I could at least showcase how to copy / paste links.
I started sharing the MVP on Twitter, where I gained 400 beta Users and connected with the most important person I've been in the past 6 years, Om Chachad. Om reached out saying he loved my concept for OneTap and would love to help take it to the next level. This was in June of 2022, he took the summer to rebuild it and we launched it on 9/22/24.
To this day Om and I are still working together to take OneTap to the next level, pretty insane how things work out.
How did you get your first initial customers?
Well, Om and I started brainstorming how we could get people to subscribe to OneTap and that's when we started building exclusive features only for Pro Users.
When we officially launched we converted about 150 of those 400 beta testers and then we also launched on Producthunt that same day.
We got #3 Product of day and made about $80. I know it's pretty low but once I saw people would pay for OneTap I knew we could scale it.
Since day 1, I've been posting on X & Threads. Occasionally TikTok, but I'm not much of a video content creator.
Still looking for someone who can focus on marketing for us, I believe that's the missing piece to taking OneTap to the next level.
Since launch, what are your marketing strategies or channels to get new customers?
Honestly, 90% of our users come from App Store Search / Browsing. We get about 1,500 new users a month, so do the math.
The reason App Store Search / Browsing is so high is because I've spent hours and hours improving OneTaps App Store Search Optimization.
It's the most boring thing to work on for your app, but imo the most important. Since we had the right ASO in place, when creators featured us on their channels, we would rank up on the keywords we've set which made Apple suggest downloading OneTap more.
This led to a more consistent growth than just short term growth from getting featured on these channels.
There's so many factors that affect your ASO, like your name, subtitle, description, keywords, App Store Preview pages and reviews. I could talk about this topic forever, feel free to reach out if you have any questions happy to help! As of late I've been posting on X & Threads.
On X mainly using the #BuildingInPublic hashtag on my posts or I post in the Build In Public community.
I've been getting a lot more engagement on Threads though. I've been uploading concept designs for OneTap that been getting in front of a lot of people which have led to more downloads & revenue.
I've uploaded some snapshots of the traction OneTap was gaining before I started focusing on ASO and then after I started focusing on.
How does your business make money?
Right now we offer the following options when upgrading to OneTap Pro:
As of now we don't have any future plans of expanding on monetization.
On average , OneTap is generating $1,500 in total revenue each month.
The beauty about OneTap is how we lean we built it. It doesn't have any servers that we have to pay for since we're saving everything on the Users iCloud.
We also did this to enhance security for our Users. It's important they know we don't have access to any of the data they upload in OneTap. Because of this, we have nearly 0 expenses.
The only thing we pay for each month is our AI feature, which ranges from $20 - $75 a month. We also lose 30% of our revenue since Apple also takes a cut, but other than that our margins are very high.
How much time do you spend on the business?
I usually work on OneTap in the morning, and get back to it right after the work. I also spend time on weekends working on.
I would say I average about 20-30 hours a week answering support emails, answer reviews, creating design concepts, making website improvements, blogging, posting on socials.
Where can we go to learn more about you and your business?
I'd love to connect with all of you on social media, feel free to reach out if you need someone to design your product or want to chat about ASO, Design, etc.