I’m totally illiterate when it comes to coding or programming or anything like that.
But that didn’t stop me from making an SaaS and generating an income from it.
When ChatGPT landed, I knew I just had to be patient and wait for someone to create a no-code builder for noobs like myself who want to make AI-powered tools and sell them to the public.
That moment arrived 6 months ago — it’s called Pickaxe AI.
Why I Chose This No-Code Builder
I remember reading the product features page on their website and thinking, “OMG, this is music to my non-technical ears”.
Come up with a ChatGPT prompt, grab your API key from OpenAI, and Pickaxe will do the rest.
Other than handling all the horrible backend stuff and making it super easy to collect payments with Stripe, Pickaxe has all these good things going for it:
Chatbot Format
The main format in which users interact with your AI tools (Pickaxe calls them pickaxes) is via chat.
It looks and works exactly the same way as ChatGPT. This really pleased me because it means my users will feel at ease with the interface. After all, hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT every day and nobody complains about their interface.
Obviously you’ll have to ask yourself if your pickaxe idea can work as a chatbot. However, you can also choose the Forms option if you don’t like the conversational style.
Custom Domains
One of my biggest concerns was being assigned an ugly URL like pickaxe.co/0000654656XYZ and scaring off potential users.
Fortunately, Pickaxe lets you connect your own private domain, which is very important for professionalism and building brand awareness, as well as giving you a sense of ownership.
If you don’t have your own domain name then you will be stuck with a random string of characters, but that’s on you!
Community Forum
There’s a thriving userbase of no-coders at Pickaxe and you can see this for yourself by visiting the community forum.
It’s a place to share ideas, point out bugs, make feature requests, and provide each other with help and encouragement. Even the founders drop in every now and then to join discussions and keep everyone informed with news and updates.
Whenever I browse the forums I always feel reassured that I’m not alone in this SaaS journey.
Plus, everybody is using the same infrastructure, so if the servers go offline or some other technical glitch occurs, there’s 1000s of Pickaxe creators around the world who will raise the alarm and get it fixed — I could be fast asleep while this happens and wake up none the wiser.
Contrast that with someone flying solo with their own tech stack… they’ll wake up to an inbox full of angry customers demanding refunds, and a technical issue which still needs resolving.
Marketing My Pickaxe Studio
All your pickaxes live inside what’s called a studio — basically your online store.
Your studio is your SaaS:
- Create a pickaxe
- Create a studio
- Add pickaxe to studio
- Connect custom domain to studio
- Connect Stripe to studio
- Start marketing the studio
In my case I added three pickaxes to my studio, two of which are free to try, while the third is only accessible to paid subscribers.
There’s nothing stopping you from putting all your pickaxes behind a paywall or making them all free to try. It requires a lot of experimentation to figure out the right balance in order to convert free users into paid ones.
But none of this matters if no one knows you exist!
Since I’m a blogger, I took the opportunity to market my SaaS in some of my blog posts, including this one about AI vocabulary.
Be sure to read that article (it’s genuinely interesting) and follow the link to my SaaS so you can get a feel for the Pickaxe interface and maybe some inspiration when it comes to pricing, CTAs, credit limits etc.
I realize not everyone has the advantage of blog traffic, so here’s a few more marketing channels that worked really well for me:
This platform is far more ban-prone than it used to be, so don’t go spamming subreddit after subreddit or you’ll lose your account.
And try to resist using Reddit’s internal search engine to find your audience — I’ve had much better luck Googling “[keyword] + reddit” and dropping my SaaS link in threads which appear at the top of the search results.
Why? Because those threads are still ‘alive’ in the sense that they continue to receive traffic from Google long after the post was created.
In terms of starting your own Reddit threads, you can prevent mods from removing your posts due to self-promotion by creating posts without promoting your tool initially, and return a few hours later to edit in your links.
Social Media
Video sharing platforms like TikTok and Instagram are an absolute godsend if your SaaS is B2C.
There’s no question that high production value videos will be well received by the algorithm and attract lots of eyeballs. But very few of us have the time, skills or budget — myself included.
I’ve been posting videos of my computer monitor with a cool screensaver and overlayed it with text (a short sentence to entice my target audience) and added my link in the description. These videos reliably gain 100s of views apiece.
Eligible videos have the option to be boosted if you’re willing to pay for additional exposure. I haven’t waded into the world of paid ads just yet so I can’t really comment, but it’s definitely on the agenda.
SEO
Your Pickaxe studio is just like any other website — it exists on the internet and can drive traffic from search engines.
Give careful consideration to your website name, headings, and any other text-based content, because Google uses these to determine your ranking, which in turn affects traffic levels.
Pickaxe studios aren’t really designed to be a blog, so your SEO efforts are very limited. I recommend following my lead and setting up a separate website for content creation and using it to direct traffic to your SaaS.
My Results After 6 Months
After getting ranked on Google, finding my footing on TikTok and seeing the fruits of my labor from Reddit commenting & posting, I’m now gaining sign-ups on a daily basis.
And with constant tinkering, from price changes to prompt re-engineering to branding improvements, I’ve been able to persuade a greater proportion of those sign-ups to pull out their credit card and become monthly subscribers.
At the 6-month mark, I’m at 80 paid users. While over the lifetime of my SaaS, I’ve had nearly 5,000 users.
The important thing to remember is that I’m about to wield a 5000-strong email list which will prove instrumental in future marketing campaigns (once I have gotten to grips with email marketing).
Pickaxe AI has well and truly opened up the SaaS space to the layperson, helping you generate passive income if you can think of the right tool that people will pay for. Or maybe you just want to build an email list. Or both!