His Micro Saas Journey: Zero to $500K in 2 Years

Rick BlythFounder of Merch Wizard $500,000 earned from micro SaaS apps
Published July 28, 2023 by Fardeen KhanReviewed and edited by Niall Doherty

Rick Blyth had been a software engineer for almost 20 years, but he found it to be chaotic and unfulfilling

Looking for a way out, he discovered Amazon Merch, an on-demand t-shirt printing service. (You basically provide the designs and Amazon prints and ships the orders.)

But Rick quickly became frustrated trying to manage his growing portfolio of t-shirt designs with Merch’s clunky interface

So he decided to scratch his own itch and fix the problem.

He explains in an interview….

I created a few free Chrome extensions that fixed some of the immediate frustrations as a Merch creator myself.

Rick released free tools, engaged in communities to build credibility, and only ever asked for email addresses in return for his tools.

He then dropped his first paid extension, Merch Batch Editor. He built it in a weekend, sold it for $13 a pop, and watched it rack up over $3K in sales in about a year

That small success gave Rick the confidence to build his flagship product: Merch Wizard. That app helped sellers organize their massive merch catalog across all of Amazon’s marketplaces.

Rick decided to build and ship the first version of Merch Wizard within 90 days. He continued improving the product while still working full-time.

But “after a particularly prosperous Black Friday sale,” Rick finally took the leap to leave his job and focus on Merch Wizard

Partnering with influencers and providing good customer support got him good reviews, which in turn led to more sales and word-of-mouth marketing.

Rick later built KDP Wizard, a similar tool for Kindle publishers.

Combined, he was earning about $10,000 per month from those “micro SaaS” apps

Then, after 2 years of bootstrapping, Rick sold both tools for a nice exit.

He writes on his website…

I went on to make over $500,000 from my Micro SaaS apps through the subscription income and cash lump sum I received when I sold and exited.

So he went from zero to half a million dollars in about 2 years

A good takeaway from Rick: keep trying different things.

Rick tried Amazon Merch and that didn’t go great for him, but it gave him the idea to build tools for other Merch sellers.

Hard to get ideas while standing still. They flow much easier once you’re in motion.

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