Why SaaS isn't the 'easiest' path to success despite what you've heard
Whenever you try to make money on your own, that is without relying on a company to pay you a salary, some paths are easier than others. However, many people misunderstand what 'easy' actually means in this context. Let me give you two examples:
Example 1: You're a SaaS developer trying to make it. You've spent two months pushing for sales with no success. Despite solid distribution, people just aren't clicking the 'buy' button. In this case, your challenge is obvious: you have to convince potential users to buy your product, and there's no way around that if you want your SaaS to succeed.
Example 2: You buy houses and rent them out for a living. At the right price, people will sell you their house, and at the right price, they'll rent from you. That's it. Sure, there will be challenges, but the core of making money through renting is that simple. You don't have to convince anyone to need a place to live, it's a basic necessity. Meanwhile, they may not need your niche CRM for dog owners.
I know what you might be thinking: 'But don't you need money to buy a house or to invest?' Yeah, of course you do, but we're not talking about the starting point. We're focusing on the mechanics of making money once you're in the game. In the SaaS example, the 'hard part' isn't just building the product, it's convincing people to believe in its value and take action. With real estate, while there are challenges, you're leveraging a basic human need, shelter. The takeaway here isn't that one method is inherently better than the other, it's that some usually SaaS businesses require more persuasion and ongoing efforts to convince customers of your value proposition. Others, like renting homes, are more straightforward because the demand is already built in.
When people talk about 'easy' ways to make money, they often claim that building software is the easiest path. However, this confuses 'easy' with 'accessible,' and the two are very different concepts. Yes, software development is accessible in the sense that anyone with a computer and the right skills can get started with relatively low upfront costs. But that doesn't make the process of building a profitable software business easy.
Many treat software as the ultimate money-making machine, and in some ways, it can be. The margins are impressive, and the scalability is virtually limitless. Build it once and sell it to countless customers without significant additional costs. But here's the catch: if your product lacks product-market fit, all those benefits become meaningless. You can spend years developing a beautifully crafted SaaS tool, but if it doesn't solve a real problem or resonate with users, you'll end up struggling to get people to click 'buy.' In fact, you might waste a lifetime trying to sell something no one actually wants.
So while software may be accessible and theoretically scalable, the hard truth is that success in this field hinges on much more than just building the product. You need to convince people of its value, solve a real pain point, and tap into a market that's hungry for what you're offering. Without these critical elements, even the 'easiest' business model can become an uphill battle.