How We Increased Our SaaS Revenue 33% Over Last Year

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This is a follow up story for Geocode.xyz. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published almost 2 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

I’m Ervin Ruci. I run a SaaS that provides geocoding/geoparsing information via an API.

Geocode.xyz was launched in 2016, but it only got some real traction in 2018. The current year is the best year in terms of total revenue and revenue growth, which in my case is over 90% profit as the only business costs are the server rentals on AWS.

Revenue growth comes from several directions with API recurring revenue growth being the fastest. The following graph illustrates this point:

This December is the highest-grossing month-to-date with overall revenue projected at over $20k USD from all revenue sources combined. (Recurring payments are handled by Paypal as illustrated in the graph above. Stripe is used for most one time payments as you can see below:

Because I found their recurring payment API too complicated to implement - that’s why you see only 1 customer as recurring payment on the chart, and AWS and GCP pay me directly based on the number of CPU cycles/hours that clients rent my software in the cloud)

Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?

The business has grown and pivoted into new directions. We are now offering a reverse geocode lite API on the GCP Marketplace (Reverse Geocode Lite) in addition to our existing solutions on AWS (AWS Marketplace: Geolytica).

The overall growth on revenue is over 100% up year to year overall and I’m now introducing new APIs to our reverse geocoding solutions, such as location context geofencing API, which could also be a completely new company on its own. This last feature is still in closed private beta with just a handful of clients using/testing it before we are ready to launch. Once available it will simplify the process of building location-aware app functionalities with a privacy optimized API.

We’ve also just become of premium data provider on AWS. Our Geocoding/Geoparsing API collects and compiles a vast amount of geographical data which is in turn curated to provide specialized crowdsourced datasets, such as neighborhood polygons, zip codes and postal code datasets, etc.

Lastly, we have done no SEO per se, but I’ve been giving talks at various conferences on the work I’m doing, and I published a press release on directions magazine in September 2019. That sums up all of the marketing.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

It is easy to get sidetracked and distracted. After all, I'm a one-person company and I don’t have time to waste on “moonshot” ideas. At the same time it is good to try new things, but for only a short amount of time investment.

It is important to focus on valuable ideas in order to arrive at the best execution. You may be quite intelligent, knowledgeable and creative, but if you lack focus, the probability you’ll build something valuable is very small.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

I hardly know what I’m doing in the next 5 days, let alone 5 years. My only plan is to sit back and relax, work on workable ideas and enjoy life, one day at a time.

Being a product that other people will pay you for, then you are on the right path to success.

Have you read any good books in the last year?

I like to read, from bestsellers to books that probably nobody has heard about.

As recently as this last month of the current decade I read a few historical books, such as Salonica, a city of ghosts by Mark Mazower and Ali Pacha by Alexandre Dumas.

Also, I just finished reading Sapiens (A brief history of humankind).

Currently starting to read a book written by a friend (Chris Eaton) which just arrived in my mailbox (Symphony NO. 3)

I don’t read business books. What I know about business I like to figure out on my own.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

If your only motivation is “money/business success” than chances are you are going to struggle.

If, on the other hand, you happen to enjoy what you do as a personal scientific curiosity on top of it being a product that other people will pay you for, then you are on the right path to success.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

I’m a one-man show, although I do hire sometime at the entry-level for things I don’t enjoy doing myself, such as data entry for eg.

Where can we go to learn more?

• Ervin Ruci
• I rarely post on Facebook
• Same goes for Twitter

If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!

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