Building a SaaS vs freelancing as an automation builder: which actually pays off faster
Asked by Automate Naija in jobs · 4 replies
Everyone in this space eventually asks themselves this. Here is the honest tradeoff, not the motivational poster version.
Freelancing pays you this month. You find a client, build their automation, get paid, repeat. The ceiling is your own hours, and the moment you stop working, the income stops too. But you learn what real businesses actually need, fast, and you get paid to learn it.
A SaaS pays you every month, from every customer, without you rebuilding anything. That is the whole appeal. But almost nobody talks about the part before that: months of building something nobody asked for, then months more trying to get a single paying customer, with no guarantee it ever works. Most automation SaaS ideas die before the first sale.
The pattern worth noticing: most people who build a successful SaaS in this space freelanced first. Not because freelancing is a stepping stone in some official sense, but because it is how you find out which problem is common enough, painful enough, and worth paying to solve, before you spend six months building the wrong thing.
Which one are you actually doing right now, and why that one?
Replies
Reply by lindaokike
The freelancing market is the real ghetto. I actually understand your point. But I am of the opinion that it should be a combination of freelancing and then building something that will make you not to totally depend on freelancing
Reply by Zoom Play
But the overcrowding on the freelancing market is a real issue
Reply by Bhayhou
Freelancing is the mission while building SaaS product is the vision if you get it...
Reply by Josephine
Literally, Freelancing pays faster than Saas products, but what about the struggles before landing a Freelancing job? And tbh, the Freelancing market is leaning towards mostly referrals... Employers dont want to trust a complete stranger whom they've never worked with, they'll rather work with people who came highly recommended....
In the end, it might even take about thesame time for a freelancer and a builder to earn.....
Yes, the market is also not promised to the builder, but i believe its still an advantage to the builder because the product will be added to portfolio and can even hit it some day...
It all takes Grace..
Building a SaaS vs freelancing as an automation builder: which actually pays off faster · More Automate Naija community threads