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Micro-SaaS for one specific trade

A small piece of software that solves one nagging problem for one occupation — scheduling for mobile groomers, compliance logs for food trucks, quoting for window fitters. It's a subscription business with few customers and low churn, because the tool fits their week exactly and nothing generic does.

Startup cost

$100–$500 — hosting and a domain ($100–$500 to start)

Who pays

Small operators in a single trade

How it earns

Low monthly subscription, many small accounts · recurring

Tech skill needed

Building or wiring software

Role of AI

AI speeds up the work behind the scenes

Business model

Software

Run it solo?

Yes, realistically

Online or local

Online

Time it takes

15+ hours a week to launch, less to maintain

Getting evidence

Hard

First customer likely comes from

Find the trade's busiest online community and read what they complain about weekly

What makes this work

Big software companies ignore a trade with twenty thousand operators worldwide. That's too small for them and plenty for one person, provided the price is high enough that a few hundred customers is a living.

The maths to check first

  • Decide the income you need, divide by your monthly price, and look honestly at whether that many customers exist and are reachable.
  • If the answer needs thousands of customers at $9 a month, pick a different trade or a higher price.

Risks

  • Building is the easy part. Reaching a scattered trade with no central channel is what actually fails.
  • Support never stops once people run their business on it. Price for that from day one.

Would this work for you?

This page can't tell you that — it doesn't know your skills, time or budget. The direction assessment does, and it starts from this idea rather than a blank page.

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