Solopreneurship for Software Developers
He makes $11,000/month by Helping users Learn French
Benjamin Houy is a founder of French Together, a language-learning SaaS that helps users become confident French speakers with 10 minutes of real-world conversation practice a day.
French Together crossed $11K MMR in April 2024, here is how Benjamin came up with the idea, how he monetized it, and how he gets new users.
HOW HE CAME UP WITH THE IDEA
Benjamin has a deep-seated love for languages, as a kid he decided to learn Portuguese, then Arabic, and ended up studying English, German, and Spanish at school.
After spending six months teaching French and English in South Korea, he decided to create French Together because he was frustrated with the way the French language was being taught.
French Together helps English speakers learn the 20% of French that truly matters so they can quickly speak and understand the language.
Benjamin found a business idea by solving a frustration. So, if there are processes or workflows that frustrate you, do not ignore them, it may be a business opportunity.
MONETIZATION
As of April 2024, French Together reported a monthly recurring revenue of $11,599. All of the revenue comes from monthly and yearly subscriptions.
DISTRIBUTION AND MARKETING
This is by far the most important part of running a SaaS business. No matter how great your SaaS it, if people don’t know about it, its good for nothing.
Benjamin is aware of this and he relentlessly markets his SaaS actively and passively on different platforms.
TWITTER: Benjamin shares his journey of the good and ugly on Twitter. He is essentially building in public, which builds a lot of trust in his platform and helps him gain loyal followers.
Benjamin shares his mistakes, wins, losses, features, revenue, etc. this makes his journey interesting and easy to learn from.
He also has a dedicated French Together Twitter account where he shares affairs affecting France and the French language.
SEO/BLOGGING: Benjamin has amazing blog posts on French grammar, culture, vocabulary, and other lessons. Most of these posts are well-optimized for search engines and rank very high on Google and other search engines.
French Together receives more than 180K visitors per month, some of these visitors convert to paying users. French Together blog is also one of the largest language learning blogs.
Benjamin also shares the journey of building a language-learning SaaS on his website Grow With Less. Some of the visitors to this website are directed to French Together where they can convert to paying users.
Ultimately, Benjamin uses free content to drive organic traffic to French Together. This content helps build trust and authority, it also helps get new users, ultimately paying users.
It is a simple yet effective funnel that has helped him build a loved and trusted $11K MRR SaaS.
You can follow Benjamin’s journey on Twitter or on his website Grow With Less.
