Making $1.8m from maid software

Amar (ex tech sales) cold emailed and cold called maid service owners, plus one partnership, to reach the first ~100 customers. Stopped around 100 customers when lead tracking/follow-up became unmanageable for him alone; did not hire someone to continue outbound. Advises only doing this if you're good on the phone.

Ran Google Ads from day one at ~$100/month ($3/day), sized so that one to two actual maid service owners click through to the site consistently. Reuses campaign setup knowledge for future businesses (90% same, keywords differ).

Blog and YouTube channel for maid service owners built around three umbrella topics: hiring great cleaners, marketing/sales (getting more clients), and management/automation/systems. Content aims to be valuable to the whole industry so it's worth doing regardless of measurable results. Mostly top-of-funnel (traffic, brand equity until owners are ready to switch software), plus a few bottom-of-funnel pages that reliably lead to trial signups. Currently investing in SEO.

4-5 paid content pieces such as an 80-page e-book; tried building hiring, marketing and tech/automation funnels around them. Charging because people value and read paid e-books more than free ones.

Runs the most popular virtual conference for maid service owners with 40-60 speakers each year. Keeps a manually built list of cleaning-industry influencers (no directory exists; new ones found yearly on TikTok and Instagram) and invites anyone putting out good content to speak. The summit generates many partnership opportunities.

Over years in a small niche, built relationships with anyone sharing the audience: review software for cleaning companies, hiring software, coaches, consultants, virtual assistant/answering services. Found through industry presence, not search tools.

Launched a free-for-life plan and put it front and center everywhere, including ads ('free-for-life ads'), to attract very small price-sensitive maid services who may pay later. Everyone goes through the same signup requiring credit card details, even for the free plan, and gets a 14-day trial with all paid features before choosing.

After 9 years of little tracking, started setting KPIs and analyzing data already collected; found New Zealand customers pay less and cost more, so cut all New Zealand marketing spend ('vanity revenue').

Posts helpful content to ZenMaid's branded accounts, its Facebook group and Instagram; founder does not market from his personal profile. Homepage features a clip from an interview with a leading industry consultant saying every maid service needs software like ZenMaid.