01

Building a solo SaaS roughly comes down to three steps: find a need, build the product, sell it.

Many developers nail the first two. But when it comes to selling — they completely freeze. They don't dare sell. Some outright refuse.

If you ask them why, most will pause for a moment and just say, "I just don't want to."

02

I recently figured out what's actually going on.

It's not that they reject selling. They reject the image that comes with the word "sales."

The moment you think "sales," the mental images that surface are:

• Walking down the street and someone shoves a flyer in your face, staring you down.
• Getting a cold call: "Hi, I'm from XX, have you considered..."
• That person who posts a dozen ads a day on social media.

These three images make your skin crawl.

So a quiet judgment forms in the back of your mind:

"If I start selling, will I become the kind of person I can't stand?"

Nobody says it out loud, but it's a real blocker.

03

I get it. Developers have a strong sense of identity — we let our code do the talking, not our mouths.

"Selling things" feels like a conflict with who we are.

Will friends think I've changed? Will people avoid me? Will my reputation in the dev community take a hit?

There's also an unspoken hierarchy in developer circles — people who earn through technical skills carry more weight than people who earn through smooth talk.

Once you start "selling," it feels like sliding from the top of that hierarchy to the bottom.

Nobody says it out loud, but the feeling is very real.

So many developers would rather let their product rot on the shelf than open their mouths.

It's not that they don't want money. It's that they don't want to become that person in other people's eyes — or in their own.

Refusing to sell isn't really refusing to make money.

It's protecting their identity.

But if you don't sell, you genuinely won't make money. I know — it's a frustrating contradiction.

04

I hit this exact wall myself.

On March 9th, the day I finished and launched Pay4SaaS, I nervously published a post sharing my thoughts on building the project, tossed in a link at the end almost as an afterthought, and then had no idea what to do next.

I knew I needed to sell. But the moment I thought about "selling," all those images came flooding back — suits, business cards, social media spam...

I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I even wrote an article titled "For the First Time Since Going Indie, I Felt Fear" — that fear was about selling.

In the week after launch, I gave myself space. I took walks and thought about what selling really means. Gradually, it became clear:

I don't need to become anyone else.

I just need to talk about what actually happened while building the product — the pitfalls I hit, why I designed things a certain way, why I chose one approach over another.

That is selling. And it's a way I can live with.

No suits. No business cards. No scripts.

Just someone who takes their work seriously, sharing the process of doing that work. I write about what I think and what I build. No psychological burden. Completely at peace with it.

Later I learned this approach has a name — selling through state (showing who you are by what you do).

And it's the fifth of six levels in selling.

05

Once I figured this out, I felt a weight lift.

Not because I found some sales technique. But because I found a way that's compatible with my identity —

No need to become anyone else. Just be myself and talk about the process of building things.

If you're stuck at this same point, try asking yourself one question:

Do I hate selling itself, or do I hate a specific form of selling?

If it's just the form, the block is already loosening. Sales has six levels, and the one you hate is just the shallowest.

And here's the thing —

Indie developers are naturally the best salespeople.

Regular salespeople sell other people's products. We sell things we built with our own hands. Every decision was ours. Every pitfall was ours.

That authenticity is something no professional salesperson can replicate.

We understand our own products better than anyone, and we're the most genuine. And in this era, authenticity is the most powerful form of selling.

Next time, let's dig into those six levels — the higher you go, the less it feels like selling, and the more it feels like just being yourself.