How I built a $20K/month side hustle as a designer
Your guide to generate an extra income alongside another your full-time job.
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Friends,
Today, I’m thrilled to bring you a special guest post from Stu Green—an accomplished designer-turned-entrepreneur who has transformed his love for design into a thriving $20K/month SaaS business. 💰
If you haven’t yet heard of Stu, he’s the kind of multi-hyphenate creator who’s earned accolades for his product vision, business acumen, and relentless focus on customer experience. He’s taken his career from designing in Sketch to founding a successful startup, all while keeping his day job.
In today’s post, Stu pulls back the curtain on exactly how he did it, and shares the lessons any designer can apply to go from creative concept to revenue-generating reality.
Trust me, you won’t want to miss this one. 👀
Here’s what you’ll get today:
The practical steps Stu took to build a profitable product, from the very first sketch to a $20K/month business
Tips on validating your ideas early and minimizing risk as a first-time founder
Real-world tactics for marketing, user acquisition, and monetization that any designer can replicate
Insight into how Stu balances a full-time role with running a successful side hustle (and how you can, too)
Read on… 🔽
From sketch to startup: How I built my first SaaS — and what designers can learn.
What if you could turn that scribbled sketch in your notebook into a product that pays your bills?
In 2010, which seems like a decade ago (wait, it was!) I was a freelancer juggling too many clients and struggling to stay on top of my design projects. I tried using project management tools like Basecamp, but nothing quite fit the way I worked. I wanted something simple — something where I could see at a glance what was urgent, what was in progress, and what could wait.
So, I sketched out a rough idea for a tool that would help me manage my projects. It wasn’t fancy. Just a few boxes with traffic light indicators and the ability to drag and drop tasks into priority. But that sketch ended up becoming my first startup — a project that grew from a simple side tool to a business making over $20k a month.
I want to share this journey with you — and what I learned along the way about valuing your work and turning ideas into real, profitable products.
Step 1: Sketch your vision
As I progressed in my freelance career, I found myself managing a growing roster of clients and deadlines, and constantly feeling overwhelmed. I needed a better way to manage it all, and the tools available at the time just weren’t meeting my needs. Basecamp, the big player back then, was fine — but as a designer, it didn’t give me that visual clarity I needed to stay on top of things.
I could picture the solution in my mind: a tool that showed all my projects on one page, with simple visual cues on each project like traffic lights to indicate status. Something that would let me quickly see what needed attention and prioritize it accordingly.
So, I grabbed a pencil and started sketching. I drew out a concept where each project was represented by a rectangular card, with a traffic light indicator and key details like due dates, the time spent on the project, and assigned users. Tasks would open in a neat drawer animation (which, back then, was pretty novel), and I’d be able to drag and drop projects to reorder priorities.
At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about building a startup. I just wanted a tool to help me so I got sketching.
Step 2: Build your MVP — fast and imperfect
Once I had my sketches, I knew I had to build it. Not because I wanted to launch a product or start a company — but because I needed it for myself! I was drowning in client work, and I couldn’t wait around for someone else to create the tool I needed.
I wasn’t a highly skilled or experienced developer. I was learning as I went. So, I hacked together a quick version using PHP, MySQL, and jQuery — some of the tools I was just starting to get comfortable with at the time. It was simple. You could drag and drop projects, group them by client, filter by due dates and view sub-tasks. Nothing fancy, but it worked.
It wasn’t perfect, and I knew it. But here’s the thing: it solved my problem. And that’s what mattered most.
I wasn’t embarrassed to show it to myself — but I would’ve been if I had shared it with the world right away. That’s why Reid Hoffman’s quote really resonates with me:
"If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."
Looking back, I see how true that is. The first version of my tool was scrappy. It wasn’t polished, and it certainly wasn’t something I would have put in my portfolio at the time. But it helped me manage my projects better than anything else that was out there. And that was key.
Step 3: Share your product and set a price
Once I had it up and running, I figured, Why not share it with the world? After all, if it worked for me, maybe it could help other freelancers too.
So, I posted it on a forum for developers who were using the same framework I had built it on — CodeIgniter. I made it available for free because, at the time, I didn’t even think about charging for it. I just wanted to give something back to the community.
And then… it blew up.
Within a few months, thousands of people had signed up to use the tool. I started getting emails and comments from users saying things like:
"This is the first visual project management tool that actually makes sense to me."
"Why aren’t you charging for this? I’d happily pay for it!"
The thing is, I had no idea how to price it. As a designer, I struggled with the idea of putting a value on my work. I figured, Who would really pay for this? It’s not that special.
So, I did something that seemed safe to me: I used a pay-what-you-want model. People could choose to pay $5, $20, or even $0 per month if they wanted to use the app.
And guess what? Most people chose to pay nothing! They wanted it for free.
A few users paid $5 per month, but the reality was that this model didn’t work — it was a terrible idea! I was providing value, but I wasn’t valuing my own work. As a famous investor once said:
"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get." — Warren Buffett
Later on, as you will read, I solved that problem but in the meantime I had some bigger issues I was about to face.
Step 4: Scale smart and ask for help
With growth comes unexpected challenges. One evening, I logged into the app and noticed something alarming: it was slow. Painfully slow. The pages took forever to load, and I could see that the CPU on the server was maxing out. Users were starting to complain, and I knew I had to act fast.
At first, I panicked. I didn’t know much about database performance or server optimization. I had built this thing on my own, and now it was struggling to keep up with the growing number of users. For a brief moment, I wondered if I had reached my limit — if this was as far as I could take it.
But then I did what every good problem-solver does: I looked for help!
I hired a database expert to take a look at my setup. They quickly identified the issue: my database wasn’t properly indexed. Every time a user loaded a page, the app was running inefficient queries that slowed everything down. The expert showed me how to optimize the database, reduce server load, and make sure the app could handle future growth.
It wasn’t cheap — but it was worth it.
This experience taught me an important lesson: you don’t need to know everything when you start. You’ll face challenges along the way, and you’ll figure them out. It’s part of the process.
Scaling is hard, and it’s not something creative people like us enjoy. It forces you to think beyond just building a product. You need to think about how to maintain it, how to improve it, and how to ensure it keeps running smoothly as more people use it.
And most importantly, you need to recognize when it’s time to ask for help.
Looking back, those scaling challenges were some of the most stressful moments in my journey. But they also helped me grow. I learned new skills, improved my problem-solving abilities, and became more confident in handling the technical side of running a SaaS business.
Don’t be afraid of the challenges you’ll face as you grow.
Step 5: Turn your tool into a business
At first, my project management tool was just that — a tool I built to solve my own problems. But after the initial wave of users and feedback, I realized that it had the potential to become much more. It wasn’t just a personal side project anymore. It was a product with real demand.
That’s when I had to make a crucial mindset shift: from designer to business owner.