From my experience, I'm saying that I never expected a single cent from my SaaS website. All the features and everything are free. Gradually, users increased like crazy. Then I started rate-limiting on everything and launched subscriptions. That's how I grew users and my portfolio. I've made over $10,000 within one year.
Most of the time, I felt lost and stopped working, but when someone purchased, my motivation doubled, and that's how I kept working.