(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
2021 holiday spending is predicted to be record-breaking:
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by Jay Avery
The National Retail Federation predicts that holiday spending may hit up to $859B this year, a 10.5% increase from 2020. Read on for more, including Black Friday deals from the indie hackers community!
The news: 2021 holiday spending is expected to shatter previous spending records, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). However, its estimates exclude automobile dealers, gasoline stations, and restaurants. With many households enjoying renewed purchasing power, NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay noted that momentum is growing for holiday spending:
Consumers are in a very favorable position going into the last few months of the year as income is rising...retailers are making significant investments in their supply chains and spending heavily to ensure they have products on their shelves to meet this time of exceptional consumer demand.
Online purchases will remain strong, but many consumers are expected to shift back to in-person shopping this year. With the pandemic slowing down, more people feel comfortable visiting physical stores this holiday season.
Shortages? While shoppers are ready to buy, stores may not be quite as prepared. Supply chain and labor shortages will likely affect holiday shopping this year, and some economists predict that these shortages will last through 2022. Those looking to purchase this year's hottest toys should seek to buy in-person at smaller retailers to avoid supply chain issues, according to The Toy Insider.
Late start: A Gallup poll released this week found that 61% of Americans have not yet begun their holiday shopping. 33% reported that their shopping was underway, and only 4% had completely finished.
Why it matters: 56% of Americans reported that they are "very likely" to complete their holiday shopping online. Gallup speculates that this increase could be due to more people adopting the practice throughout the course of the pandemic. For e-commerce founders, and those looking to enter the space, these numbers are exciting.
Here's a list of businesses owned by members of the Indie Hackers community that are running Black Friday sales this year. Hopefully this makes it a bit easier to support a fellow founder this holiday season!
Feel free to share more deals in the comments below!
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from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
🚘 Alcohol detection systems will now be mandatory in all new US cars.
📉 Crypto markets have crashed after India floated a regulation bill.
📵 China has banned celebrities from showing off their wealth on social media.
🌳 Uber is entering the booming cannabis market.
🎈 Macy’s is selling its Thanksgiving balloons as NFTs.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
from the Hustle Newsletter by Shân Osborn
The Signal: Interest in outdoor adventure sports is soaring. The climbing and fishing subreddits are closing in on 1M members each. Google searches for "hunting near me" are on track to reach their highest peak yet.
The big picture: Spurred on by the pandemic, consumers have been flocking to nature-based activities (something we also pointed out in our human rewilding Signal).
Over a year in, demand for outdoor recreation has continued to explode. From apps to accessories, niche sports provide numerous opportunities. Three particularly high-growth areas:
Source: Subreddit Stats
Indoor climbing is also growing, and is likely to continue to do so over the winter months. Climbing accessories are particularly popular, and US Jungle Scout data shows sellers are coining it on Amazon:
And don't forget the kids: Amazon searches for "toddler climbing toys" have grown ~30% over the last 90 days to reach over 2K searches per month, and this plastic rock climbing set generates $27K MRR.
Flexibility and mobility are vital for these sports, with multiple "help with" and "how to" questions peppering subreddits. You could develop app-based exercises and programs for the climbing community (more on how to capitalize on the mobility trend here).
Founders could also leverage the aesthetic in wall art, gifts, and decor: Subscribers to r/ClimbingPorn have increased fivefold over the last year, and one Etsy seller of "gifts for climbers and hikers" has racked up 9.5K+ sales.
Source: Subreddit Stats
The global fishing equipment market is forecast to reach $16B by 2027. US sites like Bass Pro have north of 10M visitors per month, per Similarweb, generating ~$7B ARR.
Founders could focus on subscription services like Mystery Tackle Box, which has shipped over 5.2M boxes (prices range from $19-$39).
Niching down within the sport is also an option. For example, interest in fly-fishing is buzzing. These little guys go for $18 on Etsy (and the seller has done ~2.4K product sales overall), and Jungle Scout shows this 16-piece fly kit brings in $40K MRR on Amazon.
Tying your own flies is apparently a pricey business; founders could provide the growing 25K+ subreddit community with materials, starter packs, and app-based guides (there are numerous "how to start" queries). Retirees are a particularly attractive market.
Source: Subreddit Stats
Hunting ranches make bank: In the US, guided hunts start at ~$2K, plus anywhere from $500-$80K for special permits hunters need for each animal. Short of ranching up, founders could focus on gear and accessory sales. Here are some examples of in-demand options on Amazon:
Source: Jungle Scout, October 2021 data (Side note: Heading into season in North America)
Tech is a strong niche: OnX Hunt is a GPS hunting app that's trending, has rave reviews, and has a premium subscription price of $99.99 per year.
Hunting would be a great fit for the "Strava for X" model we outlined last year. Or you could build an "Airbnb for hunting" that connects hunters with landowners: One of the most commonly asked questions is how to get permission to hunt on private land.
Founders could focus on a used accessories platform to serve the growing demand for a secondhand marketplace:
r/GunAccessoriesForSale has 80K+ members, a number that has doubled over the last year.
Other areas to hone in on include the rising reloading trend (Jungle Scout shows a deprimer tool brings in $420K MRR on Amazon) and hunting decoys (this duck generates $54K MRR, and 3D-printed decoys are likely to be a lucrative biz).
As with fishing, hunting gear and accessory subscription boxes are a meaty opportunity. These Sportsman's Boxes go for $109-$299, and if just 3% of its 54K+ Facebook followers have an active subscription, revenue would be ~$330K per quarter.
Would you enter the niche outdoor sports market? Share below!
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from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry
For better conversational copy, use contractions.
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from the Growth & Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko
Stefan Smiljkovic launched Automatio, a no-code web automation tool, and recently hit $5.3K MRR. The idea behind Automatio is to be able to reproduce whatever manual work you have on the web, and create a bot without writing a single line of code.
Last week, Indie Hackers sat down with Stefan to chat about his journey as a bootstrapped founder. Here are his insights!
I started my digital journey around 15 years ago, and have worked on 3D modeling, UI/UX, growth hacking, business development, client work, and other things since then. My full focus now is on Automatio.
It's important to point out that Automatio is not just a web scraping tool, but an actual visual web bot builder. It can deal with complex scenarios, bypass blocking detection, solve Google Re-Captcha, click buttons, fill forms and fields, take screenshots, and export and import data from Google Sheets.
Automatio was created out of a desire to solve my own problems. I was always looking for web automation, for a bot to save me from tedious, repetitive manual work. It was obvious to me that if this tool served me well, other people could benefit from it also.
Automatio started as our internal tool over three years ago. One day, I shared a video of it on Facebook. It got tons of positive feedback, questions, and “take my money” comments. This was when we decided to create a SaaS.
As a bootstrapped project, it was difficult to find people who possessed the necessary skills to help us build at an affordable price. We also spent a significant amount of time testing what we had created. For many years, I was the only user; I was the one who tested, found bugs, and reported problems. I did everything I could to save our developers time so that they could focus solely on building. For each issue I discovered, I would make a video with a detailed explanation so they could get right to work fixing bugs or adding features.
We used Automatio to grow Automatio.
I was scraping different communities and finding people who related to me and my business. I started growing my Facebook account by scraping the information of relevant people and connecting with them. Back then, I discovered a plethora of small growth hacks on Facebook.
The biggest growth hack was creating a video about how I am using Automatio to solve some of my problems, posting the video on the Automatio business page, and then sharing the video in various Facebook groups. I had 30K views per video, and didn't have to pay for any ads.
Another big milestone was making Product Hunt's Upcoming Page. This was a new feature for products that were not yet released, but preparing for a beta launch. I contacted the relevant guy on Product Hunt, and he was interested in featuring Automatio on the page. I needed to build a landing page before getting there, so I spent a lot of time and energy on design, making an intro video, and content writing. We were featured as the number one product on the Upcoming Page, and that brought us great exposure.
Currently, I am growing Automatio mostly organically. I am going all in into content marketing because of our promising results with SEO. We have a set of small growth hacks which help us rank fast on the first page of Google for the most of our keywords. I am going write about this in the future.
I also found that building in public gave me a chance to talk about the progress of Automatio, and expose it to new customers and users. This also gives me additional benefits, like getting backlinks to my content for SEO purposes.
Currently Automatio gets around 1.3K visitors weekly:
Automatio's users subscribe to a monthly package and receive a fixed number of credits to be used.
Back in February, we started an early adopter program for people who want to support the project. We had two subscription options: $1K and $2K per year. Most of those early adopters were converted through live calls that I conducted with them to demonstrate the power of Automatio. They really liked this, although sometimes I was putting myself in the fire by trying to work out how Automatio would work for their use cases. This can be tricky because web automation is really fragile.
We released the monthly packages in September, so now our users can finally pay us monthly instead of annually.
I believe that having acquired various skillsets over the years has given me an advantage. But that also came with a cost. Being spread thin across multiple side projects makes it difficult to focus and complete tasks on time.
Even though I don't know how to code, I understand technology very well.
That was useful because, as a bootstrapped founder, I had to design logic myself, explain to developers how things should work under the hood, and design the overall user experience.
You can follow my bootstrapping journey on Indie Hackers, where I share my weekly progress updates!
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Priyanka Vazirani, Shân Osborn, Harry Dry, and Darko for contributing posts. —Channing