Build multiple products and use them as acquisition channels
I've been talking to fellow indie hackers who have multiple products, and most of the benefits that they share are pretty obvious — more income, diversification, learning... But one less obvious thing I heard a few times was that each product can serve as an acquisition channel for the others.
For example, @dohertyjf of Credo ($45K/mo) and EditorNinja ($4.5K/mo) said that, "EditorNinja has benefited from Credo, but not vice versa, simply because EditorNinja is so much smaller still."
And @robhope of One Page Love (and several other products) said that one of his primary sources of growth is cross-promoting between his various products. Of course, cross-promotion usually refers to different companies promoting each other for mutual benefit… but who says the companies can't be owned by the same person?
How to make Product A benefit from Product B (and vice versa)
Here are a few tips and tactics to put your products to work for each other:
Set the stage
- Make related products: This is probably the most important part – your products need to be similar. Not so similar that they cannibalize each other, but similar enough that customers of one will be interested in the other. In other words, they should be in the same market. Niche down, and make similar, but distinct, products. Rob's products are good examples of this, as they all serve indie hackers, but with different focuses (landing pages, email, UX, etc.).
- Branch out to other product types: You don't need multiple SaaS products. It'll spread you too thin. Instead, try other types of products that are easy to create and maintain — ebooks, courses, etc.
- Build your brand: Some folks like to build their companies' brands, and that's all fine and good. But it's generally best to build your own brand too — particularly for indie hackers. People will be far more likely to purchase your other product(s) if they know and trust you as a creator than they will be to take the recommendation of a faceless brand.
- Make it known: As you build your brand, make sure your product portfolio is clear to your community. Link your products from your bios and your personal website.
- Add a link from Product A to Product B: Indie hackers often add their names and products to the footer of their product's website. Something like "Created by [Name], founder of [Product A] and [Product B]" should do nicely.
Cross-promote
- Leverage your content: Once the stage is set, it's all about cross-promotion through your content. Where applicable, reference the other product(s) in your content, whether it be in your blog, videos, social media, you name it. Backlinks to and from the blog may even give SEO a bit of a boost.
- Leverage email lists: As with your content, cross-promote in your email lists. John uses his to good effect, "We have a weekly agency email within which we often promote EditorNinja. We also from time to time share EditorNinja content there." Of course, be respectful of your recipients' inboxes.
- Use your product as a funnel: While you'll want to be very careful not to negatively impact UX, it's possible to promote your app at specific high-impact moments in the user-flow. If there is a user action that might put someone in a particularly good position to find value in your other product, you can send a transactional email or add an in-app notification with a call to action. Even actions like signing up might be a good time to say a quick "you might also be interested in…"
- Offer discounts: It's usually a good idea to offer customers of one product a discount on the other, for obvious reasons. Contests and giveaways can also add excitement. And if you have multiple one-time-payment products, consider offering a discounted bundle.
- Capitalize on ad space: If you're sponsoring something or buying ad space, consider advertising both products together. This won't always be a good idea, because you don't want to dilute the potency of the ad. But in some cases, and particularly when products are complimentary, it can be a useful tactic.
- Use exit-intent popups (maybe): Full disclosure, I'm not a fan of exit-intent popups… but they're an option so I'll include them. You can use an exit-intent popup to send traffic to your other product. Alan Warsoff of SelfDecode did that and saw a 1.2% click-through rate.
- Share space: This won't apply to most of us, but if you happen to build a team for both and you want a physical office, use one office for both to save money.
- Apply your learnings from one to both: Use the learnings of one to benefit the other. This is particularly helpful when you're A/B testing, as the results and learnings can have double the impact. And you can run riskier tests on the smaller product to play it a little safer.
Long story short, if you're already going through the trouble of building multiple products, let those products work for you as much as they can. Cross-promote and get creative to make the most of the time you spent building them.
Anything I missed?
I think levelsio is the most extreme example of this. He built who knows how many things around remote work and the entire surrounding culture.
The push back of "we don't have time to build multiple startups" is valid, but I think what's worth noting is that most of these success examples (barring the inherent survivorship bias) is that they were built over the long term.
I don't think these people bootstrapped multiple businesses from 0 simultaneously. Instead, I'd wager that they built one thing at a time and by the time one was sustainable, they'd encountered so many issues/ideas along the way they had a healthy backlog of ideas to start pursuing now that they have the money/time freedom.
Yep, agreed on this.
These companies came to understand their target market so well, that they identified potential for other newer products.
For every product, you've basically got an entire audience to cross sell to and you've already completed the hardest steps: building trust, establishing commitment, etc.
This is basically every fulltime internet marketer's playbook. Especially those that are making their entire living via a highly targeted mailing list
Well said!
💯
I think building small side products like widgets, calculators, freebie lists, etc. Is an awesome tactic especially if they're useful and drive organic growth
I'm curious how you go about finding the right products to fit within that flywheel or where you get the inspiration to work on others that are related but not the "main" one?
I think the best bet is to hang out where your customers hang out so that you can hear their problems and provide solutions. Or you can just scratch your own itch if you're in your own target market. But of course, you need to be super strategic so that it is both valuable and capable of symbiosis with the other product.
Bookmarked.
This is a great list and exactly what I'm trying to do (you can follow me here/Twitter from my profile). However, I think there is still a lot of magic around how to get into this position. After all, you're not making a single product anymore but now several.
Justin Welsh does this well. He's nailed his core offering and has expanded into several related ways to make revenue.
I think some keys are:
Thinking about diversified revenue streams should also make it easier to bounce back from failures. Finally, as you build, consider future revenue avenues. Some of those might be better than what you're currently making.
Hah, yeah #1 is key. Well said, thanks for your input!
Yep this works wonders. En t it doesn't need to be a paid product. I build web apps..too.
I used to do so before my SAAS was acquired. Worked wonders.
But I am sort of doing it still, to small paid and free products, then I decided to make a landing page for all the projects and link to unwrapped.design untill I finish to build my second SAAS.
Yeah, great point — free products are an excellent way to funnel leads to a paid product.
Thanks for sharing the excellent information on this post. It is extremely helpful in many ways.
Fantastic ideas
This works best when you leverage marketplaces.
For instance, create a Chrome browser extension, a mobile app, or a WordPress plugin, and you'll automatically get downloads from the marketplace it's listed on.
This way, you don't have to divide your marketing time between projects. The side project needs zero marketing input and will bring in new referrals all on its own.
Great point!
'm happy to share my experience how i got my money back with the help of DanteGideon @ Consultant com with his strategies
This is definitely one growth hack I'm planning to implement at Stormkit. With the latest changes, it's going to be super easy to host full stack applications on Stormkit that is, frontend, backend and data storage (data storage still being in development). Actually, now that I think about it, this could one of our niche markets - allowing building mini products easily 😅
I'll create some blog posts once we start implementing this strategy.
Nice, good luck!
I'm happy to share my experience how i got my money back with the help of DanteGideon @ Consultant com with his strategies
All the landing pages on your OnePageLove platform belongs to you or shared by different public users?
Most people don't have the luxury of being able to go all-in in terms of focusing everything into one product.
Also, products all have different characteristics - some are about building a brand, while others are about making as much income as possible without worrying much about branding, others still can be about re-occuring revenue or long term SEO. While you maybe can combine all these plays into one product, it might make more sense and be more feasible to have them as separate projects.
Even a highly focused 1 project entrepreneur probably has multiple umbrella projects under that 1 project's brand umbrella. Otherwise, they're doing it wrong.
TL/DR: It's good to have a couple irons in the fire.
Agreed!
So build 2 startups simultaneously basically.
Why only two?
Generally, you'd bring one to a stable place, then start another project. And you'd essentially go into maintenance mode on the first one while building the second one.
Also, it doesn't have to be a full startup. A simple product can push the needle too.
But your point is valid, of course. It'll be hard for most of us to find the time.
Super interesting idea for growth. However, building two products also means 2x the time investment, which is not possible for a lot of people.
Still interesting
In my experience, if you play your market right, you can reuse a lot of experience, and even code, to bring things to market much faster.
Totally. But if you've got the time, or a particularly quick idea that you can knock out in a weekend or two, it's worth considering.
Really interested by the idea of using specific events in one product to promote the other... I've got some thinking to do. 🤔 Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, but who has time for that?
Hah, yeah I know the feeling. But products don't necessarily have to be big or time-intensive. I actually looked into products that can go to market quickly as I was writing this... I'll follow up with another post about that.