(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
Staying up-to-date as an indie hacker can be tough:
Want to share something with nearly 115,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
Between understanding your wider market, your niche, your discipline, demographic trends, economic trends, and so on, indie hackers have a lot to keep up with!
So, how do you stay on top of everything and still remain productive? Let's dive in.
First off, let's talk about where indie hackers are getting their intel from:
So, how do you do all of this? Here are a few tips for staying efficient:
And, voila! You're getting a ton of information on autopilot. Information is sent to your inbox, and all you have to do is read it. Block out time in your schedule to regularly consume this information, then get back to work!
Pro tip: If you're already consuming this content, perhaps it wouldn't take much longer for you to create a newsletter where you post or summarize the curated links. That way, you can monetize something that you're already doing.
Here are some tools that can help maximize efficiency:
How do you stay up-to-date? Share your experience below!
Discuss this story.
from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko
💸 Twitter's new API access charges could price many apps and researchers out of their projects.
🏛 HSBC has acquired Silicon Valley Bank UK in a historic last minute deal.
💻 Every advertiser should perform these keyword maintenance tasks regularly.
🏦 Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors will be fully protected, according to the US Federal Reserve.
🧙♀️ Custom AI chatbots are quietly becoming the next big thing in fan fiction.
Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.
by Dan Kulkov
No founder has ever said: "No thanks, I don't need a higher conversion rate."
That's why I collected eight non-trivial tactics to increase your conversion rate in 2023, even if you don't have a marketing budget. Read on for more!
Companies with 50 person marketing departments can have complex multilevel marketing funnels. Most founders can't.
The more complex your marketing funnel is, the more optimization you need to make it work. That's why you should shoot for minimalistic marketing funnels:
Sure, you will lose some customers who need extra attention, but you will also make life easier for 95% of your users. That's how you get more paying customers.
Acquisition channels are not equal. If you acquire users from a crappy marketing channel, they will not buy your product, not because you are not convincing, but because traffic quality is poor.
Trying better acquisition channels for your product will help you get more website visitors, and help land you more customers with less effort.
Want to overwhelm your users? Offer five freebies, 10 main products, and four upsell products. People will get analysis paralysis, and end up not buying anything from you.
Or, you can have one freebie, one main product, and one upsell product. Some people will leave unsatisfied, but most users will have an easier time agreeing to your offer.
Help your users focus on buying one thing, then direct them to focus on purchasing the second thing.
You should have one offer, but not just one pricing plan.
Each product should have 2-3 pricing plans. Always include an upsell pricing plan for people with money, and a down-sell pricing plan for people on a budget.
Expensive pricing plans make your main pricing plan look better. The same goes for cheap pricing plans. Your goal is to define the most desirable plan for your business; don't offer more than three. That's too much. You don't want your potential customers to get paralyzed from comparing each price.
Discounts are growth drivers for founders, but only if you pick the right strategy.
Here are four different approaches:
Understand when to play the discount card!
Many indie hackers think they need to change how they describe their product to increase sales, and that's true to some extent. But remember, you already have the best promoters: Your customers. Use them to impress your website visitors with the love your product gets.
People trust people way more than they trust companies. Leverage that. Collect video testimonials, reviews from opinion leaders, and success stories from satisfied customers.
Your users need to feel that buying your product is a risk-free decision, making it a no-brainer.
Your users don't know everything that you know about the industry.
They have no idea why your key competitor sucks. They only remember 2-3 features in your product. They are clueless most of the time.
You don't have a lot of time to persuade them. You need to be convincing, clear, and concise. That's why your positioning must be irresistible:
Answer these questions. Embed this data in your marketing copy. Repeat it over and over again to be consistent.
Not everyone is ready to buy on the spot. People need time. Use this as an opportunity to nurture potential customers to become your loyal fans.
The only way to do this is to talk to them. Send free content, hang out in your community, and surprise them with limited deals.
Don't give up on users that didn't buy your product on the first try. Reactivate them.
Conversion rate optimization is all about making it easier for your users to buy your product. It's a win-win for everyone!
Will you implement any of these tips into your strategy? Let's chat below!
Discuss this story.
from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry
Apple built a portable media player, but sold what it can do for you:
Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.
Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.
by Nico Jeannen
Hi, indie hackers! I'm Nico Jeannen, and I just sold my app, MakeLogoAI, for $65K.
Here's the story!
I launched the platform three months ago, with zero budget and less than 600 followers. I learned to code just nine months ago.
In December 2022, I had a sudden idea. What if I made an app to generate logos using AI?
I was making AI logos already for my other projects, so I knew how to do it. However, I needed to validate two hypotheses:
I decided to make an MVP in 48 hours, as deadlines are the way to go when launching anything. 48 hours, one earthquake, and two power outages later, I had my crappy MVP ready!
By crappy, I mean a static HTML page linked to a Typeform to collect payment. The backend was literally me generating the logos and sending them by email.
No framework, no fancy stuff, just text and pictures.
I posted on Twitter a few times, and generated a couple of sales from it.
Sales = validation. The next step was to make an automated version, so I challenged myself again to create that in 48 hours. And, oh boy, things went crazy!
I launched on Product Hunt on December 11, and generated $1K+ in sales. I hit Product of the Day and got tons of followers on Twitter, so I knew that I was onto something!
However, it was far from perfect. Lots of logos needed additional editing, or ended up looking weird because the customer inputs and prompts weren't good.
So, I started from scratch again, and launched a brand new version in January. The new version offered way more options and better results overall.
Then, I added the app to every startup directory I could find. That's how I got most of my traffic. I also kept posting on Twitter. Every time someone asked: "What are you working on?" I replied with the name of the app. I also replied when someone asked for AI-generated logos.
I tried to run ads on Twitter and Reddit, but that didn't really work because they weren't targeted enough.
I don't have much interest in logo design, and I don't have the technical skills to improve the app further, so I decided to sell it in February.
Acquire.com made the process pretty easy. I received a few offers and chose the best one. I did the transfer, and here we are!
In total, the app made $23K+ in sales and $15K in profit. If you want a more detailed post, I wrote about everything I was doing in real-time on my blog.
Now, this wasn't my first shot at indie hacking. In the last five years, I've launched around 35 projects. Most were total failures. Just between October and December 2022, I released seven different apps.
I never gave up. I kept showing up. It's a number game. The odds are against you, but at some point, you'll build something that sticks! Don't be discouraged. Failure is part of the process!
Discuss this story.
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
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Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.
Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to James Fleischmann, Darko, Dan Kulkov, Harry Dry, and Nico Jeannen for contributing posts. —Channing