What's New: Using Facebook Groups for content distribution

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Use Facebook Groups to reach potential users with quality content:

• Share a short version of your content, and be sure to include compelling visuals. DM folks who engage with your post, offering the longer version.
• Launching soon? Remember that users are forgiving. If something goes wrong, a timely, earnest reply directly from the founder(s) goes a long way.
• RefineBase went from zero to $15K MRR with a simple strategy: Engaging freelancers on various platforms through a robust referral program.

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Using Facebook Groups for Content Distribution 💻

by Cameron Scully

Combine Facebook Groups with quality content to attract users!

The process

1\. Find relevant Facebook Groups through unfiltered conversations with those who use them successfully, instead of just promotional blog posts. For example, I found SaaSWarrior through a conversation here:

2\. Share a short version of your blog post. Make sure to include compelling visuals. People on Facebook love visual content!

Pro tip: Ask people to comment "Yes" if they'd like the longer version of the post. This helps increase engagement.

3\. When someone engages by liking or commenting on your post, send them a DM. Here's a sample template:

Hey [name], thanks for liking my post about ___. I have more examples like those at (your site here). Thought you might be interested!

4\. When someone wants the longer version of the post, send them a DM with the information. Here's a sample template:
‍

Hi [name], you can check out the longer version at (your site here). It explains the process in more detail, including everything that I couldn't fit into the Facebook post.

5\. Have pop-ups upon 80% scroll, or on exit, for your blog posts, and CTA subscribe buttons on the landing page, top navigation bar, and bottom. Make it easy for people to subscribe!

If you enjoyed this post, check out 29 other marketing examples from The Growth Archive.

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Take Control of Your Time ⏳

This issue is sponsored by Morgen

Work. Life. Side hustle. You're juggling a lot.

Morgen gives you a complete picture of all your commitments so you can plan, prioritize, and control how you spend your time.

Integrate your calendars, task managers, time blocking, and scheduling. Then, turn on AI assistance to make the most of it.

Lessons for Launching 🚀

by Ben Waterman

In December 2023, we publicly launched Strabo after six months of work. Following the release of the private beta in the summer, we gathered feedback from 150 users. Here are a few lessons we’ve learned from it, which will hopefully be relevant to anyone launching a SaaS product!

Understand vanity metrics

Waitlists are vanity metrics. Although they’re undoubtedly important, their primary purpose is to demonstrate that there is a demand for the product, not count users.

The most frictionless way of collecting signups is by just using an email box with no name, age, or other details. This reduces the initial commitment level.

Even passionate signups will likely have forgotten about a waitlist they signed up for after a matter of weeks, so re-engagement is important. Also, it's best to write off anyone who signed up more than a few months ago and no longer engages.

Pace yourself

The last 10% of the work tends to take up half of the time. There's so much to do to prepare for going live, including things that you may not anticipate until you get there.

Don't make launch promises that you may not be able to keep.

It is going to break

We tested it, tested it once more, and tested it again before launching, and it still broke. One particular example was "rage clicks." A button might work perfectly as intended if you click it and wait for something to happen.

But, what about when the button needs to call the backend, and that takes more than half a second? People start smashing the button repeatedly. Your product needs to be robust enough to counter this. You need to lead people down the intended use path without letting them deviate due to avoidable mistakes.

Users are forgiving

One of the biggest fears stopping people from launching is that people might hate it, or crucify them for their mistakes. If people receive a response directly from the founder(s) in a timely manner, they are willing to forgive a lot!

Put thought into your responses, take feedback earnestly, and show them that you’ve poured love into the product.

Collecting feedback is a founder task

Don’t outsource this! Also, do it every day. Talk to users as much as possible, and try not to make major changes unless they’ve been validated.

You can follow our daily and weekly updates on our community page here!

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In the News 📰

from the Growth Trends newsletter

🍎 Apple prepares to enable sideloading and App Store changes in the EU.

📝 Run these GA4 reports to set your 2024 SEO priorities.

💲 Link to your product here. Our most affordable ad.

🤩 Recognition is better than recall in user interfaces.

🔎 Here's the average conversion rate for a landing page.

📱 The AI phones are coming.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

One Simple Strategy Led to $15K MRR 💡

by RefineBase

I'm a software engineer who's launched several products over the years, none of which worked out. The whole time, I had been considering SaaS as my only option. One day, a thought came to me: What if I don’t build SaaS at all?

The idea

The following morning, I came up with the idea to create a service specifically designed for AI image editing in bulk.

The basic idea was for businesses to provide me with a large number of AI-generated images. I would then edit these images and return them within a week, making them ready for practical use in various business applications. A couple days after thinking it through, I officially launched RefineBase.

Validating the idea

As AI image technology is still fairly new, it's hard to know how many people are thinking about using it at scale for their business. I needed to know if people wanted to use AI images for professional business applications, or just to play around and create cool images.

I began asking around in a few forums and got some responses, but nothing too promising. Because I didn’t know who my target audience was, I just took a bet and geared my website towards businesses who need high-quality, professional images, including creative agencies and magazine publishers.

To be honest, I still don’t have this totally figured out, but since this is a high-ticket service, I only needed a few clients to achieve a decent MRR.

Getting to $15K MRR

To land my first client, I headed to freelancing sites like Upwork and Fiverr. I realized that if I DMed the image editors on these platforms, I could offer them a commission for every referral they brought to my website.

The idea was that, if an image editor couldn't take on a requested task due to capacity issues, they would direct the client to RefineBase. I would give them a discount code to make it a win-win; I offered a 20% commission per referral.

Using this method, I was able to get three clients, bringing me to $15K MRR. I'm hoping to at least double that in the near future!

Discuss this story.

The Tweetmaster's Pick 🐦

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Cameron Scully, Darko, Ben Waterman, and RefineBase for contributing posts. —Channing