(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
Customer interactions are make or break:
Want to share something with nearly 95,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
by Joe Kaiser
I just can't seem to get the hang of customer development and growth. I always feel like I'm pestering people and turning them off.
For example, I've been active on Twitter and Reddit trying to interact with my target users, but I'm struggling to make sure that the interactions are genuine. It feels wrong to befriend someone just so I can wait for a moment to push my product onto them. Following up is even harder.
Does anyone have any tips?
Taylor Brazelton points out two rules in the book The Go-Giver that you might try applying here:
Spencer Scott is reminded of the movie Inception:
If I tell you to do something, you will likely never do it. If it is your idea to do something, you are extremely likely to do it, even if the event is the exact same thing.
I learned this after spending the last five years growing two SaaS companies to $400K ARR. You need to create a way for people to find you or your product, and realize that they want it.
The best part? It sounds like you've already found where your target users hang out. Now, all you have to do is change the way you post.
Try these conversation starters:
If none of the above work, or you have no customers in general, try the following:
Johannes Radig works with a lot of startups and founders on this:
To me, it sounds like you're conflating two different things:
Focus on those who are experiencing the problem you're solving the most frequently or most effectively. While your product might have broad appeal, it's important to start with the people who struggle a lot with this. They will be the ones who will be happy to give you feedback, and they'll turn into evangelists later, making sales easier for you.
There's a reason that Superhuman started focusing on VCs first. They get tons of cold emails, they have to read most of them (looking for new opportunities), and time is money for a VC (and they are happy to spend money to save time!).
You need to find your core audience, and that's what customer development is for.
Shaun recalls how, a few years back, a salesperson that he respects explained that there’s an average of seven touch points to a sale:
A touch point might be an email, a call, a tweet, a landing page, a demo, etc.
With that in mind, rather than waiting to pounce with a pitch, you can go about interacting with people freely and confidently in a way that helps them. This may lead to your pitch either directly or indirectly. You see this often on social media, and when done well, it’s not a problem.
Perhaps just a slight change of process like this might make it more natural and comfortable, rather than trying to be sales-y and ready for a direct pitch.
What are your tips on customer growth? Let's chat below!
Discuss this story.
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
📺 Disney has outstreamed Netflix.
💸 More than $7T has been wiped out from the stock market this year.
👀 Facebook is already running out of money for its metaverse.
📡 Starlink internet is now available in 32 countries.
💁♀️ Women are signing up for sports betting apps faster than men.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
If you've got a few years of experience and a few projects under your belt, skip the hourly rate or per project pricing, and start charging a flat weekly rate instead. Here's why!
If a potential client isn't sold on a weekly rate, or isn't sure about the scope of their project and how many weeks they might need you, start with a fixed price discovery project.
Essentially, write up a simple proposal with your recommendations and suggestions, and deliver it as a nice PDF for ~$500. If they decide to move forward, you'll have a nice plan in hand.
I'm not a huge fan of retainers, as they usually put control of the schedule in your client's hands. For example, they can drop a bunch of work or requests on you at any moment.
That said, I've used them in the past. I usually give the client two options:
One last note: I often sold hosting and maintenance packages at the end of projects. These were simple monthly retainers that included a few hours of updates, bug fixes, etc. They were auto-billed at the start of the month, and did not roll over. This made it easier for me since there was nothing to keep track of.
When I first started freelancing, I would simply charge per project. I only had about two years of self-taught experience, and would charge $1K-$3K to build simple websites or web apps.
I was still learning, making a ton of mistakes, and I was super slow. Charging hourly didn't seem right. With a little more experience, though, I moved to hourly rates. This was mostly because I was getting stuck in endless revisions with fixed-price project clients.
Here's what people don't tell you: The cheaper the project, the more revisions and feedback you can expect.
I made the jump to building more complex web apps and mobile prototypes, and went back to per project pricing. This time, I set the base project price at $10K+ (I then had 3-5 years of experience).
Higher prices meant much better clients and way less revisions. Of course, you can only command decent rates once you've successfully completed some projects, gained client testimonials, and nailed your processes and workflows.
Over the last several years, I've completely moved away from hourly or project based pricing. Instead, I simply charge a flat weekly rate, usually in the range of $3k-$5K per week (I now have 15+ years experience).
Would you consider implementing weekly flat rate pricing? Share below!
Discuss this story.
🧐 Maker Twitter is useless. Posted by Yasin Kavakli.
🆓 Why don't SaaS boilerplates have free trials? Posted by Iain Cambridge.
😵💫 Anything that starts now will have a difficult time scaling. Posted by Usama A.
💻 Do you use static site generators? Posted by Darko.
⏰ Daily micro-reviews are a system for personal accountability. Posted by Kevkav.
🤔 What are you working on? Posted by Alucard Vania.
Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.
Hey folks! I'm Ayush Chaturvedi, and my writing course crossed $500 in sales one recent morning.
I thought it would be useful to share how I used Twitter to validate the idea and pre-sell the course. The biggest challenge with launching anything on Twitter is getting eyeballs on your landing page.
Even if you have a decent audience, the moment you share a link in your tweet, the algorithm penalizes those posts and doesn't show it to most of your followers. This happens even if you post the link in the second or third tweet, not just the first.
I suffered with this problem before with other projects, and I wanted to avoid it this time. Read on for more!
Broadly, I faced three challenges:
I made a basic outline of the course in Notion based on what I wanted to build, and set up a Gumroad page for the course with the course outline.
Then, I tweeted out a screenshot of the outline. I offered the course for free to a few people on Twitter if they replied to the tweet.
I wanted to make it a no-brainer for people to check out the landing page.
That tweet got 35K impressions. There were 90+ replies within six hours, and my landing page got 400+ views.
Initially, I DMed everyone who replied. Once I got tired, I posted the link to the course. The first five people got the course for free. After that, I kept raising the price as more people kept buying. This gave me a sense of what people were willing to pay for a course like this.
Within 48 hours, I had made $247 through 49 sales. Then, I started working on building the course. I wanted to increase sales through building in public. I knew that I wasn't going to get a traffic spike like this again, but I had to bring in some traffic regularly. Otherwise, sales would dry up.
I had set the course launch date for April 17, and I made a plan to build the whole thing by then. Every couple of days, I tweeted out progress updates on the course.
This nudged people who were on the fence to check it out, and maybe buy it. I even sent initial chapters to the pre-sale buyers as I was completing them. Folks loved it, and shared initial testimonials.
I used these testimonials on the landing page and in my tweets.
After about five weeks, the course had crossed $500 in sales. I've already launched the e-book version, and a community for the course. I'm working on the video version now.
I'm planning to continue to raise prices, as this course is not a one-off project. I plan to create a community of writers, and possibly, a job board for creators.
For the next couple of weeks, I'm focused on the video course and community. If you're interested, you can check out Make Money With Words here!
Discuss this story.
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 Joe Kaiser, Priyanka Vazirani, Tyler Wanlass, and Ayush Chaturvedi for contributing posts. —Channing
Really insightful post. I think you split it into many separate articles and added numbers to headline - it would get better traction.
thanks for the feedback, Denis! appreciate you reading the newsletter.