(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
Do you have what it takes to go all-in on your side project?
Want to share something with over 100,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
Do you have what it takes to quit your day job and go all-in on your side project? It's a good idea to get real about your strengths and weaknesses before going all-in.
These crucial questions can help!
First off, it's important to ensure that your circumstances are set up to support you. Ask yourself these questions:
These questions pertain to your skillset:
I think it's probably safe to say that the more you said "yes" to the questions above, the better your chances for indie hacking success. As long as your product is validated, your responsibilities are covered, and you're confident that failure won't break you, it's worth a shot. You may not succeed, but you'll definitely learn a thing or two! (And hey, you might succeed!)
Here's a bit of advice about taking the leap:
How did you prepare to quit and go full-time? Let's chat below!
Discuss this story.
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
👀 Startups are seeing new opportunities as Twitter reels with chaos.
🌎 Next week, the global population will hit 8B.
🧢 Laid off tech workers are posting "get ready with me" TikToks.
🗳 The US midterm elections could be bad news for Big Tech.
🖼 Burning a Frida Kahlo drawing to sell NFTs is probably not a good idea.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
I built ExcelFormulaBot, a website that uses AI to transform your text instructions into an Excel formula within seconds. I've been incredibly fortunate to grow the site from $0 to $20K in just a couple of months, while working a full-time job.
These growth tactics helped me get there!
1\. Take advantage of the fact that social influencers love promoting free tools to their audiences. TikTok and Twitter are full of productivity hackers who freely promote websites that can help people be more productive.
Some people advise never giving your product away for free, but that's not the best strategy in every situation.
My website has been shared by several hundred influencers and top internet personalities, often included in posts like:
Whether it's freemium, a free trial, or other free offerings, give people a free appetizer of what they'd be getting.
2\. Automate an email drip campaign with a free trial of your product. After you give them a taste of a limited version of your product, give them the real thing. Require a credit card to test the full experience. Currently, my trial conversion rate is at 80%!
3\. Engage in social listening for your industry. If someone posts about "excel formulas" on Twitter, I'm there commenting through my business account, engaging with the user. Whether it's sending a funny GIF or solving a problem for them, I am constantly engaging.
4\. Engage with users when your brand is mentioned. There's no "excelformulabot" mention on any social site that I haven't responded to. If people are talking about it, I'm responding. Leaving a comment only increases post engagement and reach, resulting in more eyeballs on it!
5\. Be the first to comment on large accounts that reach your target audience. This has been a game changer for me. I set up tweet notifications so that, when popular accounts that reach my audience post something, I'm notified.
When I'm notified, I quickly leave a comment, making me the first commenter. Hopefully, my response is witty enough to be a top comment. Some of my comments have garnered several hundred profile clicks and clicks to the website.
6\. Add a time-saver calculator! This isn't applicable to all products, but it's been a big success for mine.
Does your product save people time? Add a calculator on your site where users can input their hourly wage or salary, and the average time that they spend doing what your product solves. In my case, it's time spent searching for Excel formulas on Google. On my site, users that engage with the calculator convert 3x higher!
What growth tactics have been most helpful for your business? Share below!
Discuss this story.
by Josh Spector
I'm sharing growth tips for creative founders! Here's this week's:
Most creators don’t maximize the value of their creations. Here's how to do this:
Every creation is an asset that you can leverage forever.
Subscribe to Josh's For The Interested newsletter or I Want To Know podcast for more.
Hi, fellow indie hackers! I'm Minh-Phuc Tran, and seven months ago, I quit my job to start indie hacking full-time. Back then, I posted about how I prepared to quit, and my plan to build six startups in 12 months. I had two years of runway before quitting.
A few days after the post, I added the goal of making $12K in 12 months. It was inspired by learnings from Jon Yongfook's video and Andrey Azimoz's hardcore year.
Today, I completed the goals! I built six startups in six months, sold one of them last month, and nearly tripled my revenue goal.
AMA!
I started building six startups in 12 months to force myself into the habit of launching early and shipping frequently. I did not go into it expecting any of the startups to become successful.
Instead of shooting for success right from the beginning, I spent the first year building the habits that will likely lead me to success later on, and making sure they stick.
Depending on each person's goal and situation, these habits may vary. For me, it was to ship more, ship earlier, and ship more frequently.
Along with getting used to launching early and shipping frequently, I grew a lot during the process:
Every Sunday, I open Daily, my note-taking app. I spend a few hours writing down problems that cost me a lot of time.
For each idea, I expand the list into a few points:
After repeating this a few times, an idea will resonate strongly with me until I can't help but work on it.
It sounds unstructured, but this exercise helps with focus. Why?
Twitter, friends, and Product Hunt.
Having a Twitter audience is crucial to my process. I've acquired most of my customers simply by tweeting daily.
Another big source is Product Hunt launches. I posted on Indie Hackers about how to successfully launch on Product Hunt!
Some of my customers are my founder friends. I'm in a few founder group chats, and I share my products there.
If it takes two weeks to build the first version, I'll name a few people that I know who I think will be customers. I'll reach out to them, ask about the problem and what they are doing about it, then see if I can make their current solution significantly cheaper or better. If I can make it at least 2x better, I'll build it. The person that I talked to will be the first customer, then I'll go from there!
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 James Fleischmann, Priyanka Vazirani, David Bressler, Josh Spector, and Minh-Phuc Tran for contributing posts. —Channing