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Five years of indie hacking

allisonseboldt.com

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Re: Five years of indie hacking

#51

Post by mattgreenrocks »

dthedavid wrote: post #43

I share the same dream; of one day charting my own path. I've been doing things a bit differently. I've kept my job and am building my product (www.bannerbox.io) on the side. I wake up early and dedicate a few hours to it in the morning. So far I've built the MVP but have no users. I'm fine with this because I'm learning. Last year I've dedicated 100% of my time to building. This year I'm spending half of my time mar…

Same boat. I've made some small change. Marketing really is the thing to learn. I find it kind of fun actually because I know it is building skills to align with my existing technical skills.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#52

Post by pengwing »

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #50

"Indie Hacking" An indie hacker is an individual who builds and launches a business or product independently, without the support of a large organization or team. Most 'indie hackers' i've met are working on some app, or SAAS that they see a need for in the market. They strive and toil, for a grand vision; And there is beauty in that, but.... More 'Indie Hackers' should find fulfillment in starting an agency. The ris…

I agree with your initial idea, but you lost me at "hourly rate". I think doing fixed prices for fixed scopes allows any agency to scale up to a certain point. (Instead of disincentivizing efficiency through hourly rates)

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#53

Post by mattgreenrocks »

cdiamand wrote: post #36
loveparade wrote: post #18

> With the launch of my second business last July (a programmatic SEO tool called PageFactory Great read, but it's a bit disappointing to see that the author was only able to make money with yet another SEO spam tool to generate low-quality content. The idea of the original Fantasy Congress was much more interesting, too bad that didn't work out.

To me, that's actually one of the most optimistic parts. The author is willing to build what markets want, not a passion project, which is a turning point.

Good take. This is not selling out, this is being open to problems that people will pay for.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#54

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

shafyy wrote: post #48
pyrrhotech wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't take extreme privilege to quit your job and indie hack for 5 years. It takes $60k in savings and extreme frugality (or the equivalent of the cheapest amount you can live on for 5 years in your country). $60k of savings can easily be saved in a year with a junior dev job in the USA, or 2 years in Europe as long as you have the frugality. Of course, you do sacrifice having a family, living in an expensive ar…

Sorry, where in EU or US can live a "normal" live on $12k/year? Sure, you can do it if you live in a one bed-room apartment in the middle of nowhere and only eat home-cooked pasta every day. But I don't think anybody that had an above average lifestyle before that can sustain that for 5 years, especially if you know that "luxury" is just one succesful job application away.

Sorry, what's wrong with home cooked pasta? Just made some, with scallops, using a chatgpt provided recipe, it came out pretty good.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#55

Post by tecoholic »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #42
VyseofArcadia wrote: post #41

> I finally started generating enough consistent revenue to pay myself a meager salary. After five long years, I now make $1k/month. > More than anything though, I'm so thankful I had the courage, and privilege, to take a swing at this. I'm glad the author acknowledged that privilege. As someone not from a terribly privileged background, this sort of article usually just makes my blood boil.

It doesn't take extreme privilege to quit your job and indie hack for 5 years. It takes $60k in savings and extreme frugality (or the equivalent of the cheapest amount you can live on for 5 years in your country). $60k of savings can easily be saved in a year with a junior dev job in the USA, or 2 years in Europe as long as you have the frugality. Of course, you do sacrifice having a family, living in an expensive ar…

I have seen this logic presented in multiple places. While it might be possible to live that frugally, it only works if you have your work already sorted out. Like the business plan or an app idea. As a college student who spent $2/day on food (India 15 years back), I can assure that it’s not the setup for a healthy mindset. It also restricts exposure a lot and thus limits access to new ideas. Most of my brainpower was spent on penny pinching each expense.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#56

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo »

pengwing wrote: post #52
TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #50

"Indie Hacking" An indie hacker is an individual who builds and launches a business or product independently, without the support of a large organization or team. Most 'indie hackers' i've met are working on some app, or SAAS that they see a need for in the market. They strive and toil, for a grand vision; And there is beauty in that, but.... More 'Indie Hackers' should find fulfillment in starting an agency. The ris…

I agree with your initial idea, but you lost me at "hourly rate". I think doing fixed prices for fixed scopes allows any agency to scale up to a certain point. (Instead of disincentivizing efficiency through hourly rates)

Depends on whether it's internal development or external recs. I've had alot of success doing T&M's for the State and local governments. It consumes the resource for your agency, but the rate arbitrage is attractive.

But yes, as you scale from just being you to multiple people you should have fixed proposals and ideally, an annual maintance and monthly retainer.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#57

Post by asebold »

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #50

"Indie Hacking" An indie hacker is an individual who builds and launches a business or product independently, without the support of a large organization or team. Most 'indie hackers' i've met are working on some app, or SAAS that they see a need for in the market. They strive and toil, for a grand vision; And there is beauty in that, but.... More 'Indie Hackers' should find fulfillment in starting an agency. The ris…

Author here - Totally agree. Service based businesses like an agency is a much better way to start out. If I was starting over, this is the approach I would take.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#58

Post by asebold »

patrickscoleman wrote: post #14
asebold wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here - Thanks for reading. I'm glad to hear this post resonated with you. As long as you're learning new things with each experience, you're getting value from it. I know the goal is always to build value through wealth, and as we both know, that doesn't always work out. But for me personally, the things I've learned on this journey have tons of application to my career. It's just made me so much more well rou…

Also just starting out on this journey. Thank you for the post! Subscribed and eager to follow along. If you ever do a writeup of who’s who and what’s what in the bootstrap community, I’d love to read.

Thanks so much! That's an interesting idea. I'll think about it!

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#59

Post by asebold »

jart wrote: post #23

Here's a link to the author's project: https://pagefactory.app/ For an indie hacker project that you're doing for passion, you really have to pick something that connects with the dreams of people. Especially if the thing is a tool that empowers ordinary people. No one dreams about how much better the web will be with lots of auto-generated content. In order to sell something like that, you'd have to do a YouTube hus…

Author here - There may have been a misunderstanding. Fantasy Congress was my passion project. PageFactory is my attempt at a B2B SaaS.

Also, my product does not provide any AI services.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#60

Post by asebold »

loveparade wrote: post #18

> With the launch of my second business last July (a programmatic SEO tool called PageFactory Great read, but it's a bit disappointing to see that the author was only able to make money with yet another SEO spam tool to generate low-quality content. The idea of the original Fantasy Congress was much more interesting, too bad that didn't work out.

Author here - Thanks for reading! Glad you enjoyed the article.

Programmatic SEO has a long history of being conflated with spam, though, it is not. There are many instances where this approach to creating content is the best approach for users, and many are surprised to learn how often and how much programmatic content they consume (I often use nutritional information as an example).

I've talked about this at length on my twitter, podcast interviews, and my free course on the subject. I will put links to these below. If you're concerned about the efficacy and morality of programmatic SEO, I'd suggest getting more information from these resources in order to make an informed opinion.

Also, my product does not provide any AI services. I know it's common for people to assume "programmatic" means "AI", but this strategy has been around much longer than AI.

My twitter (examples and many threads on the subject): https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt

Free course: https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course

Podcast interview I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU9VYD86xTA&t=818s

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