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Five years of indie hacking

allisonseboldt.com

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Re: Five years of indie hacking

#61

Post by asebold »

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…

Author here - That's awesome. I admire your grit. Realizing you needed to change and focus more on marketing is a big step in the right direction. We all start out doing the wrong things and making mistakes. The key is learning from them, which it seems, you are willing to do. Best of luck!

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#62

Post by asebold »

magic_hamster wrote: post #16

It was very disappointing reading how the author found credible podcasts, books and people to follow, only to recommend nothing and leave the reader wondering about this mysterious information.

Author here - Sorry about that. Since I haven't been much of a success, I didn't think people would be interested in my recommendations. But here are a few that I found really helpful:

Indie Hacker Podcast (the forum on the site was also a great resource for me): https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast

How I Built This Podcast: https://www.npr.org/series/490248027/how-i-built-this

Stacking the Bricks: https://stackingthebricks.com/

Books: The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, The E-myth by Michael Gerber, Running Lean by Ash Maurya

As the other posted said, any resources provided by MicroConf are also great. Basically look up their videos on YouTube and follow all of their speakers on Twitter or subscribe to their newsletters.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#63

Post by asebold »

xupybd wrote: post #20

I'm interested in the author's latest SAAS. Can you really game SEO by spamming out templated articles? I thought Google filtered out that sort of thing.

Author here - Yes it works. I have two programmatic sites so far, one of which I built in public on my blog. I also consulted on programmatic SEO for a bit. Just like human written content, Google won't index your pages if they are low quality or straight up spam. You have to actually provide value to the user. A common example I use for when programmatic SEO is appropriate is nutritional information.

Here's a twitter thread with legitimate websites getting millions of traffic each month from programmatic SEO: https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt/status/16195138347790499...

I also created a free course on the subject to address people's concerns about this approach, and to teach them how to do it the right way: https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#64

Post by short_throw »

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.

If the article were more prescriptive (i.e. it were giving people life advice or suggesting policy) I'd agree.

But it's primarily descriptive ("this is what I lived" and the prescriptive parts are limited to "if you find yourself in this situation, here's how to do it better than what I did").

Seems a bit silly to require a meaningless disclaimer on someone's memoir.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#65

Post by asebold »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #31

I honestly found the article rather confusing. Maybe it’s the terminology used? When I hear the term “indie hacking”, I don’t think of product building (although author’s link has that as a definition). Going into the post I thought I’d read about some person’s five year journey into some wonderfully whacky personal hacking projects. The post seemed to start that way. But then half way through, the tone changes to ta…

Author here - Sorry for the confusion. The term originated from the Indie Hacker forum launched around 2016, a forum that was dedicated to helping people start small businesses online. This is the website I linked to at the beginning of the article to give people context. I've seen this term used often in the context of startups on reddit as well as hacker news, so I thought it was common knowledge. It doesn't have anything to do with "hacking" computers, though I can see why people might think that.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#66

Post by asebold »

ronnykylin wrote: post #17

I resonate with your idea about passion a lot. Passion is what gets you to do the job, but once you're on the job, you have to put that aside and think with a cold mind. You turn passion into a small flame inside of you. It helps you go through the darkest moments.

Author here - Thanks, glad to hear that part resonated with you. I agree, you can't let your passion burn too bright, or it will consume you. "a small flame inside you" is a great approach.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#67

Post by asebold »

moltar wrote: post #15
asebold wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here - Thanks for reading. The $1k/mo is just my "salary" from revenue generated by my indie projects. I had a substantial amount of savings that I lived off of for my first year. Since then, I've supported myself with contract work. I'm also very lucky that my partner is very supportive and has a good job, so at times (such as last year when I was launching my latest SaaS), he picked up our shared expenses.

Hi Allison, thank you for sharing your story. It’s inspiring in during a tough time. Just wondering if you were able to find contracts regularly with ease? If so, how did you do that? Thank you.

Well, it wasn't easy. I tried many things: searching twitter, cold out reach through linkedin, upwork, broadcasting my availability to my personal network. Usually at least one of these would work. If I was more serious about building a consultancy, I would build a pipline for leads. However, my SaaS products have been my main focus, so I continue to rely on the tactics I just mentioned.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#68

Post by jollofricepeas »

xupybd wrote: post #27
FlyingSnake wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but they seem to be in the DNVB/DTC business. It is an interesting eCommerce sector. 1: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/dnvb-digitally-native-vertical-...

Thanks, I've never heard that term before but I'm pretty sure I work for a DVVB.

The DTC (later DNVB) sector was a big part of the e-commerce boom in the 2010s through the pandemic.

It was fueled by cheap Facebook advertising, iOS tracking and cheap FBA fees then later on by cheap Amazon advertising and to a lesser degree, TikTok.

Lots of successful small and family businesses were created during this time period with revenues of 500k-$20m of which I own one.

But the largest ones were companies like Anker, Away, Casper, Warby Parker.

And the underlying shovel companies like Shopify, Stamps/ShipStation, Mailchimp, Zebra and many others.

Pretty much, the play was the same.

1. Identify a decent size niche market that you can hyper target on Facebook or Instagram. Pet, health/wellness, beauty, exercise were especially popular.

2. Source/design a product from Asia that has a high enough margin for advertising

3. Buy ads on social media, hire influencers, and build a strong email channel via Mailchimp

4. Drive customers initially to Shopify and then later to Amazon FBA

5. If you have a strong enough brand, then take your products to brick and mortar retailers

That all went well for years especially with customers flush with pandemic monies until the iOS upgrade and Amazon started squeezing sellers.

At the tail end of the pandemic, VC money poured multiple billions into the market as they used the PE aggregator model to create entities like Thrasio, Elevate, Accel to buy up a lot of small players in the $5-20m ARR space.

Now times are dire for all.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#69

Post by armanm »

safety1st wrote: post #29
armanm wrote: post #12

I'm about to launch a bootstrapped project on my own (my third idea). Your post really resonated with me because I have been thinking about the same feelings and outcomes as you shared in your blog. My conclusion is that the only guaranteed outcome from ventures like this for people like us (who are trying to build wealth from nothing) is and should be the learning. I have accepted that today I don't know how to crea…

I wish you success on your next venture, but if the problem you're focused on solving is "creating wealth by building a SaaS product," your focus itself might be holding you back. Imagine going into a meeting with a potential customer and saying "Hi, my name's armanm, and I'm looking forward to our chat today about how I'm creating wealth for myself." They would probably walk out of the room! If there's any one commo…

Sage advice. Thank you @safety1st

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#70

Post by shafyy »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #54
shafyy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nothing wrong with it. Just saying that you with so little money you'll probably struggle to get balanced nutritional meals over the years.
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