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Five years of indie hacking

allisonseboldt.com

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Re: Five years of indie hacking

#71

Post by joenot443 »

asebold wrote: post #59
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.

I don’t really see the “indie” connection then, frankly. It’s an app for churning out wordy, SEO optimized articles, right? I feel like you may have picked the wrong platform to brag about that achievement, most people on HN don’t have great things to say about the way SEO driven tools like that have changed the web.

EDIT: The demo on the site being 2min of time to churn out an entire website’s worth of content. I weep for what tools like this have allowed the web to become. You have the furthest thing from my support, I’m sorry.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#72

Post by joenot443 »

asebold wrote: post #60
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…

I don’t think anyone’s going to listen to a whole podcast to get the answer they’re looking for. I’m still of the opinion that “programmatic SEO” == spam, but perhaps you can use the space here to explain why that’s not the case. I perused your Twitter but was admittedly left even more confused.

“ Programmatic SEO is not a means for replacing human written content.

This strategy targets keywords that aren't served well by human written content. It lacks the critical analysis and nuance only humans can provide.”

Maybe you can explain. Is it a real human writing every line of the copy you’re generating? If not, how is it not very directly “replacing human written content”.

What you’ve mentioned in this thread seems to run contrary to what’s on your Twitter and the product page itself.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#73

Post by asebold »

joenot443 wrote: post #72
asebold wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don’t think anyone’s going to listen to a whole podcast to get the answer they’re looking for. I’m still of the opinion that “programmatic SEO” == spam, but perhaps you can use the space here to explain why that’s not the case. I perused your Twitter but was admittedly left even more confused. “ Programmatic SEO is not a means for replacing human written content. This strategy targets keywords that aren't served we…

I mean, if you're hell bent on not educating yourself, I don't think there's much more I can do to help you.

Nonetheless, here's a twitter thread I made with a bunch of examples of big, well known sites that use programmatic SEO. Which of these sites are spam? https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt/status/16195138347790499...

"This strategy targets keywords that aren't served well by human written content."

One example I often use is nutritional information. We don't need in-depth, 1200 word articles for how many calories, carbs, protein, etc. there are in every food and drink item out there. Plus, there are billions of them. So it's not even feasible to create human written, long-form articles for every item. Websites use templates to plugin in nutritional information into webpages, and Google picks it up. That's programmatic SEO. It's applicable to lots of situations, and we consume tons of it every day.

If you can't see even a single legitimate use case for this strategy after all the resources and details I've provided, I just have to assume you're looking for people to argue with. Not worth my energy, sorry dude.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#74

Post by [deleted] »

asebold wrote: post #11
steve1977 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since then, I‘ve supported myself with contract work So „jumping into indie hacking full time“ is actually a bit misleading, no?

My first year I lived entirely off of my savings and dedicated myself full time to my first project. So, it is indeed the anniversary of when I attempted to go full time, which was the sentiment of that sentence. Sorry if that wasn't more clear. All the contract work I've done was part-time at most, so I also haven't had the comfort and safety of a full-time gig during this time period. My projects have been the prio…

[deleted]

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#75

Post by e2e4 »

asebold wrote: post #62
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://stackingth…

Nice list. I find the book "company of one" to be quite interesting (although somehow it's less popular in tech community): https://www.amazon.com/Company-One-Staying-Small-Business/

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#76

Post by 4pkjai »

joenot443 wrote: post #71
asebold wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t really see the “indie” connection then, frankly. It’s an app for churning out wordy, SEO optimized articles, right? I feel like you may have picked the wrong platform to brag about that achievement, most people on HN don’t have great things to say about the way SEO driven tools like that have changed the web. EDIT: The demo on the site being 2min of time to churn out an entire website’s worth of content. I we…

It's indie because she built the product independently.
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