AMA! I'm Justin Jackson, creator of MegaMaker and other resources for indie entrepreneurs.

There are ways to acquire customers that don't involve building a personal brand, blogging, creating podcasts, doing video, etc...

Here are a few of my favorites:

• @mbuckbee is getting hundreds of subscribers per day from this "subject line tester" tool. How he gets traffic: word of mouth.

• Ruben Gamez gets thousands of leads by offering a downloadable proposal template. How he gets traffic: SEO.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Some communities have areas built specifically for sharing your work. Hacker News has Show HN. Designer News has Show DN.

2. Observe when links get shared and are deemed "OK." One observation: when your current users share your URL in response to a question, that generally gets the 👍. Example

3. When you've built a free tool that's really useful like Buckbee's subject-line checker, those are much easier to share in forums. He's also found that writing content surrounding the tool is easier to share on Reddit. Example

4. If you're writing helpful guides + resources, those are also easier to share. You can summarize them on Reddit, Quora, FB Groups, but then link to the full version. Example

Oooh. I am building a secret SaaS in 2018. I'm going to come back to this question. ;)

Finally able to announce this: I'm building a podcast hosting platform called Transistor.fm with my friend @jonbuda. 🎉

We're excited to already have paying customer (Cards Against Humanity was one of our first!).

Here is the announcement post

One of the things I love about creating a landing page, is it forces you to think about:

"How am I going to drive traffic to this thing?"

It's an exercise in thinking about how you're going to find good channels for this product you're about to build.

What kind of traffic should you go after? Whichever channel provides you with the greatest number of high-quality leads.

In terms of balancing value vs self-promotion, sometimes I fail at that. 😜 The biggest thing for me is to look back at my email newsletters, and my tweets, and see how many are valuable, and how many are asking for something.

I used to be embarrassed about the "community builder" part of my personality. It felt like, for whatever reason, it was a lower skill.

But increasingly, I'm realizing it's:

• one of my strengths

• a valuable strength to have!

If you look back on my history, it's the same story over and over: I've been hosting meetups, building online forums, and fostering group interaction my entire life (ever since high school!).

The success of @csallen and Indie Hackers, as well as other communities like Product Hunt, and proven that community building is valuable.

Here are my tips for building a successful community:

1. You have to love it. Supporting a community is way different than running an app, interacting with people on Twitter, or writing a blog post. It's going to require daily attention and care.

2. Everything rises and falls on your leadership. IH is awesome because @csallen has been a great leader. PH's community is cool because of @rrhoover's leadership. You have to lead.

3. Start small. Invite your favorite people to begin with. Initiate good conversations.

4. Create recurring traditions. Inside of MegaMaker Club we have QOTD (Question of the Day)., we watch Apple Keynotes together, and whenever I visit your town, I'll try to meet up.

5. In terms of tools, my favorites are Discourse, Slack, Podia, and Spectrum.chat.

6. A community will need you to show up, be present, and proactively generate discussion. You can't just leave it and expect that it will grow on its own. It needs daily watering!

I wrote The Freedom Ladder two years ago, and I need to update it.

The biggest lesson from changing pricing for Tiny Wins was that your:

• business model (recurring, one time)

• distribution channels

need to match your product, and the market you're targeting.

In the case of Tiny Wins, it made more sense for folks to pay once.

There's a temptation to force a business model onto a product, because it suits us as the entrepreneur ("recurring is better than one-time!"). But what works is asking:

What business / delivery model makes the most sense for this product?

If you're storing data for customers, sending email through your servers, or providing a significant number of updates every month, SaaS might make the most sense for you.

Some companies, like Placeit, employ both models. If you use their service infrequently, you can pay once. However, if you're using it all the time, you can save 63% by getting a subscription.

This was the evolution:

• in 2012, I was working for a startup called Mailout, they promoted me to Product Manager. I'd never done PM work, and so I connected with another local product guy named Kyle Fox. We started a podcast called Product People. We thought we'd interview PMs, but we really ended up enjoying was talking to indie hackers like Nathan Barry. That got me interested in indie hacking.

• in 2013, I built MegaMaker Club for the podcast listeners, and it became my first successful "product."

• I was the Product Manager at Sprintly from 2014-2015. My podcast listeners kept asking me for marketing advice, so I wrote M4Devs.

• That book allowed me to go independent in 2016. I made a few more things like Tiny Wins, and eventually folks started asking me if I did coaching so I started offering that too!

However, this year, I decided I wanted to work on a software product again. So I'm building a SaaS with a buddy from Chicago. More details soon!

I told this story on the Release Notes podcast. It's worth listening to if you want the whole thing.

I had started a podcast called Product People and was getting tons of questions by email about product marketing. During those email interchanges I noticed some trends:

• almost all of the folks asking were software developers.

• almost all of the folks were looking for an idea, were working on an idea (but hadn't launched), or had just recently launched.

• most were looking to find their first 100 customers.

As I was hanging on Twitter and Hacker News, I saw similar trends there.

There were also trends in the questions I was answering. So I wrote those down, and created an outline for a book.

To test it out, I created this landing page. It wasn't pretty, but it was enough!

Using those same channels (my podcast, HN, Twitter) I started sharing the landing page. It got a bigger response than I'd ever had before (3,000 subscribers in a few weeks). It definitely seemed like there was interest. So I started writing. It took longer than I wanted, but I finally published the first version Oct 15, 2015.

A few high-level tips:

1. Be genuine and human: programmers (like most folks) respond well to folks who are real, and aren't pretending to be something they're not.

2. Be helpful: there are amazing forums for devs online (HN, IH, PH, Stack Overflow, etc...). Get on there, and be as helpful as you can.

3. Build your reputation: there's a reason PHP developers trust trust folks like @TaylorOtwell and @adamwathan - they've earned people's trust over time! You can't rush that piece.

4. Differentiate yourself: the first question I get from people who are considering buying Marketing for Developers is: "what makes this different from blog posts?" or "how is this different than the Traction book?"

For you, the question folks will be asking is:

What makes this t-shirt store different from a brand like DVLPR?

You might want to listen to these two podcast episodes:

• What makes a great branded t-shirt?

• Automated t-shirt deployment

Damn, @csallen, you've done such a great job so far! It's hard for me to add anything.

When you're having a conversation with someone (online, or in real life), you're generally asking three questions:

1. Do I already know you?

2. Do I like you?

3. Do I trust you?

In forums, to answer #1 & #2, you might see if you recognize someone's avatar, or might take a peek at their Twitter profile.

To answer #3, there needs to be some evidence. You're already doing a good job with the ⚓️ on folks' profiles, that shows what they've launched. Your new verified revenue badge is also a good step in this direction.

Human beings respond really well to rewards. If you want to continue to generate good conversation, reward the folks that are posting the kinds of comments, articles, etc... that you want more of!

Ideas for rewards:

• more badges (not just for makers with revenue, but folks who ask great questions, or provide awesome answers)

• perks (special access, free software, special swag) for folks who complete their profile, upload an avatar, and answer a question.

• in your email newsletter, highly a "user of the week." Someone who exemplifies the qualities you want to encourage!

There were a bunch of retreats that had a huge impact on me this past year:

• Shawn Blanc, Sean Wes and James Clear invited me to their retreat in June. They're all way smarter than me and so getting to hang out with those guys was huge. One of the most helpful things we did was the "hot seat" where other attendees could talk about you as if you weren't there. Really hard to sit through but great to get that unfiltered POV.

• I've been doing a weekly mastermind with Jarrod Drysdale and @pjrvs for 4-5 years now. We met for the first time this past fall. These guys know me, my life, and my business. It means their advice holds a lot more weight than other folks in my life. We did a SWOT analysis on each of our businesses, which was super helpful.

• I did a weekend trip with Mike Vardy in the summer. We took our kids to the waterslides + amusement park in Cultus Lake. That retreat was deeply personal. Mike and I got to share life with each other, and I got to talk about some personal struggles. Very helpful.

Hmmm. When I launched the MegaMaker show the initial premise is that I'd make 100 things in a year.

During that year, I launched a bunch of things:

• A little web app called Network Effects

• A t-shirt store

• A WordPress plugin called ProductPress

• Full list is here

What did I learn?

In many ways, “100 things Justin could make in 2016” was like a mid-life crisis. I finally had the freedom to try new things! I went crazy like a kid in a candy store.

I spent six months exploring my creativity, and doing crazy projects.

But I didn’t make any significant new revenue until I went back to my main products, and my main audience.

One thing that doesn't get talked about much: some customer groups are just more profitable than others.

You could invest the same amount of time in two different markets, and get drastically different response rates.

My advice is to look for a target market that has:

1. Purchasing power

2. Purchasing desire

3. Market mass

First, you're looking for folks who can pay for whatever you’re producing. This is their purchasing power (or ability to pay).

Second, you're looking for a group of people that is highly motivated to solve their problems. These are folks who will spend money to overcome obstacles and make progress in their lives.

Third, you're looking for a market mass. To have a sustainable business, you need enough people in your target market with the ability and desire to pay you. If your market is too niche, it’s going to be difficult to make a profit.

I wrote more about this here. (It's written for the SaaS market, but applies to almost any business)

The most important thing to understand is what motivates human behavior. When you get that, marketing + sales become a lot easier.

Resources:

• Influence by Robert Cialdini

• When Coffee & Kale Compete by Alan Klement

• Marketing for Devs my book + course

You might also enjoy these videos:

• How programmers can find good startup ideas

• Build what people want, not what they need

You definitely need to get on the phone with your users.

You'll want to ask them questions like:

1. What brought you to my product? What was going on in your life at the time?

2. What were you using before my product? Why did you switch?

3. How useful has my product been since you started using it?

4. Did you know there's a paid version? Are you interested in upgrading?

Without talking to your users, you'll never be able to really ascertain what's going on. A single conversation can give you a rich perspective: you'll hear their hesitations, their excitement, etc... in their voice.

In the interview, you're trying to figure out:

1. What progress is the user trying to make in their life? What obstacles stand in their way?

2. How motivated is the user to use this consistently? More on this here.

3. Am I offering too much value in the free product? (Maybe they don't want to upgrade because they like what they've got already)

My best ideas come after years of:

• observation

• experience

• acquiring skills

• helping customers

• relationship building

in a specific segment. You have to have enough background with a customer to really understand what they want.

Once I have a hypothesis, I personally like to validate it with a landing page. I talk about it in this video:

https://youtu.be/YaHXZT6RNs8

Whoa. So much questions.

Top 4 mistakes developers make

1. Sell to a niche that's too small (or doesn't buy products)

2. Sell to a niche that doesn't have good channels

3. Sell to a niche where they don't have an advantage

4. Focus too much on the tech, and not enough on the outcome people really want.

When does something fit into SaaS

It's called Software as a Service and too often we forget about the service part.

What reoccurring service am I getting for my $29, $49, $99, $149 monthly payment?

Adii Pienar has this old quote that's stuck with me:

Let's be honest: when people pay for a subscription, a lot of what they're paying for is the customer support.

In the old days, you buy software, and if you wanted technical help, you had to pay for it.

That all changed with the SaaS delivery model. Now folks were paying monthly, quarterly, annually and part of the expectation is they'd get customer support included.

Can anything be SaaS?

I'm just one opinion here, but I think not everything can be SaaS.

I wrote more about this here:

https://justinjackson.ca/saas/

Can you say JavaScript?

Hahaha. I made this video just for you:

https://youtu.be/AgH6RKTS5KY

Definitely focus small to start! Focusing on a specific group helps you be razor sharp in your messaging. When people land on your site, they'll no instantly that "this is for them." Focusing on a specific niche will also help you find good channels to start.

In the beginning, you just want to focus on your customers (or potential customers. Focus on the people you're going to serve, not your competitors.

I am! I'll be speaking at the Starter Conference, and attending the Growth Conference.

My goal is always to connect with people in meaningful ways. Last year I had a chat with @brennandunn that really kicked my ass (in a good way).

Last year, I talked about "how I went indie:"

https://youtu.be/WKokJTrGiQM

It was a high-level talk. This year, I'd like to get more tactical. I think I'm going to talk about how to build an effective landing page (and why you should do it). I'm hoping to take people through the process, so at the end they'll have revised their landing page, or built a new one.

For cloud hosting, you'll need a good answer to this question:

Why should I switch from Digital Ocean / Amazon S3 / Azure / Heroku to your platform?

Motivation. You'll need folks that are highly motivated to switch.

What makes developers switch?

• Better documentation

• Better API and integrations

• Better pricing for indie devs (having a generous free tier for people that want to try it out on side-projects)

• Social pressure (all their friends / heroes are switching)

• Significantly better performance (only works if their current solution is really bad)

I personally wouldn't promote a product unless I can see that people are already in motion:

• Are they searching for answers on Google?

• Are they asking for recommendations in Slack?

• Are they sharing hacks and workarounds in private groups?

• Are they hiring contractors and employees to get the task done?

• Are they willing to jump through hoops, just to make the progress they desire?

Don’t waste your time trying to convince unmotivated customers!

(More on this here: https://justinjackson.ca/motivation/)

If I was in your position, I would start small!

I wouldn't write a single line of code until I could go out and find 5 customers that wanted the service. Then I'd try to provide it to them manually at first.

My favorite Derek Sivers quote is:

For an idea to get big big big, in needs to be useful. If you want to be useful you can always start now with only 1% of what you have in your grand vision.

(The whole video is here and it's awesome)

If your target is a large cleaning company, call them up now! Are they currently struggling with their scheduling? If not, you probably shouldn't build the app (or you should call a different customer and see if they need your service).

I wrote more about this here: https://justinjackson.ca/we-are-not-normal-people/

My first tech talk ever was on this topic!

You can watch it here: "Amplification: content marketing that works"

https://youtu.be/QjM6m3Wnfcg

This is tricky, because when people follow a Twitter account with public quotes and comics, they're expecting to get just that, public quotes and comics (for free).

There's a few ways folks have monetized accounts like that:

1. Advertising - you sell sponsored tweets.

2. The Daily Stoic publishes quotes, but pushes folks to its email newsletter (pinned tweet and bio).

3. Building a membership site around the topic. Hot Pod a membership site for podcast enthusiasts.