I'm tired of reading posts that talk about rocketship revenues in too less time! Or is it just me?

That's something I call "startup porn", because like porn, it has very little to do with real world.

It's good stuff to get you excited, but very bad for you if you start believing that as how everyone succeeds. Real world is sweaty, awkward and when you're starting up you have no idea what you're doing. It takes trust and a lot of hard work to get better.

I've met many indie hackers over the past several years who are afflicted by what I'll call the Salary Mindset. The Salary Mindset says that we should be compensated for our input. It says that the harder we work and the more hours we put in, the more valuable our contributions must be. It says that putting ourselves through painful slogs is not only necessary, but it's The Right Way™ to do things.

This is, of course, wrong. I think part of it comes from the modern day workplace culture, which pays us for the time we put in, not for the value we create. And part of it is just intuitive… we evolved in a world without the internet, without a complex economy, without the modern tools and strategies that can give a person who uses them well extreme leverage.

So what is it that actually matters if it's not the time and effort you put in?

It's the outcome for your customers. What matters is the value (relative to alternatives on the market) you create that customers experience, as well as customers' ability to easily understand how that value affects their bottom line.

I know people who made six figures the first year that their product business launched, while working 20 hours a week or less. Many of them launched in under a month and started making money immediately. Some of them had no audience whatsoever to begin with. How? They're operating in extremely valuable markets, where customers will pay a lot of money for help with clearly-defined problems.

It's almost worth labeling this a "magic trick only they know," because very few people follow these basic principles, even experienced indie hackers who've read hundreds of interviews, articles, guides and seen the same advice over and over.

…Those of us toiling for 3, 6, 12 months on products that have never seen the light of day, without talking to any customers or validating the market. Those of us obsessed with building clever, novel widgets that might do well on Product Hunt, but that don't solve valuable real-world problems because those seem too "boring" or "hard" or "crowded." All of us who plan to charge $2 or $5 or $10/month without realizing that selling something at a low price is the equivalent of selling something that is not valuable, which has predictable challenges: (1) it's hard to convince most people to buy something that is not valuable, and (2) reaching thousands of people via marketing is harder than reaching dozens of people via sales.

So I don't hate the "rocketship revenue" posts. At the very least they force people out of the Salary Mindset for a short time. They expose us to the possibility that merely working hard isn't all that goes into creating something of value. They force us to dig into the underlying reasons why some businesses and their revenues can grow so quickly. I'd like to think that some people will come away from reading those and realize the importance of analyzing the fundamentals before jumping into a business idea.

wait for my "how I tried everything and worked 100 hours a week and still failed miserably" post

I don't really read posts like that anymore.

Nothing ever helpful in them or new. You can almost guess what they did to make it to X in X months.

Here is a simple tactic I use to ignore those posts: I ignore them. 🙃

This is not just a smartass reply, it is good practice for mental health. Ignore things that are not meant to add value to you. No need for a "tactic", those are easy to spot from the title.

Now, let's go back to discuss content that do add value? 😀 There are lots of them on IH and elsewhere

The thing is that most of those posts fail to clarify one thing which is usually in the fine print: They ALL did something before for N years that got them to this product/business/idea that made them $X in Y months. So it sounds like they just did it in Y months while the truth is that they probably spent N years getting the experience and skills to finally get this thing which technically took Y months but couldn't be done by someone else who didn't have that extra years of work put in.

The bad thing about those posts is that they usually fail to pinpoint the key reason for the success. They're just self-serving ramblings about what they did. Like telling a long story about how you put together a bunch of bricks instead of telling how exactly the house design doesn't fall apart.

Sometimes you can infer the key to their success, but they rarely mention it directly.

When I read those kind of posts I always felt behind, because I'm missing out on this new growth technique. Or because my marketing/writing/sales skills kind of suck. Or because I'm toying around for almost a year now and only having $500 to show for it. But now I don't really care. And I don't even read those posts.

I'm focused on building cheerful software that solves a problem. Learning the basics when it comes to marketing/writing/sales/customer support.

Just trying to get to a point where I can do this full time. No other "growth metric" matters.

Just as there are startups with $$$ numbers that use them to convert readers into more $$money$, there are those who will try to do the opposite and convince people that it's better to care about "more realistic" numbers and casually mention their Springzo "Content Marketing Agency".

Everyone can believe that their way is the best way, and all of them are wrong. Learning is about collecting perspectives, not about subscribing to a single one as the holy grail.

When you're not on your own agenda, you're prey to the agenda of others.

In my opinion, posts complaining about them are more annoying and definitely less useful.

A lot of those articles don't count the amount of investment money they needed to get started making money so quickly. 💸

Really this is one of a very good post I really like it. we are providing the different kinds of massage services in Kolkata at very low cost. We are famous as one of the best massage centres in Kolkata. Contact now - http://www.sagarikakumari.com/

It's definitely not just you :D

What I've found is that majority of those successes (which are true successes, they don't lie) have some kind of unfair advantage, usually already existing audience, or some people connections to spread the word. People like Gary Vaynerchuk - of course, he would earn $100k in 5 hours on anything he releases, because of huge amount of fans (I'm one of them).

I hear what you're saying completely, but with a caveat or two. Followup Edge has gotten a lot of hate for explicitly breaking down what we did to achieve such rapid, consistent growth. Some people won't believe you period, and the smart thing to do is identify whether or not it's an outlier... if it is - then study those examples and take what you can.

I had to unsubscribe to the newsletter. Seems like 90% of the interviews on IH are about marketing companies. Haven't seen any innovative companies here, where I'm like "wow interesting".

About 10 years ago I was able to take an article like that and a made about $400/mo with with only a little effort. I was using misspelled words in google and other search engines and affiliate networks. The best were things that paid if someone entered their zip code. It's all against terms of service now.

I feel a lot of it worked for a while but by the time you read about it the opportunity is long gone.

Most overnight successes take years. The $∞k/m revenue in just 3 months is usually preceded by 5 years of industry knowledge.

I think you have a good point and it's especially true when people see IH as a primary place to try to find new customers. That leads to update/brags with links to squeeze pages on a regular basis.

Yes, I hate that stuff. Its everywhere. Have you noticed that the concept of "greed" has disappeared from the world? It seems being a billionaire is a valid goal these days.

Just personally, I want the whole world to find my software helps them.

definitely, I'm tired of these too, are a lot, and have clickbait titles, same as the "how do you guys to this.. insert link to site that does this".