What did you struggle with in your business this year, that you'd like to improve in 2018?
If you're like me, you're already thinking about 2018, and what changes you want to make in your business.
For me, I'm thinking about two things:
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Increasing the number of qualified leads I get through SEO.
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Improving overall profitability.
What about you?
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What are your big business goals for next year?
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What did you struggle with this year, that you'd like to change for next year?
Big goals for next year:
build up the Indie Hackers community into something really valuable for people that keeps them coming back
related: develop some tools that leverage the community to help people build their businesses
expand to feature a bigger variety of businesses
This year's struggles:
too much time spent selling ads (first 4 months before joining Stripe)
some false starts with finding the right direction to go in
treading water; spending too much time on tasks that merely keep IH running instead of moving it forward
This feeling never goes away ;)
I've been a very focal advocate of IH since discovering it. I think one of the things that really makes it chime with me is the interplay between the written content (including the articles and forums) and the podcast - it feels symbiotic. I think that's one of the reasons the community feels real and not just an online forum.
just wondering - how did you know when you had landed on the right direction? metrics or gut feel?
Thanks for the feedback! Nobody's ever put it that way before, and it's helpful to hear. I like the way that every part of the site interacts with other parts, too :-D
I was confident in IH when I came up with the idea, because it was based on stories that were already popular elsewhere online. But things didn't really get real until the HN launch. That was the first time I got to see how my hypotheses would stand up to reality.
The forum and the podcast came later, and both of them have grown slowly but steadily over time. Neither was a success out of the gate, and they both still have a ways to go, but they're getting there!
You're welcome! I guess I've just being thinking a lot about why I really connected with IH (particularly as I plan to launch a forum on my site when the time is right).
I've connected directly with some of the interviewees on IH after listening to the podcast, and started using some of their products (for example Missive, which is great btw!). That personal interaction really connects everything together for me.
Planning to try to arrange a meetup for IHers in Scotland. Maybe something which helps develop local IH communities would be a cool feature in future :D
Man, shame that this post fell to the bottom so quickly! Really big potential for some great discussion and it's on the 3rd page.
For 2017, I struggled with marketing effectively and really, laziness. I spent a considerable amount of time reading about and talking about pushing my business forward, but didn't do a whole lot of actually putting it into action, e.g. cold emails, reaching out to trialing users, reaching out to my mailing list, etc. and not just post to Reddit, Quora and HN then call it a day.
I did fun stuff like work on new features, offload manual marketing efforts by buying ads (even if they've been relatively performant), and building sub-products.
But I want to change all of that next year (well, I've already started) and really put 100% into trying to make my goal of going full-time a reality by focusing on marketing.
I want to hit a decent MRR next year and find a few good marketing avenues.
Agree it's a good thread, just bumped it!
What's your primary product/service?
How are you planning on improving your marketing?
My primary product is https://keygen.sh, which handles software licensing and distribution through multiple developer-focused APIs.
I'm planning on improving my marketing by actually putting effort into prospecting/getting my funnel figured out. I also need to increase organic traffic (large majority of my page views are from ads). I've really kind of just been trying things and hoping for growth, without actually knowing what's working, or having any type of marketing strategy whatsoever.
I'm thinking: putting more effort into cold emailing indie devs/small app shops I come across posting their apps to Reddit/HN/other communities (something I've already started doing the last couple weeks), and then finding companies on the macOS/Windows app stores and see if they'd be interested in hearing about how they can leave the app store and earn more money by selling their app independently. Maybe content marketing?
And then I'm also wanting to get a better understanding on how to sell to larger companies, where the developers don't make (or have a large say in) the final decisions, e.g. how to sell to CTOs, VPs, etc., because the few sales calls I've had with positions like that haven't gone anywhere.
Idk, I feel a bit scattered right now. Any suggestions?
Two suggestions to figure out the best ways to market:
If you already have some customers, talk to them - not just how they use your tool but their lives at large, their goals at work, biggest challenges, what are they looking forward to in the next year, how do they keep themselves updated, their buying process for new software. I have found the jobs to be done framework in this book very helpful - http://www.whencoffeeandkalecompete.com/
There are events/triggers that make people look out for solutions/tools. This could be something going wrong, a new person getting hired, some quarterly meeting, a competitor's move, some change in the industry - think about all these triggers that might make your prospect look out for a tool like yours and think about how they are going to try find a solution.
The reason I suggest the methods above is because then you are really thinking about marketing from a customer's point of view based on when/how/why they need a solution like yours and how/where do they go looking for it as opposed to just trying out a bunch of channels because they exist/it worked for somebody else.
Another suggestion would be to think about what is going to get your returns today vs 6 months down the line. Paid ads work only as long as you are putting in money but they help you understand the market need and messaging quickly, and whether this is a viable business at all or not. Content will give you returns 6 months down the line - you should invest in it if you know you are going to in this for the long run but how do you grow revenue till then?
I'd say go for content marketing. I really needed your product a few years ago when I was making desktop apps and I remember googling "how to license desktop software", "how to make software uncrackable" etc.
Appreciate the feedback! I also think content marketing is a good direction to head towards and one that I haven't tried yet.
I watched a pretty interesting discussion about content marketing on the YC youtube channel. I think it's a bit more strategic than tactial, but there are some interesting and useful messages in there. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBq4FN7dTZY&t=2084s
Goals 2018:
keep validating and launching new ideas
find a project where I can feel momentum and a "pull" from the market ...
Struggle 2017:
I’m in the same boat, it’s hard to make time for everyone and everything.
Over all 2017 was a decent year for my hosted comment service that I'm bootstrapping called Remarkbox.
I turned Remarkbox into a real SaaS by adding multi tenancy support. Switching to multi tenent arch was necessary make my margins work (value I provide customers minus my costs).
I learned a lot more about my market and have earned 3 customers before even officially launching, this was mostly due to finally biting the bullet and throwing up a static hand coded HTML landing page that talked about and demo'd what I am building.
2017 struggles
For example, I'm more then capable of integrating my service with stripe and building a self service on-boarding experience, and yet I find myself shaving the yak (building features or refactoring code) and only making small incremental moves into that direction. I know it needs to be done, I need to refine the funnel, get people who are demoing live on their site to turn into paying customers.
Also I don't keep my potential customers "warm". I need to start touching base with them more often.
For 2018 I want to:
Dedicate more time to content marketing and marketing in general. I need to write content for my potential customers whenever I'm think about my potential customers.
Figure out if I can come up with another business model that could accelerate my eventual path toward running Remarkbox full time.
Hey russellbal
I'm also trying to get a handle on content marketing. I've found that it takes a huge amount of time to research and write decent content, but I think it is definitely worth the effort in the long run.
What's wrong with your current business model?
I think my version of my business is sane, I just think maybe there is a way to accelerate earning and on-boarding customers so that I can make enough to do Remarkbox full time.
Marketing my side project. I'm IT guy and marketing is still quite difficult for me to invest time for.
Did not exactly struggle but distribution and getting attention is getting harder and harder in the SaaS space with the number of people entering the space. Keeping your existing audience engaged and leveraging them for further distribution is becoming more and more important, and so is building a brand.
I'm just started out so I wouldn't really call what I've got a business yet. But a change for next year is:
Ship Earlier.
Make your audience as you make your product.
Next Years Goals
"No more fashion calendar… I’m going Mad Max… 6 collections a year…3 albums a year"
I have a service that connects developers with freelance programming jobs.
This year, I did well with finding freelance developers and onboarding them onto my platform. I'm at a pace where developers are organically signing up and onboarding themselves onto the platform. Unfortunately, can't say the same for hiring managers... I am struggling big-time with attracting high-quality signups.
So next year, my big business goal is to create systems that can predictably generate high quality hiring manager traffic and convert it. It's a do-or-die goal for the business.. if it happens, great! If it doesn't happen, it's game over.
Currently, I'm working with a product marketing consultant to conduct in-depth customer interviews of the target market. We're incrementally revising the landing page (https://codefor.cash/delegate). But I just did a test ad campaign (~$850) and didn't generate any quality leads. So we're more or less still at the drawing board.
Hey Zack! So you're trying to match up your freelancers to hiring managers that sign up for your platform? Don't most hiring managers want FT employees? What I mean is, if a company is at a size to have hiring mangers on-staff, I'd imagine they'd want to hire FT talent, not freelancers. Have you tried focusing on agencies? They're usually the ones looking for freelancers, in my experience.
Great idea. I actually bought a list of agencies contact info. I will let you know how the outreach goes.
2018 Goals:
Accountability & Teams for Strides
Launch Summit Day Planner
2017 Struggle:
The toughest thing this year was having to focus on optimizing our code to lay a solid foundation, as opposed to building valuable new features that can grow the business.
Next year, I’m all about building on top of this new foundation to help more people, and I’m hoping to double revenue again in the process.
This year, I did well with finding freelance developers and onboarding them onto my platform. I'm at a pace where developers are organically signing up and onboarding themselves onto the platform. Unfortunately, can't say the same for hiring managers... I am struggling big-time with attracting high-quality signups.
So next year, my big business goal is to create systems that can predictably generate high quality hiring manager traffic and convert it. It's a do-or-die goal for the business.. if it happens, great! If it doesn't happen, it's game over.
Really interesting thread - thinking about what to write actually really helped focus my mind (thanks mijustin)!
Big business goals for next year for www.bikeup.co.uk
Achieve 100 paying customers in my current location (currently ~25)
Launch service in a second location (Edinburgh)
What I struggled with this year - this could be a long list so I'll pick just a few :)
Marketing x1000 (particularly digital marketing and content). I'm getting better, but need to sustain significant effort.
Customer discovery - I talked to a lot of customers, but it's taken me a good 6-9 months to figure out how to really do that effectively. The first time I actually watched someone use my website was a revelation!
Growth - been keeping my head above water but still not seeing consistent growth month-on-month.
Good question.
This year (2017) my biggest struggle has been to find bootstrap money. I spent way too much time in finding the contract work that pays well so that I can keep the lights on while working on my product.
So for 2018:
I would like to get a better grasp on the financial side. Maybe find funding that helps with bootstrapping.
Spend proper time in creating an effective, measurable and growth-oriented marketing strategy. This year, I kinda just went with the flow but I think in 2018, I would like to structure how much time do I spend on conferences, training, onboarding, marketing etc.
Our company (Shelf) is working on the growing pains of targeting an audience. Our focus is going in too many different directions at the moment.