1 Month as an Indie Hacker - A Realistic Journey + Some Lessons

This isn't a story about magically reaching $10K+ MRR in 30 days.

This is a story about falling on my face several times, but getting back up anyways.

I haven't made any money off my side project ideas. And that's ok.

Truth be told, I'm about $150 down from buying a micro-saas framework course and some pay-per-click ads, which unfortunately targeted the wrong audience.

(Seriously, why did my Meta ads mostly reach people aged 65+?)

Building a business of 1 is testing my sanity, but I always like to remind myself:

For every failure i've had, a successful indie dev has failed 10 more times.

So what did I learn in a month?

Week 1 - Scratching my Own Itch

I was on a family vacation. I was feeling super inspired. I brainstormed ideas and one of them stuck. My friends and I were always struggling to come up with hangout ideas. My friends in relationships were always stuck on what to do on date nights. I combined this idea with OpenAI, a nice frontend, and some soft validation from my friends. I set out to build "Daites", an AI-powered date idea generator! I couldn't wait to go back home to the US to build it.

And then I read "The Mom Test".

It hit me like a truck. I fell into every single trap the mom test spoke about.

• I was constantly pitching my ideas to people
• I was interpreting compliments as validation
• I was asking people if the app was a good idea

I learned that these behaviors often lead to "false positives". For example, people saying your app idea is a good idea just to be nice. Developers often take this as an invitation to build their product, only to release it and find out nobody wants it.

On top of all this, similar apps were only charging $5/month, and my app fell into the B2C category. It would be hard to profit from. And, it would be difficult to manage support and churn.

What I should've been doing was analyzing demand and potential user behavior and pain points.

I sadly put my app idea away, never to return to it...

Week 2 - Scratching someone else's itch

How was I supposed to come up with another app idea? I was so passionate about the other one.

Not losing hope, I tried a different strategy: scratching another person's itch.

I had a tattoo appointment coming up.

What do tattoo artists struggle with?

I scoured Reddit, Facebook, Tik Tok, anywhere I could find that artists spent their time in.

I found out that tattoo artists were spending money on assistants to answer client inquiries. But, they proved to be unreliable money sinks.

InkQuery was born from this.

I wanted to make an AI chatbot that clients could talk to that would answer the artists' most commonly asked questions. It would (hopefully) save artists some headache dealing with clients so they could focus on tattooing and spend less time on emails. I thought it was a great idea! It was time to validate:

• I built a landing page (https://inkquery.vercel.app/)
• I set pay to click ads to run for a week with a $10 budget per day

1 week passes.

• 4,237 impressions.
• 162 website visitors.
• 1 email signup YAY!!!

(It was my test email.)

Oh...

What I failed to do was actually talk to my potential users. I got some potential pain points from Reddit threads, but that was all I did. I did not talk to any potential users at all. I had no data. I could not properly validate this product or judge its demand.

I put the app to rest. Again.

Week 3 - Solving a poor customer experience

I had the same thought once again. How was I supposed to come up with yet another business idea?

This time, I sought out to solve a poor customer experience that annoyed me for my whole existence: PDF menus on restaurant websites.

They look bad on the phone, they're not SEO friendly, they result in a high bounce rate, and they are slow to load sometimes.

These were all common complaints from my friend circle.

Was it a valid business problem though? This time, I attempted to talk to potential users to find out.

But before I did, I built yet another landing page. And ran some ads. I should really stop doing that.

Here it is if you want to see it: https://yep.so/p/qwikmenus

Basically the concept was an online menu editor that was powered by Notion. It could be launched as a standalone website or as an HTML embed. Something non-tech-savvy restaurant owners could use to improve their websites!

I made a post on a restaurant owners group on Facebook.

I posted:

"Not an owner, just a restaurant goer. I just wanted to ask: Why are PDF menus so common on websites? Is there a reason for not using plain text? Thanks!
EDIT: This isn't a sales pitch. I just really want to see more accessible menus out there on the web. Please be nice 🙏"

Somehow the post did really well and I got 43 comments!

Here is what I got out of it:

• 2 people calling me out for not being a real restaurant owner
• 2 people pitching their own online menu builder services
• A whole bunch of people defending PDF menus and how they are so much easier to update than working with a website.

My idea was instantly invalidated (at least I thought it was).
But, that wasn't a bad thing.

Something I learned from the mom test applied here.
If people aren't already looking for a solution, they won't look for yours.

Feeling defeated, I retired yet another micro saas app idea.

Week 4 - Adapting validated software to a different niche

This is where I am right now.
I'm taking everything I learned, and I am preparing to jump ship once again if needed.

I'm taking a validated software model (Booking software),
and applying it to a small niche (tattoo artists).

Yes, i've already explored this niche but I LOVE art. I thought this niche was worth a revisit.

• I'm not building another landing page (yet)
• I'm not going to pay for ads (yet)
• I'm going to talk to some real potential users (contacted 2 friends who are in the industry and could be potential users!)

I just know there's room for innovation in booking software. Many tattoo artists have complained that big scheduling apps like Acuity lack good support and just aren't built for specific industries.

That is where I want to fill in as a micro-saas founder.

This app may fail, but that is ok.

I'll always be learning.
I'll always be failing forward.
I'll always be an indie hacker.

Tl;dr

• Read the mom test. Learn how to interview users properly.
• Find a marketing funnel early!
• Actually talk to your potential users. Stop procrastinating!
• Don't be afraid to ask questions that may destroy your business in 1 fell swoop
• You don't need to build the next big thing. Sometimes you can take something that already works and apply it to a smaller audience.
• If you think failing once is bad, someone more successful than you has failed 10 times and made it work anyway.
• Don't give up, and keep hacking.