A Good Business Counts All The Pennies. And How do You Keep Product's Social Media Accounts Busy?

Hi there. It's the daily edition of IndieLetters.com, a daily newsletter curating the best content from IndieHackers.

---

• Checkout optemization.com, a consulting site built on Notion by using Super.so, super.so/icons for making website, paperform.co for booking embed, and email capture by using chilipepper.io by @optemization
• Instead of using Calendly ($12/mo) to book consultations, @felixjosemon created the BuyMeACoffee page (link) and added Paid consultation as an "Extra." With no monthly charges.
• Boost your click-through rate by adding GIFs to your emails. When Dell started using GIFs in their emails, their click-through rate increased by 42%. And they're not alone --- 72% of email marketers who use GIFs record increased click-through rates.
• Use https://gifmaker.me/ to create animated gifs, video animations, and frame animation for Free

Snippets section will be subscribers only stuff -- very soon (4.3.2.1.) So get your very own FREE subscription at IndieLetters.com

---

What's the best way to track a B2B SaaS onboarding/signup funnel by @benbartling

Use Hubspot CRM (which is free) synced to products to visualize customers and their state in their customer journey. If they signup with a professional email, Hubspot enrich their company data automatically. They have many integrations and you can easily automate emails, track sent messages, etc. You can use Clicky that even tracks specific pages a customer visits before signing up or becoming a paid customer.

---

How do you keep your product's social media accounts busy? by @unremute

Gary Vaynerchuk advocates for a strategy called "Document, don't create." Rather than trying to constantly craft perfect content, simply post and document what you do when you work on it, or when you make new side products/improvements. People who are interested in your products will be interested in how and why they work. Also, you can post information tangential to the industry that they are in.
From what I've seen, a lot of people create templates for stuff they do on Insta, FB. Then, they simply add the text they want and then post it or schedule it using tools like Publer etc.
In the future, you can use Spreadtech.online, a content repurposing tool, that will automatically convert Youtube videos into podcasts, podcasts into blogs, and blogs into social media posts. And @LouTromans is working on it.

---

Does anyone have advice on how to make MySQL database faster, or even better setup or structures? by @victoritous

PostgreSQL has "materialized views" that are essentially pre-calculated views so it doesn't have to be calculated every time the view is queried. Unfortunately, MySQL/Maria doesn't have that option but it does have scheduled job functionality. What I've done in the past is to create the queries I need in advance.
Another option might be to split the data out into various DBs based on-site or data type.
Yet another option is indexed to speed up search operations.
Yet another option is to dump the old data to a backup and only keep the more recent data that you regularly use in the DB.
Yet another option is I've heard sites like Facebook and YouTube have a tiered storage model where old data that is rarely used is stored on a slower storage medium. So, you could have one DB on an SSD only storing one month of data then all historic data on a traditional HDD for the rare times you need to access it.
Finally, I believe the new MySQL/Maria has the ability to use a JSON text file. That might at least speed up the one-time write operations if you're just appending to the end of a text file. I've not actually gotten around to looking into this option so not sure how well it'll work. (read for more)

---

What's your go-to Payments+Billing+Accounting infrastructure for SaaS by @ved

First started with Stripe, then switched to Paddle when I discovered legal stuff that I should take care of as an EU/French citizen:

• Applying the right VAT depending on customer's location
• Verifying VAT numbers
• Filling tax declaration exchange (Specific to french customs)

I might switch back to Stripe the day where my company is successful and I can automate or afford someone to take care of filling tax declarations.

Other mentions are: OpenNode for Bitcoin payments, 2checkout, Chargebee, Billsby, and Xero.com

---

Audit Your Monthly Paid Services! A Good Business Counts All The Pennies! by @8bit

Make a list of all services that you are currently paying for. Have these columns filled too while mentioning the services:

1.Tool Name
2.Primary Owner
3.Notes (for context, history, etc...)
4.1Password (is it available for others to use?)
5.The credit card associated with the service

Then take time and think which services you should not pay for(or search for free alternatives if possible). In this way, you will end up saving much-needed cash.

Tip:

1. Switch to the yearly plan for all services you can't live without. This will save several $100s monthly overall!
   2: Use Honey or Cently, which automatically applies coupons and gives you cashback for your purchases. (A huge shoutout for Cently as it saved me money where Honey failed to save a penny.)

---

How I hit 250 newsletter subscribers without a massive Twitter following by @Stefanallday

Quora: Spend 25 mins answering questions that generated thousands of impressions to my Quora profile which translated to a few hundred views on my newsletter and a handful of subscribers.
Mix (evolution of StumbleUpon) - a content discovery platform that has some niche followers.
Redef - According to SubStack analysis, it had driven a couple subscribers.
(Good read)

---

25 fastest growing SaaS companies by website traffic by @boraoztunc

How do you code trial account flows in your apps? by @rfizzy

To get leads from uneducated markets, go after potential buyers, not after learners by @andreeamaco

We're a tattoo booking platform and this is how we got our first paying customers by @oguzcanhuner

Places to validate your idea and get early users by @mattcrail

---

📌Do you like my curated content? Head over to indieletters.com to get your very own free subscription!

❤️ To keep it 100% free forever, this email may contain affiliate links to products. I may receive a commission for purchases made through these links without any additional cost to You!

👉 If you enjoyed this please consider sharing this on Twitter. Your sharing helps me reach more people and it does make a difference.