(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
Channing here. Hypothetical question for you: if it were possible, would you live forever?
Well it may not be hypothetical for much longer. A new study suggests that a protocol of oxygen treatments can reverse the aging process. So don't let anyone tell you that 2020 is all about bad news!
On to the newsletter. Here's what you'll find in this issue:
Special thanks to Darko Gjorgjievski, Harry Dry, and Pete MacLeod for contributing to this piece. Want to contribute a writeup of your own? Check out this doc for an idea of what I'm looking for.
We're in the golden age of freelancing. Things were already trending in this direction pre-2020, and the coronavirus is just speeding up the inevitable.
So out of the 34 acquisition channels I've identified in my analysis of all 489 Indie Hackers interviews, I'll be reviewing freelancing marketplaces today. (See Zero to Users for more details.)
Freelancing sites (like UpWork) help companies connect to freelancers who can do a certain service (like web design) for them. Can you use these marketplaces to promote a SaaS, though? It turns out the answer is yes.
Take ActionWins and ActionPages ($4k/mo), a referral marketing SaaS. The whole idea behind creating ActionWins was to take an open-source tool and create a SaaS around it:
I'd read the article that Tim Ferris wrote about how Harry's Shave Club used a simple Rails application to build an email list of over 100k emails. They incentivized subscribers to refer their friends and unlock free products and discounts as rewards.
The awesome thing about this article is that Harry's Shave Club open-sourced their code for the referral campaign. After getting a couple of paying clients who needed this type of service, I decided it was worth building a SaaS product that allowed you to spin up this type of campaign in minutes.
Alex (the founder) used UpWork to successfully get clients for ActionWins & ActionPages:
I've had great success searching UpWork for people looking for help spinning up Harry's Shave Club's open-source code. My pitch to them is that they can use my product to build the same type of campaign without writing any code. I also offer to build and manage the campaign for them if they'd like. The best thing about this channel is that the customer has already expressed interest in the service and has budget!
His pitch was basically something like: "Hey, why pay an expensive developer when you can get a SaaS and pay monthly for it?" Something many people found compelling.
Another example is StoreMapper ($21k/mo), a SaaS that enables you to put a store location map on your e-commerce website. The way Tyler (the founder) got inspired to create StoreMapper was by being a freelancer:
I taught myself to code and started doing freelance development for businesses on Shopify to earn a little money on the side. These clients were the ones who originally asked me to build them a custom store locator, which gave me the idea to productize it instead.
He then realized that many people were repeatedly asking for something like this on freelancing sites and used that fact to promote his SaaS:
I searched job sites like Upwork for people looking to hire a freelancer to do a custom build, and would swoop in and pitch them on Storemapper instead.
Freelancing platforms can be a viable acquisition channel if people are actively looking for a developer to build them something your product already does. Give them a shot.
What's your experience with freelancing sites been like? Go here for a discussion with other indie hackers.
🔥 Up to 98% off domains: Namecheap's having a Black Friday sale starting Tuesday.
💰 Gumroad announces a membership feature. Creators can now charge for access to online content.
🎓 Lambda School will let companies hire their graduates for a free four-week trial.
🎨 Tailwind CSS 2.0 is out. The second version of the popular UI framework offers dark mode, 220 new colors, and does not support IE11.
🦸♀️ Blogger Steph Smith announced "12 Scholarships in 12 Months", where $500/mo scholarships will be offered for various social causes.
📹 YouTube will soon start placing ads on videos without creators' permission.
🍎 Apple to pay $113m to settle claims it slowed down batteries in iPhones in 2016.
by Harry Dry
A few years ago I was trying to use Twitter to promote a few side projects. But I had no idea what I was doing.
So I made one big Google Doc where I started saving the best “brand tweets” and grouped them into different categories.
I've spent the last few weeks turning that into this little handbook. I hope you find it useful.
1/ Quick tips
Teach people something new in a tweet. Short, sweet, and shareable.
2/ Threads
People don't click links. So if you've got a story worth sharing write a thread.
3/ Memes
Make your brand relatable.
Sparknotes sells literature study guides. Twitter and literature study guides don't mix. So Sparknotes use pop-culture to make literature relatable.
4/ “Quick reaction” tweets
Each day a new story consumes Twitter. Think fast and you can go viral.
5/ Build in public
Makes your brand feel ALIVE. People want to come on the journey.
6–17/ Click here to read the full article
If you'd like to learn more about marketing you might like my newsletter. Each week I share a new short, sweet, marketing case study. They're normally shorter than this haha!
Or check out my website to browse all the previous case studies :)
Yo! Every day I post the tweets indie hackers share the most.
This one's an easy call: the daily pick goes to @StevejLamar:
Flex out.
Sign up for the Indie Hackers newsletter to get more like it, or tell me how I can make the series better!
You can also help me out by contributing to it directly.
Great newsletter as always @channingallen!
Only downside is that the link to the browser version was broken this week 😱
(I mean this link: https://click.convertkit-mail4.com/v8uow6zv23brhl88v0sg/6qheh8hpvgo6n4to/KGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmluZGllaGFja2Vycy5jb20vcG9zdC9hLWd1aWRlLXRvLWZyZWVsYW5jaW5nLW1hcmtldHBsYWNlcy05OC1vZmYtZG9tYWlucy1uZXh0LXdlZWstdHdpdHRlci1pbnNwaXJhdGlvbi1oYW5kYm9vay0yMWQ4MzBkODU5KQ==)