What do you use Indie Hackers for? What parts of the community do you get the most out of?

I use IH to (in descending order of importance):

• Help founders who are less experienced than I am
• Discover (and stay in touch with) interesting new people and projects (I met my cofounder for PostPerk on IH, for example, and have made several good friendships which I've taken 'offline')
• Get advice from people who are more experienced than I am. Especially domain specific knowledge.
• Discover interesting news articles

As the changes to the feed continue, I think all of the above will become easier/more effective. Already, I notice I'm moving fewer conversations to Twitter/email.

If i am honest it just interests me what other people are doing. And makes me feel less alone. But I like to help and when I can I try. That gives me a lift.

Also I get lots of serendipitous knowledge from Indie Hackers. Things I would not have thought to search for like @louisswiss recent article on sales vs marketing. Or a recent post about hotjar which I had never heard of. (actually I am sure I used a site for sharing java applets way back in the 90's called that ...)

Interviews.
The interviews are what brought me to the sight at first and are what are keeping me here now. Hearing the perspective of founders who are at various stages and the problems they have faced. theres a good variety of industry / revenue / country. Also I've gotten value from when the founders mention resources that they used to develop certain skills. Things like certain books, blogs, newsletters etc

My use cases:

• contribute where I can, answering Q's. Because I'll likely ask Q's later.
• show off some project(s) as I build them out, requesting feedback.

I get the most out of forum posts and the occasional status update from people I follow. I've gotten some good advice from my own posts, as well.

I think this is largely because I can't figure the rest of the site out:

Maybe it's just me, but everything besides Forums + Posts from people I follow are really hard to discover. I'm a software power user, and it took me almost a month to understand Articles, Posts (vs. Forum entries), Status Updates on Products (which don't seem to show anywhere AFAIK), etc. It seems like there's lots of valuable content lurking here, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to consume it.

For example: If you write an Article, it seems to just disappear into the abyss. Unless someone catches it on the "latest activity" area, there's nowhere else to find it on the site.

Hope that helps!

Birds of same feather flock together 😀

Get inspired mainly :)

I recently started using IH to be helpful to other founders specifically to raise awareness about the Nugget Startup Academy.

But now that I've started using IH it I'm very excited about the possibility that you're creating the next Digg/HN in the form of a micro blogging network like Twitter that focuses on Indi Hacking .

At the moment there is nothing that romanticizes Indi Hacking and bootstrapping in the same way that TechCrunch does for the VC world (ie Zuckerberg, Uber, Google, etc).

I'm excited that what you're doing here might be the beginning of a counter balance to that larger narrative of "make a unicorn".

In short: That micro blogging thing.

I get the most value from reading detailed posts that detail challenges people ran into, and what they did to overcome them.

I mostly lurk on here. The interviews were what brought me to the site originally. Being able to see real data on what people are doing/achieving is helpful to calibrate my own ideas of what can be achieved and how.

The discussions are a bit of a mixed bag. When somebody asks an interesting question about an issue they are facing or posts some valuable detail from their own experience then it can be very worthwhile.

Podcasts almost magically give me a reasonable portion of inspiration to keep going.

I want to tell my story. IH feels a natural place to do it.

This is a good and nice community in general. I like to contribute with my domain knowledge. I like to have an opportunity to ask embarrassingly stupid questions and get patient answers :)

I really enjoy contributing/helping where I can and getting involved in the discussions.

Regularly listen to the podcast too.

I’ve got quite a few sales for my latest product from users here as well.

Ideally, I’d like to build to some friendships with people who are on the same wave-length.

Hi! I love listening to the interviews on the Indie Hackers podcasts as well as reading about successful Indie Hackers on the site. I love learning about how otherwise ordinary folks build businesses from scratch. They serve as great inspiration to get me to start Indie Hacking myself - something I've been telling myself I really want/need to do. Discovering the Indie Hackers community has lit a fire under my butt to finally get going!

I also love the fact that IH allows me to instantly connect with successful entrepreneurs as well as other aspiring entrepreneurs for advice, tips or even just moral support.

Just a few suggestions - to second @andyadams concerns, I also find it difficult to find specific things or topics. Perhaps it would be time to start organizing the site as something like a knowledge base or library broken up into specific topics like marketing, product development, getting started, recommended tools (forms, apps, spreadsheets, budgets, calendars, etc), inspirational stories, etc.

Another thing that could use improvement is the site's speed - when I log in to view the latest or top posts, it always takes several seconds to load.

Thanks @csallen for setting up Indie Hackers and all the hard work you've put into it! Keep up the great work! Thanks as well to all the Indie Hackers who contribute to this community and help us wanna-be Indie Hackers out!

• Accountability (Forum stand ups)
• Reality checks (Forum feedback)
• Inculcation (Podcasts)

I'm building a product and I use this site as motivation and a source of valuable marketing/other insights. I'll use it to get feedback in the future when the landing page and MVP is done. Btw the article section is amazing, man. I've been looking for a site like this for some time. I've stumbled upon it while googling "Solo developer startup ..." something

advice + inspiration
forum / articles

I am learning a lot of techniques for increasing traffic and users on my project. Also a lot of motivation and inspiration. Thanks, everyone! :)

Podcasts are #1 🏆 for me

I love interacting and helping where I can. For me, the interactions are thoroughly motivating. It's the building that's important and everything I interact with leans toward building and making progress.

A couple positive side effects of that are that I am continually nudged about other products and ideas, and reminded that there are others online bootstrapping and trying things out.

If you're looking for things you can double down on, I'd suggest bringing the product building and growth process to the fore with a little more emphasis on product updates and better linking of products. I actually think building on the idea @Harlem is building with the daily stand up discussion entries could make for a great addition. It's unobtrusive but has the potential to help a lot of users gain a lot of value, especially because it encourages interaction and positive feedback.

Hey, Allen! I mostly lurk around, reading everything the community posts. I may not engage in conversations frequently, but I silently read everything to get the pulse of the community and gain business and maker insights every so often.