[Feedback][MVP]: Curated list of all communities/resources for Indie Hackers
Introducing Curated Index - Your gateway to finding free online communities/resources. Will remain free and community driven.
Please feel free to roast me, I absolutely want this to happen to gain feedback and learn!
Short Version
It is difficult to find quality content on Google
The current go-to place is Reddit but there are others too
Curated Index (community driven) is curation of all free and publicly available communities/forums/resources
Currently only limited content for Indie Hackers
Feedback?
Long Version
The Problem?
- It is becoming increasing difficult to search for high quality content using Google Search.
- More on the problem in these blogs:
Current Alternative? Reddit
- Reddit has become the go-to alternative for high quality content on the internet.
- Generally, a lot of users (me too) add the keyword reddit in Google Search to get results from Reddit.
Limitations
- But Reddit isn't the only place out there, since there are tons of communities out there on the internet with very high quality of content and resources.
- But a lot of these communities are specific to a domain/subject/niche, so hence is difficult to find on the internet.
Solution? Curated Index
- Curated Index is a curation of all free and publicly available communities/forums/resources.
- The goal of Curated Index is to curate all these open and free communities so that when a user wants to re-search about some topic in depth, they can use Google Search but filter the results from those particular community/forums.
Vision
- To have good quality education, information and content available to everyone.
- To keep the project community driven and free.
What's in the Current Version (MVP)?
- The curation list is only for one single topic: Indie Hackers
- The content is very limited (have collected a list of about 100+ resources, but added only a few to validate and gain feedback)
What feedback do I want?
- What is something which you'd like to add in the product?
- What is something which you'd like to change about the product?
- What is something which you'd like to remove from the product?
Please feel free to roast me, I absolutely want this to happen to gain feedback and learn!
Trending on Indie Hackers
Hello, this seems like a great idea! I actually hoped right in and started searching for websites that would help me. One thing is that I am currently on phone and the website froze but on refresh it was ok ( maybe random bug on my phone ). One suggestion is that you could add a list of pages and reddit communities that you can market your startup. For example I went into r/ smallbusiness but it says no marketing.
Overall this is extremely helpful and we need more lists like these!
I'll take a look at what's the issue with the bug.
I will be adding filters based on tags, and having a marketing filter would be a great option, thanks for the input!
No problem good luck with the endeavor! Feel free to reach out anytime
Sure, thanks!
Nice work. Edit button isn't working for me.
startups for the rest of us is the podcast I've been listening to, with Rob from microconf. Think it's the oldest on the subject of indiehacking and has been going since 2009.
You should add this.
Thank you for your inputs, Dan. I'll add this podcast to the list! I also have other 100+ resources, but added only a few to quickly get the MVP out.
Yes, the Github repo is still private, so edit won't work yet. Will make the repo public before the launch, along with something like Google form where even someone who doesn't want to edit the code can fill and add resource.
Great work! I think it would be great cause it's super hard finding communities. Keep up the good work and I'll keep watching as I am super interested.
My company is also currently offering Free QA and Software Testing Services. You can send a mail to [email protected] if you ever want extra insight for free
Sure, thanks Kolajo. Will keep you posted about the project!
This is definitely a useful proposition.
I've used similar lists. Also curated a similar list - all vetted & verified. But it's available for a nominal price of $29 - https://www.shno.co/products/product-launch-arsenal
While 99% of the content & curations on my site are free. This one happens to be on the remaining 1%
I'm also considering building a 'museum of resources' of sorts. May be a thing or 2 from what I've been thinking/planning will help your case:
I love the was this one is organised: https://learningseo.io
Specific articles, podcast episodes, newsletter editions, videos, books, book excerpts, etc.. etc.. all intuitively tagged, organised and searchable.
This is a level deeper than the communities collection above. Because 'SPECIFIC RESOURCES' is the key. Its usefulness is from the specificity. For example, listing/recommending a book (say The Minimalist Entrepreneur) is high level, BUT listing a specific advice/nugget from the book The Minimalist Entrepreneur and making this knowledge nugget easily discoverable with the right tag/s is A WHOLE DIFFERENT LEVEL.
The usefulness of such a curation is probably 100x more than, say, a curation of (for the lack of a better word) surficial/high-level resources.
I'd happily part with a few 100 dollars to access this. If it's available for free then nothing would be more amazing 🙏🏼
Thank you, this is amazing feedback, Shankar.
Yes, this is one problem which I have in the back of my mind that it might get too overwhelming with a lot of content, so will have to make sure it is organized properly (need to get clear on how to go about this)
Regarding the example you gave for The Minimalist Entrepreneur, I think this would be the biggest challenge. There will be a lot of other requirements similar to this.
I had thought about this shortly earlier, that after a while, product add-ons can be introduced to go one level deeper, and improve the user experience (like a course/step by step guide/some other thing)
If I able to monetize the project by that time (using ads/sponsors/something similar only), then I'd want to keep this part as free too, otherwise I think, these product add-ons can be a paid feature.
I will definitely check https://learningseo.io for improving my project, thanks for the heads up!
🙌🏻
I love it!!!
I love it, i think you probably already have plan on adding search box in the future 🤔 and mail subscription for certain query / category
Thank you for the feedback, Wawan (I think that's your first name, apologies if not).
Yup, have planned on adding a search functionality, and add tags/filters to organize the content.
Haven't really thought of mail subscription at this time, but yes something similar to this might be useful in the future.
Great stuff, Heeth! Great collection.
Few observations:
Great list and indiehackers are a great place to start. Always looking for new platforms to engage at.
One thing I'd recommend changing is the homepage flow. While ofcourse you will add a lot more, since the MVP is about indiehackers, how about aligning CTAs and copy around "Find more places to promote your microsaas | 100+ communities, podcasts and newsletters for solopreneurs" - which is a common problem for example.
What I find is that the homepage has a lot of text and the above the fold is currently not giving me the meat of your website, which is inside the indiehackers link.
Perfect. Thanks for the feedback ashna. I'm still learning about marketing and copywriting (this is my first indie project, btw). I'll definitely improve the flow and the call to action in the next iteration.
This also brings me another idea for discovery and that is to have dynamic CTA based on how the user discovers the project (i.e if the user comes to the website while searching for Indie Hackers, then the CTA will be for Indie Hackers and different for another topic accordingly.
I have no idea how would I go about implementing this, but I feel this would definitely improve the project discovery!
This is a good idea Heeth, but it would be better if you create a directory page and add all the resources there instead of a table.
Example:
https://www.makerpad.co/
Makerpad looks great. Thanks Karthik. It seems this type of UI would definitely be better going forward with multiple categories and filters along with cards for the resources.
the word "curated" sounds like health care stuff ... :)
best of luck to your project
Pedro
Thanks for the heads up Pedro. This name was picked in a hurry to get the MVP out, but will definitely not use the word "curated" in the name for the launch!
I'd recommend to narrow down here. What's the target audience? What's the content that you help discover, specifically?
I myself don't feel like I experience what those two blogs you linked are talking about. Maybe it's some specific content that gets locked because the raise of language models?
On the other hand, currently, I do have the need to stay in the know about what's going on specifically in the indie hacking, freelancing and startup community. What skills are in demand for freelancing, where to best find jobs, how to access people to validate my idea.
I liked your list on indie hacking communities, although https://www.foundercafe.org/ and https://solofounders.com/ are broken links from there.
This is great feedback, thanks Toli.
I thought I had narrowed down already, but it seems like I was wrong. Will have to go a little more in depth and in detail. Same for the blog posts too, will have to get more specific and detailed.
You mentioned you are interested in knowing what's going on in the indie hacking, freelancing and startup community. Where do you actually look for this content? I thought you'd be looking at communities/social media/newsletters (that's where I look for btw).
Thanks for the heads up on the broken links, I missed them in a rush to get the MVP out as quickly as possible.
I think it's great to iterate fast, so good that you unroll MVP early :) getting the feedback is the entire point!
Yes, same. Currently, I'm on Product Hunt and Indie Hackers mostly.
What I find challenging is not discovering communities per se. But the fact that at the end of the day, you need to spend time at every community. Actually read the forums, see what others are doing there, write. Because ultimately you learn about the good practices, good tools and opportunities – you learn about all of those from interacting with people. Hence, I feel like Product Hunt and Indie Hackers are enough for me at this point, and I still don't have the time left to properly engage on social platforms :)
Do you have the same experience? Or is the bottleneck different for you? How do you approach staying up-to-date with the market?
I generally just put the name of the community in my Google search as a keyword (for example, reddit) to get results only from those particular community/platform since Google Search is great at this. (Reddit and Awesome tagged Github repos meet my needs most of the time, but not always). This is exactly why I am building this project so while searching on Google, I have more communities find what I am looking for. (I will mention that this is the problem I am solving better in the next iteration)
Your comment actually brings up another important problem which is that there are so many communities that interacting on a lot of them is difficult so we can only do it on a few of them. I guess this too would be a great problem to solve. Will keep a note of this to see if there is some way to solve it. Thank you, once again!
Reddit is great place so far.
There is 2 article I wrote about reddit.
The first one is How to scrap idea from reddit
And the second one is How to find customer on reddit
Both have shit a lot of traffic showing how interested people are on these kind of topics, and people understand the important of these community like platform
Having a directory of it will be very useful and I would love to use it, but the only concern is how you want to maintain so it does not over cluttered. Google search used to be a great place to find this but it become just to much and very low quality.
How do you want to make sure the quality is maintained in the future ? The problem is when it is to much its hard to ensure the quality of it.
Nevertheless I will use the product if exists.
Thanks Azhar, I'll check out the articles.
This is exactly the problem which the project is aimed at solving. For the few initial versions, there won't be a lot of content, so adding filters based on multiple parameters/tags would fulfil the need.
But as the content start to rise, will introduce product add-ons to ensure that the quality remains high. Have a few ideas regarding this (but not finalized) by using Indexing/AI/Search or something similar.
These add-ons might be a paid feature since I will have to pay for the tools/APIs, however if I am able to implement them easily and for free, then the add-ons will be free too!
Hey Heeth,
Really great idea! As a recent joiner to Indie Hackers, your list is already invaluable to me! I totally agree that it is getting hard to easily find quality content on the web. Usually one thing leads to another in search and exposure but just having a community based resource that simply puts everything infront of your eyes is surely helpful.
In general, how will resources be added?
Uri
Thank you for your feedback, Uri.
Regarding how resources will be added, can have something like a Google form (or similar), can submit the resources directly. Will also be making the project open source on Github, but at this point I'm not sure how the project tech stack would end up being (for example, the resources might get stored in a DB), so it might not be directly possible to add a resource by a PR. Still need to decide on this part.
For anyone missed, here is the link: https://curatedindex.com/
Please share your feedback, and more importantly, do you want this??