Got paid (my first) $9/mo to Build in Public! 🥳
(To clarify, most of the 'sales' are on the 'free' tier, but one of the sale is on paid!)
🥳
This happened last week, but I got super tied into other stuff, so I didn't get a chance to share the good news here :(
But hey! I got my first $9 for my Building in Public journey! Context below, but I'll just say that it even gets a tiny bit better
Context
I run my main business which has done about $200k in the trailing 12 months. I never built that in public, since the audience of that tool is... not interested I guess?
I, however, recently started building (in public) a new tool called PriceUnlock: aimed at SaaS owners, helps them find the perfect pricing.
But because PriceUnlock is... not benefitting from a lot of action (almost ready for an early live), I started building in public other projects of mine:
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The said main business, Legit Check By Ch. Revenue is not our 'biggest' number, number of users is: 6,000,000 all-time users
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I run Reddit SaaS, so I started sharing figures there
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My Twitter audience where BiP in itself is BiP: I went from 190 → 1,000 followers in less than the targeted 1 month. A post on this coming soon 👀
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Made one-off project, called the Build In Public Cheatsheet
The problem?
The problem was that all these numbers, on my Twitter, got scattered. Sure, somebody could search, but... some people in the DMs were really supportive and for a reason I don't really understand (to be completely honest) really want to be informed with what I do.
So I made "Dear Mom/Investors", a free subscription where people get an all-access monthly 'investors' update:
- All the numbers from all the projects
- My goals/aims
- Strategy, my thinking, bets I'm placing
- Keeping myself accountable for how those turn out
Why free? Because I don't really understand why people would pay for this — maybe in time, as I grow and the projects grow, this will become worth paying for.
But I did make a paid option (which gets you the exact same thing) for funding future milestones, such as video production, more writing or a closed community for AmA.
If I ever get to the point where I feel there's a lot of value in seeing all these numbers, I'll make it paid-only, but until then this should to
And then...
Somebody paid! Like I've shown in the header. But then...
Two more sales came in in a few days! A $10/mo and a $5/mo subscription.
This has to do with the IH post I made the other day here, which was also as high as top 5 on HackerNews: will document the whole thing soon on Twitter.
Anyway, just wanted to share the good news and I've got a couple of posts coming up soon about the 190 → 1,000 followers Twitter journey, as I marked down (almost) every milestone for IndieHackers
Congratulations man, you're doing it!!!
Hey man, thanks a bunch 🧡 Any parts that stood out from this post?
Something you've liked so I can do more of it?
Something that is 'excess fat' in my post?
I mean essentially what you've done is created a tip-jar. If someone enjoys your content they have the opportunity to send you a small incentive. I think it's a great way to keep yourself accountable and form productive habits.
"Building in public" is obviously not a new concept, but maybe there is space for some type of productivity application that holds people accountable. What if someone could invest money in you that would only become accessible when you reached certain predetermined benchmarks. Almost like a stick and carrot approach that could help increase productivity and unlock new funding as the project grew.
Sorry I went on a bit of tangent, probably not the reply you were expecting...
Still, always impressive to see stories like yours!