Help! How do I start?
Iām keen to start Indie Hacking, but I can just never find the right time to start. A cliche, I know. š
The problem is that my work (I study lions in Africa) involves me spending 3-4 months at a time in a remote field camp with poor internet. I ship out to Africa again in just over a week which, to be fair, I am psyched about. š¦
I don't want to procrastinate on the Indie Hacking side any more. Any suggestions on what I should be/could be focusing on between now and shipping out (and that I can continue with while out in the bush) that gets me well placed to hit the ground running when I get back to solid internet?
š Do I launch something quick now and hope that I have the cell coverage to maintain while Iām away?
š¤¼ Do I focus on building an audience?
š„ Do I focus on engaging with the IH community?
Any advice would be boss! Cheers in advance šµ
What are your ideas? What do you want to make / do?
Great question. I'm not sure.
I've been asking questions in the IH community to see if sustainability metrics are things that are core to Indie Hacker's ideas/brands in order to identify problems, but I'm not getting many bites - so maybe IHs aren't my market.
That said, I've been thinking lately, and I do have some criteria to try and find any old idea that I can learn from:
ā Manageable alongside current job
ā Once running, shouldn't need more than 2 hours per night( (avg)
ā Not life-ending deal for someone else's business if it goes down for maintenance
ā Strong links with sustainability or environment or conservation
ā Gets me psyched (linked to āš¾)
ā Solves a problem that people already have (demand should be there already)
First thought that comes to mind: Have you thought about content-business? You could target an audience that's into sustainability / environment / conservation. You could use your time in nature to create content (great fotographs, tell stories of your trips, etc.). For this type of content you wouldn't need strong internet connection. You could even create a backlog of content / content ideas while in nature, and once back you can shoot.
Thanks, Tom! šš¾
I had thought about that... specifically around helping identify underserviced green niches that indie hackers can target to help save the world and make a tidy profit. š
I put out some feeler posts here and here. But I felt interest was luke warm. š¤·āāļø
What sort of content at the crossroads of entrepreneurship and sustainability/conservation/environment would interest you and would you find value in? š¤
And BTW some self-promo: I share community-validated business ideas every week in my newsletter. Some of them are also content (business) ideas. In case you wanna check it out: https://communityvalidated.substack.com/welcome
I'm not in your target audience, so not the right person to answer your question. But I did find these two folks in another IH community talking about similar topics: https://twitter.com/bensterne?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author and https://www.indiehackers.com/Humbledeedsguru
Great - thanks, Tom! I'll check our your newsletter also! šš¾
Right -- that's a good start. Do you have anything more concrete in terms of potential ideas?
Maybe you can reach out to others who are currently in that space already and see what types of things they're working on, what the pain points are, etc?
I agree that IH is probably not the best place to start.
Reddit or twitter are probably better, have you tried/had any luck there?
I have a huge list of ideas -- for example, vertical specific carbon calculators that make it simpler and faster to measure and offset carbon emissions across business processes. I was initially thinking about focusing on indie hackers with micro-saas businesses.
The questions I've asked though have invalidated my assumption that sustainability is enough of a brand identity/interest of enough indie hackers for me to gain traction here. So, I think I need to re-jig the assumed problem. š¤
Good ideas about Reddit and Twitter. I will also explore the communities there too. Thanks for the thoughts! šš¾
Giving you general advice is really hard since you might be the only person on IH who studies lions in Africa. Plus you haven't shared if you have any ideas or any work done on a project
If I were in your shoes, I'd launch something quick and dirty as a means to put a stake in the ground. Ideally this is just a lead gen page of some sort. And then while away, you can find a little bit of time here and there and drive traffic to it and start having conversations with potential users / customers.
When you come back, you'll be in a good place to start building something useful.
Yea, I guess I might be š
Thanks for the thoughts!
That does sound like a good idea. On reflection, I've also got some nice connections through National Geographic - so I can start some early conversations around initial ideas.
Cheers š