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19 Comments

How are you?

2020's been one hell of a year.

Goodness happened, great things happened, and some bad things happened as well. Anyways, it'll be over soon, so I just wanted to ask how are you all?

Our agency had really great numbers from April to July. Our SaaS did very well in the same period, then hit the bottom and this month it's coming up slowly. My video sharing app hit 5k+ downloads and 3k+ active users this month (yet suffering generate some revenue). The private community I'm building is going good with 35+ signups—all joined waitlist from this month—from ih alone.

I'm trying to break my toxic work-life balance (which is so not in balance) and I'm quite satisfied with my personal, mental, and business goals.

How are your products doing? And most of all answer the title's question, how good/bad (it's ok) are you feeling?

  1. 3

    Not so good, it has been a tough year in all aspects. It is a chance to practice my patience, resilience and optimism. I think good things will come eventually.

    1. 1

      You're right. Good things will come eventually.

    2. 1

      It is hard when we face "I'm giving up" "It is hard" with our products and with ourselves. But one thing we all know deep down is it'll become ok.

      Our projects get better with time and feedback. We do better by knowing when to give up and when not to give up. It's these tough times that teaches us all!

      Good to know you're taking this time to practice patience and being optimistic about it.

  2. 2

    Dinakar can you tell me how can i follow people at IndieHackers i am new here and cannot understand how it works

    1. 1

      Welcome Vinay, there are three places to follow someone here.

      On any page when you hover your mouse on someone's name a follow button will show up.
      following on IH

      When you visit someone's profile a follow will be on top.
      following on IH

      You can follow the post author by clicking the follow button near their name on top of all the post's page. For example, you can follow me (I'm the author of this post) by clicking the follow button as shown here.
      following on IH

      Lastly, this is your followers' feed. Posts from the people you follow will be shown here.
      following on IH

      1. 1

        I was using edge chromium I was not able to see this follow button then I switched to chrome. I think it's a bug. Thank you Dinakar

        1. 1

          You're welcome. You can mention @csallen when you find bugs like this. Most probably he'll see this message and fix that.

      2. 1

        The navigation here is really easy compared to traditional forums if you ask me.

        Most of the time, I won't go past the home screen as it features quite some new content from the day and there are milestones and products to explore are in the sidebar as well.

  3. 2

    Not that great this year but things are going better 🙏
    A few days ago, we started getting traction with our product idea and got around 10 people sign up to our waitlist and it feels great! Then yesterday, we already reached 20 + people on our waitlist. 🥳
    Although things are progressing slowly, I am still staying optimistic 💖 Plus, I'm still trying to figure out a way to grow our waitlist. 🤔

    1. 2

      Oh also, the best places you can grow your waitlist is by working with businesses that use social media for managing their brand/product. If you can somehow prove they're spending a lot of money on social media management that can be reduced by your AI, then they might try.

      Lead magnets, social campaigns, and pitching to agency owners are a few things I can think of.

      1. 1

        Thanks for the suggestions @Dinakar!

    2. 2

      I think it is slowly getting better for everyone.

      I like your landing page and the product idea but it is doing a lot of loading (that splash screen) before and even after fully loading, that may not be the best experience. Are you tracking your bounce rate? Asking because I could see a tag manager on it.

      Nice to another Indie maker is doing good! Stay optimistic.

      1. 1

        Thanks for the feedback! I think we haven't properly set up the tag manager yet 😅

  4. 2

    I'm feeling good, thank you. The product is doing okay for a newborn -baby steps... Nice to know that someone is killing it in 2020, besides the coronavirus...

    1. 1

      Welcome.

      Oh, Boostlane it is, right? It looks a lot cleaner (with white spaces and less colorful UI) from the last time I saw it. Well done. How many users have you got from the start? It looks like most of the posts are from the product itself.

      1. 2

        Thanks again for your feedback, it helped a lot.

        Not many users, it was not possible to sign up until 3 days ago... I don't monitor that for now as it not significant. It will matter in a few months.

        I will have some original content soon. Most of the posts are links to relevant news; a human would not be able to curate content at that pace. Already more than 300 000 links to learn about all kinds of topics.

        If one is researching about a subject, I find that pages like this save time. A new version of the product will be using them to produce digests and summaries:

        https://boostlane.com/h/marketing

  5. 1

    Honestly? Not so well. 2020 has been rough, and more recently life circumstances have made it really difficult.

    That said, I've been given more time to focus on what I'm building, so that's a plus. However, I'm finding myself becoming mentally worn out. Being a solo founder and doing a complete pivot and starting from scratch has been exhausting, physically but more so mentally.

    I'm hoping in the next couple of weeks I'll have something tangible.

    1. 2

      It's been a rough year for all. Even the ones killing it now got nearly killed.

      I appreciate your honesty. (not pitching) I'm building a private community for Indie makers like us. Can you join.coulf.com, please? It is free now so nothing to sell or anything. I plan to help my members 1-on-1. I'll give my time to help you too. Reason I mentioned this is I've been where you're now (still am, sometimes) so I think I can help.

      1. 1

        Signed up -- thank you

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