How can Indie businesses help each other out more?
At EmailOctopus we've been going a few years now, we're doing ok and there's a team of 7. One question I've been considering, is how can we help other Indie businesses do the same?
There must be tons of ideas that are mutually beneficial. Many of us pay thousands a month to the likes of Google and Amazon so it would be nice to take some of that and actually support each other as individuals. The AMA's on here are a great example and there must be more. Here's just 2 ideas I've had:
- Sponsoring of newsletters/projects which align with what we're doing (see MarketingExamples)
- Hiring freelancers on 3-day per week contracts who are also working on side-projects, helping give balance of income and time for own projects.
Anyone else got any other ideas?
I've thought about creating a spreadsheet for people who are willing to swap newsletters ads/promotions/tweets.
Hi Rosie - i'm taking this concept one step further and building a project called reciprocation.com. You can setup a reciprocal marketing group and allow users to join. Members can then post requests (for common marketing tasks) where other members can then pledge to help. Members that complete pledges get assigned points which helps build their reputation in the group.
I'm a couple of weeks away from an alpha launch. It would great (and I would be eternally grateful) if instead of creating a spreadsheet you might consider creating a group on the site?
Ok, ping me when it is in a usable state :)
Thanks. :) Will do within the next couple of weeks.
I dig this idea. Is there a concrete example you can give? I can piece it together in my head for our products as to how this would benefit us and at the same time benefit the indie hacker(s) we would be engaging to help cross market etc
There should be a Discount / Deals section in the main Indie Hackers navigation where we can offer deals and discounts to members.
Like both of your ideas.
My mindset is currently focused on SaaS, so these tips will mostly apply to them, but i'm sure other businesses will benefit.
I would love to see groups/cohorts in at least two dimensions:
by revenue / size where we can pass relevant ideas between each other for improving
by industry / related business, so we can drastically increase our content creation and audience overlap
We’re all here to grow our businesses, so being able to share and bounce ideas off people in similar situations would be great (on a smaller scale than the full forum, more dedicated to each other).
And the big boon would be helping each other create content by guest posting, appearing as a podcast guests, etc. I think paid media has its place, but having a larger content library will do wonders for everyone’s organic reach. If you could have 10 guaranteed guests for a podcast, or find a co-host, or do screencasts / tutorials / interviews for another business, we’d all get a lot better at our own messaging and have a fantastic library to share with our respective audience.
I've been thinking about this as well. I think many startups here can adopt products on IH.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
This would be great for IH meetups :)