How to bootstrap an audience as an indie maker.
When you start out as an indie maker it feels like you're shouting into the void.
You launch projects to 0 followers and not-so-surprisingly no one ever hears about it.
It's frustrating to see other makers with huge followings get so much attention so easily.
But how did they build those audiences? Is there some kind of cheat code?
That's where I started too. A couple years ago I had just a few hundred followers on Twitter and really only my friends from school would see anything I posted about.
I wanted to build an audience so that my projects would get more attention, even though I wasn't sure what exactly I even wanted to build.
The secret I found?
Every time you launch, you gain new followers.
The more followers you have, the better your launch will go.
The flywheel might be slow to start, but once it gets spinning it gets easier and easier to keep it going.
So if you're just starting out, don't wait until your grandest vision is complete to launch.
Find ways to be launching small projects all the time.
Example:
If you're building a a tool for farmers, you might start by publishing a list of feed suppliers and their prices.
If you're building a tool for designers, maybe you start with a design blog or a weekly UX newsletter.
The important part is to start now and start small.
Before you know it your flywheel will be spinning too.
Great idea - it's also a great incentive to build new features!
Yep!
but watch out for feature creep. Sometimes it's better to launch features as standalone products to keep the main product from swelling so much that it becomes less usable.
For example, check out what Spark Toro does: https://sparktoro.com/tools
They have several standalone tools which they use as lead magnets and SEO building for their main product.
Each tool gets it's own landing page which:
This is a fresh take. Nice!
I'm not sure exactly it works just for sharing content by itself, as I see sharing blog content via Twitter doesn't get you anything when you don't have much of an audience.
But I think your overall idea still is worth keeping in mind, especially once you get that first bit of traction and following.
Post snippets directly to get attention, then follow up with a link to the post.
Focus more on commenting on other people's stuff at first versus posting your own.
When you launch something, DM all your friends to share the tweet with them directly and ask for feedback.
Good call on asking friends for feedback to help boost it.
Looking forward to reading some of your work on Twitter, too.
This is awesome and great advice. Also busy reading Andrew Chen “The Cold Start Problem” which has great insights into building a network at each stage.
I think most people underestimate how hands-on you have to be at the beginning.
Don't just hope people will see and upvote your content, find people who you want to reach and message them directly, ask for the feedback, build relationships.
That's probably one of the most fun audience-building strategies I've seen. Very cool.
Thanks Jonathan, I hope people will find it useful.
Thanks for reading! If you're on Twitter say hi @AnthonyCastrio