I stopped treating Indie Hackers like a launch channel and started treating it like a room
Over the last few days I changed how I use Indie Hackers.
Before, I was treating it like a launch channel.
Write a post.
Mention the product.
Hope people click.
Watch the numbers.
Feel good or terrible depending on the result.
That worked once for me.
A couple of posts brought real attention to my tiny product and even led to my first few paid reports.
Then traffic went back to zero.
So I started wondering if I was using the community wrong.
This week, instead of trying to make another product post, I spent more time replying to other founders.
No link.
No pitch.
No “by the way, I built...”
Just trying to leave comments that were specific enough to be useful.
A few examples:
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A founder was trying to sell a working product after months of only building. I commented that distribution probably needs to become part of the product routine, not a launch event.
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A journaling app founder wrote that users wanted trust more than features. I replied that trust might need to be part of the first-use experience, not hidden in documentation.
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A QR code SaaS founder was doing SEO-first growth. I suggested tracking pages by template cohort, because “restaurant QR pages” and “competitor alternative pages” are probably very different bets.
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A football sentiment platform founder was racing against the World Cup. I suggested treating distribution as part of the live product loop, with shareable match cards and country-vs-country sentiment snapshots.
The interesting part:
People replied.
Not because I was promoting something.
Not because I had a clever hook.
Probably just because the comment was actually about their problem.
This feels slower than posting my own updates.
But it also feels healthier.
I’m starting to think early distribution is not just “getting attention”.
Maybe it is becoming a familiar, useful person in the room before you need anything from the room.
The part I’m still trying to figure out:
How do you make this repeatable without becoming the annoying person who comments everywhere just to be seen?
Do you have a rule for community participation as a founder?
The rule that's worked for us building goffer.ai: only comment when you have a specific detail that changes the framing of the problem, not just "great insight."
Your QR code example is the right move. You're not plugging your product — you're naming a cohort-segmentation insight the founder probably hadn't articulated yet. That's the comment that makes someone want to know who you are.
Our version: we make congressional data accessible as a webhook (you can route it to Airtable, Notion, or Sheets via Zapier, no code needed). The community conversations where we learned the most weren't our own product posts — they were threads like this one where people were debugging their distribution model. The recurring frustrations told us which no-code integrations to build first.
On your repeatable question: I keep a running note of threads that revealed a real problem I haven't solved yet. That backlog drives both future content and product decisions. Slower than shouting into the void, but the ratio of useful conversations is much higher — and you stop dreading the silence after you post.
This is a really useful way to put it: “a specific detail that changes the framing of the problem.”
That’s exactly what I’m trying to get better at. A generic supportive comment is fine, but it usually doesn’t move the conversation forward.
The QR code example clicked because the founder was already thinking about SEO, and the cohort/template angle gave him a more concrete way to inspect the strategy.
I also like your running-note approach. It turns community participation into research instead of just networking.
Do you organize those notes by problem category, or is it more of a raw list of recurring frustrations you keep noticing?
I've also changed how I approach socials - putting myself on blast to shill a link was just annoying people. Now I try and genuinely add to the conversation.
It takes a lot more time, but builds a lot more trust. It is also nice to have actual conversations without feeling like a carnival barker all day.
One nuance I’m still thinking about:
I don’t think posting product updates is bad. My mistake was treating every interaction as a chance to drive attention back to me.
I’m trying to reverse the ratio now: be useful in other people’s threads most of the time, and only talk about my product when there is actually something worth sharing.