If you could give a would-be independent hacker a piece of advice, what would it be?
I'm currently contemplating becoming a solo hacker. So far, I've developed a Figma plugin that, at the moment, isn't generating any revenue. I have enough savings to sustain myself for 4-5 years. Right now, I'm learning the ropes of marketing. 📈 Any advice or suggestions? 🙏
my figma plugin: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1196444588254898329
Business is about people, not tech.
Behind a graph chart is a human person sitting on a customer. Behind every DB row is a human clicking on a button.
Focus on the humans first and almost exclusively. Forget you even know how to code. Act like you don't know how to code at all but you need to grow this business anyway.
What would you do? You'll start trying to get in front of people right? Tell them about your idea. Well same applies.
95% of indie hackers never make money because they are more focused on making themselves happy than customers.
Very inspiring, indeed, maybe I should think more empathetically, I have to admit that I have been in the joy of coding for a long time, it is time to jump out of the cage of thinking
This is what killed my first startup. I highly recommend that you do not make a landing page at all until you've talked to at least:
Then make a landing page and I recommend you do not build a product until you get
This will take your odds of failure from 96% down to 30% but only if you stick to it.
It's easy to compromise and tell yourself "I've talked to 7 and they're all excited. Let me go spend 3 months building the product or I've sent 50 emails but only got 4 responses I quit" but stick to it and you will win
Thank you very much for your experience, yes, I put a lot of energy into the development in the early stage, now I am a bit stuck, I will try your suggestion in the next project, I guess it will take a while to get used to, sometimes I am very tired Difficult to say, especially if English is not my first language, but I decided to give it a try, thank you FrenchMajesty~
Bro listen, when you open a new store in your near place what will you do on the first opening day? Well, there are 2 options, one is you can open it and see if someone enters it or the 2nd is open it with a yt celeb or like a big bang ad campaign.
If you have a budget issue then go to insta, twitter, and reddit. Get into the community where your customers walk around, reply to them, and bring a solution to the table.
Great brevity, thanks for the advice, I'm just starting out with a limited budget, so I've started experimenting with Twitter and it's kind of picking up, it's going to take a while, I'll try to get used to the process of selling my own products
My advice for getting to six figures "quickly" is to talk to people. Whether they're potential customers, partners, investors, sponsors, mentors, or whatever people usually have some value add if you align your audience profile.
When my company almost went under last year it was reaching out to people that saved us (we were able to get customers/partners that helped us).
Whether it's B2B or B2C I believe talking to people about your idea/project/business is one of the best ways to see rapid improvement.
Also here's the personal productivity system I developed after a few years of leading indiehacking projects, system
Thank you very much for your advice. I was always worried and hesitant about spending too much time on social media every day. Now I understand that as long as the communication happens in a context that may lead to a connection with the target users, it is not a waste of time. I will try to follow your method and help them solve real problems encountered in business scenarios. Thank you again
No problem, and spending too much time on social media is definitely something to pay attention to (especially if you're still developing or doing major updates to your project).
My general recommendation at the start is 1-2 hours per day as this can bring great results in 2-4 weeks (starting from 0 and growing to even 100 emails on your waitlist can be a great start for first time hackers, but depending on the engagement and your project you can really start "feeling" the list when there's between 500-1,000 subscribers waiting).
Thank you very much for your suggestion, 1-2 hours, 100 emails, I can try to start from this small step, I am currently trying to attract some users in the form of small illustrations on Twitter, the effect is not bad, as for email marketing, I Haven't made a good plan yet, and from what you've said, it looks like it should be on the to-do list