8
11 Comments

If you have to start with 1$?

If you have to start with 1$ (or 10 - 100 bucks whatever you consider minimum in your currency).
What will be your approach provided you have all the basic necessities (wifi, laptop)?
The purpose of the question is to get some creative applicable outcomes from the human mind. Similar to the "sell me this pen" question.
( Try not to be sarcastic.)

  1. 4

    I'd get a job. Being an entrepreneur is hard! Very hard, most ventures take a minimum of 2 years to get off the ground. Ignoring the cost of living, you will still need to put some of your own cash into the project. The more cash you have, the easier it will be.

  2. 3

    Well if I needed cash fast I’d sell my time. The free way is a free site on netlify for a portfolio and then post to Reddit. In addition to just saying I’m for hire id offer a free service like a code review or design review to show value then offer services on the back of that. I’d do some helpful blogging and share that around too. All of this cost nothing. Just need a free stripe account to take payments.

  3. 2

    I will spend the $1 for a coffee

    It's absolutely true that many growth tactics can be done with no cost, but it's hard without investing your time. And your time should be worth certain amount.

    I have been growing a side project in the last 5 months, besides the domain name ($20ish for 2 years), I spend nothing on marketing.

    Because when I running a side project, I tend to be chill and challenge my creativity.

  4. 2

    From a marketing perspective I would do:

    1. Youtube
    2. Blogging on personal website
    3. Medium syndication
    4. Post relevant content on reddit/hackernews etc.
    5. Email target audience after producing some content

    Assuming you have a phone, most niches don't require you to have a big production with videos. Youtube is an amazing traffic source that you can organic traffic hitting sometimes relatively quickly (3-4 months). Take the YT content and embed it on your blog, write the article version of that. You can use a free tool like Ubersuggest ( think it's still free) to do keyword research initially. Once the blog is written up, you can post that to your Medium account as a synidcation channel. Medium, similar to YT, as a content recommendation engine and assuming what you're selling is B2B, it can be a fantastic place for extra views.

    You'd need mod approval for the subreddits, but there and hackernews can help you get some starting traction.

    For the last part, if it is B2B especially, you can cold email your target audience. Build a list of a dream 100 clients, email them telling them what you do, you'd love feedback and that you wrote an article that "solves X". If you did your target market research well, then X should represent a really painful problem your dream 100 is experiencing.

    I'd never send the link to your article in the cold email, instead have them reply saying they'd want to read it to get a mini yes commitment. I feel this comes off less spammy/salesy, but feel free to test it as every niche is different.

    I have a friend built a six figure marketing agency by cold emailing businesses and having them reply with "1" if they were interested. I thought it was weird/gimmicky but hey it worked apparently haha

    1. 1

      Cold emailing with a reply "1". Hats off, You got me here. genius guy. Lol

      1. 1

        haha yeah Aarvy. I was pretty surprised when it worked for him as well

        1. 1

          got me surprised too! I'd have never thought these "tricks" still worked, but my opinion is useless, let's just look at the data!

  5. 2

    Does that include internet access?
    Lots of things are free online:
    All these Profiles are free, if you have internet access: Fiverr, Upwork, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Substack, Udemy,

    Having a dollar vs zero dollars is pretty much the same. Create a bunch of free accounts on platforms you can make money on.

    If you're coding: A digital ocean droplet is $5 a month, but you can start at $0 with MongoDB and Heroku.

    1. 0

      Well, that's what I wanted to check. The numeric perception.
      You say "nothing" because I put the monetary figure in question.
      Whereas, if I modify the question with something like "What business you can start for free?".
      You probably will come up with tons of things because it is possible with too many free resources out there.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 18 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments