Indie hacking is NOT a Ponzi scheme!
TLDR: Most Indie Hackers on Twitter are NOT building products targeting other Indie Hackers
After reading this IH the post: Why I hate the indie hackers community on Twitter and seeing so many supportive comments I felt a little bit discouraged.
I love the Indie Hackers community ❤️
Indie Hacking is a noble career path of brave entrepreneurs that fight against society's status quo with hopes of one day being able to dedicate their full-time changing the world
And even though I do understand that this might be an over-romanticized perspective, I was sad to learn that we are often seen as a big Ponzi scheme.
Is Indie Hacking a Ponzi Scheme?
As the founder of the WBE Space, a community that targets starting bootstrappers I am definitely feeding that theory 😂
Soooo, besides me... 😯
Is it true that most of us are actually targetting other Indie Hackers?
Apparently Not!
I did a Twitter poll asking makers if they were targeting Indie Hackers and got more than 75 answers....
As you can see 80% of the participants said that they are NOT targeting Indie Makers.
Also, by scrolling through the more than 180 products submitted on my Indie Lottery we can verify that the target groups are diverse and not only makers...
Why it might feel that most target Indie Makers?
I think that my friend Jasper put it perfectly:
I think it makes sense that people who have relevant stuff to sell in the IH community are trying to be very active on Twitter right?
I agree that it’s not always the most interesting, I like reading about how people are building things, what tech they use, etc... However, those kinds of users probably post way less though
Makers that target other makers (like myself) have as our main marketing channels IH and Twitter. Therefore, a lot of our marketing strategies are related to creating content for these platforms... And that's why you hear more from us...
We can always improve
I do understand the frustration shared by a lot of the other IH that are tired of reading the same kind of content...
But the beauty of being a maker is that you can do something about it!
Build a solution for this problem!
But if you do, be aware: Your target group will be other makers too 🤣
I agree in that IH is not a Ponzi scheme however it is a really big marketing channel for a lot of people and that means that this place is not full of advice so much as it is advertisements. And I think that is some peoples main complaint. I came here with the idea that this was creators giving advice and sharing experiences but the more I'm here the less I believe that to be the case.
I could be really mean and say something like "people who can't do, teach" but I don't know that I believe that. I think it's people starting companies, hitting road blocks and then trying to monetize their solution to those road blocks. Or people who want to be their own boss but then not having a clear idea for a business, so they try to solve the problems that they're seeing here. I don't know. Could be any of the above or a million different other reasons. End result is the same. And none of them are bad, I should clarify.
I think I may come across as more negative than I actually am. I think it's fine for people to come here and try to advertise their businesses. It's a good place to get initial feedback from people who (hopefully) have experience going from 0 to 1. And it certainly helped me get off the ground with my company, and the response here gave me a massive confidence boost as this was the first place I told about it.
It's just that when you aren't a beginner any more, when you've actually started, this place becomes a bit less relevant and that's a shame.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
I mean, I think you're bang on by suggesting a smaller, gated community. I think that's the only solution because forums don't really scale well. More users inevitably leads to watered down discussion targeting the lowest common denominator (for IH, that'd be people with less to no experience starting/running a company).
My life is crazy right now but I think that's most likely what I'll end up doing. Though I think I'd prefer something in person rather than online. Luckily there is a few in the UK.
"Luckily there is a few in the UK" Pray do tell.
It'll really depend on where you are, someone else mentioned https://www.ramenclub.so/uk which looks great, another would be Indie Edinburgh. I think that, the best idea, initially, would be to check websites such as MeetUp or EventBrite to see if something like those exist near you.
Value proposition for Ramenclub needs some work.
Will check. Thanks.
I think that RamenClub has a lot of people in the UK and they often to IRL meetups.
Thanks for the recommendation, bookmarked!
crashes through window
Hey @smcn - Ramen Club/IndieBeers founder here. Where in the UK are you based? We do regular IRL meetups in London. Currently for drinks or co-working. You're welcome to join.
Thanks for the shoutout @tiagorbf 🤟
Edinburgh predominantly but I'm in London quite a lot. Thanks for the invite! I'll definitely check it out when I get a bit of stability.
You're more than welcome sir. We just launched Tuesday IRL co-working as well, so there are a few options. 🍜
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
Look, I won't comment on your general behaviour or how others are perceiving you in this message.
What I will say is, if you ask your question like this:
You won't get an honest answer. Because you primed that question. That is a big no-no in the "real" research world.
You might as well ask "As an indie hacker are you a con man?" and would get the somewhat same results.
There is also the "sample size" issue. IH (just the site) has ~164K members. For representative research, you should have ~400 respondents. You have only 20 per cent of it.
And since you are just polling your followers, it skews results toward your point of view.
Good point, well made.
In the end, I got 94 votes and 81% said they are not targeting Indie Hackers. I agree that it's not a big sample size and if the results were closer together (like 60% 40%) I would completely discard them. But given that it has such a big gap, even though it is not 100% conclusive, I believe it gives a good indication.
Regarding being my followers wouldn't that actually skew the results in favor of having more makers targeting other makers? Especially if the theory that this is a fraternity that follows each other was true...
Since I don't want to feed into the problem I won't say what I am building here, but I am one of the people currently building for other indie hackers.
To maybe offer another perspective as to why:
Because I am my own user!
I mean, a lot of great products started out with people solving their own problem (see AirBnB for example). This is also a recommended approach and all that, often called "dogfooding" among others. Not to deny that there are a lot of people selling get-rich-quick-schemes, but still: Is it really surprising that indie hackers often feel the urge to build projects for themselves, basically?
I'm new here and it seems i have been an Indi Hacker for a decade (very sad state of affairs) without even knowing it. And so i arrive and i can see exactly where i can add value and i have products and services that can help. But my first thought is "will these people be willing/able to pay?". I could be wrong, but i'm thinking: probably not. Point being: Indihackers seem to make a terrible target customer.
Note to self.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
Rightly said man! Agree with your post.
Thanks Alok :D
First of all, i do have to say that I agree with your point of view. But I also agree with the point of view of the post that you are quoting. I do not hate the IH community, in fact I find that the encouragement and opportunities it gives is gigantic. But, on the other way, there are very few posts here related to indie hackers or side hustlers that work or have businesses in other markets. For sure, as someone stated in the previous post, the main reason for this is that these people have their forums of choice where they can resonate better with their audience.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
To be fair, I don't think this post is a sales pitch. What I think has happened is he's gone too far on the comment replying, and that's just stuck in your head.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
😂
hahahah things are about to get spicy! But I agree.
Nooo! Everyone is hating on me now... XD
Better start practicing your tears for the apology video xD
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
Holy shit, it's the "WBE Space" guy.
I've never clicked on it, and I never will.
Agreed but sheesh that's a spicy comment 🌶️
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
And there is a reason why some people or companies use dark patterns. Because they work.
"But because they work" is not a good point to make. That makes every kind of spamming, scamming, and scheming, "good". It is the same excuse as con man's "they should have been more clever".
No. You are responsible for your conduct. You are responsible for your behaviour.
If you spam, people will think you are a spammer. It is as straightforward as that. It might not be fair. But it is how it is.
One of the things I hate is people calling things dark patterns when they're not dark patterns. Anything people consider unethical they call a dark pattern.
On the whole spamming thing. He 100% over-commented linking to his community. But it kind of reminds me of a story, there was a boss who was sent to his newsletter 5-times a day. Everyone begged him not to, people will get sick. He said no, he wanted to find the people who wanted to hear from him 5-times a day. He carried on, found his super loyal following and sold millions of dollars worth of stuff to them. Maybe people who were fed up of seeing his comments just weren't the people he was looking.
Anyways, the important take away is to stop mentioning dark patterns everytime something unsightly comes up.
Sorry if the above was unclear. I didn't say spamming is a dark pattern. I was just drawing a parallel between spamming and dark patterns on the basis of (a) both work and (b) both are unethical.
If you think spamming and building a loyal following works together, I'd advise checking Godin's Permission Marketing. Or not, whatever brings you peace.
And that gives him a right to spam. So everyone should spam everyone else? Interesting point of view.
I assume you don't use a spam filter on your email?
I find it interesting that you think he didn't have the right to reply to comments and posts and self-promote.
And I don't know if you've noticed, but half this community is basically doing the same. He just was annoying because he was very consistent.
Yes, even more than half and that is the issue. I have no quarrel with this person. I have however a problem with this behaviour.
Because it probably will kill this community, similar to what happened to others.
There is something called Gresham's law in economics. Basically it says "bad money drives good money out of circulation." In my experience, this applies to communities and societies as well.
If this kind of behaviour left unchecked, it will force this community to devolve into a pool of spam that nobody wants to visit because it is too costly to separate the grain from the chaff.
As it is already discussed on another thread, people are having this issue for a while. And it is possible that we will arrive at a breaking point in the next few months.
And I certainly would be sad if we lost IH to this...
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
I am not saying you do.
But still we all know spamming works. It is why it has been a scourge upon this earth for years upon years. But that doesn't make it right. Even if your whatever is useful.
Do you know why? Because you are only focusing on success stories. But while you were gaining 65 paid members to your community, hundreds upon hundreds of people read your messages. And in the end, they had to spend their cognitive energy to read and understand your message and then filter it as irrelevant. If you do not see this cost as a cost to the community and your fellow human beings, I think I can't say anything else. And I am not sure if we can productively debate on this matter.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
The only thing that makes me sad reading a lot of these comments and posts is that people don't see each other as humans online.
They see each other as avatars or users and there is a disproportional hatred and aggressivity in the communication...
We all want to make our Indie community better, let's talk to each other and make that happend!
This comment was deleted a year ago.
I am a proud Wannabe bro XD
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
This comment has been voted down. Click to show.
This comment was deleted a year ago.