Instead of a Black Friday sale, I'm raising prices. 🦃

It's that time of year again.

That special time when our Twitter feeds and email inboxes get flooded by Indie Hackers promoting steep discounts on their products in order to capitalize on the American custom of post-Thanksgiving sales.

Well, I've got a different tradition.

Instead of offering a discount to join my community for Indie Hackers I use the end of the year as an opportunity to raise our prices.

On November 29th, the day after Cyber Monday, I'll raise prices by 70%. From $29/month currently to $49/month going forward.

It's the opposite of a Black Friday sale. It's an Anti-Sale.

And it's not just marketing.

Indie Worldwide has made huge, meaningful, improvements this year and I absolutely feel like the current price is undervaluing our community.

1-1 introductions

This is something we've done for a while now. We introduce you to a startup founder making similar revenue every week.

What's changed is we now have a much better platform that lets you pause or unpause matches at will, update your own data, and choose who you want to meet with ahead of time.

Better moderation

✅ ​ ​We removed 90% of lurkers. Now only active founders and paid Indie Worldwide members are in our Slack group.

I wrote about this change in a recent post here on Indie Hackers: Why I kicked out 90% of free members

This has already led to much higher-quality conversations.

✅ ​I quit my job as a freelancer to focus on Indie Worldwide full-time.

✅ ​We started regularly pulling member updates from the Slack to feature in our newsletter (5000 subs) and on Twitter (3000 followers). This helps our members get extra eyeballs on their product launches and updates.

✅ ​We added a searchable member directory.

More resources for your startup

✅ ​ We negotiated deals with AWS, Stripe, MongoDB, and more totaling over $20,000 in benefits you can take advantage of.​

✅ ​ We've built and continue to grow a content library of recorded webinars with experts on topics like cold email outreach, audience building, and product positioning.

✅ ​ ​1-1 mentorship and coaching.

I want to attract people who value the indie community and are invested in the group. One way we can continue to grow, without ballooning in size, is by increasing prices.

At the same time, I want to reward current members who've taken an early bet on us.

I will not increase prices for current members. That includes anyone who signs up this week before the price increase.

If you've been considering joining Indie Worldwide for awhile, now is a great time.

We've still got a 30-day guarantee which means you can lock in the current price risk-free and get your money back if you change your mind in the first month.

Obligatory CTA: 👉 Join Indie Worldwide

Next week I'll be back with post-sale updates so you can see exactly how well this anti-sale concept turned out (or how hard it failed).

See you there,

EDIT: adding more details on my own blog https://castrio.me/the-black-friday-anti-sale