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Is Indie Hackers worth it? Results of the first launch

Nine days ago April 3 I wrote an article on IndieHackers about the presentation slides software I built.

MeetSlides allows to create slides really fast, while staying focused on creating supportive slides for your main message.

Here I would love to share some insights I discovered after the publishing the first article.

TLTR: IndieHackers worth publishing you product because the community is alive and people would leave you some real feedback.

RESULT IN NINE DAYS

  • 258 visitors, 250 new visitors -- google analytics, see screenshots
  • Four (4) meaningful comments on IH. It's a lot. When publishing on ProductHunt I might of have hundreds of upvotes and some cheer-up comments but truly MEANINGFUL comment was rare, if any.
  • Found quite many problems with website, see details below

The problems I found

#1 Sign up was broken
I used google firebase authentification and CDN, but when I changed CDN to vercel then google confirm email link got broken. Needed to change DNS/Auth settings.

#2 Feedback form was extremely obtrusive
It appear to often and quite randomly. Some people closed window just after dialog appeared. Fixed that.

#3 Title of the article was too vague
It's not obvious what product does from the article title, LOL

#4 Wrong choice of analytics tools
I'm engineer and so I showed results to my friend who is good with marketing and they told I should change analytics to see everything in one place. So, I switched.

In short, IndieHackers launch was valuable for the following reasons:
-- I found and fixed very obvious problems with the website
-- I configured analytics to track the real data
-- I got FOUR REAL comments which shows IndieHackers community alive and cares.
-- I got 250 new visitors to website and I learned from their experiences.

on April 12, 2023
  1. 4

    Congrats on the amazing results!

    And totally agree on your saying "IndieHackers community alive and cares". Everyone here is generous about reading carefully what you wrote and giving back their thoughtful feedback and advice. That's truly why I love IH community!

  2. 2

    Useful experience !