Is it just me or is this stuff really hard?

Yes, it's hard. And that's a good thing.

Yes, it is hard! But on the other side just if you make it hard.

I don't say it is easy either but many decisions can be made easier by just not caring too much about them or by overthinking them.

What framework to choose -> The one you already know

Marketing channels -> Trial & Error. Stick to one and search for the next one.

I think the really great thing about indie hacking and this area is simply the community. I almost never saw such a supportive community. It doesn't matter if 100k MRR or 0 MRR all are happy to help and to give out quick advice.

But it is hard, but also a lot of fun 🙂

It's the nature of business. The problems are only going to get difficult day by day :)

Honestly I used to feel a lot of stress everyday having to deal with problems. But then I came to the realization that businesses are going to have fires that need to be put out everyday.

Spending a substantial period of that time (2-3 year) being depressed & stressed isn't a good idea. Ever since then I've just taken it slow and been more happy :)

I've followed this approach while building Famewall and have been really enjoying everyday :)

But yeah marketing is going to be difficult until we find the one channel that we can scale consistently.

Not much in life that is worth doing is easy.

As you probably already know, the "hardest" part is that voice in your head telling you "this is hard"

Yeah, I struggle with that pretty much every other week.

Here is a little note (more like a rambling) I've written for myself and reread every time I feel down.

It is hard and it's not that hard. Stop bitching.
There is a lot of noise. Do your best to filter it out.
Get better at organizing yourself.
Set your goals.
Review your goals every week.
Crush them and repeat.

I think the technical side has gotten way easier. I remember back in the day you had to do almost everything yourself. Nowadays there are so many great open source libraries and services (Stripe, Vercel) that help you build, deploy and run your project. It's not unheard of for talented solo founders to crank out a complete MVP with payment and everything in a matter of weeks.

However, actually getting users, growing your product and, most importantly, making money is super hard. Most give up before they get there. Everyone that tells you otherwise is either lying or has forgotten how it is starting out. I can't comment if it has gotten harder because I'm relatively new to the indie hacker game.

There is a lot of noise out there no doubt. Be a signal and consistently publish high quality content, publish to your own domain and create digests for social media platforms.

People can barely be bothered to write a paragraph before they start promoting themselves. It's easy to stand out from the noise if you do what most people don't and put in the extra effort.

Yes and no. Deploying servers and getting payments is easier, but web standards for a good app and best practices are harder.

I think a lot of the apps that are easy to build and make money get built first, so the things that are left are the apps that are harder to build. But for every Waave.co or Discord there is a Flappy bird or Linktree. I think some ideas are by nature harder to build than others.

I've been at this since '01 and it does seem to be ramping up. The tools have gotten easier, which levels the playing field.

And since the pandemic reset the game board - many people around the world are realizing life is short and they don't want to work traditional jobs anymore.

The maker / creator economy is exploding.

Regarding marketing and promotion; the only way to succeed is to be meaningfully specific - to an audience with a lot of pain.

Personally, it's about keeping our cool and managing our mental health / mindset.

No, it's hard alright :D

As somebody already mentioned - Few things in life that are worth doing are easy.

What I've noticed recently, especially since I've started working on BotMeNot is that marketing (and generally reaching out to people and getting them interested) has gotten much harder.

You have to work a lot for every single person who is willing to provide feedback.

I started 9 months ago and I have to say that the hardest thing is definitely getting users (aka marketing). One thing that might help you is to surround yourself with other entrepreneurs and learn from their mistakes and experience. Have a look at my virtual coworking space. There are many bootstrappers there working on their projects that can help you out!

I regularly help SaaS founders who're struggling to make sales. DM me on Twitter, and I'll see how you can make your life easier.

Yes. It is definitely harder. And I do not blame the audience but I blame the creators. Internet has given access to almost anyone without verification. This brings a lot of scammers/salesy people into the playground. I mean people are not willing to even give you their email because they don't trust you. So, what I did? I posted an ad o Reddit asking to beta test my product in return for $5 and guess what, I didn't get a single reply. So yes it is hard. But if you make the right connections and do a collab it will definitely work. It will give you credibility. For example find the right hunter on PH, find a genuine guy on Youtube etc. Stay strong man.