I've been indie-hacking for about three years now. I haven't earned even $100 revenue in total yet. Should I quit?
I'm 24 years old and started work as a software engineer a year ago. At the same time I started building commercial projects about three years back when I was in college. I've built multiple mobile and web apps, and many small tools and plugins. I've had a few very modest successes but haven't been able to grow any particularly product yet.
My primary bottleneck has been my lack of marketing/sales expertise. In the first couple of years I focused mostly on product development while completely neglecting marketing. But now while I greatly appreciate the role of marketing and tried to keep marketing near the top of priorities while working on recent projects, I still haven't been able to crack this game at all.
I don't have an audience and have been struggling to gain any kind of traction to my contents on Twitter. Also I don't particularly enjoy it though I have a feeling I might begin to enjoy it if I got the taste of small success and could witness its power.
As far as project-specific marketing goes I've hit a complete dead-end. When I put in some effort I'm able to get small amounts of traction from my Reddit posts which dry up after a day or two. Also, for many kinds of products it's very difficult to post submissions on Reddit without coming off as spammy and being banned.
I have tried going to my product's target audience on Twitter but somehow I get zero engagement consistently. I learned a short while ago that Twitter algorithm penalizes tweets with links. I don't put links on my tweets anymore but I still don't get any engagement. I've tried replying to relevant tweets, tweeting on my own timeline, with/without hashtags and so on but none of it has helped.
As far as the products go, things are hardly any better for me. I understand the importance of validation before launching a product. However it's difficult to get idea validation when eyeballs and traffic sources are so scarce. Usually I get ideas while surfing through the internet, when I notice a new trend or see multiple people talking about a problem within a short period. While I'm working on the idea I feel very confident that there's a market for it, however after the launch most of the comments I receive are about how the product isn't of much use to them. It might have something to do with the way I present the use cases of my product, bad communication, inability to reach the right market segment or so on. One theory I have is that given my desire to launch the most minimal prototype in order to ensure validation, the products I ship are perhaps too small or feature-poor to be worth the effort for a person to add it to their toolkit.
I simply don't know how I would get any customers to any product I build. Perhaps I need to find more pressing pain points to win the attention of target audience members. Or perhaps I need to become better at marketing in general, plain and simple. Or perhaps I need to partner up with a good marketer/growth hacker?
At this point in my indie hacker journey I'm feeling very stuck without any clear solution in sight. At this moment I'd be happy to achieve even the smallest of success in the immediate short-term, just to get the ball to roll.
From your post you're feeling stuck because you post and get no response. You post on reddit, on twitter, and get nothing in return. You admitted the key problem: You have no audience. That's it. You're posting and getting nothing back. I was in that place years ago.
I got out of by doing this:
Go 1 on 1.
Stop broadcasting bullshit.
Broadcasting is for those with an audience.
2 big points I'd like to make
you need to beef up your profile. Make sure people can find you. You talk about your project but you don't show it. I went to your Indiehackers profile. and this is what I found: "berk hasn't added any products." You'd be surprised at how much traffic you get in passive ways. Put your photo on your profile too. Spend a couple minutes here every week editing your profile. I've made so many edits to mine over the years. In fact just last week I changed my photo. Make sure people know you're a human online.
Go Direct
Get into Direct Messages, Email directly, message folks.
Get used to being rejected but also persist. Make sure you're identifying people as they want to be identified and that your solution, your product could actually help them. When I started my newsletter I DM'ed hundreds of people a week on LinkedIn and got conversions. I reached out with a fair offer, "you do X and I write about doing X better" something like that.
For years I sucked at sales. I just absolutely sucked. I couldn't persuade anyone. Then I realized and found out (read a lot of books) that sales isn't only about persuasion. It's about finding the right people who want what you're selling and talking with them.
Marketing isn't about ads and broadcasting a message. It's about finding the right market. the right people. Once you find the people and their problems and you have actually figured out how they identify.. and their problem is a "hair on fire" problem. You'll be awesome at sales. Suddenly you're not shilling your shit, you're doing customer service.
Don't write ads about people who don't use your product. Write for those who already do use your product and then use those as content marketing or ads. Think of the "marketing funnel" as an hourglass. At top is impressions and those who don't know you. then they know you, and some will buy... and then those who buy use and some who use will use a lot (power users). Write for users, and get that content in front of those who don't know.
You're essentially writing to convert users into power users.... but those who don't know will be persuaded to use you. It's a fun thing to think about. When I found out it changed my content marketing A LOT. It added a whole new flavor to the way I write and how I market a product.
What Andrew said here is 👍👍👍
Stop thinking about "Sales" "Marketing" and stop trying to follow what others are doing like SEO, content, Twitter etc.
You actually only need 2 things: find 5 people with the same problem and then build something to help them. Stay laser focused on this and that's it.
How you keep going from there - guidance will show up as you keep "talking" to these 5 people. Follow insights, internalize (don't copy others), and execute.
Hey berk. Ultimately the choice to quit is yours, and yours alone.
That being said if your really passionate about creating a profitable business don't quit. The hardest thing to do is not quit. I can say I've been in your shoes before. I think every Indie Hacker has. I still don't have a profitable business, but I'm determined to make it happen.
@csallen has a very real and honest story he talks about on this Indie Worldwide video. He spent 6 or 7 years not really finding success, and then doing great with Indie Hackers.
Even if your not finding success with your products your still growing. Your still learning new things that will help you in future ventures. Learn, grow, and keep doing your best. If you truly try everything you can I believe you can succeed.
Are you interested in indie hacking or interested in side project building? IMO, those are often two very different things. You can build side projects for fun or intellectual curiosity, and not necessarily need to turn it into a business. A lot of people enjoy hacking on whatever they feel like.
If you really want to start a business, then you're going to have to ask yourself the tough questions. Are you picking products to build that solve painful problems? Or are you picking products to build that solve minor inconveniences? Are you passionate about the problem space in some way, so that you are inspired and motivated by something more than the money? Do you truly understand your customer's needs? Answer those questions yourself and see what you think. If you found a problem to solve that meets all the above criteria, would you want to build a business around it? Or would you be perfectly happy just releasing a solution for free?
If you want to learn how to build something that users need, check out The Mom Test. The title sucks but its content is awesome.
The thing about marketing is that most people underestimate it and don't really understand what it's about. Most people think it's just promoting your product or service to an audience with standard practices.
However, actual good marketing is kinda the opposite. Marketing is all about telling a story and connecting on a creative and emotional level with your audience. Just think about it, the best commercials you remember are the ones that did things differently than the others.
Common knowledge has us thinking that you first build something and then promote it. Now, I'm not saying that can't work, but I'd argue you want to do it the other way around. Nowadays, it's easy to build a community/audience with the vast amount of social platforms that are out there, and it's free, as opposed to building a product.
So if you build an audience (that shares the same problem you want to tackle) first, you now have a group of people to not only launch you're product to, but also ask for feedback as you're building.
Now again, I'm not saying this is the only good approach and that other ways can't work. But from what I've seen upclose and personally experienced, this is the way to go.
I'd recommend Kickstarter for you. It's a great way to get feedback, iterate on your product and get pre-orders. A friend of mine launched a product with this and he couldn't believe the results. He's an electrical engineer who has 0 experience or knowledge with marketing. (his own words)
Good luck.
I think Andrew and Kevon have mostly covered all the relevant advice you need.
I'll just add, if you need any specific help, let me know, happy to help out bounce some ideas about marketing or validating the products you are building. Reach out on Twitter or send me an email.
Also, I'll reiterate one thing that Andrew said -- Put a real picture on your profile.
On the internet, people buy from people, not from bots. Make sure you look like a real person.
Hey man,
Totally feel where you are coming from. Was where you are a few years back. Ultimately the choice is yours but this was how I thought about my decision:
Ultimately I chose to get a full-time job whilst working on projects on the side. I hope you find a satisfactory answer for yourself. All the best.
More details:
(https://p-zero.fufei.io/how-i-decided-should-you-quit-your-job-and-go-full-time-on-your-startup-a0ccba5d5b21)
honestly, i worked for years without making money. kinda the process.
i think you can do this faster now though... i wonder if i can help. i wrote this. how can i help?
Hey berk,
I completely understand how frustrating this must be. Although I'm not a tech founder, from personal experience the most important thing is to speak with as many prospective customers as you can about your idea, in a useful way and without any expectation from them, before you launch into months / years of product development.
Of course, quitting is always a totally valid option if you're not getting anything out of this experience, but from the sounds of it, you may just not have hit on the formula that works for you just yet :) Maybe starting with an audience you're already quite familiar with would help? For instance, whatever your day job is, think about the problems you and your colleagues come up against. What could you build that might help? Speak to them about their pain points and using the right framework you could find some great insights.
Try to use the networks you're already a part of in more of a conversational way. Generating discussions and being analytical about the responses you get, without any expectations. If you can do that, you're much more likely to hit on some real pain points that people need solving and would ultimately pay for (if that is indeed the aim you have).
I'm sure you've already read it, but I highly recommend reading the Mom Test and spending a little while 'training' in this style of user-testing / interview because honestly there is little else that will ensure you get real, useful data from prospective users / customers.
IH is absolutely the right community for this too, keep conversing and learning, you'll find 'your' niche if you keep working at it!