Made my first dollar from an Indie Hacker today
I get a decent volume of email from folks on IH that are either:
- Trying to pitch me on something.
- Just wanting to have a quick chat about whatever it is they are researching
I actually try to respond to everybody, but I'm extremely frustrated with y'all.
The reason for my frustration is that when I am interested in what you're doing, or perhaps give a small stipulation (like not being able to jump on the phone, but would be happy to answer any questions if they were to be emailed) I get ghosted.
Yes, people get a response out of me AND THEN NEVER FOLLOW UP / THROUGH.
That said, I tried something new today. I got an email (purposefully keeping the sender anonymous, they can chime in if they'd like to) asking a few simple questions about something I had posted here on IH for some research they are doing.
Zero sales pitch, and they actually included their questions in the email (you wouldn't believe how rare this is). Huge win, and I was already in my email following up with some customers, so I figured I'd respond.
Before hitting send I thought "time is money, I outta include a Venmo link to see if they'd buy me a beer".
The result?
I got a seed round to reinvest in a tall boy or two.
Handful of take aways here:
-
Don't ever be too afraid to ask somebody for money. One of my favorite quotes from when I worked at Sumo was from SumoCon when Noah said "it's your money, and you have to figure out how to get it back from them". Often times, it's as easy as asking for it back.
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If you haven't made your first dollar yet, stop everything, and see #1. On a damn whim today I made my first dollar on something brand new. That's not to say I'll be starting a business around this, but even though it was a small win, it was a win nonetheless and wins always feel freaking fantastic.
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Folks need to stop emailing people asking for them to give up their time for nothing. That's not to say that people should be handing out a few bucks to get a response, but it doesn't hurt. Formal user research studies have paid me north of $100 for my time. Asking people to "hop on a call" is an absurdly huge time ask for zero compensation.
Before I step off my soapbox, big shout to the person that made this post possible, couldn't have done it without ya, bud :)
Great story Josh. I did the same with a friend... who asked for some research to be done. I asked for $3 and gave them a buymeacoffee.com link and boom it was in my bank account.
Good stuff!!
Hope you raise a series A soon too
my liver couldn't handle a series A cash infusion for beer :P
Thanks for sharing this post! Well, you make a good point there. Personally, I've received lots of emails asking for help in particular programming topics, and I've spent hours in providing advice or programming solutions. I've always been shy to ask for a small compensation for my time, and trust me that this time was always too valuable. Time from my work, my projects, my family. Time to change that I guess.
I feel ya there... Josh from 10+ years ago was always eager to help. Josh at nearly 40 is EXTREMELY guarded with his time. It's all extremely limited and all!
Interesting story, would have never thought about emails and money. Thanks for sharing!
I love this! How can I make my first dollar from passportlist.co
Doesn't look like you're monetizing at all? I mean, quick and dirty would be to slap a "find this helpful, throw me a bone" with a link to a paypal donation form or something.
Not sure what your traffic looks like, but if you're not planning to slap your information behind a paywall, ads may be a solid bet. Feel like you're be targeting some solid keywords as a publisher.
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Really interesting point! Totally makes sense though, most people don't actually value their time, so they sluff around and have no problem wasting other people's time.