My hardcore week of writing (and why IH is not doomed) ✊
There have been many posts these last years lamenting the state of Indie Hackers, and the Indie Hacking community in general. Many of you feel that the site is doomed to be crushed by an ever-growing wave of self-promoting trolls.
Here is a small sample of the disappointment:
- Stop "building in public"
- Is it just me, or is it getting harder and harder to get some engagement on IH?
- Why I hate the indie hackers community on Twitter
As @shash7 put it:
The homepage has turned into marketing driven blog spam pool
...
😐🤢🤮
I certainly do not want that too!
That being said, I don't think Indie Hackers is on Death Row. Not yet.
Indie Hackers is still the best community for any founder with a keyboard and an idea. Every day, you can read detailed success and failure stories from entrepreneurs across the globe, for free. I know some paid communities that are charging for what I get essentially for free on IH, every day.
Self-promotion is a problem that can bring the community down but in my humble opinion, self-promotion is also a necessity for every founder starting on their journey. Most startups fail because of shitty distribution, or worst, because of ZERO distribution. If IH was to become as marketing-hostile as Reddit, it'd be sad.
There must be a way to reconcile community with self-promotion. Some people like @rosiesherry or @Vinrob have been net givers. Net giving adds to the balance sheet of the community. Net taking runs the community to bankruptcy and irrelevance. What do you think? Is a healthy balance possible?
On my end, I've been a net taker for a long time by being a pro lurker. Always reading, never writing. So I'll challenge myself to be a hardcore writer and contributor for 1 week. I'll challenge myself to balance my consuming (taking), and self-promotion (more taking) with my contributions (giving). I hope I'll end with a positive balance. 🙏
Personally, I consider advertising not as entertainment, creativity or a certain kind of art, but as a tool for conveying information from the seller to the buyer. All it does is only interest the buyer so that he clicks and buys your product or order a service. And if you have a problems with writing, you can use assignments sites like https://www.brillassignment.co.uk/ for the beginning
I think a no-self-promotion rule for the majority of accounts would clean things up quickly. No product mentions, no links to external resources, etc. until you've proven yourself with some high quality comments or other valuable community activities.
We've already got gated permissions on certain abilities like upvoting posts—maybe there's appetite for restricting more.
I agree, having contribution thresholds could work.
Oh, btw, check out my startu—
I think this post applies to a lot of online communities in 2022. They've all been overtaken with marketing. Back in the day, like ahh, the late 90's/early 2000's, the concept of online marketing wasnt nearly as ubiqitious and of course social media was in its infancy, so not everybody and there dog was trying to be influencer of some sort .
Back in the days when forums and text were dominant before images and then videos tookover.
We've all got ADHD.
I wonder if they are some free communities that manage to strike the right balance. The rule that I'd like to follow would be that (1) At least 90% of my contributions are useful and (2) at least 90% of each contribution is giving value. I kind of hope that if most members had a similar goal, we would strike a good balance :)
I think that given many people posting in this space either have their own side hussles/startups or work for one, there is a natural tendancy to find a space for promotion. So how do you satisfy that desire without making the entire site a straight up self promotion tool. I think you need to reward good posting over time. IH attempts to do that with its point system. Its not easy balance to find when your constantly striving for new users as well and you dont want to set the bar too high.
Interesting take (being a net-giver is a great principle to abide by).
What are you planning to write about? You didn't say.
Yeah, but I guess not that easy! I know how to code but I'm a "duct-tape programmer", so I don't feel confident writing about dev topics. I'm more at ease with the sales and marketing side of things, so I'll share what I know and what I'm learning about that.
So then why the focus on trying to provide value by writing? Asking great questions (which draw enlightening answers from the experts in the group) is potentially a much stronger value add, and also serves you in your journey.