My Internal debates as a beginner Indie Hacker.
Hello Everyone,
This is my first post on this website. I have been reading along for a few weeks and find this a very interesting, social friendly and helpful website. I also have been listening to the last few podcasts which have been also very informative and helpful.
I call myself a web application developer with about 10 years . I use mainly PHP, Laravel, React, React Native, HTML and CSS. I don't call myself a real expert in anything.
At the moment I have a part time job. I am very Happy and plan to stay there until I have enough of my own to support my family.
In the past few years I have worked on small side projects / ideas, which never saw daylight because I didn't have customers for it. So they're all unfinished or hardly started.
My goal for the coming months is to start something of my own. I'm starting from zero and want to build it up. I consider every step I take into this journey as important. I need to take these steps in order to grow my business.
So these are my internal debates:
- I heard in one of the podcast is to just start freelancing and then your will find something interesting and arrive at a place where you will find more business. I
- How do I start freelancing? I have no network and have never done it before. I would like to start on little projects which I can do remote. Should I start freelancing at all.
- Should I put the focus on my personal website https://www.apptender.nl or is it a waste of time? It has no traffic at all.
- My last little site project is a news app which reads a few rss feeds and groups them together in an App. I have no customer for it yet .
- I have no experience in sales. I know this is really necessary how should I go about this?
- I don't have an email list, while I have a subscription form on my website. The only subscribers are Me, Myself and I.
If you look at these questions, my mind is all over the place. So I am curious about your thoughts. I want to be positive I have to start somewhere but I could use some feedback. I want to start executing.
Thanks guys.
Warm greetings from The Netherlands.
Hey Dubbeltje,
All fair doubts. Let me share what I would do.
The whole point of the "start freelancing" advice, IMO, is that you get first-hand experience on real problem people are having. You get to know from inside new business and industries, kind of specializing in one, then realizing that there are some problems that you can solve with technology in a scalable way.
I agree with the core of it, but I don't it does necessarily need to be freelancing. Unless you are in need of money in the short term, I would consider another approach.
Look around at your current job what pain they have and you can solve it. I did it with my own project and is doing well. In my day job's company, there is a very strong culture of one-on-one meetings for the whole company (about 400 people). But the software some of the leaders use for management and notetaking of these meetings is expensive and the company is not willing to buy it for all of the team leaders (about 50). So I built an alternative for it (www.oneonemeeting.com) and now they are using it! :)
My day job employer is the first customer of my side-project!
So, check around what can help your colleagues of? Preferably it is not the core problem the company solves (as you would be an employee building software that competes with the company). But something administrative that will make your colleagues happy to try and use it.
I was about to say that, if you don't find a good problem to solve in your company, then consider freelancing. But actually, I believe that it only depends on you looking hard enough.
Even if it is something small. Build some smart tools that will make the employees of your company more productive, more efficient. Start from there.
So, considering this, I believe you should not start freelancing and that you should not work on your website or build an email list.
Unless there is a topic that you really enjoy studying and talking about, I wouldn't go through this route.
Again, look and solve a problem for your colleagues that will them and the company leadership happy!
Of course, all of it is my point of view. I tried to start a few businesses before (going all the way from building the MVP and trying to sell it), all failed. Now it is the first time that it is working.
It is a path that naturally aligns with a lot of good, solid advice about starting a business: knowing the problem, validating the problem before building it, founder making the first sales.
Let me know how it goes! If you follow that route, it would be nice to follow your progress. We can even chat about how to find your company's problem to solve.
Good luck!
Groeten terug uit Holland!
A decent first step when getting into this whole 'independent' thing might be to talk to some recruiters. While they do take a cut, they can also make it easier to get you started. My suggestion would indeed be to get your own freelancing going on a level that can support your family needs, and start setting up side-projects, well, on the side. Then see what sticks, learn marketing, SEO, etc. and move out from there.
Hi Thanks for your reply. Have you got some lead on learning marketing, CEO etc?
For SEO I would recommend the Moz beginner guide to SEO, and then just keep up with the Moz blog to stay up to date. For general marketing, promotion, etc. just try some things out. See if you like advertising (like Google Ads), content marketing, video marketing, vlogging, etc. and find a way to make that work for you.
Thanks
So my advice to you is build a few websites/Apps 1st , People /clients/Recruiters want to see how you think & how creative you are .https://www.apptender.nl , has no pop..no sizzle..it looks like you wanted to build something..and either ran out of ideas...or got bored
I have been inventing products & gadgets since the 1980s...I think you should build the news app..but reinvent what the concept of a news app really is..and can do for users...
So I invented a news app concept for you to help you out ,since your site gets no traffic , then scrub the name and create a
new one for a news app .
1st. We reinvent the news concept...its NOT a news app..thats what other guys call their product . ...because what we call news now ,
has changed..this is the INFORMATION AGE
its an OMNICHANNEL
This is the FRAME , each news/information source concept goes into one of the boxes..users can scroll to choose the one they want to use Many people now get their news from TWITTER...
http://twitter-stream.statick.org/
OR INSTAGRAM
https://github.com/stevenschobert/instafeed.js
( the feeds would be news type instagram accounts )
Some of the information comes from here
http://www.netartmedia.net/newslister
As people are reading..they might want to see whats on the # 1 jobs site ,and those clicks will help earn you affiliate dollars .
http://www.netartmedia.net/indeed-jobs
newsplane -
This is a news sharing concept , it needs some polish , basically a user see something they think a family member or friend should read , the send it to them using the NEWSPLANE into their email .
https://paperplanes.world/
GLOBAL NEWSFLIGHT
each of the tiles would be an image with a clickable link connect users to a video of an INTERNATIONAL news story .https://codepen.io/cantelope/pen/vxpaYq
Lots of people like to WATCH news clips
https://codepen.io/Anees786/pen/MXeOWb
CITY NEWS - Billboards of Videos & text news stories mounted on the sides of the buildings provide news to users
https://codepen.io/cantelope/pen/vxpaYq
Here are some others that you could use
https://codepen.io/jkantner/pen/YZqboP
https://codepen.io/mxc/pen/lEnzJ