15
35 Comments

Need Help Building Audience First?

Hi,

I am looking to put my concept in front of makers who are interested in building their micro-SaaS products audience first or anything else you're building. Maybe you have questions about this. I can help. But I also need some help.

  1. I can help you figure out your message and finding a good niche and help spark some ideas and get more insight into audience first building.
  2. I can gain some insight into your business and see if you would find my concept useful.

Let's help each other get over some speedbumps.

https://engagepad.com

  1. 3

    Interesting & timely. Thanks.

    1. 1

      HI Mikka,

      Thanks a lot for the support! Is there anything I could help you out with right now?

      1. 1

        Hey Steve - well, I am building an audience for the app I am building (www.sendqu.com), and I am trying to find channels to build the waitlist. If there's something we could work on that end, happy to chat :)

        1. 2

          Hi Mikka,

          This is super cool. I would love to explore it when you're doing demos. I have another project that might align well with this. The Colors rock!

          I would make a few demo videos for this showing the ease of use and that cool personalization feature.

          You could carve out a small corner for yourself in the indie-maker market. What do I Mean? I think you could be a great way for this market for those who are building their dream businesses and software products but in the meantime need to do some freelancing to keep the pizza and soda pops(Money) flowing for themselves. I also think this would speed up growth because it would be super focused in a growing market.

          But you should definitely create a community for this. There are a lot of avenues you can take this. But the "Indie-maker looking to work(freelance) their way out of their current job and into their own software business " is a great way to spark growth and interest.

          You could reach out to indehckers community and see who is in need of extra cash while they build their software businesses and give them some ideas on how to use their skills to freelance.

          Let me know what you're thinking about who your ideal users are. Or your vision for how users should be discovering you. Also, let me know if you need a little more explanation on some of this.

          1. 1

            Interesting idea with the indie hackers community. I have not thought about so niche audience, but it might be worth a try. Currently, I've thought about targeting coaching & consultants of the concrete industry, as they're usually making proposals manually and don't have an automated onboarding. It might be that they have a longer LTV as well compared to hackers who're looking for a short to a mid-term solution to earn cash before they get their product off the ground.

            The ideal client would be someone who has to make proposals every week or even daily, has a manual hands-on client acquisition process, and wants to streamline the process (and look professional). One-man companies or freelancers would fit the bill.

            Current solutions are either poorly designed, lack the personal touch that proposal creators would add, or are expensive and meant for enterprises (and also a lot of friction).

  2. 2

    I really like your idea, and signed up for your waitinglist! It may not be entirely suited to my niche but interested to see how you go about helping build audiences.

    1. 1

      Hey Feigner. Thanks a lot for the interest!

      I will be sending out an initial email soon offering some more help (in case I didnt get to those who didn't respond here) then will send out the email detailing the concept and pricing and whatnot shortly after.

      I think you'll find it pretty neat and judging from what I see on Komende it could possibly be helpful.

      I signed up for your beta as well.

  3. 2

    Hi @HypeCrux -- This is timely for me. I'm working on a productized service helping indie filmmakers launch their websites. Would love some ideas on how to build an audience. https://www.indiehackers.com/product/flickity -- Look forward to connecting with you. I subscribed as well.

    1. 2

      Hey Thanks Jmac! That means a lot. I will do some diving into this one for you.

      I love the name. super fun to say lol. I was repeating it while I was typing this.

      I also love this niche. Good job on not going broad. You can do so much with this and own something really cool. Plus I love film.

      So you seem like you might know a little about the process of making independent film. What im envisioning is you owning a community of indie filmmakers that want to take advantage of more tech and software to advance their promotional efforts for their films. Essentially making a film is both art and sales (which a lot of everything is ). As a filmmaker they have to put on their business hat while balancing their Art hat on top of that. Websites are a great start to this. You could eventually do way more (create your own sales tools targeted at filmmakers) but sites are a good beginning for your film makers.

      I would tell you to set up something on my platform but I don't have anything as of yet. So what I recommend you do is set up a slack community. Put a landing page on it detailing what you focus on. Lay out what you think your users should know and make your channels inside slack reflect that(toolsfor film makers, introductions, whats your film about?, Content for film mkers, Sales/bbusiness stuff for film makers etc. etc.) You can take a look at the community i built and how i set it up for reference.

      THere are a ton of communities im assuming dedicated for indie filmmakers. Get on those sites and start helping people out and inviting them to your community thta aims to help them push their films further.

      I used Carrd.co for my landing page linking to my slack community but I'm sure you have other workarounds.

      Let m eknow if you need anymore help or have questions on any of this.

      my community https://pigeonhack.com

      1. 2

        Thanks so much for your thoughts. I'll look into all of this. Will keep you posted

          1. 2

            @HypeCrux, I guess my question is how do i drive traffic to the slack community. I know that's probably a very complicated answer.

            1. 1

              Here's what I did...

              I just created a good email and Twitter invite and invited people from this community. I knew where my users hang out and just reached out. Send 30 a day if you can. If you'd like to see my invite copy email me or hit me up on Twitte or email me.

              Then eventually you find other touchpoints but brute-forcing your first 1000 members is essential. YOu also want to make sure you have a good introductory message when they join.

  4. 2

    Really nice idea. I think it can be really tricky to build an audience from scratch if you've not much experience. Often people writing case studies assume those reading have some kind of audience!

    1. 1

      I think you signed up for the waitlist thanks! I will send out more info on the concept to those who did soon.

      You really right. I aim to take that work out of it so you can focus on the fun stuff. Everyone wants a community but the work can be daunting but it's not that hard and hopefully I can make it easier and a lot more useful.

      Was there anything I could help you out with? Tell me more about your resource/hub.

  5. 2

    Joined the waitlist. What's next?

    1. 1

      Hey Rishabh. Thanks for the support! I will be sending you more info on the concept soon.

      Was there anything I could help you out with in the meantime? Tell me more about your project.

  6. 2

    Hey Steve, love some feedbacks on my site: Growthunt

    Its a database of various business strategies I've curated and summarised.

    1. 2

      Hey - I had a look. I like it but could be good to have clearer text on the boxes? The writing is quite small.

      1. 1

        Thanks Hannah. Will work on that!

    2. 1

      This is sweet! You're doing a great job. signed-up.

      I would put your Share button up top as well. Maybe make an infinite scroll for your home page showing all articles, also have a clearer way to get back to a "Home" after a user clicks a tag. You could also include a pop-up for your Sharing feature to follow the user as they navigate.

      I would also get a sweet logo. YOu can use Fiverrs logo builder for a quick fix and choose a color scheme and get rid of the generic business photos. These are just my opinions and it seems like you got a good handle on the content.

      MY big thing is community building. I think you should create your own and bring the makers and writers of these strategies directly into your community where you can go deeper on individual member issues with them and each other. Or some type of content that would incentivize to join your community.

      Indie-hackers would eat this up so there's one awesome channel for you to tap and get to sign-up to your community and /or your website. eventually, you could put a payment gateway up for premium content. https://circle.so would be a good way to get started if you are more of content-based company.

      1. 2

        Thanks for the detailed and great insights! You're great at this!

        Lets connect and keep each other updated on our progress.

  7. 2

    Subscribed, sounds good.

    1. 1

      Heya! thanks for helping out. I'll reach out to the email you left on my landing page. Feel free to chat me up here as well.

      1. 1

        Sure thing.

        Care to share some teaser info? What would be some processes for building an audience of customers that are:

        1. solo Sales People or
        2. (secondary market) 'on the go' small business operators (tradesmen,etc.)

        My product is an android app for an instant Customer list/business organizer from a users existing Google Contacts.

        Thanks

        1. 2

          Could you tell me a little more about your potential user? What are they selling in general? Are these guys on foot? Selling online? Do you have experience in this type of sales?

          This is probably a good niche already that you can own and expand it out into more general sales. I can see some potential here. I just need a little more info so we can unpack this a bit more.

          What I would do is try to find out where these users are online or offline. Get a few distribution channels that you can feed off of in the beginning stages.

          Once you find this out You should then try to become a resource
          (or your own channel) and own something in terms of content or just a niche itself. (tradesmen sales tools/tips/strategy etc.). As you'll rea din my landing page copy it is far easier to build your audience if you aren't asking for an instant buy. Is it good to have CTA's incentivizing this? Yes! but 30% of the time no one is buying immediately especially in the SaaS game.

          A good way around this waiting game is to get them into your sales environment quickly and your keep website visitors warm at scale.

          You're not just an android app. You're someone who is going to help keep sales top of mind and easy to manage. You bring sense to sales clutter. IDK lol Im goign off what I envision your app does lol.

          Let's keep it going...

          1. 2

            Yeah I would say they are more on foot, or at least they are dealing with customers more so face to face. The sales people are from all walks of life; car salesmen, water tanks, solar panels, Tupperware.

            My personal reason for the app was to organize my small business, with multiple jobs for contacts, and also have a better organizer.

            I'll reply again later. Great questions. Thanks for the interest :)

            1. 1

              I definitely want to see this in action. Or if you have mockups or if you can walk me through the users' journey from sign-up. This might help bring about more ideas on my end,

  8. 1

    Love this idea, I just signed up for the waitlist.

    I just launched Mugshot Bot on Product Hunt yesterday! It’s a tool to automate link preview images for blogs. I’m targeting independent bloggers who aren’t designers to start.

    I’d appreciate any tips or ideas you have to start gaining more traction in that world.

    1. 1

      Hey Joe! I actually used your service a few weeks back. It's really unique and clean. Great eye for clean design and spacing.

      Thanks for the support!

      Indie-Bloggers. cool niche. Are these bloggers talking about anything in particular or are you going broad on this?

      What I would do is sort of "bulldog " your way into their world. I would find these bloggers and give them a sample of what they can do. Or do this on your own and make a post using their content comparing the boring image sample to the sample using your service and actually tag them in Twitter or wherever you are going to do this and link back to them. Send them some business as well as engagement proof. This is a really fun product where i think you can get away with this. But you also want to start collecting data on the performance of your images and emphasizing ease of use.

      Let me know if this makes sense I can sometimes "throw up" on my keyboard lol

      1. 1

        Thank you! That's awesome to hear that you recognize something I built from my comment.

        Right now the bloggers seem to be focused on technical writing. e.g. coding tutorials and development best practices. But I also have a customer who writes about The Office!

        I love the idea of giving folks a sample. Kinda similar to the "drop of your product" approach in the physical world. I could also probably link to them with a designed image with a little bit of coding (e.g. a link shortener).

        Getting some performance metrics is definitely on my to-do list. All I have now is a small quote from Buffer about images in tweets (in general).

        Thanks for the great ideas!

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 17 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments