The scariest moment for an Indie Hacker 😦
You know what I'm talking about...
You have an idea for a product or a service that will help thousands of people around the world.
So you go heads down into building it for 3 months.
You add a "Forget your password?" form, just in case one of the future million users forgets her password.
You optimize your page loading speed so you could rank higher than competitors with 10m pageviews/month.
Wait! Before launching, let's add dark mode and create 101 new bugs. It's fancy, users will love it.
Alright! You guessed it. It's my story, and probably a lot of Indie Hackers too.
I'm finally launching HabitsGarden, a gamified habit tracker to fight procrastination 🎉
As a typical Indie Hacker, marketing isn't my thing.
So I'm getting inspired by @yongfook 1-week coding/1-week marketing framework:
I can't code any additional features until Habits Garden gets 1,000 users (currently 98).
(UPDATE: 632 new users after a successful launch on Hacker News)
Besides the launch, SEO will be 80% of the marketing focus with a goal of reaching $1,000 MRR by the end of the year and $10,000 by the end of 2023.
If you want to follow the journey and learn from my ongoing mistakes, I build in public on Twitter
And if you want to grow a wonderful garden by sticking to your goals, you get a free trial for HabitsGarden.
Whatever this is you're building, ship it, fast! 🚀
If you do this, you're more likely to lose the 98 than to gain the next 902.
Also I know "1 week coding, 1 week marketing" is popular on Indie Hackers, but you have to ask yourself what the current bottleneck of your business is.
If the product is currently the problem that's preventing growth, that's what you need to work on, not suddenly context-switch to marketing just because it's "marketing week."
Hope this makes sense!
UPDATE: launch on Hacker News is successful, so there are 632 users now
It does make sense.
And adding new features to keep users engaged is the way to go.
However, 98 people is a fairly small basket.
In order to add features users really want, I need to get valuable feedback.
That's why I set the "1000 users" goal.
It's achievable, not too hard, and enough to tell what's the current bottleneck.
Does it make sense?
I definitely agree with you about what's best is what's best for you/your product ✌️
” I can't code any additional features until Habits Garden gets 1,000 users (currently 98).”
I really like this approach of “1 week coding and 1 week marketing” since this will essentially force you to properly market the app. This kind of mentality is something I will use for my projects!
Congrats on the launch btw, looks really nice :)
As developers, we are constantly distracted by the temptation of adding new features.
We need some kind of rules to make we don't neglect marketing.
Thanks for your kind words, Lukas 🙌
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
Exactly!
No lifetime deal at launch?
It totally went out of my mind... Thanks for reminding me!
Do you have any example of a successful lifetime deal campaign I could get inspired from?
Sure, here’s one https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-launched-a-ltd-made-4k-in-a-week-and-unlocked-new-customer-types-788868bfdb
Just read the post, it's mind-blowing!
Thanks for sharing, I'll definitely think about how to do it in the near future.
The best way for you to know when it's available is to check my Twitter https://twitter.com/marc_louvion (that's where I post updates about the tracker)
Thanks again!
Do you have a newsletter?
I don't but you my Twitter is pretty much a long newsletter^^
I’m not currently active on twitter 😬😂
I'll try my best to be active here as well 😊
Also, a git integration would be super cool
Let me know if you make a lifetime deal campaign!
Nice
Thanks, good luck with Feofast 🙌
great insight, thanks for sharing Marc. btw what's your distribution channels to get those 98 users?
UPDATE: launch on Hacker News is successful, so there are 170 users now
Selamat Pagi Amir 😉
So far, users are mainly coming from Twitter.
I started tweeting 4 months ago and have about 130 followers.
Traffic data on Habits Garden is public, if you'd like to see it for yourself: https://plausible.io/habitsgarden.com
I'm struggling with a similar challenge right now... ready for beta users, but, tempted to add another feature that I'm now convinced will be powerful for bringing in customers. I need to launch and learn, right? So easy to give that advice to others... so hard to internalize it yourself.
Does your product or service solve the promise you're making?
If the answer is yes, launch and add that extra feature later when you get XYZ users.
If you want to share a link to your app, I'd be happy to provide feedback ✌️
Sure... it's www.AppGrease.com - a toolkit to help mobile app developers get more installs.
The next feature will likely be a simple landing page / single page website generator for mobile apps ...or... wrap the current "smart install button" in a Wordpress plugin.
Thanks in advance for any feedback!
If customers can sign up and send a link to install their apps by SMS, then launch ;)
Looks nice 👍
Thanks, Shaun.
Just saw you joined IH in 2017, you're one of the earliest! 😃