To become an IH i have to become a freelancer first

Starting my new journey

In my last article “5 years of failed indie hacking” I wrote about my failures in the last 5 years and the goals I want to achieve.

As of the time I am writing this, I have 17 twitter followers and 4 newsletter subscribers and a few people that were messaging me that i inspired them to do the same. Not much but it means a lot to me.

Building in public, being honest about your current situation and the things you try is already much more fulfilling than coding alone on a project.

My first hurdle

My first hurdle is to make my first $ on the internet. I failed at this for 5 years already and i can wait a bit longer till i achieve this goal but i want to make it happen in the short term.

After sharing my story online, I got advice from @jdnoc, a person I hold in high regard.

I would never ever have dared to ask @jdnoc for advice. The lesson here is that if you expose yourself by building in public, people will come and help you, you don't have to be alone.

So to become a successful indie hacker i will try to become a freelancer first.

Building your own products is already hard enough, to ease into it I want to start with freelancing and learn more about the world clients live in and what issues they have.

A niche that I want to explore is Shopify, shopify SEO to be exact. I am no SEO expert by any means. I barely know the basics of SEO. In the past I would have put countless hours into learning, reading articles and watching youtube videos about that topic.

But I don't want to be just a consumer anymore, I want to take a more active approach.

The active approach

To do this I went to a few related Facebook groups and offered to review their shopify site for free and send them a pdf report with my suggested improvements. So far I sent out five reports and I have three more in the queue.

The active approach has multiple benefits:

• I will learn more about the topic.
• I get a feeling if shopify store owners are even interested in this.
• I will get a feeling if I even like to work on SEO.
• I engage with the community and learn more about them.

My new workflow

In my last post it talked about my “very suboptimal workflow”:

Having an idea -> work hard on it for a month -> seeing no results -> stopping for a few months.

I want my new workflow to look more like that:

Choose a topic -> engage -> learn -> practice -> share -> iterate

My focus from now on is on the process and not on the immediate results.
Learning and sharing are my priorities, if i have success on the way that would be a nice byproduct.

This may sound counterintuitive but right now it makes sense to me.

What kind of products can I offer in that niche?

There are three categories of services that can be done:

• Done for them: I offer to do SEO for them.
• Done with them: I consult them on how to improve their SEO
• Done by them: I teach them how to do it by themselves. (ebook or course)

For now I follow the “Done with them” approach and advise them on how to improve their store.

What if it fails?
What if there is no interest?

By sharing my journey with you I am learning to love the process and not the results. It does not matter if it fails, at least I have learnings to share. It's just another data point. The results will come eventually.

Building in public

Building and sharing my journey in public has been really great so far and I believe is the best thing to keep one accountable. Some of you told me that they have the same issues as me and that my writing really spoke to them, that's incredible. I am by no means a good writer, I am more like the opposite of a good writer. But reaching and inspiring people is an awesome feeling.

TLDR:

• To become an indie hacker become a freelance first
• engage -> learn -> practice -> share -> iterate
• It does not matter if it fails, at least you have learnings to share
• Building in public is awesome and i believe every creator should try it out

Follow my journey

I share my story and the insights i learn along the way.

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Or connect with me on twitter: https://twitter.com/TheStormDev