Top trends for indie hackers?
Which indie hacker trends are you most interested in or intrigued by? Here's a list of a few candidates:
- paid podcasts
- paid communities
- paid newsletters
- micro SaaS
- no-code
- teaching and courses
- dropshipping
- open/transparent startups
- unlimited design
- influencer marketing
- productized services
- conscious capitalism
- non-VC financing
- A.I. and chat bots
- curated lists
- remote work
- job boards
- Shopify apps
- Wordpress themes/plugins
- paid open source
- mobile apps
- blockchain / crypto
- acquiring companies
- trends (yes, writing about trends is itself a trend)
Comment below, and feel free to name any trends I'm leaving out!
Trending on Indie Hackers
Micro SaaS, definitely! Paid newsletters (e.g. Substack) are a distant second.
Agreed on this one! I've been looking into it much more lately and there seems to be so much opportunity.
What is this micro saas?
From Tyler Tringas’ website:
“A SaaS business targeting a niche market, run by one person or a small team, with small costs, a narrow focus, a small but dedicated user base and no outside funding. Hence, Micro-SaaS.”
I vote for productized services
Services are the fastest way to start generating revenue. The challenge with services is scaling it.
Productized services is the middle ground.
I run a small product development consulting service and I would love to share my problems and my learnings about it.
Micro SaaS & no-code are my own interest. But I'd be interested to know how developers feel about Shopify apps. Some are making good money.
Micro SaaS 🤖
Building a niche job board right now and really wish there was more content out there on how to do it.
Email folks who've done it before. Obsess over the problem you're solving more-so than the solution you're building. Talk to your customers, and research their existing behavior elsewhere. Think about marketing and distribution early, and tailor your product to fit your decisions there. You can't go wrong following the fundamentals.
The lack of a public playbook correlates with what gives you leverage as a founder. Employees have thousands of playbooks at their disposal, thus countless competitors for their roles, thus little negotiation power, thus a low ceiling for compensation and self-determination.
The founder path is an attempt to raise or eliminate your ceiling, in return for having to proactively figure out most of the playbook yourself.
Wise words. Will document my progress and see what happens.
I've scaled a job board to 7 figures... shout if you need advice :)
That would be great - I have a couple of specific qs I'm sure you dealt with :) Have an email I can shoot you a message on?
yep, drop me a message on [email protected]
Micro SaaS, Remote work & paid newsletters
I'm biased because I run Niceboard but I'll go ahead and say job boards.
Paid newsletters and paid communities in general also seem to be booming, which is a great thing for indie content creators.
I'll be doing a challenge to build some micro SaaS and I'll be documeting the whole process
you got a signup yet?
Sorry, Could you elabore more ?
you said you would be documenting your process, i was wondering if there was somewhere i could signup to be notified for when it's ready.
it's always interesting to see others build things
Yes, I'm planning to document my process in Instagram and in my blog. Thank you
What about digital art, motion design, fonts creation, small VR piece of art and online comics ?
That could be a great USP if binded with a product or that could become a project itself.
If one of those categories was in a sub-category of your list, could we create a main one under « digital art » ? 😊
what do you like about digital art? do you see any trends these days?
NFTs around digital art are getting huge!
I love art in general and would take hours to speak about, but comments area is not the best place to do it 😊
Like a lot of domain, there are more and more digital artists who sells creations and build new ways to sustain themselves online.
But didn’t see a lot of them here. So, to answer your question, no trend these days.
My comment was more to raise attention around this topic to see more digital art on IH 😁
I really like the idea of Micro SaaS'
Micro SaaS, No-Code, and Unlimited Design are among my favorites! 🥰
no code and productized services
I like learning about micro SaaS, although I am working on an info product. I think info products are underrated, by a lot. Courses too. Multi-million dollar empires have been built on courses and they are just a step up from an info product yet I rarely see them talked about.
Blockchain
Added!
Paid communities
Paid newsletters (and a paid Slack community) - because they don't require any coding.
Personally, Paid Newsletters/Communities/Podcasts. Has information overload or rampant misinformation contributed to the users' desire of higher quality content for which they are willing to pay?
Dropshipping!!
@dru_riley, some ideas for a Trends report ;)
@csallen Can I recommend more? Here are two I'd like to see more about:
Paid newsletters, micro SaaS, no-code, teaching and courses, productized services, curated lists, remote work...
These all sound very trendy to me, but I would single out no code and Micro-Saas.
micro SaaS & apps
micro SaaS, no-code, open/transparent startups, paid communities, trends (yes, writing about trends is itself a trend)
What is "unlimited design"? Is this the productized service of graphic designers offering unlimited designs for a flat fee per time period?
micros saas, paid open source, productized services, dropshipping, teaching and courses.
No code, productized services and curated lists like this
Virtual bookings for healthcare.
Paid Newsletter, acquiring companies, Blockchain / DeFi
Micro-SaaS, paid newsletters, paid private communities
Curated lists? What is that?
Perhaps I should just call it curation. It's basically doing research on behalf of your readers/listeners/users, cutting out the cruft, and giving them what's good. I talk about it on the podcast often. Examples include Nomad List (what places are good to visit as a digital nomad?), Indie Hackers in the early days (what startup stories should I read?), Key Values by Lynne Tye, Site Builder Report by Steve Benjamins, Startup Stash by Bram Kanstein, etc.
Nice one. Understood.
Mobile Apps - I’m about 2 years in and would love to connect with any fellow app developers on here.
Dude. Acquisition entrepreneurship needs to be added. Big time.
Paid newsletters and information products such as ebooks and courses.
Content explosion trend 😵
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