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Updates & Learnings From the First Week of Being an Indie Hacker

Day 06 of 30 Days of Starting Up

Seven days ago, I started fresh into my new job - indie hacker / startup founder. I took my cofounder Hua’s advice to launch a 30-day project to kick start as a way to keep my workday structured, and at the same time, validate ideas and get traction. It is very helpful. @HuaShu, thank you!

The first update from the past weekend is that I made a website for this #30DaysOfStartingUp project; the URL is https://startup.wentin.net/. The website makes it easy to browse all the past content and find where else it is being posted. Show me some love with your upvotes and favorites!

Project website: 30 Days of Starting Up

The #30DaysOfStartingUp project has been motivating. Every night I feel accomplished going to bed, and every morning I wake up to stats I want to check immediately. The feeling is a familiar one - I was like this when I did passion projects. Stats kidnap me!

The stats are different from what I am used to with passion projects, though! It is much harder to get people’s attention with a startup than with free passion projects. I had project launches with 20,000 visitors on launch day and get on the front page of hacker news. Examples:

Google Analytics for Type Detail in the first week:

https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7c040afb-038d-45bd-b392-8bc96b4ae767_1660x692.png

Google Analytics for CSS Icon in the first week:

https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ec5206b-f20f-4ece-8e76-606d5c57d6c0_1660x689.png

Google Analytics for Font Playground in the first week:

https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14ba5266-0c55-4fc1-b4b5-a037f8f11b12_1660x675.png

Now looking at my startup journey in its first week. I promote mostly my newsletter page, the stats of page visitors:

https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffd4bed42-3232-41f3-a7d3-8e7e1588d377_1162x620.png

My old self would dread seeing this. However, my entrepreneur self looked at it from a different perspective. I learned my first lesson: passion projects are a short game; most of my projects reach their peak on launch day. Startup is a long game. We never want the peak to come.

Instead, I found encouragement in a different set of stats: the open rate is consistently above 40%. As long as I am putting in good work every day, people are coming back to see my content and progress. That is the second lesson I learned: Persistency and consistency work.

https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F77399c22-b419-4771-ba4a-80c987809bee_1460x584.png

I am sure there is still overnight success stories out there for startups, for example, Clubhouse. However, personally, I am not tuned into any clubhouse rooms anymore. What remains are the true fans. Overnight success certainly doesn’t hurt, but it is far from being necessary.

I was originally only planning to write the newsletter daily for 30 days. Now I have a bigger plan after 30 days: I will switch to biweekly and keep it running as long as the startup is open. Stay tuned at https://wentin.substack.com/.

  1. 1

    Congrats! Are you tweeting about your progress?

  2. 1

    NP, wentin! thank you for sharing these stats. Start-up is definitely a long journey, and you are doing great so far 💪

    1. 2

      Thanks @huashu! It definitely needs a fresh mindset! Passion projects are easier to grab people's attention because they are fresh ideas and free, but I was never able to make a substantial income from it. Startup is slower to get noticed, but I am confident that it will pay off one day!

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