Usual advice is "It depends". But on WHAT?
Noticed a tweet from @hiten - https://twitter.com/hnshah/status/1173829388086861824
“It depends.”
Most advice should come with that two word disclaimer. But it doesn’t.
If you’re in a position to give someone advice, make sure you understand their situation first.
Asking good questions can be more impactful than any advice you can give.
And I really think it's very important, because a lot of advice in IndieHackers community are one-sided. So question like "What do you think about my page?" are answered like "Here's tip 1, tip 2 and tip 3" but hardly anyone is spending time on the initial GOAL of that page, the tips are from the commenter's perspective, without digging any deeper.
So, for commenters, please spend a little more time before giving advice. And for those asking for advice - please take everything with "it depends" thought, or take time to explain your question a little deeper upfront, so people would have context.
Context is everything. Same landing page or startup idea may be good or bad, depending on context.
I would also say for those that are asking for advice, it's always really helpful to provide as much relevant info as possible. This allows people to give you better advice.
For me, advice comes from a deeply experiential place. I can only give advice as to what worked for me, and how I understand it to have happened. I've noticed this very one-sidedness in my comments and those of others.
An actual conversation, a back-and-forth, would more easily allow for establishing context. Looking at a product, and a product that people think may not be good enough, and THEN trying to figure out the goal of the product (which may not be communicated correctly yet) will certainly lead to unclear results.
I do however think that any comment can start a thought process, and that is often already enough.
Yes, it actually requires time, would be interesting model if someone agreed for PAID hourly consultations provided by other IndieHackers who would spend time digging deeper into your problem. But I guess it's utopian idea.
That's absolutely true! It's one thing that pops in my mind more and more nowadays.
I see people say "BUY GOOGLE ADS". Yes... no ... it depends.
For some services, it is interesting, even important. For other, it just doesn't make sense at all.
And that explains why some say "Buy ADS", and others says "Ads are the devil!". Because of context, because it depends.
Yes, exactly, it's like "what is best marketing channel?" - it would depend on the audience. For my product, for example, the audience is PHP developers, so Twitter and Github are my channels. FB ads or Instagram Stories would be a waste of money.
Google Ads actually work in majority of cases, but then you need to do the math - they always will bring you leads or even customers, but at what cost? Dollar per click? 10 Dollars? Can you afford that? What is the conversion rate? Etc.