We decided to stop making money.
Recently I built and launched a web platform with a friend of mine. Since day one we have been interested in how can we grow our userbase, but constantly have advisors and friends pulling us aside to find out what our business model is. Where are you going to make money, how are you going to make this profitable.
We were constantly trying to monetize our platform, we were always looking for ways to turn what we had built into a money printing machine. But it is actually doing the worst things for a young platform, we are ignoring our users, providing a second rate experience for those who don't pay, and prioritizing our bottom line over our users, and we were able to get paying customers.
That stops today, from now on all of our features will be available to all users for free, because we strongly believe that what we are building is going to help entrepreneurs around us create good things. It's not free to run our platform, we don't know how long it will take us to make profit, but going forward, our users will the main priority. My word of wisdom to all of you, revenue isn't everything.
Don't let money and all of the business buzz words distract you from the real aspects of your product.
if you're curious: https://befounders.com
I'm sorry but in my opinion that's not word of wisdom. Being an indie hacker is about profit, you are small, independent, you don't need to make millions, but you do need to make money to support yourself and your family. You're not a startup.
Startup is about fast growth, and part of the strategy is to give it away for free and then find a way to charge. But guess what? That growth is held and subsidized by the money raised from VC. Free users will cost you even more time. Maybe you're not charging more, that could be a problem. So my own word of wisdom. Maybe think of charging more or figure out how to get more paying customers.
Being focused on your user's experience will increase the quality of your product. For sure this will have a positive outcome for your business.
Not making money is also a strategy for making more money later... That's how Facebook started. Good luck.
Congratulations on your decision