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What are you working on this month? (May 2019)

Welcome to May I hope the sun is shining where you are!

With every new month comes a new chance to talk about what you're working on and meet other founders. Here's how you can join the discussion:

  1. First, respond to someone else who's commented, just to say hello or leave them some feedback!
  2. Next, leave your own comment describing what you're working on (or aspiring to work on), and your biggest goal for May.

That's it!

Excited to hear from everyone and see what you're working on!

#ask-ih

  1. 5

    I'll start...I've been trying to take some community things off of @csallen's plate.

    From an IH community perspective I recently started organizing AMAs and Office Hours. This month I hope to get my head around all the timezones and get a smooth ball rolling with regular AMA/Office Hours sessions happening. I'd love to hear your ideas and founders you'd like to hear from.

    My job also involves reading nearly all the discussions that are being posted. It is a lot to take in. I hope to continue to connect all the dots, get to know you all a bit better. Every post or comment I make helps me understand better what it is the community wants (or does not want).

    If I can help you, or if you would like to talk about anything, please get in contact.

    1. 2

      You've been doing an amazing job so far Rosie! The AMAs and Office Hours have been extremely valuable already.

    2. 2

      I like your posts, comments and questions - always kind, thought-provoking and welcoming to discussion. Thank you for doing what you do!

      This month my goal is to evaluate more of the ideas I have in my spreadsheet and hopefully narrow it down to one and hit the ground running half way through May.

    3. 2

      Oh, I'm also working on starting a Brighton Indie Hackers Meetup group!

    4. 1

      Yeah the AMAs and Office Hours are amazing and informative :)

    5. 1

      The office hours are great so far. Would love to see Julian Shapiro or another growth marketing expert.

    6. 1

      I've been trying to take some community things off of @csallen's plate.

      I didn't realize so. Good to know @rosiesherry and thanks much for keeping IndieHackers sane :)👍

    7. 1

      Oh I didn't know that IH has someone else helping manage the community with Courtland/Channing!

      1. 5

        I'm still kinda new, I'm a couple months into the 'job'.

        1. 4

          and doing awesome work so far!

  2. 4

    I'm going to work on revamping the user onboarding process for https://remoteleaf.com. For example setting up a easier signup form and payment button on the second page.

    1. 1

      Have you learned anything from your current onboarding process?

      1. 1

        I received feedback from couple of people that it's long form that people wont prefer to fill. So I thought of just asking the email & card details in the first page and the next page is for the preference like categories/country and email frequency. Any feedback?

        1. 1

          Yeah, it does look a bit long. If you split it up, perhaps indicate the progress somewhere? Step 1 of x, for example (?)

          1. 1

            Yeah, that's a good idea. Will experiment with that.

    2. 1

      I'm working on something similar, hope it goes well for you!

    3. 1

      This looks great! hope you have success with the revamp!

  3. 3

    I'm still working on https://www.bookerino.com my startup book club platform. It is currently live and usable, but I'm adding some bits before I properly start pushing it out there properly!

    My biggest goal is to get the user profile and notes section finished...

    1. 1

      You starting with Traction then?

      1. 1

        I am indeed!

        I think it's a great book to get people started with their marketing endeavours. I'll be pushing the site out more and using my marketing strategy based off of the book!

        The next book will be The Art of Gathering as I think it'll be quite a fitting book for what I'm trying to do as well haha!

  4. 3

    Hello Everyone,

    It's good to see that everyone is working on something great. We have been busy working on some fantastic upgrades too. Here's what's going to be new this month at Draftss.com

    • We are celebrating 1 year anniversary at Draftss
    • We will soon share statistics and a brief overview of our journey at Draftss in the past year
    • After getting a great response on Code, we have gone ahead to support more coding extensions
    • We have re-worked on financials and are coming up with a new pricing model
    • A couple of surprises which will have to wait till we officially launch them this month
    1. 1

      I'd love to hear your journey, it's interesting to see how services like Draftss perform.

  5. 3

    PDFShift.io is nearing it's first anniversary on 22nd of this month, and I'm close to have 100 customers too!

    For this month, I plan to work more on ways to increase my visitors and improve my visitors to customers conversion rate. As a dev, it's difficult to understand the specificities of Marketing so it will be challenging :)

    1. 1

      That's great. We are celebrating the completion of 1 year anniversary this month too.

      1. 1

        Awesome :) Congratulation!

  6. 3

    what you're working on (or aspiring to work on)
    Working on https://startuphubs.com and aspiring to launch soon

    and your biggest goal for May.
    Do better than April ;-)

    1. 1

      Haha good goal!

      I'm liking the UI of your site, gives off some Producthunt vibes!

      1. 1

        Thanks @soluxos. I'm keeping it simple yet usable.

  7. 3

    We're releasing our brand new platform in beta. It will be a far superior experience to order and manage design requests. We've worked 8 months on this and I am super stoked to launch it!

    Here it is : https://platform.manypixels.co/order/new

    1. 2

      Nice! Looking forward to using it Robin 👍

    2. 1

      looks awesome, you should do a whitelabel program, it'd fit in w/ teams doing unlimited wordpress support possibly, or devs could provide it as an addon service.

  8. 3

    Yesterday and on the last day of April, I launched the new landing page for Xebel: xebel.co.

    This month my focus will be on these few items:

    • Creating the user flows and mockups for the initial version of the product
    • Evaluating my options for the Xebel tech stack
    • If I find the time, get started building the first few pieces of the platform

    Xebel is a side-project alongside my full-time job. So, for once in my life, I'm going to try and not overcommit myself!

    1. 2

      Signed up to the launch list!

      1. 1

        @rosiesherry -- it looks like you may have not confirmed your signup...

        I'm worried that the confirmation email might be hitting people's spam box! Please tell me that's not the case!

        1. 1

          Hey @merott - I tried signing up with two different emails and didn't see any confirmation email come in :|

          1. 1

            I can see that you've confirmed your @indiehackers.com email now. What other email address did you use?

            Actually, I'll email you.

    2. 2

      Yeah, I love the artwork on the landing page. Nice!

    3. 2

      Looks great! I went ahead and signed up...

    4. 2

      Nice picture on the landing page :)))

  9. 2

    Hi, I just launched the 🚀 Cyberspace Building Crew shop 👩‍🚀
    https://www.cyberspace.builders

    I sell cool embroidered patches and stickers for internet people, and I created patches for designers (UI/UX), developers (front/back), CEO, product owners and so on.

    I have 14 design for now and a security patch 😊 is on his way. I'm sure you'll like some of them (cheap international shipping, discounts this week ;) ).

    I'm not a developer, so making a multilingual (fr/en) ecommerce website was not easy, but I kept it simple and used some designers friendly tools (Kirby + Snipcart + Stripe) and DIY mind to develop it in 1 week.

    The kickstarter campaign launched 1 year ago was very successful (#winning), so now I'm trying to sell the patches and stickers to new people.

    It's totally a side project for now so no idea if it will work, but I'm curious to have your opinion, insights and tips on the project and the best way to reach agencies and non french customers.

    Thank you!

  10. 2

    Launched https://3gratitudes.com out of private beta! Very excited about that.

    If anyone has some time/interest please check it out and let me know what you think!

  11. 2

    I just released Ranked Lists for the GG| mobile app. I'll be working on the feature a bit more for the desktop version and then I think I need to go into a deep planning session for some big things I have coming up next.

  12. 2

    Internet Privacy Simulator Marketing! https://darkplaceguy.itch.io/privasim - will spend this whole month just for marketing!

  13. 2

    Trying to come up with an idea and seeing it through!

  14. 2

    Thanks for this post, Rosie!
    What I'm doing:

    1. Finishing MVP v0.2 of my product that could be described as Software as a Service for creating Software as a Service :) www.caravelstudio.io
    2. Finally, I'm going to do marketing for it.
  15. 2

    Now that the beta platform for Frontend Mentor has been launched my main focus is on gaining user insights/feedback and improving the experience.

    From early feedback on the platform, I also think I've come up with a viable business model. So I'm in the process of building a prototype for user testing to help validate the idea.

    I hope everyone has a great month!

    1. 1

      Great idea for frontend developers! The technology grows fast and you need to stay updated!

      1. 1

        Thanks! Yeah, people of all skill levels are finding the design-led challenges useful which is great. Allows people to play around with any new tools they want to try out.

        1. 1

          I posted it on my slack and a front dev said "thank you, I saw it earlier and can't find it again". So some French front developers heard of your tool 😁

          1. 1

            Ah, awesome! Thanks for sharing it around. Also, great to see that some people are starting to hear about it! 🙂

            1. 2

              Love Frontend Mentor! I mention it a lot to people who ask me how to learn web dev, and used it in a live coding YouTube-- people seemed to really like it. I didn't know about the beta before, but the platform looks great!! Excited to see it grow 😊

              1. 1

                I just checked out some of your YouTube stream and it was awesome! So happy that you're enjoying the challenges and using them to teach others how to build layouts.

                Promoting users who do live coding sessions is something I'm really interested in experimenting with for the platform so it would be great to talk more about this soon.

                1. 1

                  Thanks! Yes, I'm of the mind that the only way to learn web dev is to just build a lot of websites and get that practice in. I definitely want to do more live coding videos, so I'm psyched to see that there are more templates available! :D Happy to chat sometime about collaboration ideas.

                  1. 1

                    Great! I’ll be in touch for sure 👍

    2. 1

      Interesting, would love to see how this goes. At Ministry of Testing we are always looking for ideas on how to teach people testing, I will share your website with them :)

      1. 1

        That's great! Thanks a lot, Rosie. I'll be sure to keep you updated :)

  16. 2

    I just released the first version of 9 GANS: https://9gans.com/

    9 GANS is an Art Gallery created by Artificial Intelligence.

    1. 2

      Congrats, and that's pretty cool!

    2. 2

      This is really cool, what did you build it with? Would love to know a bit more :)

      1. 1

        Thanks! It's pretty simple. I used gastby (static site generator on top of react) for the front end and deployed it using Zeit. Everything is serverless and should be cheap and fast to scale (if it ever comes to that). :)

  17. 2

    I've been focusing almost exclusively on SEO for the past couple of months after postmake.io's launch, and it's slowly starting to show. Got a bunch of posts I'd like to finish writing up along with a couple of side projects, in the hopes of building some links and driving more traffic to the website now that the HN/PH launch traffic has died out.

    1. 2

      The trough after the HN/PH launch is real. Experienced it last year with my project as well and the excitement does give way to "Alright... how do I make this sustainable?". What have you specifically been doing in terms of SEO lately?

      1. 1

        How can we help indie hackers realise that the 'trough after HN/PH' is normal and real? So many people seem to rely on it as a strategy, to only get disheartened afterwards?

        1. 2

          @robfitz just shared this with me -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LNQxT9LvM0&feature=youtu.be&t=136

          A video on Weebly and their traffic surrounding PR hype vs sustainable traffic. Those kind of things do definitely help put things in perspective I think.

        2. 1

          Very good question. Posting about it for sure helps I think, just hearing it from others. Sharing graphs of traffic before, during, and after big PR hypes is probably a good way of bringing across that it is normal. I'll contemplate it a bit and come back with some better ideas if I get them.

    2. 1

      Cool, will keep it in my bookmarks.

  18. 1

    Focusing on driving more traffic to my facebook group leads generation software:

    https://groupleads.net

    to increase sales.

  19. 1

    User acquisition for more feedback on my CRO platform, https://howuku.com.
    Putting more effort into marketing and SEO.

    1. 1

      How is that going for you guys?

      1. 1

        Not much at the moment, need to wrap up some development work before focus 100% on marketing and SEO. Realize we don't have any organic traffic, so got to put in serious work into SEO.

        1. 1

          How many are you in the team? Are you guys only gonna do SEO?

  20. 1

    May is going to be the biggest month of all for me. I am finally launching something!

    I am wrapping up the alpha version of the Yuum App (https://yuum.io/) this weekend. I am literally just doing testing and writing the terms/private policy pages and that is it. Last week, I hired an attorney to draft a couple of the contract templates in the app. I am going to get him to do the others after I launch alpha next week. I have quite a few folks signed up for the beta version. I have been getting swamped with nice messages and emails from people about Yuum. I feel a little pressure to finish now that I have people wanting to pay for the product. My prices are cheaper than my main competitors too, so that helps a little bit. I am about to release the alpha version to my alpha users next week. I am so pumped but nervous. I have been working on this project early October 2018 but came up with the idea last June.

    1. 2

      Did you launch? How is it going?

      1. 1

        @rosiesherry

        Yes! I did indeed launch the alpha version earlier this month! Feels good to have some users in the app. Right now I am finishing up the last core feature of the product (time tracker) and that is it. I have to do some testing and make sure the app is ready for beta too. I've also been toying with the idea of dropping the beta price to 16/mo and then raising it to 25+ after stable release.

  21. 1

    Last year I was working on a e-commerce marketplace product that we grew to 500k in revenue in 6 months. After some cash problems we slowly shutdown, but through the failure we learned a lot. A huge market gap I saw during the journey was that 1) most e-commerce stores sucked at giving a good customer experience ( probably because its so easy to start one ) and 2) There were no real tools on helping you improve your customer experience with e-commerce. When we look at retail, we see companies like Tiffany and Co, Khiels etc give extraordinary unique experiences but it is hard to come online.

    So I came the conclusion that e-commerce customer experience in its current state sucks. That brings me to answering OP question: What are you working on this month:

    A tool for e-commerce stores to improve their customer experience. I have talked to a handful of e-commerce owners but this month I really want to talk to as much people as possible to see what can be done in the space to improve.

    Goals for the month:
    🥶Talk to 20 E-commerce stores owners
    😱Finish building and get a few owners to try the first tool built to improve a stores customer experience:

    https://www.bumpradar.com

    P.S if you are e-commerce store I would love to chat [email protected]

  22. 1

    I'll be launching a new version of my project on PH next week. Hoping to finally get this thing of the ground after so much grinding and hoping it justifies my decision to reject an offer. Let's see if it can help get it in the right direction!

    For those interested in the actual project: https://courseroot.com/

    Have a good time building!

  23. 1

    Having a little beta test for my interest-based meet friends & dating app to get ready for the launch in a month or two!

    I could use some testers! => https://www.indiehackers.com/quarterlifecrisis/post/672792b02c

  24. 1

    Finally going to start building an MVP for a Europe travel site that curates trip itineraries , ranks them, allows users to create their own itineraries and share travel tips with other users.

  25. 1

    I'm working on concept consolidation with the goal of low overhead and high returns.

    1. 1

      Interesting. Would you mind sharing your process on how you're going to do that? This is something I've been struggling with and will spend the weekend ruminating about it.

      1. 1

        I identify a potential competitor and take notes about what they do wrong. I then use those notes to better improve on my own projects.

  26. 1

    I am currently solving the only blocker issue I have:

    • implementing type classes support in Fay compiler to unblock my js-less realtime frontend web framework.
  27. 1

    I'm continuing work on MagnusRush interactive podcasting platform, with a focus of bringing new podcasts into the mix, and working on validating Announcr, a location-based messaging and customer experience solution with a very large potential market.

    1. 1

      Nice - I'm still trying to work out what I'd use MagnusRush for...

      Just checked out Announcr. Sounds like a novel concept!

      Do you have customers waiting for that? I'm not involved in that space, but I was really surprised that stores would want to do what Announcr enables...

      1. 3

        As a podcaster, you'd use Magnus Rush to get user tips, send down interactive surveys, make links in show notes pop up during the show.

        Announcr is something I'm playing with, validating. The value to the business is that it would increase a customer's mood in a novel way and establish a communication channel they could use for promotions and competitive advantage.

  28. 1

    Deploying DjaoDjin's solution in AWS Europe this May. That is a whole new ball game...

    • i18n - because not everyone speaks English there :)
    • Stripe SCA - because regulations around payments are different there.
    • and all the complications dealing with AWS having different versions of their product in different regions.
    1. 1

      Does europe use ACH? what are you using Stripe SCA for?

      1. 1

        We have been asked to support SEPA. Apparently it is bigger than ACH in Europe.
        SCA is related to some new regulations in Europe coming into effect soon. Got to do it.
        I have also seen MasterCard starting to ask vendors to put links to the "unsubscribe" option in recurring charge receipt (This might be also outside in Europe).

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