At the beginning of every month indie hackers share their monthly goals with each other. Now let's discuss the challenges we're all facing to reach those goals!
What do you need help with?
What help/advice/service can you offer others?
Please reply to someone else and help them out — especially if you've requested help yourself!
I definitely need motivation and focus. I've got no shortage of ideas to try, I just need to get a lot better at focusing on delivering one at a time, and maintaining the motivation to work on it even though I'm not seeing immediate results.
I know exactly how you feel. Just try doing 30 minutes every day. If you're really feeling like you cant crank out that 30, do something that mentally motivates you. For me, it's fitness. If I work out in the morning, I'm much more likely to have a productive day.
Another thought....maybe not applicable to you...but dont get down thinking that just because you are having trouble staying motivated sometimes means you're any less able of being a successful entrepreneur. I think this sometimes but it's bullshit. Just keep plugging away. 30 minutes. Every day.
Let's do this one day after the other!
Motivation and hacks are cool, but in my experience lack of motivation always comes from disconnecting your effort to your purpose and meaning. If your purpose isn't really clear and you don't see how every action you do gets you there, you don't really have a chance at success, no matter how much grit and willpower you have.
That's a good point!
I also struggled with this. I wrote a blog post about this
TL;DR - Read The One Thing. helped me focus and stay on track by only committing to 1 thing per day and 4 hr max of work
I am new to IH, but I found this excellent article on here about motivation:
https://jamesclear.com/motivation
What helped me most in the article was the fact that most of the time we are waiting for motivation to start. Just start, then motivation will come afterwards.
I've seen James Clear's name around, I'll give that one a read, thanks!
I need help with scoping my dev work so I can finalize my business plan and submit for funding.
If its a web app I could help you scope a bit. If you provide info
You are going for funding without a product? Where are you looking for funding from??
If anyone needs help understanding their analytics in order to grow their business, let me know. I do a free trial to go through all of your analytics and show you the best ways to improve your conversion rates or which traffic you should focus on growing. I've helped everyone from startups to Inc. 500s. Let me know!
@Grendorf Could you take a look at GreensideEnergy.com ? We are setting up our sales funnel now interested in your thoughts.
Sorry for the slow reply! I would be happy to help. If you can give me access to your google analytics data, I'd love to give you a free report.
Just head here and click the sign up for a free report and I'll get you some help! https://insightswebanalytics.com/
Scale to first 1000 users
Of what? I’d love to know
I need to find a business idea for side project. People don't seem to have a problem coming up with ideas, but every idea I come up with is extremely hard to monetize, plays in a market with large barriers of entry or a lot of competition. Maybe I'm just being too critical though?
@joheines I would be happy to help you come up with an idea! I have this unique skill where I can take someone's hobbies and interests and suggest fitting business ideas. As a serial entrepreneur I can assure you that I will run the numbers and think things through thoroughly (I'm a chess player) before I suggest anything.
Answer these five questions and I will get back to you.
I struggle with the same. I come up with many ideas but after some thoughts I see they are hard to monetize and is difficult in general, or unimportant, then I get fustrated.
Need help with growth strategies for https://www.mostrecommendedbooks.com/ :)
You could niche down and make categories such as marketing, business, entertainment, design etc. Make separate pages; "Book recommendations from [insert niche here]-thought leaders" for instance. Then it would be much easier to find and engage with specific niche communities online.
Thanks! I started doing this and am releasing it soon :) Probably headed in the right direction then
Hey man! This concept might actually go quite well with a business idea I was trying to pursue in the past. Let me know if you want to talk more info
Disconnecting from my day job and focusing on my project. It's hard to context switch and code on weekdays after work. I'm taking two days off to write some code and send some emails to potential customers.
Same here, especially when the day job is doing so well. Have you considered having someone help part time on the coding side so you can focus more on attracting new users?
I need someone to proofreads my copy, might hire a freelancer tho...
Hey, I'd be happy to look over some of your work if you'd like! I don't do this professionally, but I am generally pretty good at catching mistakes.
Hi, sorry for the late reply.
Thank you so much for your offer, I'm redesigning my website right now. When I'm done I might ask your help to check my copy :)
No problem! Just post the link here or email me when it's ready!
Building a following/audience and credibility in the industry.
I understand the high-level recipe.
But I'm having trouble being confident in our approach. It kind of feels like I'm wandering around with a blindfold waiting to reach the finish line. If you or someone you know has built a following from nothing, I'd be deeply grateful for your advice. I'd love to reciprocate with product management/development expertise if that'd be helpful. :)
https://www.swyx.io/writing/marketing-yourself/
I got rejected from a potential client and their reasoning affirmed an assumption I had. I'm not sure if I should listen to this one person and pivot to what his suggested solution is, or continue down the path and try to get more feedback before changing anything.
They could be right or they could just not be your customer. Maybe speak with a few more potential clients and, if they reject as well, try to dig into the motivation behind the rejection?
+1. Never do any decision based on only one feedback. Collect more (10) and see if the pattern emerges and your assumption needs to be addressed or not. Most likely you will discover even more. Which is great.
Feedback is good. Shows that they cared enough to say something back. Although it's only 1 feedback the fact that you also felt a certain way is interesting. I'd collect more data and than go with your gut
Man, thanks for posting this @channingallen - I really need help with growing our Beta user waiting list. It literally is a point now where my feet have been put to the fire & it's time to grow our own userbase for our SaaS app versus helping other companies grow theirs (which I still enjoy doing).
A limiting factor is that I'm really limited on marketing budget, I want to be able to grow significantly without ads since the SaaS is still super early stage.
I literally think of marketing in time frames.
Pre: If you have a landing page with an email signup form you can spend a few bucks to validate your idea. Would someone even sign up for this? $100, google ads and a landing page.
Month 1 - 3:
Direct contact, get people who are interested in your type of product by directly messaging them on LinkedIn, or Twitter. After this and the MVP is up, launch on PH and/or ping your content to blogs and interested third parties.
Month 3 - 6:
Reddit and social. Find key people in your market. Create content that gets 'hype'
Month 6 - 12:
You might have MRR now, which means you might consider paid ads. Creative marketing is always the best though.
This is very good advice m
Things are really hard currently with the Corona Virus in my country a 3rd world country...
I am a very good Graphics designer and Virtual Assisitant...
I will be more than willing to work with any one who needs a graphics designer or Virtual Assistant
Here is a sample of my Graphics Design portfolio
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14LvgLdMzRru95yaKCTSHiVPpzd21hWPB/view?usp=sharing
Chrome Web Store Alfa Launch – tips/recommendations >> https://www.indiehackers.com/post/tips-for-launching-extensions-on-chrome-web-store-3c32838621
I would love feedback on a free trivia website I created to let multiple people over Zoom play trivia against each other. Thank you! http://www.titansoftrivia.com
Love this idea. My friends and I thought about maybe doing something like this but ended up just playing more trivia with each other instead..
A few comments:
I need to figure out how to get in contact with people that I like and can support me in this entrepreneurial direction. I've always been kind of antisocial, but that needs to change.
Im in import hell. I'm trying to import goods from another country into the States and having trouble figuring out all the necessary paperwork and fda requirements. About half way there though.
I need help finding a problem to solve so I can come up with a way to monetize a solution! I dont care what kind of problem it is I want to start learning how to develop creative solutions in order to create a business around solving issues.
Finding a side project that I don't stop believing in it (for good reasons) after a few weeks in.
We need help with promoting our #UniteForABite (www.uniteforabite.com) initiative after our start-ups were put on hold due to Covid-19.
If any other startups in NYC are interested in partnering that would be amazing. We're both now effectively unemployed and wanted to keep our momentum going in any way we could!!
I need feedback from job seekers. I currently run a Remote Programming Jobs board with equity as part of the compensation. But I'm realizing how challenging it is to get the actual numbers. Not all jobs provide equity or salary ranges. This makes it difficult to implement filtering options such as who has high or low salary/equity. Which would be useful for those looking for a range.
I would like to know what could be helpful to you when searching for a job. What would help you to apply to a company? Would you be willing to share your coding experiences? Upload resumes?
site is https://www.forapiece.com
Hi everybody,
Together with a colleague we are building a platform to save your content on an organized and clear way, as many of us already bloated Pocket and alike.
The main problem that we are trying to solve is that we didn't need a read-later utility but a toolbox. Medium posts, GitHub repos, etc, related to a given tech or topic.
We are finishing development of the platform itself and starting to plan the launch and design of the landing page.
Any tip on these last 2 steps to improve our chances on reaching people would be greatly appreciated 🙂
Thanks a lot!
I can help with technical topics:
I need help with copywriting/market/design:
I need help in growing my audience,
It went quite quickly in the beginning, but now it's kind of stalled. Just wondering how I go about the next part.
I need to convert people from the Web site to our digital app.
I need help gaining some traffic. My organic search results are dismal. Now days the answer to this always seems to be "throw money at it" and "pay for search results". It's hard when there's very little cash rollin and the big competitors are paying $5 a click.
I want to launch Remote Wise https://wise.pm/products/remote-wise (Online co-working space) but I don't know how I should launch to have enough people to make it interesting for the first users.
How would you kickstart such a community?
The unique aspect of this would be community and being among people like your self. Push these angles
Just tried it. Not very many people on there. I would look for other relevant communities and figure out why people were joining them.
I haven't promoted it yet. The above link is the only public mention of it...
Thanks for the suggestion
We need help with marketing and coming up with a release plan for our multiplayer mobile game! We want to self publish, but this comes with a lot of unknowns.
We specifically want to lock down
Nice man, for
#1 the usual channels like reddit, twitter, ig are great. But you might wanted to pay for some fb ads or twitch sponsers when the game is released or for beta
#2 you want to create a email-series to like 2-4 to get users interested and convert
#3 you might want to invest in something like zendesk and triage tickets into priorities.
Thanks for the tips! We do plan to pay for some fb ads when we release, seems like it can't hurt. It's a word game also and we're hoping a lot of that playerbase is still on fb.
As for the email series...we do have a Mailchimp set up but haven't actually done anything with it yet, we really should just give it a shot though. This week!
Also some system to log feedback and turn them into tasks would really help. Do you think people from a game community might be turned off by a support system like that (seems more corporate)? Or is it possible to log and filter tickets all through email and they won't know?
I think a bunch of games use support ticket system. A user submits a ticket, the ticket Goes into your admin dashboard. Then your team can triage the tickets and reply through the zen desk app. The user will then get a response by email
Okay awesome, we'll look into this more. Sounds like it could help a lot. Thanks!
I'm struggling with getting initial customers (outside of my network) for my product, ImportPress. I know what to do, but I'm having a hard time shifting gears from development to customer acquisition.
If anyone here knows of someone who wants to improve their workflow on getting content from Google Docs into WordPress, please let me know :)
I need help with coming up with an idea.
In what area? Mobile, SaaS?? The problem first approach is recommended. What problem have you had that you can help fix?
lovley response. thanks. but I don't have a problem. I just want to make money.
Maybe you know someone - a friend or family member or coworker - that does have a problem? If you some interest in solving that, then maybe that is a different way opposed to solving your own problem.
Or make a tool that helps people come up with ideas : D
Coming up with problems worth solving that folks will pay money for ;)
there have been many posts regarding ecommerce/dropshipping nowadays, but I can't figure out how to get into it. Everything I've looked at including Shopify, Oberlo, and Amazon, suggests to me that it's a race to the bottom as they all suggest dropshipping cheap knockoffs from China and then doubling or tripling the the margin at the same time competing with those very suppliers on Alibaba and Amazon.
Shopify has a lot of videos on how to find niche products on oberlo to sell, but the lists they publish including their mailing list of "niche" products are exposed to hundreds of thousands of ecommerce sellers. So how exactly is that niche?
I am just confused as to what the endgame is here. Is it like an Uber kind of scenario where everybody puts in crazy amounts of hours trying to set up dropshipping and spending money on marketing the hell out of the same products in the hopes of maybe breaking $1000 a month profit, while the platforms like shopify and suppliers from china rake it in big time?
I basically need help understanding how indie hackers have an advantage here and how we are supposed to benefit from the whole ecommerce scene.
My goals:
How can you help me?
By being one of those 3 devs/designers
Also check sharetribe.com for a quick MVP.
Thanks. I'm okay building myself for now despite the time investment. We want to really have control of the flow and what we'd be offering. So we can be a bit more than just another generic marketplace
I use to run an online marketplace a la fiverr.
If it is similar to what you have in mind, I'd be happy to give you the source code.
Less interested in the source code but would love to hear about your experience and any learnings :)
The niche you pick is very important. A generic developer marketplace will be hard to succeed.
A service marketplace is a lot of people management, both from provider and client side. I suggest you design the experience in a way to reduce problems to manage manually.
For example, what if a freelancer goes away in holidays and the customer gets angry.
Happy to chat more on a video call if you want
Dev here!
Thanks! What's the best way to contact you? There's no private messages on IH, right?
Designer here, happy to help and give feedback.
Thanks! What's the best way to contact you? There's no private messages on IH, right?
Nope, no private messages. But you'll find contact information in the profile pages, circling around profile pictures; like twitter and email. Where you'll find mine too. Both are ok with me.
Happy to help – I'm a fullstack + frontend dev
Thanks! What's the best way to contact you?
It's mad there's no DM! You can get my email address on my personal site: shass.co
Finding a side project
I need help reaching Gumroad creators for the product I just launched: https://gumroad.com/l/css-templates
Knowing what my audience wants and how-to best ask them. I have over 1,200 people on a mailing list and I feel afraid to touch it. I don't want to piss people off.
If they signed up for your list, they must have recognized some kind of value in you and your product. I dont think you would piss them off by reaching out to them. That's why the joined!
Agree! Sure some people will unsubscribe, but that's normal. If they don't want to be on your list, they shouldn't be on your list.
Here are a few suggestions:
I need help to advertise my book (open for pre-orders this Monday at: https://gumroad.com/l/demystifying-oss-licensing). Any thoughts?
I need help finding beta users (digital marketers) to test my product. I want to validate if the new method of promoting online is a success.
Link: https://www.talktroop.com
My goal for this month was to launch the new business: Check!
Now I'm trying to promote it by creating ads on LinkedIn. The results so far are good at about $100 / lead but it's really hard to optimize LinkedIn ads since I need literally hundreds of thousands of impressions to get perhaps a dozen clicks. Planning on testing Google Ads next.
The audience targeting seems to be good (startup owners / CEOs) and I'm getting the kind of leads I hoped I'd get. But I'm really just trying to figure out how I can reach executives and entrepreneurs via other channels. I'm getting about a lead a day. I'd like that number to be closer to 2 - 5 so I can work out the kinks in my process.
Regarding getting more value out of LinkedIn Ads: are you using value videos + lead gen forms on linkedin? If not I'd highly recommend it, seeing good results for myself personally to a similar audience. @maxk42
Here's a video I made a while ago with some advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0S0d0kepU4
Thought it could help 👍
Hey thanks -- great, clear video and definitely something I'll give some thought to.
Now I just need to figure out how to build a value video affordably!
$100/lead is too much in my opinion and I believe before getting in the trap of ads, we should try making the hard work ourselves first. You can do much better with less budget. Read my comment here.
$100 / lead is practically infinitesimally small for a $50,000 product.
We need more early users for Browse AI! Our web automation SaaS will be ready for use in ~3 weeks. We're hoping to have ~20 more people try it out and share their feedback. We'd really appreciate them and offer them a significant discount once we launch the paid plans later.
We're primarily looking for people who'd use our software for one of the following use-cases:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-do-you-grant-read-access-to-gitlab-repos-via-api-4eddc62fdf
I need help with sales, I have a software development company and several e-commerce solutions... every time we have a an interested lead we can't make the sale. Don't know what else to offer, we send brochures, usage videos, mockups, etc... but can't complete the sale.
Have you tried getting a customer on the phone to ask them why?
interesting, can you tell your website url?
Thanks for this post @channingallen!
I could use some help figuring out the tagline of my product. There is another post on IH with some more details:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/which-product-tagline-and-why-6d272223b4
I'd love to get help about a legal contract with an enterprise customer. It looks fairly complex.
More specifics would be helpful.
But if it's boilerplate stuff for like T&C or SaaS contracts, I'd recommend starting wtih Avodocs - https://www.avodocs.com/
It's a great starting point for early stage companies that need a little CYA when dealing with more "sophisticated" clients.
thanks for the avodocs. Looks great.
i love that you do this! just +1'ing this!
I need help figuring out how to allow users to log in to Indie Hackers with my IH mobile app. From what I've read it seems like I'd need Courtland to grant access to the app in his Firebase console but there are a bunch of Hacker News clients that seemed to have figured this out...
I find it hard to find and keep up with resources to learn about topics. I created https://www.collorem.com so that I can keep track of books, websites, videos, and articles around a topic.
It would be nice to grow this into a community of people that contribute resources and ratings to help people quickly find the best resources around a topic. How do I go about building a community around this?
There was a tweet on my timeline today saying that when you start from zero you first need to demonstrate some level of credibility in your field. Maybe you could start by tweeting/blogging/whatever about your expertise in this field of knowledge management?
I think that can help get the ball rolling, but what I'm looking for is the value that the collective brings, more so than just the knowledge of one person. But I think you are right as far as getting started; I will need to choose a topic and begin to grow it from there.
Need ideas for new links.
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Curious on why you want to go blackhat instead of doing it the proper way?
i need to get some quick results for testing. I want to create a directory project and list some companies to gain traffic for the main project. (+ for our main project i already started a whitehat method.)
btw: who downvoted my post 👇😊
If you just need traffic, just create some HTTP requests in a for loop.
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