What's New: Combating loneliness as a founder

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Many founders face loneliness and isolation:

• How can founders combat the loneliness that comes along with indie hacking? Here's how to invest in community and find support in meaningful ways.
• Do you have a double opt-in mailing list? If so, your confirmation rates are probably lower than you think. These tips can help increase them in order to reach more of your audience.
• Founder Janet A. Carr made $20,000 in 6 weeks through her consulting business. Below, she shares her tips on pricing, negotiating, and closing the deal.

Want to share something with over 90,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

😔 Combating Loneliness as a Founder

by Goscha

For me, loneliness is the hardest part of being an indie hacker. It can impact my productivity, and becomes a vicious cycle that typically goes like this:

1. Feeling unproductive.
2. Not wanting to go out.
3. Working more to feel better, but not accomplishing much.
4. Feeling guilt, shame, or burnout.
5. Not wanting to meet other people because of that shame.

For some of us, leaving a company means leaving all that we may have known for a long time. Without the traditional workplace, our lives may suddenly become empty of daily interactions and check-ins. If you can relate to these feelings, keep reading!

Social habits

It's important to add social habits into your weekly routine. You can connect with people who are at different stages:

1. People who are at the same level and career stage as you: These are your main peers. You are rooting for them, and they are rooting for you. You can support each other since you share a lot of similar struggles right now.

2. People who are ahead of you: These people have been through what you are going through. They can guide you and give you helpful resources. You still have to walk your own path, but they can show you options that you might have never considered.

3. People who are not as far as you: You can give back to the community and create a positive environment for newcomers. You know what you struggled with and how you came out on the other side. With that knowledge, you can help others. There is always something you know that somebody else does not. It's better to be a positive beacon in the community than to be a gatekeeper. Don't be afraid that people will outpace you. It might happen, but if you were a positive influence along their way, they will not forget.

A positive cycle

Connecting with people in the same industry can lead to many positive outcomes:

• Meeting with someone.
• Becoming inspired by their work.
• Sharing your work with them.
• Gaining new opportunities through them.
• Having contacts to recommend for others when you are booked out.

When you're in a traditional job, there are many people who have a very similar role and daily life as you do. That automatically builds community within. If things don't go well, you have a common struggle. You want to create this same dynamic with other founders, and be in community with them to avoid feelings of deep isolation.

Finding founders

My favorite way to find other founders is to go to meetups.

The unfortunate thing is that I started freelancing right in the middle of COVID-19, which made the in-person meetups impossible. But, although the internet cannot replace in-person meetings for me personally, it's better than nothing! Specific communities like Indie Hackers, Wannabe Entrepreneur, Weekend Club, and more have made it easy to connect with others.

Other channels are Slack, Discord, and Facebook Groups. But try to avoid the "shopping effect." This is where you collect communities to feel like you are part of them, but truthfully, you are not actually posting or engaging in any of them in a meaningful way.

My advice is to stick with one or two communities for a while and try to create real relationships. You can even jump on face-to-face calls. There is something about immediate communication that can't be replicated by texting. In the beginning, it may feel awkward to talk to a person that you've never talked to before. But do it more, and it will become second nature!

How do you combat loneliness as an indie hacker? Share your tips below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🎮 Inside the battle to save video game history from digital obsolescence.

💻 From profile pictures to virtual identities, here's the next step for NFTs.

🏛 Washington, DC is suing GrubHub over hidden fees and other shady practices.

📺 Streaming wars: The fight to become the top streaming platform.

🛩 Here's why international flights are so expensive right now.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

✅ Improve Your Double Opt-In Confirmation Rates

by Anna Maste

Do you have a double opt-in mailing list? If so, do you have any idea what percentage of your leads actually complete the confirmation step when subscribing to your list? Depending on your email marketing platform, you may have difficulty determining what your number actually is. These tips can help!

Why you should still have a double opt-in list

Single opt-in lists are frequent targets of list bombing. Malicious attackers submit email addresses en masse to as many lists as possible, in hopes of flooding people's inboxes. If you're sending daily emails to large quantities of people who didn't sign up for your newsletter, you're highly likely to get marked as spam, and your deliverability will take a hit. Double opt-in lists can help avoid this.

A double opt-in list can also save you considerable amounts of money. Most ESPs charge per subscriber, regardless of whether that subscriber opens your email. A double opt-in list ensures that your subscribers can find your emails so that you won't be paying for emails that are all getting funneled to spam.

Confirmation rates are probably lower than you think

The average rate varies considerably, but is typically in the range of 50-70%. ConvertKit is one of the few platforms that shares those numbers on a dashboard. Other platforms may allow you to extract it via an API or other means.

Mailchimp stopped recommending double opt-in lists in 2017 because its data showed that double opt-in confirmations on its platform had dropped to 37%. But this won't affect you after implementing the below tips.

Reasons for low opt-in rates

There are many reasons that subscribers don't complete the double opt-in, and most can be attributed to one of the following:

1. The signup is actually a spambot.
2. The email address was incorrectly typed.
3. The subscriber changed their mind.
4. The subscriber didn't realize they had to confirm.
5. The subscriber got distracted and never looked for the confirmation email.
6. The subscriber never found the confirmation email.

Most ESPs will lead you to believe that reasons 1-3 are responsible for most incomplete signups. But the number of spam addresses and bounces in a single opt-in list is almost never as high as the rates we see for confirmation failure in a double opt-in list, so there's big a disconnect there. Reason three may happen very occasionally, but few people are likely to change their minds in the 60 seconds that it takes to confirm a subscription, so this doesn't make much sense either. So, reasons 4-6 are the real culprits that you need to deal with.

Tips for increasing opt-in rates

Here are my top tips for increasing your double opt-in confirmation rates:

1. Make sure people know that they need to confirm.

This seems like a no-brainer, but make absolutely sure that, after you collect their email address, the next text that they see explicitly directs them to go find your confirmation email in their inbox. Headlines like "One more thing..." or "Almost there..." are good starting points.

Send them to a dedicated page after signup that has practically nothing on it except for your logo and text telling them that they need to confirm.

2. Tell leads what to look for.

Inboxes are messy. Very few of us ever get to inbox zero. If you want people to find your confirmation email, tell them exactly what to look for. For example:

Look for an email from (your company email address) with the subject line: Important! Confirm your subscription.

3. Send from a verified domain.

A large number of the leads who don't complete their subscription won't do so because your email was marked as spam. Some ESPs may tell you that you shouldn't send from a verified domain unless you're over a certain threshold of emails per month, but most agree that sending from a verified domain will increase your deliverability.

Check with your ESP for instructions on how to verify your email domain. It will usually involve adding entries to your DNS records, which are hosted where you purchased your domain. Don't be intimidated if you're non-technical! Most ESPs have good guides that will walk you through this.

4. Tell leads to check their spam folder.

Regardless of whether the email comes from your ESP's sending domain, it may still get marked as spam. Remind subscribers on the "Almost there" page to check their spam folder, and remind them to mark you as "not spam" so that future emails will end up in the inbox.

5. Create an open loop.

People like resolution. Find a way to motivate people to finish the opt-in, in order to get a sense of completion. A common way to do this is to promise them a bonus (e-book, case study, etc.) for signing up, but only send it to them once their confirmation is complete.

You can also be creative here! Give the first line of a joke or riddle on the "Almost there" page, and only give them the punchline after they click that "Confirm" button in the email!

6. Send a reminder if you can.

If you have access to the list of people who haven't confirmed, a personal reminder is incredibly effective. If sent from you personally, it has a much higher rate of being received than the automated email sent by your ESP.

More tips for those who are technical

Everyone should be able to implement the above strategies with relative ease, but if you have the programming chops, here are a few other strategies that you can implement to increase confirmation rates:

1. Provide "sniper links" to the find confirmation email.

The large majority of people these days are using a webmail service, with more than 75% falling into the big three: Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook. By inspecting your lead's email address, you can provide them with a link that will open their email service in a new tab, and include a search query to find your exact email.

2. Remind leads what email address they used.

If possible, include the email address that the users entered into the form on the "Almost there" page. This allows them to recognize if they've made an error entering their email.

3. Update with the status of their confirmation.

Most ESPs provide an API that you can query to see the status of a particular email. You can use this to see if an email address bounced. Use AJAX calls to close the open loop by updating the page when confirmation is complete, or if you learn that the confirmation email bounced.

4. Let leads subscribe by inbound mail.

Inspecting the SPF and DKIM checks on the incoming email can be enough to be satisfied that your lead does own the email that they're subscribing from. You can then use the API of your ESP to add them to the list as an already confirmed member. Many mail providers will then automatically add you to the user's contact list.

Subscribe Sense is a quick addition to your marketing stack that will track your unconfirmed leads and implement the above suggestions to ensure that you're getting as many confirmed subscribers as possible.

Will you implement any of these strategies? Let's chat below!

Discuss this story.

👥 10M Users, Zero Funding

by Aytekin Tank

Building a great team:

Hire to ease your bottlenecks.

Signing your first employee is a big step. The right person should be well-rounded and able to handle lots of different tasks. Look for someone who can eliminate the biggest roadblocks in your business. And it has to be someone you actually like, because you’re going to spend a lot of time together. Would you enjoy having lunch with this person? No? It’s probably not going to work out. Choose wisely!

Discuss this story.

☎️ Janet A. Carr's Consulting Sales Call

by Janet A. Carr

Hi indie hackers! I'm Janet A. Carr, and I want to talk about the (un)glamorous world of consulting. A year ago, I had no clients; just a shitty micro-SaaS and a day job to keep me miserable. I was stuck between a dream and a day job, but there was a way out: The service business.

Why consulting?

Now, I know what you're thinking: It's not much better than a job! And you'd be right about that, but hear me out. You can cut your teeth on something that you know the market values, and will pay for. You can learn sales and marketing by selling your services as a freelancer or a consultant.

We all know that we're supposed to do sales and marketing, so why aren't we? I honestly think it's because we're chasing this dream rather than learning the game. You probably already have something very valuable to businesses and prospects: Your skillset.

Fixed rate pricing for the win

The name of the game is value for the money, but you can't create the value if you go hungry to compete on price. So, what are you to do? Fixed rate = No starving, if you hit it out of the park. I did this for a client, and they fired all their hourly contractors because I made them irrelevant. I made $20K in six weeks. If you do what everyone is doing, you're going to get what everyone else has, and judging by Twitter...it's not very much.

In my experience, employers are anti-competitive monsters. Most don't want you working on a side project. If you work in tech, you have leverage because the market is super starved for talent. Want a portfolio of small bets? Write your info products in between consulting gigs, or consult part-time while writing.

How to close the deal

If you're worried about keeping current clients happy and finding new clients, you're either not charging enough, not confident in your ability to close, or making excuses to stay comfortable. So charge more, learn how to close, or get more leads. If you've ever gotten a job after a killer interview, you can do sales. Here is my sales call in a nutshell:

• Build rapport.
• Qualify the lead.
• Don't be afraid to talk about money, but avoid discussing hourly rates.
• Negotiate your fee.
• Move to close.
• Do all of this on the call.

A lot of sales are informed by who you are and what you do. How do you build rapport? Honesty, vulnerability, humility, and laughter. Basically, all of those things that let people know that you're a human.

When to walk away

Don't be afraid to walk away when qualifying the lead.

• Can't do the work for their budget? Walk away.
• Don't know the tech? Walk away.
• Can't learn it fast enough? Walk away.
• Think they want someone to boss around instead of getting results? You know what to do.

A lead should only become a prospect when you know you can crush it, stop it, and profit. A bad customer is a liability. I've rejected otherwise good leads because they wanted someone to hop on their ticket mill. Having time between gigs is what's going to propel your career forward as a founder. Time is precious; don't ever let them take it unless you think there will be a return on it.

There are some people who just don't get it. I'm talking about recruiters. They always want to talk about money, but only ever talk hourly rates. They'll ask about your previous gig, how much you charged for it, and how long it took. They try to work backwards so they can put you in their perfect little employment box.

My suggestion would be to avoid speaking with them at all. Avoid all hourly rates talk, as it puts you in a poor negotiating position. Why? Because now you're selling time again, and they can buy time elsewhere. Your skillset and experience are unique, competitive advantages, and you should be selling the output of the work that you provide. Fixed rate client wants too many meetings? Charge them $500 per hour for meetings. It will make them think twice about wasting your time on their useless All Hands, or whatever.

Negotiation station

How do you negotiate fees so that you don't starve? Ask the prospect for the budget. If it's too little to do the project, move on to the next lead. If you need to do a project for a little less (but still eating), ask for something in return, like a testimonial, before you move to close.

When I move to close, I make sure that there are very distinct next steps with the prospect. I send them a copy of my contract. Never use their contract. If the next step is a meeting to prove your skills, that's fine, but remember to value your time. Let them know that you don't have time for eight rounds of interviews to prove that you can do what you say you can. But, if you used the "asking for the budget" technique from the previous paragraph, closing should be fairly easy.

Icing on the cake

Consulting will expose you to business problems that you want to build solutions for, on top of all the small business problems you need solved to run your own business. Opportunity much?

In the beginning, I spoke to everyone I could. Here are other keys to my success:

• My clientele has high budgets for hiring since I'm a software developer.
• I have a horizontal niche that's hard to find good developers for.
• I have previous experiences that informed my current experiences.

If you think you can't consult because you don't have these advantages, I bet you do have them. You just need to think a little harder, and experiment. If prospects ask why you prefer being a consultant, just tell them that you want the flexibility to build your own startup someday. Literally every single person I've said this to agrees that it's awesome, they really respect it, and they wouldn't go back either.

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Goscha, Priyanka Vazirani, Anna Maste, Aytekin Tank, and Janet A. Carr for contributing posts. —Channing