What's New: Should founders outsource marketing?

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Outsourcing marketing could provide relief to some founders:

• But what do you sacrifice when outsourcing this essential function? Founders weigh in below.
• Last week, we shared some of the downsides of Building in Public. Below, Dru Riley enters the fray with a strong case in favor of it.
• Founder Nikola Velkovski hit #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt with his Reddit marketing automation tool, Howitzer. Here's how he's working to help marketers acquire users, without ruining the Reddit fun.

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

✌️ Should Founders Outsource Marketing?

by Jasper Schoormans

Ever since reading The 4-hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, I had a goal: (Nearly) passive income. Two years ago, after finishing my PhD, I decided to start working on this. Here's what I've done!

Idea and motivation

As I have a background in image processing, I decided to fix up old maps and sell them as a print on-demand model. A lot of maps can be found in digital archives, but these are usually not directly printable for a variety of reasons: The colors may be off, there may be scratches, many of them have stains, etc.

Because I am notoriously lazy, everything has to be automated. I created Python scripts to download royalty-free maps, used Python scripts and Photoshop automations to clean them up, and added some text with Python as well. I created a simple Shopify website and added the products.

To find my customers, I decided to invest in advertising. After a few months of using Instagram and Facebook advertising, the store grew to $5K+ MRR. Customers were really happy.

At this point, the work shifted from programming and design to marketing. I needed to monitor ads, tweak the details, and maintain a social media presence. This was not passive income! It became very boring for me, and I stopped paying attention. The ad effectiveness started dropping. I turned them off. After a few months, the customers stopped coming. Eventually, I had barely enough sales to cover the Shopify fees. Goodbye, passive income dreams...

Luckily, I met a few marketing guys in my co-working space. They are business students who have just started a social media marketing agency. They agreed to handle all of my social media and marketing for me for a cut of the profits. I gave them carte blanche permission with one caveat: Stop the ads if I start losing too much money!

So far, they have been very eager in coming up with plans, setting up all the accounts, and brainstorming new ideas. It even rekindled a little fire inside me, making me want to develop some new features for the shop.

Will this finally lead to true passive income?

Yes, it will work!

Justin Fransen believes that this plan is totally doable:

You should partner up! Give others a piece of the work that you don’t want to do.

I am a developer with a high interest in marketing. I actually have some partnerships where I handle the media (website and socials), and I get a percentage.

Find a person or party that believes in you and what you’re making, and make them accountable for acquiring your users. Let them take control of your marketing, while you keep your focus on your profession.

Add a SMART Goal to it, and voila: You have a channel to acquire users (the stuff you don’t like having to worry about) on a performance basis. If the person or party doesn’t perform according to the specified SMART Goal, break the partnership and find someone else. Repeat until you get the right match.

Not so sure...

Faptebune is more skeptical about this approach:

I don't think that a marketing agency will employ the needed passion and attention to make the ads work as you expect. You know your business and customers best, and that's probably why you were able make those ads work well.

Advertising on social networks or search engines is hard these days. There are a lot of competitors, and most advertisers don't expect to make money right away. Instead, they invest money in creating a user base or email list that they can use to drive sales. Others are spending money on creating contests or deals to capture those potential customers, instead of sending the traffic directly to the main shop.

That's why you need passion, attention, and thorough knowledge of your product and customers. You've already reached it, which means that your product is good and appeals to potential customers, and that you were creative enough to set up the right ads and campaigns to be able to profit right away.

I think that you should continue to work on ads, with the aim being to decrease the time spent. Try to automate as much as possible. Ad networks offer a lot of automation in their ad serving processes.

What do you think of outsourcing marketing? Share in the comments!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

👓 Meta is creating its own AR glasses.

👀 The NFT of Jack Dorsey's first tweet, purchased for $2.9M, is now worth $6.8K.

📉 VC funding fell in Q1 2022, the first drop in well over a year.

🌳 Crypto tokens give cannabis funds a new way to raise capital.

✨ This giant balloon will take you to the edge of space for $50K.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

💻 Trend Alert: Building in Public

from the Trends.vc newsletter by Dru Riley

Why it matters

Building in public helps you:

• Validate ideas.
• Stay top-of-mind.
• Get fast feedback.
• Build connections with stakeholders.

Problem

You need to break through noise to share your story.

Solution

Make a habit of sharing struggles, wins, milestones, questions, and lessons.

Players

People building in public:

• Dru Riley: Trends.vc creator who shares progress and failures, both in public.
• Aaron Aalto: Designer and artist building Wagmi Table.
• Naya Moss: Building Frauvis, a newsletter, community, and job board.
• Zoe Chew: Shares projects on her personal site.
• Janel Loi: Building Newsletter OS, a framework to launch and run your newsletter.
• EK: Building Appbasics and RubyOnRemote.

Predictions

• Creators will use podcasts as a channel to build in public. KP interviews creators on The Build in Public Podcast. Startups for the Rest of Us is where Rob Walling shares his journey building MicroConf and TinySeed. Arvid Kahl opens up about the process of writing books, making courses, and building PermanentLink on The Bootstrapped Founder. Lunch Pail Daily is where Lola talks about no-code and growing a solo business. Software Social is where Colleen Schnettler and Michele Hansen jam on building Simple File Upload and Geocodio.

• More companies will be built around accountability challenges. Creative Companion Club is for creators. 100 Days of No-Code is for builders. Ship 30 for 30 is for writers.

Opportunities

• Find your tribe by engaging with subcommunities. #fintwit is for finance. #retwit is for real estate.
• Share more than revenue. There are other ways to build in public. You can share lessons (Cameron keeps a thread of mistakes), share goals (Pat Walls added his goal to his Twitter bio), reflect on progress (Noah Bragg shared his one year update on Potion.so), or offer help (Stripe offered to help developers building in public using its API).
• Join a challenge. Social accountability works. 12 startups in 12 months helps you launch a startup every month for 12 months. Ship 30 for 30 helps you get started writing online in 30 days.
• Repurpose content. Dru Riley wrote How I built a paid community to 1K+ members in 10 months as an essay before turning it into a Twitter thread, and sharing the story on podcasts. Nathan Barry turned his iconic blog post into a Twitter thread.

Risks

• Person > Persona: Don't lose yourself while building in public. It's easy to become obsessed with crafting narratives. Building in public is performative, but find balance.
• Copycats: Sharing success and strategies will lead to copycats. Feature parity is possible in SaaS, while creators and communities are categories of one.
• Competitors: Oversharing can allow incumbents to front-run your roadmap. Buffer, one of the most open companies, throws caution to the wind and shares its full roadmap.

Key lessons

• Building in public has benefits beyond reaching customers. You can recruit team members, get fast feedback, meet new friends and mentors, find evangelists, and find investors.
• Early followers become invested in your journey when you involve them by asking for feedback and sharing struggles. See the Endowment Effect.
• Building in public works because transparency is scarce. We value authenticity and vulnerability.

Hot takes

• If building in public feels like a job to you, it won't last. Choose a strategy that you can maintain. Don't like Twitter? No problem. Podcast, or make videos.
• Building in public is performative. Embrace it. Be authentic. Tell honest stories and build connections.

Haters

"What if people judge me?"

This is your ego talking. The bad news is that no one cares about you. The good news is that no one cares about you. We care about ourselves and our problems. Focus on providing value and sharing stories. Fear-Setting can also help you overcome stage fright.

"I don't have any followers. No one's listening."

Don't try to boil the ocean. Join small communities and connect with people one-on-one. Highlight the work of others. Dickie Bush gained early followers by appreciating others.

"Building in Public? This sounds like Bragging in Public."

If you only share wins, this is bragging. And, it's inauthentic. Share both the ups and the downs.

Links

• Who should I talk to about building in public? The tweet behind this report.
• Origins of Building in Public: Twitter tries to figure out where building in public started.
• Building in Public: 20 Examples and a How-To Guide: A comprehensive guide including the types of content to share.

Related reports

• Open Startups: Open dashboards help you continuously share.
• Audience-First Products: Build trust before you build products.
• Personal Brands: Personal brands have higher affinity than business brands.

More reports

Go here to get the Trends Pro report. It contains 200% more insights. You also get access to the entire back catalog and the next 52 Pro Reports.

Subscribe to Trends.vc for more.

👥 10M Users, Zero Funding

by Aytekin Tank

Leadership:

Culture is encoded behavior.

You can’t design company culture. It’s not something you can write down and say, “This is our culture.” Instead, culture is simply a shorthand for how your company functions. For example, junior employees watch how senior team members work, then follow their lead. If you want something done a certain way, set clear standards and expectations, then encode them in daily operations.

Discuss this story.

🥇 Nikola Velkovski Hit #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt

by Nikola Velkovski

Hey everyone! I'm Nikola Velkovski, cofounder and CEO of Howitzer, a Reddit marketing automation tool. Howitzer allows you to find new customers on Reddit, and send them personalized Reddit messages at scale.

A week ago, we won number one Product of the Day on Product Hunt, and later, number two Product of the Week. I wrote a blog post giving a firsthand overview of the whole journey, including an analysis of the Product Hunt launch results.

AMA!

What are your thoughts on how your automation could negatively affect the Reddit experience?

As a Redditor myself, I truly love Reddit. We are completely aware that bots could be a huge problem, and we are working towards addressing it. Here's what we plan to do:

1. Educate people: We are building a base of Reddit marketing experts who will be educating our users on how to target the right people and write non-spammy messages. Howitzer is built for delivering value to the people who ask for it, at scale, not for spamming.
2. Cool down period: A Redditor cannot be messaged through Howitzer more than 2-3 times per month.
3. If a Redditor responds negatively to our message, we'll blacklist him so that he will never receive these messages again.
4. Premium Reddit accounts won't receive messages through Howitzer.
5. Users can't send a link in the first message. They have to get a positive reply first before they can send a link.
6. If our users don't follow Howitzer's guidelines, and are spamming people, we're shutting their account down.

These are some of the things that we have done and are working towards. Please feel free to add some new ideas, as we would love to protect Reddit as much as possible, while providing real value to marketers at the same time!

How do you know when a user is interested?

First, we defined what spam means for us. Spam is sending messages that won't bring value to the target group, messages that are poorly written or scammy, messages that won't benefit or interest the recipient, and conversations that start by sharing external links in the first message.

We decided that, no matter how much someone is paying, we won't allow spamming. This means that the Enterprise customers (people able to send 500+ messages a day) need to explain their use case and their marketing strategy so that we can ensure that they don't plan to spam. We implemented this by adding a form to learn more about the customer and their business during onboarding.

When you receive a reply from the lead you've contacted, we try to calculate if they're interested in your product, and add a label to that conversation. We have a custom AI model that detects this. It's trained on all of the conversations conducted through Howitzer.

Does this put my personal Reddit account at risk?

Reddit's bot detection system has been improved a lot, and sending messages like people may have done previously is pretty much not doable.

We started sending the messages through our own high karma accounts so that the tool won't risk our users' accounts. Right now, if a Reddit account gets suspended, we immediately replace it in the background. Our users continue on as if nothing happened, without risking their own accounts.

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

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

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Jasper Schoormans, Priyanka Vazirani, Dru Riley, Aytekin Tank, and Nikola Velkovski for contributing posts. —Channing