What's stopping you from starting?
Is there anything stopping you from starting your indie hacking?
Post below any challenges you may have to see if the community can help you out!
Is there anything stopping you from starting your indie hacking?
Post below any challenges you may have to see if the community can help you out!
Energy. After 8hrs on my 9-6 job I don't have energy left.
That or just pure anxiety that I shouldn't continue before validating the market and don't know how to validate the market and bunch of what if's
When I overcome those I stop every time because I don't know how to fully do X or Y in CSS.
Then I stop for a few days and feel like I don't have energy.
Regarding not knowing CSS - One option there would be to find some freelancers on e.g. upwork. It’s not quite the same, I run a small software agency providing software development for startups. Sometimes customers need HTML and CSS which isn’t our speciality. I can often find people for $20/hr, and if you set the contract to stop after a few hours you can get a feel of what they’re capable of, and you haven’t lost much money if they turn out not to be good.
I tend to go for $20/hr in order to attract the best talent, of course there are people for much less if you want.
That's actually an interesting point of view. I didn't want to use freelancers because it could easily get out of hand and not necessarily get what I'm looking for, but if I used only for specific task that I know are possible and limited that could be way more manageable.
For instance, (just an example) instead of "Creating navigation bar" which seems be small enough but might have a bunch of little details (animation, responsiveness, what happens when user types a long title, etc), I can build it myself and just had fix those pesky bugs that often times are time consuming. "Fix hamburger menu animation for Safari iOS 9"
I can still do most of the work but could benefit from using expert help on very specific small areas.
Thank you @adrianmsmith
Yes, that's another approach I know has worked well for a few friends, who have more HTML/CSS talent than me. They do a basic version, and just ask people to fix very specific bugs. You can either make the work fixed price on upwork, or you can talk to the freelancer to get an estimate and set a limit on the project at slightly higher than that number of hours, to make sure there's no abuse or things getting out of hand.
Regarding the lack of energy, I can totally sympathize.
One thing I've started doing to get around this though is to wake up extra early and invest the first couple hours of my day (which are also my most productive) indie hacking at my local coffee shop.
I love coffee, so that helps a ton 😬☕🙂.
I'm able to carry on with the rest of my day more easily knowing that I already knocked out some hours out of the work that is most important and meaningful to me. 🤘🏽
Best of Luck!
Yeah, I tried this and failed miserably, but mostly because I was trying some extreme things like: Wake up at 4am. Didn't last long, also, I end up getting a bit late to work and then getting out (10-7) after a couple of days I halted.
My current strategy is to get to work at 6am :D and try to get out by 3. I've been doing that by a couple of weeks now and it feels good.
Next step is to start working after office hours.. let's say from 4-6 every single day, no matter how little progress I make. I'll report back on my findings :D:D
Thank you @cgbeas
I can tell you what was stopping me until yet. It was lack of commitment.
However, I just decided to go ahead , and cold emailed the hell out of so many women building profitable businesses to ask them if they wanted to be a part of my interview series !
I am glad I did!
https://www.indiehackers.com/product/womenhustlers/-LmQcVAX9kDND1uJBfJ3
Yay!
I have absolutely no idea how to find B2B project ideas that isn't just another todo list.
I know about "scratch your own itch" and all that, but I don't have any problems in my life that a web app could solve.
Try "Sales Safari" by Amy from https://stackingthebricks.com
:)
This looks very interesting. Thanks!
Does it have to be a web app? Have you considered services, or service + product plays, or e-books, or even mobile?
Yes, I’ve considered becoming an independent software consultant, and I’ve considered teaching / writing about development in C#.
The thing is; I don’t know how to get clients, I’ve never taught and I’ve never written much before.
I’m pretty new her :)
There are many ways to get clients, but if you're interested in consulting, here's my recommendation: Start a blog targeting the particular market you'd like to consult with, and write specifically about the problems they have. If you position yourself as an expert in solving those problems (and demonstrate that), the clients will come!
I really like this idea, though it's not new to me. I've been following a guy called Jonathan Stark for a while, and it's one of his shticks.
I just got to find out what middle-sized production companies wants to read online from a software consultant specialized in making production planning software.
Well, you've got some work cut out for you. :D
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Not that I can think of. At least, not a group small enough to not be an “everyone” group. And certainly not a B2B market :-/
Mostly I care about ordinary people that just want to quit the rat race. People like myself, you know.
Honestly, the biggest reason for me are excuses. Sure I have so many reasons why I can’t work on it today, or this weekend. And they are all just that, excuses. It’s why I am glad I found Indie Hackers. I like this supportive community and flow of ideas. I can see reading these excellent forums as another excuse to not be hacking on a project! LOL
Recognition is a first step, and I am getting back to it. Little changes and efforts every day to drive big changes and future habits. Thank you all for being here.
Great question.
For some reasons:
What drives you?
I need to create, I need to use my skills to do something, to not waste my potential, to explore it. In order to do so, challenge myself to learn, do, explain, sell.
I'm struggling to get (the right) traffic to validate the idea. So far, I'm trying: Blogging (for SEO), Twitter, and Google Ads. I know a lot of this just requires patience and continued hard work. But it's tough to keep at it without any feedback loops yet!
You tried LinkedIn? Plenty of companies and recruiter types hang out there.
Not yet, but that's an excellent idea. Thanks!
Lack of an urgent pain to solve. Currently trying to speed up 2-factor authentication with face recognition.
My idea is overwhelming as it has both a hardware and software component to it. I want to know better what path to take, I can't do it all at once... The software component is obviously the cheaper piece of the puzzle but it's the complete package I ultimately want to do. The perfectionist in me wants it all but it makes more sense to break it apart.
I sounds as though you have answered your own question in response. You know what needs to be done. Just remember to focus on the small piece of useful deliverable possible. You’re a perfectionist and have this grand plan, but I can promise you that plan will be pretty different by the time you get to the end of it.
Keep it small and ship often. You got this.
For me combination of things
Nothing – I start so much, too much! My main challenge is consistency. Trying my best at the moment to stay with a single project. :)
Time! Seriously... I need more time... Or clone myself lol....
Would you be able to take 30m every day to invest in a side-project?
I'm trying :)
Cool! How often per week do you get to invest time in a side-project, currently?
Hum... Not sure but I jump on side-projects almost every day, even if is just research...
Trying to find a CTO for an app that serves a great cause!
Say more about the app! And/or add a product page to your IH profile. You might get some bites.
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What's stopping you from trying out the Physics job board idea? Seems like a thing that already exists out there, which means there's already a market!
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Why would a Marketplace business not produce MMR? Just takes too long to get the flywheel of the two-sided market going?
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Awesome! Post on IH when it's done.
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You could try applying for programs in Gooogle for Startups - https://startup.google.com/
Free credits on all the services you would need!
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Gitlab pages is free, if you just need to stand up a marketing website (and not necessarily a web app).
For a full blown web app, there's solid VPS hosting out there for $3.50/month or less.
If you're attempting to prove the market and sell before you build, the free hosting should help get you where you want to go to eventually fund a small VPS.
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To add one more to the list, https://taormina.io is just GitHub pages free static hosting.
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I use mailchimp.com. They just ask you to drop a HTML snippet in.
They had an office like right next door to my favorite wing place in college so I have a little soft spot for them and their derpy/cute knit hats they gave away.
I should mention they have a free plan up to 2000 subscribers. https://mailchimp.com/pricing/
They definitely have competition though. Wouldn't be surprised to see an IH project that competes.
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GCP & AWS offer free tier credit for 12month, It's enough to deploy MVP app and validate idea.
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Of course, yes. I'm hosting https://downless.io backend (Go Lang & Postgres) on AWS EC2. And the front end hosted on netlify.
https://www.print2press.com just finished a year of free AWS credits. It's a Ruby/Sinatra stack on EBS with an RDS backing it. So a tiny server and tiny database.
https://danger.world applied for the Google for Startups linked in the other comments and received an extra $1000 on top of the $300 that is GCP's normal "free tier".