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27 Comments

Which growth channel has worked best for you?

As bootstrappers we juggle between multiple platforms to get early users for our platform and to gain traction. Which channel gave you the best returns so far

I have been working on growing https://www.vadoo.tv/ over the past few months and found Twitter to be a great channel so far

Which growth channel is best for bootstrappers building in public ?
  1. Twitter
  2. Indiehackers
  3. Produchunt
Vote
  1. 5

    Missing SEO + Reddit here

    1. 4

      I believe SEO takes a lot of time to kick in and was the reason I haven't kept it in

      Mind sharing what subreddits have you used for growth/marketing ?

      1. 4

        Sure. My audience is early stage founders and indie hackers, here are the subreddits I've collected for those niches

    2. 2

      I would support that SEO is missing!
      SEO is a slow instrument but with long-lasting result.

  2. 4

    Twitter for daily/weekly updates

    IH for longer form posts

    PH for launches

    1. 1

      Precisely. There's also a lot of potential on Reddit, but I would put it somewhere next to IH.

    2. 1

      Great summary.

      For some reason, I prefer using IH to comment on people's posts than using Twitter to comment on other people's tweets.

      So IH to interact with what other people are putting out there and Twitter for posting your own stuff and interacting on your own stuff.

      If any of that makes sense 😅

  3. 2

    It must be Twitter! I suspect you can also use IH as a platform to connect with more indie hackers and eventually onboard them on your Twitter journey lol.

    1. 1

      How do you onboard your indiehacker audience to twitter ?

      1. 1

        Just add your Twitter link to your profile. For some reason people seem to click on profiles a lot on here (anecdotal experience of course)

        1. 1

          Makes sense, thanks for sharing

  4. 2

    Found twitter to be more engaging to get reach

    1. 1

      What tips you would give for someone starting out on twitter ?

      1. 3

        Be consistent - the Twitter algo rewards this the most.
        Be prepared to put in work and time to build a decent following - it's not going to be easy.
        Have fun and be authentic - try to be the kind of person you would like to follow yourself.

        1. 2

          Great points, thanks for sharing

  5. 1

    For BotMeNot I'm currently getting the best results from IndieHackers.

    Also, I've been getting more active on Reddit recently (trying to give the platform sort of a "second chance").

    And I'm aware that I'll definitely have to start being more active on Twitter.

    1. 1

      What subreddits do you feel are the right place to target for bootstrappers/indiehackers

      1. 1

        I'm currently mostly active on r/startups, r/saas, some subs for beta users and even r/blogging, because I've recently launched a blog page for BMN.

        1. 1

          Thanks for sharing the info

  6. 1

    SEO has been the highest ROI for me!

    1. 1

      Are you using Wordpress for blog? Can you share some SEO tips that you use?

      1. 1

        Using Ghost. I'll post something in the coming days. Stay tuned!

        1. 1

          The Patrick Swayze film?

    2. 1

      Mind sharing how much time did it take before SEO started giving results ?

      1. 3

        1-2 months - it's a matter of creating content that answers the right questions

        but the best part is its evergreen and keeps people coming back.

  7. 1

    I have got mixed results from all these platforms

    Overall I felt Indiehackers to be friendly to someone starting out

    Twitter is great if someone already has good following or if someone is consistent and shared data on a regular basis

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