Who's on the struggle bus? Tell IH about your latest obstacles and f-ups
It’s humpday, folks. Seems like a good day for a thread about our struggles! Comment if you hit a roadblock, threw in the towel, screwed the pooch, or generally shat the bed recently. Let us know what happened and what you did about it.
We’re all in the weeds from time to time — it’s just part of being an indie hacker. So let’s normalize it.
Welcome to the struggle bus 😱
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The T button on my keyboard only works about 50% of the time, so that’s fun 😡I try to catch all the typos but let's be real, I've probably missed most of them.
I don't want to buy a new computer yet so T's are dead to me now. I might need to invest in a thesaurus.
😂 That's rough. On the bright side, I don't see any typos in your comment.
Product idea: An online thesaurus where you exclude words with specific letters.
Million dollar idea right there.
With presets, like HEX numbers, a-z but with foreign languages with umlauts, etc.
Personally, I’m struggling with motivation. After I do the work that pays the bills, I just don’t have it in me to build a product. I honestly don’t know how you side-hustlers do it. There just isn’t enough time in the day to work, build, and do the things I need to do to stay sane.
I never mastered it either.
Even when I was just working part-time, my product didn't move forward as much as when I finally did it full-time.
I don't think it's about the hours you work on it per se -- but your mind/mental headspace needs to be 100% dedicated to it for it to work IMO.
You can't work in the day on your day job and still expect to have the same focus/motivation for your side hustle in the evening.
The context-switching costs are too high.
For Zlappo, I lucked out because I was laid off during Covid lockdown in 2020, and I used the federal unemployment supplement to bootstrap it while I worked full-time on it.
By the time the federal unemployment ran out, I already made more from Zlappo than my previous job.
I'm based in Los Angeles where the COL is really high, so in that regard I consider myself blessed, because I know if I can survive here financially off my startup, I can survive anywhere in the world.
That's awesome, congrats!
Your username includes midwest, so I'll just throw this out there: I grew up in MI, Jan/Feb is ROUGH. Dark leaving for work, dark coming home, freezing cold... I bet there's plenty of side-hustlers that aren't getting much done right now. [edit: typo]
That's a really good point, thank you. I actually do know a few people around here who say they have seasonal affective disorder. I wouldn't say that I have it, but it definitely takes a lot out of a guy when you start and end work in the dark.
That said, I don't really want to work in the summer either — gotta get outside and enjoy the sunshine while I can! 😂
Yeah, I feel like there's alot of undiagnosed/self-diagnoised SAD going on. Hang in there! Hope you find the energy to get a spark going. Whatever it takes, just don't quit while there are these external factors throwing your game off.
I appreciate the support, thank you! I'm not throwing in the towel yet 😅
I've been there for sure. Well-being (and your sanity) is what's most important IMO.
Been there, and will be there again! I find it helps to wake up earlier (and go to bed earlier), but that's just me. I'm more productive in the morning.
I can back this up. I've been getting up at 5:30 every weekday for a while now and it's been huge for me.
Easier said than done though. I've tried this a number of times in the past and if I break the streak, it's really hard to get back into it. So that's my motivation — I can't break the streak because I don't want to go through the struggle of starting again.
I like the "streak" idea. That helps me wake up early as-well.
I'll add: writing out your tasks the night before is huge. If not, then half-asleep you will think "Meh I don't have that much to do today I'll sleep another half an hour" and you'll wake up 3 hours later.
That combo is powerful though. You'll get a lot more done with coffee in the mornings. Plus, you feel accomplished your whole day and after the day job you can actually kick the shoes off and relax. Just like Thanos after using those infinity stones.
Haha, exactly. Except try not to wipe out half of the universe while you're at it.
I recently sent an important email that said, "so, I'm going to get right toot the point." The good news is, I actually find this hilarious enough to laugh about randomly throughout the day. So it was TOOTally worth it. 😂 ✨
🤣 "Tootally worth it" 😂
Not a mess up exactly. But recently had to shutdown a community I was working on. Described here Shutting down my startup
Sorry to hear that! From what I see on your tweet, you lost a co-founder, burned out, and couldn't find a way to monetize it. That's definitely enough discourage anyone! What next? Still up for the challenge of another project?
currently trying to negotiate for a URL I want which matches a name I like for my app. the current owners are being super unresponsive though.
considering paying for a serivce like GoDaddy's outreach program, where they do the negotation for you, but not sure what else theyd actually be able to do which I havent tried.
as it stands, looks like I might have to go back to the naming drawing board, as I REALLY want that sweet sweet .com domain
Damn! And all because they're being unresponsive, that sucks. Have they responded at all or has it been radio silence?
The perfect domain is a beautiful and rare beast. Rooting for ya.
amazingly, they responded to my cold call for the first time right after I posted this! the person was super friendly and said they would get back to me next week - fingers crossed
Yay on a response! Cheering for ya too!
Nice, good luck!
I've been 5 years working on a car rental aggregator that compares local car rental companies. This is a side project that helped me to stay up to date with technology, since I don't get to develop anymore on my daily job (I'm a PM).
2021 was actually my best year to date, however I'm struggling with what I expected the least... I want to add more car rental suppliers to the platform, but in general they are not interested. In other words, I want to bring them revenue, and they don't want!
Also seo and customer reach was always an issue, however i finally started to be on front page on Google and that really started to show.
This is one of the WORST years to ask car rental suppliers (i.e.Hertz, Avis, etc) to join your platform - they don't have a demand issue - they have a supply issue. Due to global shortages of various components and slowdown in car manufacturing coupled with the sell off existing fleets during the initial phase of the pandemic, the demand outstrips supply in many markets.
Also, most bookings already go through aggregators like Travelocity, Kayak (or directly on their own site). There is no incentive for them to join any non-major booking platform.
If there was opportunity, it would be to find undeserved markets and niches -maybe international (i.e. emerging markets etc)
Congrats on this but you've built a comparison site in a highly competitive arena. Companies don't like paying fees to comparison sites unless they have to. By partnering they could shoot themselves in the foot by supporting a new platform that they become dependent on.
Unless they think they are missing out of course.
Guys @Ghidra @honestseo @IndieJames
You are spot on on your comments.
Just to elaborate a bit more, the aggregator compares local car rental companies in the Azores. This is niche as I'm comparing companies no one else does. A good chunk of them doesn't even have a search widget in their own website, instead they just have a static website.
As you said it's a very tough market with no recurring clients, i.e. people go once to the Azores and that's it, no need to comeback to my website. Each customer I have is a brand new customer and the only way I can get him is through SEO.
I had a chance to integrate with a bigger engine, but my solution is not scalable either. My suppliers don't keep the stock of cars in my platform, so I only get to know a car is sold out AFTER a customer does a reservation request for a sold out car. The issue is that I need to MANUALLY intervene and try to get an alternative from a different supplier.
Essentially:
Btw, today just got a new supplier interested to be onboard of our platform. That's directly tied to the fact that the market is starting slow this year, so car rental companies get to think twice about joining my plat.
Thank you guys!
Bummer! How many customers do you currently have? Any idea how you'll convince them that it's in their best interest? Maybe case studies or testimonials from current customers? Or if you have any big names as customers, perhaps you could add their logos to your site (if they allow it)?
It sounds to me that what you need most is social proof...
Struggling with tweeting into the void.
I know it takes time, engaging with other accounts, to build any kind of audience on Twitter, but it’s still hard to spend so much time there and… crickets!
Hah, I feel your pain on that. I started using Twitter earlier this year but didn't keep it up. Don't stop like I did — having an audience can be a huge advantage. You got this!
I wrote MVP in Java+Thymeleaf using 3-yr old programming knowledge and I wanted to do Google SSO - after 5h of research I realized that I will have to rewrite whole app from scratch in order to make it :D
https://www.indiehackers.com/product/goodlancers
So I have still only mail Sign In :) Until time when I will start to rewrite front into Next.js (after 50 sign ups)
ooooooh nooooo. that sucks, sorry to hear it! good luck 🚀
I was forced to join the Greek army (mandatory) in the peak of our company PriceWell having 4 digit revenue growth.
I feel discouraged, but I am trying to keep a positive mind and steal some time every day to work on it.
Hopefully until the end of the service I will not be left that much behind 🙏🏽
Oh man, that'd be hard. Are you able to get by with the time that you can steal? Do you have a cofounder helping out?
I do yes. Let’s hope that nothing clunky will happen during the training period, and after I will be joining the data team and help out during my laptop time
With limited energy because of being sick deciding what I can do in this space if anything.
Yeah, not having enough time in the day is hard 😅 I hope your healing is swift and you feel better soon!
As an extrovert, living the WFH solopreneur life has been a lot harder than expected (I also live alone). My local startup community isn't the greatest and it's been difficult to find people IRL to interact with that are fellow IH peeps.
It's definitely been bumming me out the last few weeks and making me lean too much into work since work makes me smile. :/
Gonna try some meetup groups in hopes I can find some people to co-work with!
I live in a small town and I work from home so I can definitely relate. The indie hacker lifestyle can definitely get lonely.
Love that your work makes you smile — that's kinda the point, right?
That's definitely the point!
Lonely as it may be now, you couldn't pay me enough to go back to a 9-5
🙌 Love to hear that 😃
I'm really having a hard time trying to focus on one thing. I want to do so many things at once! For me, it's a habit I developed from a young age, which has been difficult to break.
Ah yes, "shiny object syndrome" — you're not alone, I think a lot of indie hackers struggle with that!
Is it too many good project ideas? Or too many important tasks? If the former, maybe this post will help. If the latter, maybe this one.
Regardless, good luck!
Actually, it's too many important tasks! Thanks for the post recommendation.
I’m about two weeks late on a deadline for my freelance gig. Luckily, my client is being cool about it, but I still feel bad. Plus, it’s a fixed bid so I’m just working for free til I get this done, ugh.
Scope creep?
Nope, just good old-fashioned bad estimating on my end.
Cushion, people! Add cushion to your freelancing timelines!
I am in a similar boat on a project and boy do I feel ya Lucy.
Big yay the client is being gracious about it!
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A year? 😱 I'd freak! And yeah, that was some rough feedback! Must have been hard to read.
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