IndieDoers

Hey everyone,

I've been on a rollercoaster of a journey for the past year, bootstrapping my startup. Everyone says marketplaces are the toughest businesses to crack but also the most rewarding if they work. After building a marketplace from scratch twice (yep, you read that right, I'll get back to that), I can tell you firsthand – those people aren't lying.

Today, I'm launching the rebuilt version of Indiedoers on Product Hunt, and your support would mean the world to me:

https://www.producthunt.com/products/indiedoers

The Frustration That Sparked an Idea

Like many of you, I've had that entrepreneurial itch – the dream of building a marketplace or a social media platform. Back when I was publishing mobile games on app stores, I was also selling them as templates on those big template marketplaces. That's where my frustration began to build. (I wrote about this in more detail here if you're curious).

Indiedoers is Born... and Then Reborn

I decided enough was enough. I wanted to build a fair marketplace where products and services could live side-by-side, without sellers getting gouged. That's how the hybrid marketplace Indiedoers was born.

Six months of hustle later, I launched... and reality hit hard. Marketplaces aren't a one-person show. I needed a team and money to make it work. But I didn't want to go the VC funding route – I wanted to stay bootstrapped.

Pivots, Lessons, and a New Direction

In the meantime, I learned a ton about marketplaces. I saw why niche-focused marketplaces were thriving, while the big horizontal ones were struggling. I also discovered the world of productized services – the idea of offering unlimited or recurring tasks for a set monthly fee.

Two big mistakes became clear: an attempt to cater to both products and services, and targeting every category imaginable instead of focusing solely on mobile games. It was time for a pivot. My focus narrowed to one category, and I embraced the productized service business model. The tricky part was figuring out which services had the highest retention. My expertise was in mobile app games, but development services didn't fit well with subscriptions.

So, I turned to Upwork for insights. It turned out that video-related services had the highest hourly rates and the most recurring jobs. Customers needed video experts for the long haul, unlike design or development, which were often one-off projects.

Indiedoers 2.0: A Video Services Subscription Marketplace

With a heavy heart, I deleted six months of work and rebuilt Indiedoers from the ground up. This time, it was all about video services subscriptions. Video experts could offer their skills on a recurring basis, and customers could get the help they needed without breaking the bank.

After another six months of building and promoting, we're finally seeing traction. We have customers who love the platform and keep coming back. We're even profitable, with an average order value of $500+ and a 70% free trial conversion rate.

But here's where I need your help. Launching on Product Hunt is a big deal for us. Your support – whether it's an upvote, a comment, or just sharing the news – would make a huge difference.

Thank You!

I'm incredibly grateful for this community and for anyone who takes the time to check out Indiedoers. And if you have any thoughts or feedback, I'd love to hear them!

P.S. One last time, here's that Product Hunt link: https://www.producthunt.com/products/indiedoers

I wanted to share my experience with creating and selling mobile game templates on a popular online marketplace. At first, it was going great - I was able to sell my templates to buyers all over the world. However, I soon ran into a few problems.

Some of my buyers wanted me to do customizations or needed support, but the only place for them to reach me was through the marketplace's comment section. The marketplace had strict policies against sharing any contact details with buyers, which made it a bit frustrating. And to make matters worse, if buyers had a problem, they had to go through the marketplace's support system to reach me.

As a seller, if you don't obey the rules, they will ban your account without second thought or reconsideration. And if a customer wanted some customizations, they had to go through the marketplace and they would take another 50% cut for the commission which I was going to do for them. It felt like the marketplace was looting sellers by charging such high commissions.

That's when I decided to create my own portfolio website to list all my templates. I priced my templates at a reasonable price, which was lower than the prices listed on the marketplace. However, I received a message from the marketplace warning me that I couldn't sell my templates at different prices on other platforms or on my own website.

That was the final straw for me and I decided to delist all my assets from the marketplace and create my own platform to solve these issues. I was pretty sure that other creators were facing the same issue.

My vision for this platform was to create a place where creators can sell their assets and related services, such as after-sale support or customizations, all in one place, and with most of the earnings going to the creators.

Buyers always seek for their project work to be done by experts. So, if they can get their work done from the creator of the template itself, they will always get top-notch work in their domain. They don't need to go to Fiverr or Upwork to find freelancers and interview them and hand over the task.

I invested a major chunk of my savings in creating this platform by hiring a freelancer, but unfortunately, it turned out to be a disaster. I was not satisfied with the template, and I thought it would never work.

But, in late 2021, I was introduced to the no-code tool Bubble, and it opened a possibility for me to create this platform by myself. I recently got married and didn't find time to try bubble, but in July, I moved to London and decided to give it a try.

Learning and watching bubble courses didn't work for me, as I found myself getting bored and feeling sleepy. But, I took a leap of faith and dove into the bubble editor to start building my platform. It took me about 5-6 months to complete, but I finally succeeded in creating the platform that I had always envisioned.

I'm proud to introduce "Indiedoer's", a platform for creators to sell their assets and related services, all in one place, and with most of the earnings going to the creators. I hope that this platform will help creators maximize their earning potential and give them the recognition they deserve.