Indie Opportunities

I finally fixed most bugs that popped up after the move to a new domain, hosting service, and design.
There were tons of unexpected problems:
1.) Ghost introduced a bug in a recent release that made complementary premium plans impossible. This meant that I was not able to import members with a premium subscription and hence these users couldn’t log in.
2.) Namecheap can’t handle proper redirects which I didn’t immediately realize. Hence the site appeared down for a few days when people visited the old domain. I fixed this problem by using Cloudflare.
3.) I previously used Integromat to sync Gumroad and Ghost. When someone purchases Indie Opportunities Pro on Gumroad, their Ghost account is either upgraded or a new one is created. Unfortunately, Integromat only supports Ghost v3 so I had to switch to Zapier.
But now with these issues out of the way I can finally start promoting the site again. This is what I will focus on during the next week.

Unfortunately, Rob and Sam decided to exit the project as another project they're working on is taking off and they need more time to focus on it.

This means I'll have to rethink the project's strategy because I probably won't be able to create enough content myself. I'm also not sure if I should look for new partners or pivot.

During the next few weeks I'll talk to a few people and then make a decision.

While talking to @alexhughsam last week I realized that we desperately need to work on how we position http://Opportunities.so

I’m convinced that we have a unique and strong value proposition, but we're just not doing a good job at articulating it.

I came up with the slogan "Ideas are cheap, Opportunities are invaluable" in the middle of the night without any deeper thought.

Needless to say it's not very convincing.

It took me more than 10 minutes to explain to Alex what we're offering.

A slogan like this is something that Nike or Mastercard might be able to pull off.

But we're not building a brand. We're running a direct response business and our copy should reflect that.

It's not just the headline. Just look at the screenshot above.

Who are we targeting and how we can help them? It's all very vague.

Also the analogy I came up with on launch day "our approach is more like abstract paintings" is, uhm, opaque.

So to improve our positioning, I decided to use April Dunford's canvas.

(Screenshot from her book Obviously Awesome.)

Product name: http://Opportunities.so

One-line description: Business opportunities and market research for entrepreneurs.

Market category: research-as-a-service for entrepreneurs

Competitive alternatives: http://trends.co, http://brainstorms.io, /r/business_ideas, http://kern.al, http://nugget.one, validated ideas

Unique attributes: access to datasets, bundle of a wide range of topics and formats, focus on $1k-10k/mo opportunities

Value:

We enable customers to:

• discover ecosystems and business models they never thought of before,
• and give them what they need to carry out the research that's necessary to find realistic opportunities that are actually a good fit for them (product-founder-fit).

Who cares a lot:

• people like me,
• indie hackers,
• everyone pursuing a "small bets" strategy,
• solopreneurs,
• software developers,
• technical entrepreneurs,
• makers and creators.

(We're not selling billion dollar dreams.)

That exercise was quite productive! First thing I changed was the headline on http://Opportunities.so

Probably I'll let these ideas marinate in my head for a few more days and then start rewriting our copy.

If you have any suggestions, let me know!

Really happy with yesterday's launch stats for http://Opportunities.so:

• 151 upvotes on Product Hunt
• ~150 new subscribers (10% paying)
• now at ~$500 MRR
• but really the best thing is that several people reached out with feedback and incredibly valuable tips for new reports

We now have 1000 subscribers on our free list and around 50 paying subscribers. 5% ratio between free and paying subscribers seems to be the standard for newsletters.

Growth was mainly the result of announcements on Twitter. Still lots of room for improvements but very happy with the growth curve so far.

As I reflected on what I did so far in my bootstrap entrepreneurial journey and what I want to achieve this year I came up with the idea for Opportunities.

I'm already running the Product Ideas newsletter on Substack and there are many people with similar newsletters. So why don't we join forces and grow together?

This way we could share resources and spend more time focusing on growth.

Bundle Magic is real and I don't see any downsides.