I've been around the block a few times with startups. Last year, I co-founded two: one sold for €10K (ouch) and the other landed €400K in funding before I exited due to some strategic pivots. Both pulled in less than €5000 MRR.
The big lesson? Execution is everything.
Now, I'm jumping into the indie hacker scene with fresh eyes and new ideas.
One thing I've noticed is how tough it is to get noticed without a massive budget.
So, how do we level up our visibility and traction without emptying our wallets?
Your Strategies
Amplified Reach: How do you expand your audience reach effectively?
Cost Efficiency: What budget-friendly marketing tactics have worked for you?
Community Building: How important is building a community for your success? Any tips?
Insights and Data: How do you use data to refine your strategies?
I’d love to hear your experiences and tips! What’s worked for you and what hasn’t?
@werbowy I haven't reached tremendous success yet, but here are a few observations/ideas from my journey.
I made a rule for myself to not pay for marketing. You become less lazy. This is a constraint, that makes you think on the next level. This helps you to come up with stuff that people with budgets can't.
Great original content is still rare.
From what I see you already did some things right. Share stories. It will attract people.
Most people are bad at consistent execution.
As with startups, initially, you need to push the rock up the hill. Same with content. Consistent effort will eventually transform the rock into a railcart on wheels. Post, post, post.
Engage with others.
This is how IMO you get noticed. Social networks (including Reddit) are about engaging with others. So engage, debate, and advice.
SEO
Is not as hard as most people tell online. Figure out the first principles of SEO and this will become a powerful tool, both for your community building and product marketing.
I've tried leveraging journalists, but without great success yet. Sending them content for free so they would repurpose it.
It either works or not. I come from working on experimentation in big companies. One thing that I learned over the years is that your assumption should be easy and quick to validate and the data should be strongly positive, or negative. Everything else doesn't matter until you are very big. That way you can learn & optimize very quickly.
One thing I want to try is to start a micro-community with only people I know, where I'll share more detailed stuff, that I share on social. People I know can invite people they know. Hopefully this will grow into something of a decent size.
@aines123 Do keep me updated on the journalist situation, this is one I just can't imagine being effective to majority indie hackers due to lack of network links
@werbowy One thing I'm working on is to document my journey of building SaaS on X with sharing lessons I've learned during the process. my thought is it will help me get more audience who are either interested in my content and my SaaS to check out my Landing page, convert into users if they find it useful.
The other focus is no websites likes Reddit, Indiehacker and Product hunt where my main goal is to learn from other and get more early users on my platform.
Amplified Reach: How do you expand your audience reach effectively?
Cost Efficiency: What budget-friendly marketing tactics have worked for you?
Community Building: How important is building a community for your success? Any tips?
Insights and Data: How do you use data to refine your strategies?
I’d love to hear your experiences and tips! What’s worked for you and what hasn’t?
Free and original content in exchange for email list.
Often, word of mouth if you have a great product
I am working on this now, planning to build a discord group for builders alike to discuss and even collab on projects
Data helps you realise where to focus energy on and what parts to improve your process. E.g high unsub rate on a specific email, figure out what caused it. Too addy? etc
