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When it comes to making money on the internet: Don't Try to Mine Gold When You Can Sell Shovels. From my own personal experience and from all the successful In

When it comes to making money on the internet: Don't Try to Mine Gold When You Can Sell Shovels. From my own personal experience and from all the successful Indie hackers the easiest way seems to be idea that tell you how to genreate traffic / leads to your site. SEO software, Social marketing software, also lot of spam software like gmass, etc. This area seems to have the most success for quick growth.

gfodor 6y ago
If you are building such things because it's what you want to create, sure, but if you're doing that because you are just looking for something that will grow, that is a fairly unrewarding strategy for doing a startup imo.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> From my own personal experience and from all the successful Indie hackers the easiest way seems to be idea that tell you how to genreate traffic / leads to your site This is partially selection bias. Most successful niche businesses prefer to avoid publicity because it might encourage more competitors. It's better to fly under the radar with minimal competition as long as possible. The more people who know about your profitable niche, the more your margins will be reduced in order to remain competitive. Yet when it comes to generic "shovel" services like SEO, having your name and business spread across the internet is free publicity and free reputation building. The product and market are already mature and saturated, so there is no worry about new competitors. Instead, it's a game of getting your name out there as much as possible. The more people see your name on famous podcasts and websites, the more value they assign to your services.
andarleen 6y ago
The issue is most shovels are free and open source, so shovel makers usually end up working for the non tech saas founders.
gk1 6y ago
The marketing software space is incredibly saturated, so it definitely is not an easy space to grow in. I've always liked the "sell shovels" idea but it's not as useful as it sounds. It just puts you in an endless loop: - Don't sell trucks, sell fleet management services to people who want to sell trucks. - Don't sell fleet management services, sell fleet management software to fleet management companies. - Don't sell fleet management software, sell project management software to software teams. - Don't sell project management software, sell a database to B2B software companies. - Don't sell a database, sell servers to B2B platform companies. - Don't sell servers, sell logistics services to infrastructure tech companies. - Don't sell logistics services, sell transportation to those logistics companies. So now you're back to selling trucks. If somewhere in the loop we had "mine crypto," then OK, maybe don't mine crypto but do sell mining hardware or whatever. But few business endeavors have such lopsided odds as mining, of the gold or crypto variety.
- deleted 6y ago
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- cannaceo 6y ago
  I've seen my industry's "shovel sellers" and they've done moderately well. Definitely more consistent than the rest of the industry but in the end they suffer from the same issue as the gold miners: timing. If you don't time your exit from your industry's bubble you can get swept away.
908087 6y ago
Why do something innovative or positive when you can make money shoveling more shit onto the heap?

gfodor 6y ago

If you are building such things because it's what you want to create, sure, but if you're doing that because you are just looking for something that will grow, that is a fairly unrewarding strategy for doing a startup imo.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> From my own personal experience and from all the successful Indie hackers the easiest way seems to be idea that tell you how to genreate traffic / leads to your site This is partially selection bias. Most successful niche businesses prefer to avoid publicity because it might encourage more competitors. It's better to fly under the radar with minimal competition as long as possible. The more people who know about your profitable niche, the more your margins will be reduced in order to remain competitive. Yet when it comes to generic "shovel" services like SEO, having your name and business spread across the internet is free publicity and free reputation building. The product and market are already mature and saturated, so there is no worry about new competitors. Instead, it's a game of getting your name out there as much as possible. The more people see your name on famous podcasts and websites, the more value they assign to your services.

andarleen 6y ago

The issue is most shovels are free and open source, so shovel makers usually end up working for the non tech saas founders.

gk1 6y ago

The marketing software space is incredibly saturated, so it definitely is not an easy space to grow in. I've always liked the "sell shovels" idea but it's not as useful as it sounds. It just puts you in an endless loop: - Don't sell trucks, sell fleet management services to people who want to sell trucks. - Don't sell fleet management services, sell fleet management software to fleet management companies. - Don't sell fleet management software, sell project management software to software teams. - Don't sell project management software, sell a database to B2B software companies. - Don't sell a database, sell servers to B2B platform companies. - Don't sell servers, sell logistics services to infrastructure tech companies. - Don't sell logistics services, sell transportation to those logistics companies. So now you're back to selling trucks. If somewhere in the loop we had "mine crypto," then OK, maybe don't mine crypto but do sell mining hardware or whatever. But few business endeavors have such lopsided odds as mining, of the gold or crypto variety.

deleted 6y ago
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cannaceo 6y ago
I've seen my industry's "shovel sellers" and they've done moderately well. Definitely more consistent than the rest of the industry but in the end they suffer from the same issue as the gold miners: timing. If you don't time your exit from your industry's bubble you can get swept away.

908087 6y ago

Why do something innovative or positive when you can make money shoveling more shit onto the heap?