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What do you do, if you are an indie developer and you suck at marketing

6 points by calltrak 4y ago

I have tried now at least 5 times to launch SaaS products as an indie developer. But I suck at marketing. When I look at my website traffic it's depressing. The product is pretty good and the competitors are doing fine, but I suck at getting the word out. What do I need to do? Any advice is appreciated.

aww_dang 4y ago
Start with easy traffic opportunities and then build a product to fit the niche. Might sound counter-intuitive at first, but it will save you headaches.
leros 4y ago
You need to spend at least as much time marketing as you did developing your product... just to start getting initial growth. I encourage you to spend the time to really try marketing. Think about how long it would take a marketer to learn how to program and create an MVP. It's a massive undertaking with lots of roadblocks and failures. You need to spend that amount of time learning marketing well enough to start making a dent. You have many many painful learning curves to get through.
gcheong 4y ago
What have you tried so far?
Stevvo 4y ago
Get someone who is good at it to work on it. They get 1/3rd of your profits.
frontman1988 4y ago
You can consider hiring some marketing professionals maybe
mikewarot 4y ago
Without examples of your past marketing efforts, it's hard to say where you went wrong.
ryanmccullagh 4y ago
You just have to learn marketing!
Irongirl1 4y ago
Can you list the 5 things you built before along with one sentence which describes their target customer? And have you considered selling those 5 things on to others? Just because you couldn't find the fit in your timeline, doesn't mean that someone else couldn't...and buying is faster/easier than building. A non-techie who might want to give selling software a try might be very interested in your pre-revenue opportunities. You would basically be paid for building MVPs. See abandonedassets.io
- Irongirl1 4y ago
  edit: came back to add this link for a pre-revenue sale from indiehackers https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-sold-my-0-revenue-saas-side-project-for-4-5k-290062e6ef https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-sold-my-0-revenue-sa...

6 points by calltrak 4y ago

aww_dang 4y ago

Start with easy traffic opportunities and then build a product to fit the niche. Might sound counter-intuitive at first, but it will save you headaches.

leros 4y ago

You need to spend at least as much time marketing as you did developing your product... just to start getting initial growth. I encourage you to spend the time to really try marketing. Think about how long it would take a marketer to learn how to program and create an MVP. It's a massive undertaking with lots of roadblocks and failures. You need to spend that amount of time learning marketing well enough to start making a dent. You have many many painful learning curves to get through.

gcheong 4y ago

What have you tried so far?

Stevvo 4y ago

Get someone who is good at it to work on it. They get 1/3rd of your profits.

frontman1988 4y ago

You can consider hiring some marketing professionals maybe

mikewarot 4y ago

Without examples of your past marketing efforts, it's hard to say where you went wrong.

ryanmccullagh 4y ago

You just have to learn marketing!

Irongirl1 4y ago

Can you list the 5 things you built before along with one sentence which describes their target customer? And have you considered selling those 5 things on to others? Just because you couldn't find the fit in your timeline, doesn't mean that someone else couldn't...and buying is faster/easier than building. A non-techie who might want to give selling software a try might be very interested in your pre-revenue opportunities. You would basically be paid for building MVPs. See abandonedassets.io

Irongirl1 4y ago
edit: came back to add this link for a pre-revenue sale from indiehackers https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-sold-my-0-revenue-saas-side-project-for-4-5k-290062e6ef https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-sold-my-0-revenue-sa...