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My current advice, which seems to be working well so far, is to do small tasks for huge government corporations and organizations for FREE, no questions asked.

My current advice, which seems to be working well so far, is to do small tasks for huge government corporations and organizations for FREE, no questions asked. Don't know how well this could work in the American context, but this has worked for 3 places I've lived in (UK, UAE, India). You don't earn cash but you will earn an INSANE amount of goodwill and connections. The next time, they need a tech solution, they'll get in touch with you, or you could sell to them much easier. Oh yeah, when shooting, shoot for the top of the pecking order. Selling to wantepreneurs, indie hackers and SMB owners is the worst. The market is super fragmented, and you'll have to do a ton of marketing to a bunch of people who won't even pay, what I like to call the Firebase problem.

moneywoes 4y ago
Any outreach examples?
- fakedang 4y ago
  Just an instance, I built a small feature module for the local transport authority, which could be easily integrated into their existing app. Through that tiny bit of weekend work, I was appreciated by the CEO of the public transport department of the transport authority. I could use him as a reference to get many further connections.
quickthrower2 4y ago
I am interested in why it is the Firebase problem, or what that means?
- fakedang 4y ago
  Firebase has a ton of users, but most of the users seem to be independent devs and hobbyists, with a small number of large clients. It's possible Firebase tends to attract non-hardcore users because of its superb UI/UX, which makes it extremely accessible for beginner devs and hobbyist programmers. But apart from a few features (which don't generate revenue, like Auth and Cloud Functions), Firebase has a hard time getting established companies to use them because at the end of the day, they're built on GCP, which has the lowest trust factor among the Big 3 - no serious company is going to trust the longevity of Google Products.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    I see. Probably thr main hope is stickyness in a startup that used them that gets growth in such a way that switching clouds is not worth it (client switching from Firebase to Google proper is probably acceptable as long as goodharts law is honoured so it doesn’t appear as a fail to Google) There are lots of operators in the “Vercel” club, providing good UX tools for hosting, CICD, databases etc. witch attract indie hackers. Makes me wonder if they will have the same issue. It grates on me because I would enjoy creating another JAMstack tool for indies, but making a boring thing for some other industry is probably more profitable. I guess that is the main issue at play. Business is work. Except occasionally when someone is lucky and the passion project does well.
  - fakedang 4y ago
    Edit:- I meant Cloud Messaging, not cloud functions. Brainfart moment.

moneywoes 4y ago

Any outreach examples?

fakedang 4y ago
Just an instance, I built a small feature module for the local transport authority, which could be easily integrated into their existing app. Through that tiny bit of weekend work, I was appreciated by the CEO of the public transport department of the transport authority. I could use him as a reference to get many further connections.

quickthrower2 4y ago

I am interested in why it is the Firebase problem, or what that means?

fakedang 4y ago
Firebase has a ton of users, but most of the users seem to be independent devs and hobbyists, with a small number of large clients. It's possible Firebase tends to attract non-hardcore users because of its superb UI/UX, which makes it extremely accessible for beginner devs and hobbyist programmers. But apart from a few features (which don't generate revenue, like Auth and Cloud Functions), Firebase has a hard time getting established companies to use them because at the end of the day, they're built on GCP, which has the lowest trust factor among the Big 3 - no serious company is going to trust the longevity of Google Products.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  I see. Probably thr main hope is stickyness in a startup that used them that gets growth in such a way that switching clouds is not worth it (client switching from Firebase to Google proper is probably acceptable as long as goodharts law is honoured so it doesn’t appear as a fail to Google) There are lots of operators in the “Vercel” club, providing good UX tools for hosting, CICD, databases etc. witch attract indie hackers. Makes me wonder if they will have the same issue. It grates on me because I would enjoy creating another JAMstack tool for indies, but making a boring thing for some other industry is probably more profitable. I guess that is the main issue at play. Business is work. Except occasionally when someone is lucky and the passion project does well.
- fakedang 4y ago
  Edit:- I meant Cloud Messaging, not cloud functions. Brainfart moment.