14 ms·

Five years of indie hacking

191 points by asebold 4y ago

xupybd 4y ago
I'm interested in the author's latest SAAS. Can you really game SEO by spamming out templated articles? I thought Google filtered out that sort of thing.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  Maybe that’s why you give it a spreadsheet of fill-in-the-blank answers so all the articles are ‘unique’?
- asebold 4y ago
  Author here - Yes it works. I have two programmatic sites so far, one of which I built in public on my blog. I also consulted on programmatic SEO for a bit. Just like human written content, Google won't index your pages if they are low quality or straight up spam. You have to actually provide value to the user. A common example I use for when programmatic SEO is appropriate is nutritional information. Here's a twitter thread with legitimate websites getting millions of traffic each month from programmatic SEO: https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt/status/1619513834779049984?s=20 https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt/status/16195138347790499... I also created a free course on the subject to address people's concerns about this approach, and to teach them how to do it the right way: https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course
neilv 4y ago
> And that most people take many years, and many failed ventures, to eventually build a sustainable, profitable business. I'm not sure how to parse that. Sometimes people need to hear that it's not going to be easy, and they have to stick with it. (How I've sometimes put it, something like: "You know how, when a startup person is telling the story of how they succeeded, and the hardest part was when we thought we wouldn't succeed? This is one of those times. And if we can pull it off, someday we'll tell the story of how we didn't know whether we'd succeed, and no one will really understand until they experience it themselves.") But other times, people need to know that many people will never succeed at building a viable business, no matter how many times they try. There are many factors, including dumb luck. Someone trying to start a business can lose a lot. They should go into it knowing that odds are that they will probably fail to build a viable business, that it's harder than it sounds, so they should take it seriously, and cover all the non-luck bases that they can.
pengwing 4y ago
For some guidance on successful bootstrapping, I would suggest to look into Alex Hormozi (Youtube, Podcast).
- margorczynski 4y ago
  > Get RICH in the A.I. Revolution (2023) > Get RICH With These 24 Investing Rules Looks like your typical get-rich-fast Youtube financebro selling you his "ultra-limited now just $500" course on starting a business. Yep, on his website is some super-special course.
  - pengwing 4y ago
    The wording of a video title is determined by the rules of copywriting. You try to maximize clicks and gain virality. There is no correlation to the quality of the content. In terms of website, I am not sure what you are referring to: acquisition.com is the actual website, that is dedicated to buying businesses. There is no paid course, all content is free. Technically the e-book costs 99 cents.
    - _jpys 4y ago
      "You try to maximize clicks and gain virality. There is no correlation to the quality of the content." Really?
jart 4y ago
Here's a link to the author's project: https://pagefactory.app/ https://pagefactory.app/ For an indie hacker project that you're doing for passion, you really have to pick something that connects with the dreams of people. Especially if the thing is a tool that empowers ordinary people. No one dreams about how much better the web will be with lots of auto-generated content. In order to sell something like that, you'd have to do a YouTube hustle talking about how rich you got doing it, and how rich you can get too if you buy the product. A bunch of people have been doing that lately encouraging people to submit ChatGPT generated articles to publications that pay for content, and a lot of those organizations are now shutting down their open submissions due to the avalanche of low-effort content.
- asebold 4y ago
  Author here - There may have been a misunderstanding. Fantasy Congress was my passion project. PageFactory is my attempt at a B2B SaaS. Also, my product does not provide any AI services.
  - joenot443 4y ago
    I don’t really see the “indie” connection then, frankly. It’s an app for churning out wordy, SEO optimized articles, right? I feel like you may have picked the wrong platform to brag about that achievement, most people on HN don’t have great things to say about the way SEO driven tools like that have changed the web. EDIT: The demo on the site being 2min of time to churn out an entire website’s worth of content. I weep for what tools like this have allowed the web to become. You have the furthest thing from my support, I’m sorry.
    - 4pkjai 4y ago
      It's indie because she built the product independently.
margorczynski 4y ago
I think an important thing is to identify what your end goal is - is it to create some cool app and get some people to use it or create a real business. The latter is much harder and even startups/companies with big funding and millions of users struggle to do it. And just by implementing some cool app you don't magically obtain business knowledge required to get it to the next level - probably the ability to sell stuff and marketing being the most fundamental.
Scubabear68 4y ago
I honestly found the article rather confusing. Maybe it’s the terminology used? When I hear the term “indie hacking”, I don’t think of product building (although author’s link has that as a definition). Going into the post I thought I’d read about some person’s five year journey into some wonderfully whacky personal hacking projects. The post seemed to start that way. But then half way through, the tone changes to talk about product and business and learning all that commercial stuff. The story ends talking about the projects only generating minimal revenue, and disappointment stemming from that. I am far from an expert in this, but what seems to be lacking is clear cut goals from the start on the business side. If the goal is to hack, then the code itself is the reward. If the goal is to start a business, then you need targets (users, revenue, profitability, growth, etc) and plans (product vision, marketing strategy, market research, etc).
- TheRoque 4y ago
  Well, the term "indie hacker" means starting a business yeah. The difference with just "starting a business" is that the mindset is most of the time to build a small scale project that can be built and maintained alone.
  - Scubabear68 4y ago
    I must be out of touch, I didn't know it was an established phrase to mean that. Thanks.
    - davnicwil 4y ago
      Not actually sure which came first, this site or the term, but indiehackers.com [0] is one of the main internet communities built around this. [0] https://www.indiehackers.com/ https://www.indiehackers.com/
      - wonderwonder 4y ago
        Funny part is that indiehackers was purchased by stripe, meaning they likely ended up more financially successful than 99% of the startups posting on their site.
ptero 4y ago
One idea for folks trying to bootstrap an indie hacking project as a cure for megacorp blues is to work for a year in a small startup. That way you can get some exposure to non-software tasks you will have to handle and will be able to move faster when bootstrapping your own. My 2c.
- Shindi 4y ago
  This. If the idea of doing sales or marketing at a small startup turns you off, don't become an indie hacker because that is your main job - to promote what you've made.
VyseofArcadia 4y ago
> I finally started generating enough consistent revenue to pay myself a meager salary. After five long years, I now make $1k/month. > More than anything though, I'm so thankful I had the courage, and privilege, to take a swing at this. I'm glad the author acknowledged that privilege. As someone not from a terribly privileged background, this sort of article usually just makes my blood boil.
- pyrrhotech 4y ago
  It doesn't take extreme privilege to quit your job and indie hack for 5 years. It takes $60k in savings and extreme frugality (or the equivalent of the cheapest amount you can live on for 5 years in your country). $60k of savings can easily be saved in a year with a junior dev job in the USA, or 2 years in Europe as long as you have the frugality. Of course, you do sacrifice having a family, living in an expensive area, going out to restaurants and all other luxuries, but you can own your time without being born into any sort of wealth or privilege outside of being born in a country with GDP per capita above $10k. Most people would rather live a more normal middle class life and work for the man instead. To each his own, but don't act like it's not a choice available to practically 100% of HN readers.
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  - Scubabear68 4y ago
    $60k/year savings for a junior dev? Maybe FAANG, but not anywhere else.
  - shafyy 4y ago
    Sorry, where in EU or US can live a "normal" live on $12k/year? Sure, you can do it if you live in a one bed-room apartment in the middle of nowhere and only eat home-cooked pasta every day. But I don't think anybody that had an above average lifestyle before that can sustain that for 5 years, especially if you know that "luxury" is just one succesful job application away.
dthedavid 4y ago
I share the same dream; of one day charting my own path. I've been doing things a bit differently. I've kept my job and am building my product (www.bannerbox.io) on the side. I wake up early and dedicate a few hours to it in the morning. So far I've built the MVP but have no users. I'm fine with this because I'm learning. Last year I've dedicated 100% of my time to building. This year I'm spending half of my time marketing. I'm struggling with this new arrangement. Marketing makes me uncomfortable. I haven't made meaningful progress on marketing yet but it's the right move as long I am consistent.
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  Same boat. I've made some small change. Marketing really is the thing to learn. I find it kind of fun actually because I know it is building skills to align with my existing technical skills.
- asebold 4y ago
  Author here - That's awesome. I admire your grit. Realizing you needed to change and focus more on marketing is a big step in the right direction. We all start out doing the wrong things and making mistakes. The key is learning from them, which it seems, you are willing to do. Best of luck!
ianpurton 4y ago
I think it's easier to take a traffic source and build a product around that, than to build a product and then find traffic. An idea for a traffic source is a gimmick. i.e. something you build that brings people to your site. The best example I've seen is https://blockchain.info https://blockchain.info now called blockchain.com/explorer. They had a site that gave a web based view of bitcoin addresses, balances and transactions. This gained a huge amount of traffic in the early days of Crypto (2012). Then the rest of the products, i.e. wallet and exchanges came later and sit on top of that traffic. So my advice to myself. Traffic first, then build a product. If the product fails at least you learned something and still have the traffic.
- deleted 4y ago
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TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
"Indie Hacking" An indie hacker is an individual who builds and launches a business or product independently, without the support of a large organization or team. Most 'indie hackers' i've met are working on some app, or SAAS that they see a need for in the market. They strive and toil, for a grand vision; And there is beauty in that, but.... More 'Indie Hackers' should find fulfillment in starting an agency. The risk is honestly zero, and although harder to scale it may bear the same fucundity of any 'Killer App'. Even if you don't have the connections, Upwork is a fantastic way to get your initial clients. When people quit their software job to be an indy hacker, what they really want is the freedom to code in the direction they choose. Although dealing with clients may seem like 'having a boss', the ability to pick your clients wisely is the first skill you learn. I quit my job working in tech and now i run a solo tech consultancy. You get your initial clients to pay for the infrastructure and as long as you stick in your lane, you can utilize all your tooling for the next client and charge a bit more in hourly rate. It soon becomes a self-fulfilling cycle.
- pengwing 4y ago
  I agree with your initial idea, but you lost me at "hourly rate". I think doing fixed prices for fixed scopes allows any agency to scale up to a certain point. (Instead of disincentivizing efficiency through hourly rates)
  - TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
    Depends on whether it's internal development or external recs. I've had alot of success doing T&M's for the State and local governments. It consumes the resource for your agency, but the rate arbitrage is attractive. But yes, as you scale from just being you to multiple people you should have fixed proposals and ideally, an annual maintance and monthly retainer.
- asebold 4y ago
  Author here - Totally agree. Service based businesses like an agency is a much better way to start out. If I was starting over, this is the approach I would take.
ano88888 4y ago
as someone who is also thinking about quitting my job to start a business , this suggestion is helpful to me : "I wouldn't encourage anyone to quit their job until they've made at least one dollar selling a product or service online"
- asebold 4y ago
  Author here - Glad you found that line helpful. Of course, the goal would be building your business on the side until it's making a substantial amount of money, and then quitting your job. But I know that isn't a feasible path for everyone. Personally, I tried starting my initial project as a side project, but made very little progress over two years, which was the catalyst for going "all in". I'd still suggest trying to build the business on the side first, just to see if you can manage it. Best of luck!
  - jollofricepeas 4y ago
    Agreed. It really comes down to side business model, the culture of where you’re at full-time and how much you’re willing to sacrifice personally. I never quit my day job after growing my business to ~$5m annually mainly because it’s e-commerce which is easy to automate and I’ve hired a great team. It’s sad to say but unless you’ve cleared $15m; making a few million really isn’t a lot of money truly so I recommend that people either: 1) make their day job their first customer or an investor 2) explore lifestyle type businesses that work well with their day job meaning no travel, easy delegation, etc (ie. FBA, shopify, physical products, micro-SaaS)
    - xupybd 4y ago
      Can you share more about your side business? For some reason it's really exciting to hear some is doing something other than SAAS.
      - FlyingSnake 4y ago
        Not OP but they seem to be in the DNVB/DTC business. It is an interesting eCommerce sector. 1: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/dnvb-digitally-native-vertical-brand https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/dnvb-digitally-native-vertical-...
bosch_mind 4y ago
Thanks for sharing. Curious, how do you sustain on just $1k/mo? The idea is inspiring but also out of reach for most people with expenses exceeding that
- mooreds 4y ago
  From looking at author's linkedin, looks like they have done some consulting/contract programming over the past few years too.
- asebold 4y ago
  Author here - Thanks for reading. The $1k/mo is just my "salary" from revenue generated by my indie projects. I had a substantial amount of savings that I lived off of for my first year. Since then, I've supported myself with contract work. I'm also very lucky that my partner is very supportive and has a good job, so at times (such as last year when I was launching my latest SaaS), he picked up our shared expenses.
  - steve1977 4y ago
    > Since then, I‘ve supported myself with contract work So „jumping into indie hacking full time“ is actually a bit misleading, no?
    - asebold 4y ago
      My first year I lived entirely off of my savings and dedicated myself full time to my first project. So, it is indeed the anniversary of when I attempted to go full time, which was the sentiment of that sentence. Sorry if that wasn't more clear. All the contract work I've done was part-time at most, so I also haven't had the comfort and safety of a full-time gig during this time period. My projects have been the priority, and I've only done the bare minimum to get by. Which, imo, is still full time "indie hacking", though maybe you disagree.
      - deleted 4y ago
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ngonzal 4y ago
Ha, I thought this was a great line, I guess I always assumed you'd spend all your time building the products you were selling. But I can imagine there's a ton of customer support, unplanned features requests, talking with tax people and other business owners in the space etc etc "Starting out, I thought bootstrapping meant freedom from the messy complications of building and maintaining relationships. Turns out, it's just the opposite."
- asebold 4y ago
  Author here - Yeah, realizing I couldn't spend all of my time just building the product was a hard lesson to learn. This experience has forced me to learn a lot of new skills though, and I'm much more rounded as a person because of it.
armanm 4y ago
I'm about to launch a bootstrapped project on my own (my third idea). Your post really resonated with me because I have been thinking about the same feelings and outcomes as you shared in your blog. My conclusion is that the only guaranteed outcome from ventures like this for people like us (who are trying to build wealth from nothing) is and should be the learning. I have accepted that today I don't know how to create wealth by building a SaaS product and I want to immerse myself in that problem enough to learn more. Building my product is my teaching instrument. When you have a full time job, a family and other responsibilities this a hard thing to justify because you sink so much time into it; time which you are taking away from yourself and your family but this is what it takes to succeed IMO. I am sure that I will fail but there is no other choice except to assess what doesn't work, adjust, rinse and repeat until I figure it out. Some of us get lucky and struck success early but others will have to try again and many will never succeed and that's just life and nothing is free in life (unless you come from money but then again I've never been in that position either).
- safety1st 4y ago
  I wish you success on your next venture, but if the problem you're focused on solving is "creating wealth by building a SaaS product," your focus itself might be holding you back. Imagine going into a meeting with a potential customer and saying "Hi, my name's armanm, and I'm looking forward to our chat today about how I'm creating wealth for myself." They would probably walk out of the room! If there's any one commonality I've observed across almost all the successful business owners I've met, it's that they're intensely focused on one or more customer problems. They've picked a market that they know well (meaning they know a lot about it, and they also know a lot of people who are in it). And they ultimately spoke with hundreds or thousands of people in that market, figured out where there was a common need and how much everyone was willing to pay to fulfill that need, and they they came up with a solution. They're usually so obsessed with solving this problem their customers have, that it's hard to get them to talk about anything else! If you approach it as a personal or passion project to fulfill your own goals, the response of the market will probably be lukewarm because your pitch, your product, or any other number of things probably won't be calibrated correctly. Whereas if you dedicate yourself to understanding, mastering, and solving a pressing problem for a bunch of people who want to spend money, you have a much higher chance of success. One way that your own interests definitely factor in is when you have personally been a member of that market, experienced the need yourself and would be willing to pay for the solution and have spoken to a bunch of other people who feel the same way. That's a long list of criteria but if you meet them all you have a very high chance of success. That's why the average age of a successful entrepreneur when they found their company is 42. It takes years and years to acquire all the knowledge and meet all the people but once you do, it becomes vastly easier for the rest to fall into place.
magic_hamster 4y ago
It was very disappointing reading how the author found credible podcasts, books and people to follow, only to recommend nothing and leave the reader wondering about this mysterious information.
- asebold 4y ago
  Author here - Sorry about that. Since I haven't been much of a success, I didn't think people would be interested in my recommendations. But here are a few that I found really helpful: Indie Hacker Podcast (the forum on the site was also a great resource for me): https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast How I Built This Podcast: https://www.npr.org/series/490248027/how-i-built-this https://www.npr.org/series/490248027/how-i-built-this Stacking the Bricks: https://stackingthebricks.com/ https://stackingthebricks.com/ Books: The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, The E-myth by Michael Gerber, Running Lean by Ash Maurya As the other posted said, any resources provided by MicroConf are also great. Basically look up their videos on YouTube and follow all of their speakers on Twitter or subscribe to their newsletters.
  - e2e4 4y ago
    Nice list. I find the book "company of one" to be quite interesting (although somehow it's less popular in tech community): https://www.amazon.com/Company-One-Staying-Small-Business/ https://www.amazon.com/Company-One-Staying-Small-Business/
- sharmi 4y ago
  If you are trying to bootstrap, try microconf talks on youtube.[1] Good signal/noise ratio. I still find good informative talks. If you find a speaker on microconf interesting, follow their talks on other channels. Newsletters I find useful: https://marketingexamples.com/ https://marketingexamples.com/ - copywriting examples https://tips.ariyh.com/ https://tips.ariyh.com/ - 3 mins tips extracted from research papers [1] https://www.youtube.com/@MicroConf https://www.youtube.com/@MicroConf
ronnykylin 4y ago
I resonate with your idea about passion a lot. Passion is what gets you to do the job, but once you're on the job, you have to put that aside and think with a cold mind. You turn passion into a small flame inside of you. It helps you go through the darkest moments.
- asebold 4y ago
  Author here - Thanks, glad to hear that part resonated with you. I agree, you can't let your passion burn too bright, or it will consume you. "a small flame inside you" is a great approach.
loveparade 4y ago
> With the launch of my second business last July (a programmatic SEO tool called PageFactory Great read, but it's a bit disappointing to see that the author was only able to make money with yet another SEO spam tool to generate low-quality content. The idea of the original Fantasy Congress was much more interesting, too bad that didn't work out.
- cdiamand 4y ago
  To me, that's actually one of the most optimistic parts. The author is willing to build what markets want, not a passion project, which is a turning point.
  - mattgreenrocks 4y ago
    Good take. This is not selling out, this is being open to problems that people will pay for.
- asebold 4y ago
  Author here - Thanks for reading! Glad you enjoyed the article. Programmatic SEO has a long history of being conflated with spam, though, it is not. There are many instances where this approach to creating content is the best approach for users, and many are surprised to learn how often and how much programmatic content they consume (I often use nutritional information as an example). I've talked about this at length on my twitter, podcast interviews, and my free course on the subject. I will put links to these below. If you're concerned about the efficacy and morality of programmatic SEO, I'd suggest getting more information from these resources in order to make an informed opinion. Also, my product does not provide any AI services. I know it's common for people to assume "programmatic" means "AI", but this strategy has been around much longer than AI. My twitter (examples and many threads on the subject): https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt Free course: https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course Podcast interview I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU9VYD86xTA&t=818s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU9VYD86xTA&t=818s

191 points by asebold 4y ago

I'm interested in the author's latest SAAS. Can you really game SEO by spamming out templated articles? I thought Google filtered out that sort of thing.

UncleEntity 4y ago
Maybe that’s why you give it a spreadsheet of fill-in-the-blank answers so all the articles are ‘unique’?
asebold 4y ago
Author here - Yes it works. I have two programmatic sites so far, one of which I built in public on my blog. I also consulted on programmatic SEO for a bit. Just like human written content, Google won't index your pages if they are low quality or straight up spam. You have to actually provide value to the user. A common example I use for when programmatic SEO is appropriate is nutritional information. Here's a twitter thread with legitimate websites getting millions of traffic each month from programmatic SEO: https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt/status/1619513834779049984?s=20 https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt/status/16195138347790499... I also created a free course on the subject to address people's concerns about this approach, and to teach them how to do it the right way: https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course

neilv 4y ago

> And that most people take many years, and many failed ventures, to eventually build a sustainable, profitable business. I'm not sure how to parse that. Sometimes people need to hear that it's not going to be easy, and they have to stick with it. (How I've sometimes put it, something like: "You know how, when a startup person is telling the story of how they succeeded, and the hardest part was when we thought we wouldn't succeed? This is one of those times. And if we can pull it off, someday we'll tell the story of how we didn't know whether we'd succeed, and no one will really understand until they experience it themselves.") But other times, people need to know that many people will never succeed at building a viable business, no matter how many times they try. There are many factors, including dumb luck. Someone trying to start a business can lose a lot. They should go into it knowing that odds are that they will probably fail to build a viable business, that it's harder than it sounds, so they should take it seriously, and cover all the non-luck bases that they can.

pengwing 4y ago

For some guidance on successful bootstrapping, I would suggest to look into Alex Hormozi (Youtube, Podcast).

margorczynski 4y ago
> Get RICH in the A.I. Revolution (2023) > Get RICH With These 24 Investing Rules Looks like your typical get-rich-fast Youtube financebro selling you his "ultra-limited now just $500" course on starting a business. Yep, on his website is some super-special course.
- pengwing 4y ago
  The wording of a video title is determined by the rules of copywriting. You try to maximize clicks and gain virality. There is no correlation to the quality of the content. In terms of website, I am not sure what you are referring to: acquisition.com is the actual website, that is dedicated to buying businesses. There is no paid course, all content is free. Technically the e-book costs 99 cents.
  - _jpys 4y ago
    "You try to maximize clicks and gain virality. There is no correlation to the quality of the content." Really?

jart 4y ago

Here's a link to the author's project: https://pagefactory.app/ https://pagefactory.app/ For an indie hacker project that you're doing for passion, you really have to pick something that connects with the dreams of people. Especially if the thing is a tool that empowers ordinary people. No one dreams about how much better the web will be with lots of auto-generated content. In order to sell something like that, you'd have to do a YouTube hustle talking about how rich you got doing it, and how rich you can get too if you buy the product. A bunch of people have been doing that lately encouraging people to submit ChatGPT generated articles to publications that pay for content, and a lot of those organizations are now shutting down their open submissions due to the avalanche of low-effort content.

asebold 4y ago
Author here - There may have been a misunderstanding. Fantasy Congress was my passion project. PageFactory is my attempt at a B2B SaaS. Also, my product does not provide any AI services.
- joenot443 4y ago
  I don’t really see the “indie” connection then, frankly. It’s an app for churning out wordy, SEO optimized articles, right? I feel like you may have picked the wrong platform to brag about that achievement, most people on HN don’t have great things to say about the way SEO driven tools like that have changed the web. EDIT: The demo on the site being 2min of time to churn out an entire website’s worth of content. I weep for what tools like this have allowed the web to become. You have the furthest thing from my support, I’m sorry.
  - 4pkjai 4y ago
    It's indie because she built the product independently.

margorczynski 4y ago

I think an important thing is to identify what your end goal is - is it to create some cool app and get some people to use it or create a real business. The latter is much harder and even startups/companies with big funding and millions of users struggle to do it. And just by implementing some cool app you don't magically obtain business knowledge required to get it to the next level - probably the ability to sell stuff and marketing being the most fundamental.

Scubabear68 4y ago

I honestly found the article rather confusing. Maybe it’s the terminology used? When I hear the term “indie hacking”, I don’t think of product building (although author’s link has that as a definition). Going into the post I thought I’d read about some person’s five year journey into some wonderfully whacky personal hacking projects. The post seemed to start that way. But then half way through, the tone changes to talk about product and business and learning all that commercial stuff. The story ends talking about the projects only generating minimal revenue, and disappointment stemming from that. I am far from an expert in this, but what seems to be lacking is clear cut goals from the start on the business side. If the goal is to hack, then the code itself is the reward. If the goal is to start a business, then you need targets (users, revenue, profitability, growth, etc) and plans (product vision, marketing strategy, market research, etc).

TheRoque 4y ago
Well, the term "indie hacker" means starting a business yeah. The difference with just "starting a business" is that the mindset is most of the time to build a small scale project that can be built and maintained alone.
- Scubabear68 4y ago
  I must be out of touch, I didn't know it was an established phrase to mean that. Thanks.
  - davnicwil 4y ago
    Not actually sure which came first, this site or the term, but indiehackers.com [0] is one of the main internet communities built around this. [0] https://www.indiehackers.com/ https://www.indiehackers.com/
    - wonderwonder 4y ago
      Funny part is that indiehackers was purchased by stripe, meaning they likely ended up more financially successful than 99% of the startups posting on their site.

ptero 4y ago

One idea for folks trying to bootstrap an indie hacking project as a cure for megacorp blues is to work for a year in a small startup. That way you can get some exposure to non-software tasks you will have to handle and will be able to move faster when bootstrapping your own. My 2c.

Shindi 4y ago
This. If the idea of doing sales or marketing at a small startup turns you off, don't become an indie hacker because that is your main job - to promote what you've made.

VyseofArcadia 4y ago

> I finally started generating enough consistent revenue to pay myself a meager salary. After five long years, I now make $1k/month. > More than anything though, I'm so thankful I had the courage, and privilege, to take a swing at this. I'm glad the author acknowledged that privilege. As someone not from a terribly privileged background, this sort of article usually just makes my blood boil.

pyrrhotech 4y ago
It doesn't take extreme privilege to quit your job and indie hack for 5 years. It takes $60k in savings and extreme frugality (or the equivalent of the cheapest amount you can live on for 5 years in your country). $60k of savings can easily be saved in a year with a junior dev job in the USA, or 2 years in Europe as long as you have the frugality. Of course, you do sacrifice having a family, living in an expensive area, going out to restaurants and all other luxuries, but you can own your time without being born into any sort of wealth or privilege outside of being born in a country with GDP per capita above $10k. Most people would rather live a more normal middle class life and work for the man instead. To each his own, but don't act like it's not a choice available to practically 100% of HN readers.
- deleted 4y ago
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- Scubabear68 4y ago
  $60k/year savings for a junior dev? Maybe FAANG, but not anywhere else.
- shafyy 4y ago
  Sorry, where in EU or US can live a "normal" live on $12k/year? Sure, you can do it if you live in a one bed-room apartment in the middle of nowhere and only eat home-cooked pasta every day. But I don't think anybody that had an above average lifestyle before that can sustain that for 5 years, especially if you know that "luxury" is just one succesful job application away.

dthedavid 4y ago

I share the same dream; of one day charting my own path. I've been doing things a bit differently. I've kept my job and am building my product (www.bannerbox.io) on the side. I wake up early and dedicate a few hours to it in the morning. So far I've built the MVP but have no users. I'm fine with this because I'm learning. Last year I've dedicated 100% of my time to building. This year I'm spending half of my time marketing. I'm struggling with this new arrangement. Marketing makes me uncomfortable. I haven't made meaningful progress on marketing yet but it's the right move as long I am consistent.

mattgreenrocks 4y ago
Same boat. I've made some small change. Marketing really is the thing to learn. I find it kind of fun actually because I know it is building skills to align with my existing technical skills.
asebold 4y ago
Author here - That's awesome. I admire your grit. Realizing you needed to change and focus more on marketing is a big step in the right direction. We all start out doing the wrong things and making mistakes. The key is learning from them, which it seems, you are willing to do. Best of luck!

ianpurton 4y ago

I think it's easier to take a traffic source and build a product around that, than to build a product and then find traffic. An idea for a traffic source is a gimmick. i.e. something you build that brings people to your site. The best example I've seen is https://blockchain.info https://blockchain.info now called blockchain.com/explorer. They had a site that gave a web based view of bitcoin addresses, balances and transactions. This gained a huge amount of traffic in the early days of Crypto (2012). Then the rest of the products, i.e. wallet and exchanges came later and sit on top of that traffic. So my advice to myself. Traffic first, then build a product. If the product fails at least you learned something and still have the traffic.

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TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago

"Indie Hacking" An indie hacker is an individual who builds and launches a business or product independently, without the support of a large organization or team. Most 'indie hackers' i've met are working on some app, or SAAS that they see a need for in the market. They strive and toil, for a grand vision; And there is beauty in that, but.... More 'Indie Hackers' should find fulfillment in starting an agency. The risk is honestly zero, and although harder to scale it may bear the same fucundity of any 'Killer App'. Even if you don't have the connections, Upwork is a fantastic way to get your initial clients. When people quit their software job to be an indy hacker, what they really want is the freedom to code in the direction they choose. Although dealing with clients may seem like 'having a boss', the ability to pick your clients wisely is the first skill you learn. I quit my job working in tech and now i run a solo tech consultancy. You get your initial clients to pay for the infrastructure and as long as you stick in your lane, you can utilize all your tooling for the next client and charge a bit more in hourly rate. It soon becomes a self-fulfilling cycle.

pengwing 4y ago
I agree with your initial idea, but you lost me at "hourly rate". I think doing fixed prices for fixed scopes allows any agency to scale up to a certain point. (Instead of disincentivizing efficiency through hourly rates)
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
  Depends on whether it's internal development or external recs. I've had alot of success doing T&M's for the State and local governments. It consumes the resource for your agency, but the rate arbitrage is attractive. But yes, as you scale from just being you to multiple people you should have fixed proposals and ideally, an annual maintance and monthly retainer.
asebold 4y ago
Author here - Totally agree. Service based businesses like an agency is a much better way to start out. If I was starting over, this is the approach I would take.

ano88888 4y ago

as someone who is also thinking about quitting my job to start a business , this suggestion is helpful to me : "I wouldn't encourage anyone to quit their job until they've made at least one dollar selling a product or service online"

asebold 4y ago
Author here - Glad you found that line helpful. Of course, the goal would be building your business on the side until it's making a substantial amount of money, and then quitting your job. But I know that isn't a feasible path for everyone. Personally, I tried starting my initial project as a side project, but made very little progress over two years, which was the catalyst for going "all in". I'd still suggest trying to build the business on the side first, just to see if you can manage it. Best of luck!
- jollofricepeas 4y ago
  Agreed. It really comes down to side business model, the culture of where you’re at full-time and how much you’re willing to sacrifice personally. I never quit my day job after growing my business to ~$5m annually mainly because it’s e-commerce which is easy to automate and I’ve hired a great team. It’s sad to say but unless you’ve cleared $15m; making a few million really isn’t a lot of money truly so I recommend that people either: 1) make their day job their first customer or an investor 2) explore lifestyle type businesses that work well with their day job meaning no travel, easy delegation, etc (ie. FBA, shopify, physical products, micro-SaaS)
  - xupybd 4y ago
    Can you share more about your side business? For some reason it's really exciting to hear some is doing something other than SAAS.
    - FlyingSnake 4y ago
      Not OP but they seem to be in the DNVB/DTC business. It is an interesting eCommerce sector. 1: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/dnvb-digitally-native-vertical-brand https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/dnvb-digitally-native-vertical-...

bosch_mind 4y ago

Thanks for sharing. Curious, how do you sustain on just $1k/mo? The idea is inspiring but also out of reach for most people with expenses exceeding that

mooreds 4y ago
From looking at author's linkedin, looks like they have done some consulting/contract programming over the past few years too.
asebold 4y ago
Author here - Thanks for reading. The $1k/mo is just my "salary" from revenue generated by my indie projects. I had a substantial amount of savings that I lived off of for my first year. Since then, I've supported myself with contract work. I'm also very lucky that my partner is very supportive and has a good job, so at times (such as last year when I was launching my latest SaaS), he picked up our shared expenses.
- steve1977 4y ago
  > Since then, I‘ve supported myself with contract work So „jumping into indie hacking full time“ is actually a bit misleading, no?
  - asebold 4y ago
    My first year I lived entirely off of my savings and dedicated myself full time to my first project. So, it is indeed the anniversary of when I attempted to go full time, which was the sentiment of that sentence. Sorry if that wasn't more clear. All the contract work I've done was part-time at most, so I also haven't had the comfort and safety of a full-time gig during this time period. My projects have been the priority, and I've only done the bare minimum to get by. Which, imo, is still full time "indie hacking", though maybe you disagree.
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ngonzal 4y ago

Ha, I thought this was a great line, I guess I always assumed you'd spend all your time building the products you were selling. But I can imagine there's a ton of customer support, unplanned features requests, talking with tax people and other business owners in the space etc etc "Starting out, I thought bootstrapping meant freedom from the messy complications of building and maintaining relationships. Turns out, it's just the opposite."

asebold 4y ago
Author here - Yeah, realizing I couldn't spend all of my time just building the product was a hard lesson to learn. This experience has forced me to learn a lot of new skills though, and I'm much more rounded as a person because of it.

armanm 4y ago

I'm about to launch a bootstrapped project on my own (my third idea). Your post really resonated with me because I have been thinking about the same feelings and outcomes as you shared in your blog. My conclusion is that the only guaranteed outcome from ventures like this for people like us (who are trying to build wealth from nothing) is and should be the learning. I have accepted that today I don't know how to create wealth by building a SaaS product and I want to immerse myself in that problem enough to learn more. Building my product is my teaching instrument. When you have a full time job, a family and other responsibilities this a hard thing to justify because you sink so much time into it; time which you are taking away from yourself and your family but this is what it takes to succeed IMO. I am sure that I will fail but there is no other choice except to assess what doesn't work, adjust, rinse and repeat until I figure it out. Some of us get lucky and struck success early but others will have to try again and many will never succeed and that's just life and nothing is free in life (unless you come from money but then again I've never been in that position either).

safety1st 4y ago
I wish you success on your next venture, but if the problem you're focused on solving is "creating wealth by building a SaaS product," your focus itself might be holding you back. Imagine going into a meeting with a potential customer and saying "Hi, my name's armanm, and I'm looking forward to our chat today about how I'm creating wealth for myself." They would probably walk out of the room! If there's any one commonality I've observed across almost all the successful business owners I've met, it's that they're intensely focused on one or more customer problems. They've picked a market that they know well (meaning they know a lot about it, and they also know a lot of people who are in it). And they ultimately spoke with hundreds or thousands of people in that market, figured out where there was a common need and how much everyone was willing to pay to fulfill that need, and they they came up with a solution. They're usually so obsessed with solving this problem their customers have, that it's hard to get them to talk about anything else! If you approach it as a personal or passion project to fulfill your own goals, the response of the market will probably be lukewarm because your pitch, your product, or any other number of things probably won't be calibrated correctly. Whereas if you dedicate yourself to understanding, mastering, and solving a pressing problem for a bunch of people who want to spend money, you have a much higher chance of success. One way that your own interests definitely factor in is when you have personally been a member of that market, experienced the need yourself and would be willing to pay for the solution and have spoken to a bunch of other people who feel the same way. That's a long list of criteria but if you meet them all you have a very high chance of success. That's why the average age of a successful entrepreneur when they found their company is 42. It takes years and years to acquire all the knowledge and meet all the people but once you do, it becomes vastly easier for the rest to fall into place.

magic_hamster 4y ago

It was very disappointing reading how the author found credible podcasts, books and people to follow, only to recommend nothing and leave the reader wondering about this mysterious information.

asebold 4y ago
Author here - Sorry about that. Since I haven't been much of a success, I didn't think people would be interested in my recommendations. But here are a few that I found really helpful: Indie Hacker Podcast (the forum on the site was also a great resource for me): https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast How I Built This Podcast: https://www.npr.org/series/490248027/how-i-built-this https://www.npr.org/series/490248027/how-i-built-this Stacking the Bricks: https://stackingthebricks.com/ https://stackingthebricks.com/ Books: The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, The E-myth by Michael Gerber, Running Lean by Ash Maurya As the other posted said, any resources provided by MicroConf are also great. Basically look up their videos on YouTube and follow all of their speakers on Twitter or subscribe to their newsletters.
- e2e4 4y ago
  Nice list. I find the book "company of one" to be quite interesting (although somehow it's less popular in tech community): https://www.amazon.com/Company-One-Staying-Small-Business/ https://www.amazon.com/Company-One-Staying-Small-Business/
sharmi 4y ago
If you are trying to bootstrap, try microconf talks on youtube.[1] Good signal/noise ratio. I still find good informative talks. If you find a speaker on microconf interesting, follow their talks on other channels. Newsletters I find useful: https://marketingexamples.com/ https://marketingexamples.com/ - copywriting examples https://tips.ariyh.com/ https://tips.ariyh.com/ - 3 mins tips extracted from research papers [1] https://www.youtube.com/@MicroConf https://www.youtube.com/@MicroConf

ronnykylin 4y ago

I resonate with your idea about passion a lot. Passion is what gets you to do the job, but once you're on the job, you have to put that aside and think with a cold mind. You turn passion into a small flame inside of you. It helps you go through the darkest moments.

asebold 4y ago
Author here - Thanks, glad to hear that part resonated with you. I agree, you can't let your passion burn too bright, or it will consume you. "a small flame inside you" is a great approach.

loveparade 4y ago

> With the launch of my second business last July (a programmatic SEO tool called PageFactory Great read, but it's a bit disappointing to see that the author was only able to make money with yet another SEO spam tool to generate low-quality content. The idea of the original Fantasy Congress was much more interesting, too bad that didn't work out.

cdiamand 4y ago
To me, that's actually one of the most optimistic parts. The author is willing to build what markets want, not a passion project, which is a turning point.
- mattgreenrocks 4y ago
  Good take. This is not selling out, this is being open to problems that people will pay for.
asebold 4y ago
Author here - Thanks for reading! Glad you enjoyed the article. Programmatic SEO has a long history of being conflated with spam, though, it is not. There are many instances where this approach to creating content is the best approach for users, and many are surprised to learn how often and how much programmatic content they consume (I often use nutritional information as an example). I've talked about this at length on my twitter, podcast interviews, and my free course on the subject. I will put links to these below. If you're concerned about the efficacy and morality of programmatic SEO, I'd suggest getting more information from these resources in order to make an informed opinion. Also, my product does not provide any AI services. I know it's common for people to assume "programmatic" means "AI", but this strategy has been around much longer than AI. My twitter (examples and many threads on the subject): https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt Free course: https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course Podcast interview I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU9VYD86xTA&t=818s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU9VYD86xTA&t=818s