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I didn't understand the indiehacker community/product mindset until I discovered the indiehacker "influencers" / lifestyle vloggers / etc. that might be the onl

I didn't understand the indiehacker community/product mindset until I discovered the indiehacker "influencers" / lifestyle vloggers / etc. that might be the only ones actually turning a profit on all of this. The influencers sell a lifestyle of throwing a million darts at the board with simple apps and building tiny businesses off the handful that get a lot of interest or seem to resonate with users. And the apps they build that do well are mostly small tools for other indiehackers to use to build/host/augment their apps. So they not only have the distribution and marketing aspects solved already, but they've actually created the demand for their own products by selling what they do as a viable (and easy/glamorous) path to success. The other indiehackers are mostly in it to be like their favorite influencers, so they copy them by making small tools for other indiehackers and trying the million darts strategy. But it just gets lost in a sea of other indiehackers with no audience or distribution, all trying to sell the same kinds of products to each other. It just seems like a really bad community to sell to: very cost conscious, building competing products, familiar with all your marketing/fake-it-til-you-make it strategies. If at first you don't succeed, watch more youtube videos and throw more darts! I don't think "market pull" is a terrible strategy and I'm sure for some it's just a fun way to write software but I worry that it's mostly a hybrid get-rich-quick scheme, parasocial thing for the small number of influencers at the top that wastes a huge amount of time. Personally I don't like the idea of baiting people with fake landing pages and think it's actively harmful for so many people to only build simple apps with immediate traction. It's just poisoning the well and making small-scale software low-trust, trying to get rich quick off other people trying to get rich quick

benjaminwootton 1y ago
Yeah, I spent some time researching this crowd and most of the ones I found have the playbook of selling to indie hackers and talking about how successful they are with fake MRR screenshots.
- hermitcrab 1y ago
  It is also noticeable that IndieHackers talks a lot about revenue and very little about profit. Easy hack for revenue: sell $1 notes for $0.50.
narrator 1y ago
Well Pieter Levels has a negative customer acquisition cost because he gets most of his business off of X and he gets so many impressions that he gets paid to post there. That's a pretty incredible marketing hack if you ask me. I invest in startups and the ones who do really well hack marketing. They have tech in their stack that is specifically devoted to automating and scaling their marketing.
- antupis 1y ago
  But if you listen to Levels' interviews, especially before his Twitter stardom, you will see that he always promotes the find your audience and build to them approach.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    But there's no guarantee your audience will buy what you can sell.
    - skeeter2020 1y ago
      your audience is supposed to guide what you're selling. The fundamental belief is getting the audience is harder than building something they want. This part is probably true, while the rest of the ecosystem is garbage and scams
  - ndr 1y ago
    Amusingly enough the product that makes him the most is PhotoAI and that doesn't seem to target his audience at all.
- andreygrehov 1y ago
  > They have tech in their stack that is specifically devoted to automating and scaling their marketing. Interesting, what are some examples?
  - jacob_rezi 1y ago
KurSix 1y ago
The sad part is, there are people building genuinely useful tools or creative projects, but their stuff gets buried under the avalanche of low-effort trend-chasing
- haag_codes 1y ago
  We need a community away from this low effort AI slop for people genuinely building good products.
wingerlang 1y ago
> might be the only ones actually turning a profit on all of this I don't think this is true at all. How many such influencers are there, really, a dozen? I'd guess there are a million people making everything from absolute bank, down to pocket money. Most of them are probably not even aware that these influencers exists.
jreebigwinnr 1y ago
[dead]
andai 1y ago
That's hilarious. The post reminded me of Marc Lou, who's launched like 30 SaaS, and from what I gathered by far his most profitable one is the one that helps you launch your own SaaS...
- baxtr 1y ago
  “During a gold rush, sell shovels”
  - amelius 1y ago
    Modern take: during a gold rush, review the shovels.
    - baxtr 1y ago
      Build a shovel app?!
      - comprev 1y ago
        Shovel-as-a-Service* [*] Also known as "tool hire" and has been around since the dawn of mankind
        eddythompson80 1y ago
        I package shovel-industry futures into financial instruments and sell them to speculators.
        Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
        and I create a cryptocurrency whose name is shovel but has nothing to do with the shovel but its just for the hype.
        baxtr 1y ago
        I think we have a winner…
9cb14c1ec0 1y ago
> influencers sell a lifestyle Oh, you mean that thing called the internet?
spacemadness 1y ago
Kind of like all the investment and finance influencers. If they’re so good at it why do they need to spend all that time trying to be an influencer? They should be rich already. They even beg for likes and subscribes so they’re obviously not doing it as a hobby. It’s simply because they’re trying to get rich selling advice to gullible people.
- bluecalm 1y ago
  There is a similar "community" of real estate investors. I've met one of them through a friend and asked a lot of questions about his business. He was "pivoting" to seminars and courses as well. I asked him why and he said he can "easily scale" with seminars/courses while investing, even pure flips takes time and you can only do so many with a limited budget, maybe one/two transactions a year. I am very skeptical as well and I think there is a lot of truth to "those who can do, those who can't teach" adage. It's one thing if you are in "who can't" group because you are older/retired/done with it after many years. It's another if it's a guy in his 20's or 30's selling courses. Those in my experience are almost always just snake oil salesmen.
- weitendorf 1y ago
  Personally I find indiehackers unique amongst get rich quick schemes because it's very transparently a community of people trying to get rich quick by building small apps for other people trying to get rich quick building small apps. It's not necessarily that the influencers are deceiving anybody (I think some do), they really do build apps like that too, some of which are genuinely successful. They're not selling advice. So it's like, on one hand it's not like "I'm a genius trader, buy my course for $3k and you will be too" because the people at the top actually, (mostly) demonstrably do the thing they claim is possible. And it's not like an MLM because there is not really any pyramid scheme dynamics involved. But on the other hand it's a market that only exists on the buyside because enough people believe it exists on the sellside to build for it, thus generating demand on the buyside.
  - kelvinjps10 1y ago
    The current templates business most of them have feels like the buy my course for 3k
jacquesm 1y ago
Something very similar applies to VC investing. Sure, some founders get rich. But founder returns averaged across all founders are horrible. The VCs however... they are like those influencers. They'll tell you exactly how you should maximize for their return, just in case you strike it big. They're not going to tell you how to minimize your risks, unless that happens to align with their increased returns.
svnt 1y ago
The thing about MLM schemes (or I guess MLH schemes in this case) is that the pyramid at the bottom is flat and small, and this example illustrates that intuitively more immediately than Avon. Are you interested in being a follower of a follower of an indiehacker? No? Then as a follower of an indiehacker you have no market.

benjaminwootton 1y ago

Yeah, I spent some time researching this crowd and most of the ones I found have the playbook of selling to indie hackers and talking about how successful they are with fake MRR screenshots.

hermitcrab 1y ago
It is also noticeable that IndieHackers talks a lot about revenue and very little about profit. Easy hack for revenue: sell $1 notes for $0.50.

narrator 1y ago

Well Pieter Levels has a negative customer acquisition cost because he gets most of his business off of X and he gets so many impressions that he gets paid to post there. That's a pretty incredible marketing hack if you ask me. I invest in startups and the ones who do really well hack marketing. They have tech in their stack that is specifically devoted to automating and scaling their marketing.

antupis 1y ago
But if you listen to Levels' interviews, especially before his Twitter stardom, you will see that he always promotes the find your audience and build to them approach.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  But there's no guarantee your audience will buy what you can sell.
  - skeeter2020 1y ago
    your audience is supposed to guide what you're selling. The fundamental belief is getting the audience is harder than building something they want. This part is probably true, while the rest of the ecosystem is garbage and scams
- ndr 1y ago
  Amusingly enough the product that makes him the most is PhotoAI and that doesn't seem to target his audience at all.
andreygrehov 1y ago
> They have tech in their stack that is specifically devoted to automating and scaling their marketing. Interesting, what are some examples?
- jacob_rezi 1y ago

KurSix 1y ago

The sad part is, there are people building genuinely useful tools or creative projects, but their stuff gets buried under the avalanche of low-effort trend-chasing

haag_codes 1y ago
We need a community away from this low effort AI slop for people genuinely building good products.

wingerlang 1y ago

> might be the only ones actually turning a profit on all of this I don't think this is true at all. How many such influencers are there, really, a dozen? I'd guess there are a million people making everything from absolute bank, down to pocket money. Most of them are probably not even aware that these influencers exists.

jreebigwinnr 1y ago

[dead]

andai 1y ago

That's hilarious. The post reminded me of Marc Lou, who's launched like 30 SaaS, and from what I gathered by far his most profitable one is the one that helps you launch your own SaaS...

baxtr 1y ago
“During a gold rush, sell shovels”
- amelius 1y ago
  Modern take: during a gold rush, review the shovels.
  - baxtr 1y ago
    Build a shovel app?!
    - comprev 1y ago
      Shovel-as-a-Service* [*] Also known as "tool hire" and has been around since the dawn of mankind
      - eddythompson80 1y ago
        I package shovel-industry futures into financial instruments and sell them to speculators.
        Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
        and I create a cryptocurrency whose name is shovel but has nothing to do with the shovel but its just for the hype.
        baxtr 1y ago
        I think we have a winner…

9cb14c1ec0 1y ago

> influencers sell a lifestyle Oh, you mean that thing called the internet?

spacemadness 1y ago

Kind of like all the investment and finance influencers. If they’re so good at it why do they need to spend all that time trying to be an influencer? They should be rich already. They even beg for likes and subscribes so they’re obviously not doing it as a hobby. It’s simply because they’re trying to get rich selling advice to gullible people.

bluecalm 1y ago
There is a similar "community" of real estate investors. I've met one of them through a friend and asked a lot of questions about his business. He was "pivoting" to seminars and courses as well. I asked him why and he said he can "easily scale" with seminars/courses while investing, even pure flips takes time and you can only do so many with a limited budget, maybe one/two transactions a year. I am very skeptical as well and I think there is a lot of truth to "those who can do, those who can't teach" adage. It's one thing if you are in "who can't" group because you are older/retired/done with it after many years. It's another if it's a guy in his 20's or 30's selling courses. Those in my experience are almost always just snake oil salesmen.
weitendorf 1y ago
Personally I find indiehackers unique amongst get rich quick schemes because it's very transparently a community of people trying to get rich quick by building small apps for other people trying to get rich quick building small apps. It's not necessarily that the influencers are deceiving anybody (I think some do), they really do build apps like that too, some of which are genuinely successful. They're not selling advice. So it's like, on one hand it's not like "I'm a genius trader, buy my course for $3k and you will be too" because the people at the top actually, (mostly) demonstrably do the thing they claim is possible. And it's not like an MLM because there is not really any pyramid scheme dynamics involved. But on the other hand it's a market that only exists on the buyside because enough people believe it exists on the sellside to build for it, thus generating demand on the buyside.
- kelvinjps10 1y ago
  The current templates business most of them have feels like the buy my course for 3k

jacquesm 1y ago

Something very similar applies to VC investing. Sure, some founders get rich. But founder returns averaged across all founders are horrible. The VCs however... they are like those influencers. They'll tell you exactly how you should maximize for their return, just in case you strike it big. They're not going to tell you how to minimize your risks, unless that happens to align with their increased returns.

svnt 1y ago

The thing about MLM schemes (or I guess MLH schemes in this case) is that the pyramid at the bottom is flat and small, and this example illustrates that intuitively more immediately than Avon. Are you interested in being a follower of a follower of an indiehacker? No? Then as a follower of an indiehacker you have no market.