Original link: http://hawstein.com/2023/07/12/five-years-of-an-indie-hacker/
How time flies, it has been 5 years since I was outside this huge system.
As with any previous essay, the timing of the writing didn’t happen at any of the milestone points (the lack of writing impulse when the milestone happened). If you have to arrange a writing opportunity for this article, it will be the fifth anniversary of solo, and you need to paste an article to express it.
Note: The structure of this article is loose and there is no central idea. Write wherever you think of it. If I remember it clearly, I will write more.
Considering that someone will come to the translation issue of “independent creator” and Indie Hacker, I have no choice but to explain it here. Here, I think “independent creator” is an appropriate free translation or synonym of the proper noun Indie Hacker. In the fixed context of this circle, it is better than the literal translation “indie hacker”. So that’s what I used. I discussed this issue a few years ago: Naming considerations for new series
The beginning of the fork in the road
June 11, 2018 was the day I resigned from the company to become an independent creator (Indie Hacker). Looking back at this decision, it can be summed up in a quote from Jobs’ speech at Stanford University:
It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
After leaving my job, I started AlgoCasts, an algorithm teaching video website. Let us call this period period A. During period A, my daily work was to study algorithm questions, write video scripts, record audio, record video, edit video, and publish video. I have done this fixed-mode work for 2 years, from various cafes in Beijing to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. In period A, I wrote a staged summary article. I don’t want to repeat this part of the content. If you are interested, you can read that article: 613 days without work
In period A, I was focused on making content, which can also be called info product. This was the best entry point I could find at that time, and it also earned me the first pot of gold after leaving the company.
Problems with content products
AlgoCasts is a content product for domestic users with a one-time fee. The 3 keywords here bring out 3 questions:
- For domestic users: the unit price is lower (compared to overseas users.
- One-time fee: need to continuously acquire new customers, monthly revenue is unstable.
- Content products: need to constantly produce new content.
Of course, it is not to say that all content products that are oriented to domestic users and charge a one-time fee cannot generate good revenue. For example, for those Internet celebrities or big Vs with millions or tens of millions of fans on the entire platform, writing a book or publishing a course for 99 yuan may cost millions or tens of millions in the account.
Unfortunately I am not such an example. What I make is an independent product, and I take a niche route, so the problems mentioned above are real problems.
Moreover, there is a very serious problem in making content products for domestic users: piracy. Even for something as niche as AlgoCasts, I know of 5 that have pirated it. When I knew that the content I had worked so hard to create was pirated and sold at a low price, my reaction was that I would not make products for domestic users in the future.
Never Forget about SaaS
AlgoCasts is the best entry point I can find for myself at this point in time on June 11, 2018. But influenced by the foreign Indie Hacker community, I have always wanted to do SaaS (Software as a service). Coupled with the above-mentioned problem of making content products for domestic users with a one-time fee, I am more and more eager to make a SaaS product for overseas users with a subscription fee.
This desire is so strong that before I had any product ideas, I was already telling others that I was going to go overseas to do subscription SaaS.
In period A, apart from doing algorithm teaching videos, I spent a lot of time on the website indiehackers.com . There are tons of stories of successful indie creators on this site. I watch all kinds of independent creators working on various products every day, and imagine that one day I can make a SaaS product that serves users from all over the world.
If I see a product that interests me on indiehackers.com, I usually go to Twitter to follow the creator of the product, read his tweets and blogs, and get a comprehensive understanding of the story behind the product and the creator. There are a few very interesting creators, I will read all the blog posts he has written, listen to all the podcasts he has been on, and then put him in a private Twitter list of mine to follow his daily developments .
Just watching (posts/interviews/tweets/blogs) and listening to (podcasts) day after day, I have almost reached the point where I am familiar with the circle of independent creators abroad, as if I am already one of them .
US bank account
During the Spring Festival of 2020, I accompanied my wife on a business trip to the United States. To be precise, she was on a business trip and I was the driver. After dropping her off at work each day, I started doing my own thing.
I forgot the day, after work, I started to browse YouTube aimlessly, and then accidentally saw @luoleiorg ‘s Bank of America account opening strategy video. The video is well done and well organized. After reading it, I thought about it, why don’t I open a bank account in the United States so that I can refuel the car in the future. Then I walked into a Bank of America branch next to the hotel and said that I wanted to open an account (well, it was such a coincidence that the hotel I was staying in was next to a Bank of America).
The person who received me was an Indian manager. After talking about my basic situation, the Indian manager said that he could not open an account for me now. He said that he can ask my friend in the United States to issue an invitation letter for me, and with that invitation letter, I can come to him to open an account. Ten thousand alpacas ran by in my heart, then smiled and said thank you, and walked out of the bank.
The refusal of the Indian manager made me want to get this US bank account even more (it’s me who is getting more and more frustrated). So, I found the nearby Bank of America branch on Google Maps, and drove to the nearest one. This time I was greeted by a Caucasian guy. After some pleasant exchanges, he not only opened an account, but also issued a debit card. The little brother also asked me if I would like to apply for a credit card by the way, but I refused. After all, to refuel the car, a card is enough. (I would also like to thank Shaobo for helping me accept the bank card)
At that time, I applied for this American bank card purely because I wanted to make it easier to refuel my car in the United States. The driving force stems entirely from a society’s fear of not wanting to have any interaction with strangers while filling up the car.
Unexpectedly, the U.S. bank account I accidentally opened at that time became an important step for me to do overseas SaaS and set up an offshore company. When I walked into a BOA branch to apply for a card, I never imagined the role it would play in the future. But looking back now, it is very clear.
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.
Responses to SaaS
After returning from a business trip to the United States and returning to Switzerland, in just one month, the new crown began to wreak havoc. I remember that at the end of February 2020, Google Zurich announced the start of home office. I also bid farewell to the carefully selected office at ETH Zurich (good lighting, strong network signal), and then began a long period of working from home.
During the period of working from home, I still mainly do two things every day: making videos and watching products (and their creators’ stories). During this period, I saw an interesting independent creator who made efficiency tools on e-commerce platforms. The product itself is actually quite satisfactory, but the story of this independent creator is very interesting. I read most of his blog posts and was very inspired.
At that time, I noticed that the tool he made was only an e-commerce platform for the North American market. So I wondered whether there are e-commerce platforms in the European market that need similar tools. After some research, as I guessed, e-commerce platforms in Europe also have similar needs, and sellers’ desire for tools is scattered in every corner of the Internet.
After completing the research, I archived the research results, including the existing solutions at that time, in my notes. Like all other product ideas, let it settle for a while.
This time, I felt a little different.
Unlike the previous product ideas, they are forgotten when they settle down. This time, the product idea invaded the brain more and more strongly as the days passed. After a few months, I decided to swing the bat (to borrow Buffett’s metaphor, every product idea that comes up is like a baseball thrown at me, and I can just watch them fly by and do nothing. Once I spot one Brilliant strike, full swing again.
At the beginning, I also “rationally” allocated 60% of my time to making videos and 40% to making new products. But I soon discovered that when I was making a video, I was thinking about new products. Later, I stopped pretending at all, suspended the production of videos, and devoted all my time to the development of new products.
Three weeks later, the new product was launched, including more than 20 functions, announcement videos, user guides, and FAQs.
On the first day of launch, there are users. After the first trial period ends, there are paid users.
In this way, my first SaaS product for overseas users with a subscription fee was born.
And my obsession has also had its first echo.
Stripes
In three weeks, a complete SaaS product was rolled out. Small but complete. The development of back-end services is the easiest for me, and I can get it done with Scala in my hand. The front-end part is learning while doing. Thanks to Evan ‘s Vue.js, this part of the work has become simple and enjoyable. In the entire development process, the slightly more complicated part is the access to payment services. After all, it is a product for overseas users, and it is impossible to simply put a WeChat/Alipay QR code and start collecting money.
There are many overseas payment service providers, and after some exhaustive research, I chose Stripe. This is where my Bank of America account for gas comes in handy. Since Stripe does not support mainland China, I can only choose one of the countries it supports to register. Considering that I already have a US bank account, I decided to sign up for a Stripe US account.
To register a Stripe US personal account, in addition to a US bank account, you also need an SSN (Social Security Number) or EIN (Employer Identification Number). Of course I don’t have an SSN, but everyone can apply for an EIN. Even better, you can spend a little money on Fiverr and have someone else help you apply quickly. How fast? My day is done.
After successfully applying for a Stripe account using a US bank account plus a personal EIN, I began to integrate Stripe into my products. The developer experience in this area is also very good, whether it is documentation or API design, it is quite good!
With the increase in product revenue, Stripe quickly sent emails asking for documents issued by the US government to further verify the name and address of the account owner. I just submit the 147C letter that IRS gave me when I applied for EIN.
Next, the MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) of the product continues to grow. By December 2020, with MRR exceeding my salary at work and growing, I knew it was time to register a company.
After using Stripe for several years, I personally think that if you want to go overseas to do SaaS and pay service providers, you should choose Stripe with your eyes closed. Of course, try not to do high-risk business. After all, it is directly related to money, risk control is very strict, and Stripe accounts are often blocked.
American company
There are some common registration places for offshore companies. After thinking about it briefly, I decided to register a US company. The first reason is that I am using a Stripe US account. After registering a US company, I only need to change the tax information, business information, and bank account in the Stripe account to the company’s. There is no need to migrate the customer’s subscription, which is very convenient. The second reason is that it is very simple to register a US company and the whole process can be done online. The third reason is that in the Internet and technology industry, if there are any new products or services, the United States is almost always the first country to experience them. The fourth reason is that American companies can pay zero taxes (in the United States, they only file taxes and do not pay taxes).
I refer to the following article for registering a US company. As for why Stripe Atlas is not used but Firstbase is used, it is also written in the article.
My US company has been in operation so far. Except for sorting out financial data every year during the tax season, there is almost no other maintenance burden, which is very light.
Micro-corporations and super-individuals
Companies will become smaller and smaller, and individuals will become stronger. This is a trend that I firmly believe in.
With the development of science and technology, various infrastructures are becoming more and more developed and modularized, making things easier and easier.
This is especially evident in the Internet industry. If one day you suddenly want to make a SaaS product, you will find that most of the things you need in this process have corresponding companies that provide vertical fine-grained services, and you basically only need to focus on your core business, All others can use third-party services. In this way, your workload is greatly reduced.
This situation of more and more vertical refinement of services greatly magnifies the capabilities of individuals. Today, you can start a company by yourself, without forming a team, recruiting employees, or needing an office, and making a very complete product to solve a very specific problem. And with the help of these third-party services, none of the links of product/design/development/marketing/operation/sales are left behind. The annual profit can reach millions or even tens of millions. This was simply impossible in the past, but now it is not only possible, but there are more and more successful cases.
The ultimate micro-company is a “one-person company”. One person is a company. Individuals are like traditional craftsmen who fully participate in all aspects of the product. That’s what I’m doing right now, and I’m having fun doing it.
hire or not
The MRR of the product was growing steadily, and I started to think about whether I needed to hire someone to help me with customer service related work.
After some research, I found that if you want to hire non-technical personnel (such as customer service) for overseas SaaS, then the Philippines will be a very good choice. There are two main reasons: 1. Low labor cost. 2. Good English. What’s even better is that there are also specialized companies to help you recruit contract workers from the Philippines to meet your requirements, such as Shepherd, which is my favorite.
The research has been adjusted and the service has been selected. But in the end, I didn’t take the step of “hiring people”. There is a picture on the Internet that can well describe my mental state on this matter:
At this stage, I like the feeling of being alone in making products freely. I can do whatever I want, but if there is one more person in this system, my degree of freedom will be weakened. In addition, I am a social fear, as long as I can accomplish one thing without dealing with people, I will choose not to deal with people.
The above are the “two things” that I don’t hire at this stage. Although the idea of hiring people still pops up from time to time, once I think of these “two things”, I give up.
beyond technology
naval said
Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
I have observed many outstanding technical people who tried to transform into independent creators, but in the end they failed, often because they can only do (Build) but not sell (Sell).
As a technical person, it is not difficult to make an app or a website. But getting others to pay for your product is not so easy. In order to sell the products I made, I did a lot of things. These things are not secrets, there are a lot of tutorials on the Internet, and even many of them are things that you know you can do based on common sense and intuition. But according to my observation, many people are unwilling to even try it, or they just try it a little and find it doesn’t work, so they don’t want to do it again.
Here are some of the things I did to sell my product.
Ask a friend to help write a good review. When a new product is launched, the discussion about it on the Internet must be zero. At this time, if a new user arrives and he can see some good reviews about this product, will the possibility of him installing and using your product increase a little? In addition, the good reviews are actually carefully written by me, and friends only need to paste them with their own accounts. Trouble your friends to praise you, but don’t trouble them to think about that passage for you. This is respect for their time.
Let users write positive reviews. Once a user is willing to pay, or shows love for the product, or I complete a customer support session in time, I will strike while the iron is hot and ask him to help write a 5-star review. At this time, users are generally happy to complete this little effort.
DM and email potential customers. You should know where your potential customers will gather or appear on the Internet, TikTok? Twitter? Instagram? Reddit? LinkedIn? Facebook? Quora? , just send an email. Be well prepared for that DM or email that sells your product, and be prepared for it to go unnoticed, ridiculed, or even criticized.
Leave your product name and official website link on the Internet. Find relevant videos on YouTube, relevant posts on Reddit, relevant questions on Quora, relevant discussions on Twitter, relevant groups on Facebook, and leave comments and answers. Try to give useful information, and finally bring your own products. To sell, but not so obvious.
Content marketing one: write articles. Write a long article with pictures and texts, and put the keywords of the product into the article reasonably. Try to use short sentences so that it is easier to read; use as many pictures as possible to make the article look richer; increase the spacing between lines and paragraphs to leave a breathing space for reading. If these suggestions seem abstract and boring, just refer to the following article and imitate the writing style of the famous bald man: Content Marketing – The Definitive Guide . In the long run, content marketing can bring free, high-quality organic traffic to your product, and it’s worth the investment of time.
Content Marketing 2: Make videos. It’s similar to writing an article, but it’s changed to a video format.
paid advertising. This is the easiest and most effective way to acquire customers in the short term. I have tried paid advertising on the following platforms: Google, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit. After several experiments, I finally found that Google Ads is the most effective for my product. Since then, I have been running Google Ads for a long time and have experienced firsthand how easy it is to make money with Google.
Affiliate Program. Allowing users to recommend you for a fee is a win-win approach. For my product, if a user refers a subscriber, then I give 25% of the subscription revenue to the referrer. As long as the subscriber does not cancel the subscription, the referrer can always receive the 25% subscription fee.
Word of mouth. In addition to content marketing, word of mouth is also the ultimate killer for selling products. Many paying users of my product are recommended by existing paying users. To allow users to spread your product spontaneously, you must first have a good product, and then you must have a good customer service. If your product is astonishingly good, then zero customer service can also spread word of mouth to tens of millions of people, such as ChatGPT. But most of the products can only be regarded as normal and good. At this time, how well the customer service is doing will greatly affect the customer’s attitude towards your products. For my product, I estimate that the attitude of most customers is: the product works as expected, but the customer service is top notch.
In addition, there are some trivial things that are not worth mentioning, so I won’t write them here. For example, outside of work, I follow potential clients on Instagram and like their posts. This thing can actually be done automatically by a tool, but since I regard it as a relaxing activity, it has always been done manually.
Emergence of product ideas
When I first started, I didn’t know what product to make. And once a product is built and running successfully, product ideas keep coming.
The first source of product ideas are customers who already have products. I have always maintained good communication with customers. Whether it is asking product questions, reporting bugs, or making suggestions, I will reply in a timely manner. In the early days of the product, I responded instantly in live chat or within 1 hour of receiving an email. I will reply within 24 hours after receiving the email. That way, these clients are happy to tell me what they think. So, I would get emails in my inbox from customers requesting to do some new product. These are the needs of real front-line customers. They will clearly describe the problems they encounter, and hope that I can make a product to help them. I receive a lot of this kind of demand emails, and I will record them in my notes first, and maybe they will be made into products someday in the future.
The second source of product ideas is the problems I encountered in the process of making products myself. Once you run through all the links (product/design/development/marketing/operation/sales) related to a product, you will find that many existing solutions are not good enough, and these solutions are not good enough. It’s a new product opportunity.
At a certain stage, you will find that you have accumulated a lot of product ideas. And because these product ideas come from real front-line users, they are often real and effective needs, not pseudo-demands created by YY. At this time, I found myself at another stage, which can be described by a book by Derek Sivers : Hell Yeah or No
That is, either a product idea intrigues me immensely, or don’t do it. This helps to filter out the product you particularly want to make among many ideas.
By April 2021, the existing products no longer require much investment (functions, onboarding, and documentation are relatively complete), so I picked a challenge and high complexity from those recorded ideas, and started to create new products .
treat customers as friends
When working on products, I have encountered such a situation several times: a customer wants me to develop a function to help him solve a specific problem. After my analysis, I found that if we want to solve this problem perfectly, we need to consider very complicated situations, and the development time will be very long. But if you just want to solve this customer’s specific problem, it will be much simpler.
The previous me would have chosen to spend a longer time developing that perfect solution. But one time I suddenly thought of the scene where I helped a friend or colleague solve a problem in the past. A specific friend encountered a specific problem and wanted me to write a program to help him solve it. At this time, will I spend a few days developing a software to help him solve a large class of problems? of course not! For my friend, what he encountered was a specific and specific problem, not the generalized type of problem to which this problem belongs. What he is most concerned about now is how to quickly solve the immediate problem. Others, such as software UI, whether the implementation plan is beautiful, he doesn’t care at all. Thinking about this clearly, my best practice should be to spend a few minutes pasting a script and help him solve the problem quickly.
Of course, making commercial products can’t be so sloppy. It’s just that when I ask myself, if this client is my friend, am I going to make him wait 3 weeks for a solution? Or help him solve the problem today, so that he can go home happily and have dinner?
Now I choose the latter. After all, having dinner happily is a very important thing.
The specific implementation is not necessarily ugly (don’t think that it is all hard-coded code as soon as you come up). My approach is to prune the “problem domain” to a small enough space, which not only solves the specific problem of the current customer, but also leaves a certain degree of scalability. This method is especially suitable for niche products in subdivided fields. Because the total number of users of this type of product is not large, maybe only a few thousand or tens of thousands. At this time, it is not necessary for us to spend a lot of effort to develop a perfect solution. One is that the development time is long, and the other is that the maintenance cost may be much higher.
Over the years, I have used this method to make some product functions, not only the customers are happy, but I am also happy. And guess what? None of the extensibility I left behind was used!
business is art
Very early on I had the feeling that doing business (business) is an art. I’m even more convinced of this after reading two books by Derek Sivers: Anything You Want and Your Music and People .
Doing business is the same as doing art, you can use your creativity in every aspect. You can learn from and integrate other people’s ideas, or you can break the rules and try something that others have never tried.
You can use your creativity when developing a product to create a unique and personalized product; you can use your creativity when marketing your product, such as writing an interesting marketing email (instead of applying a dead template); you can plan A spooky event; or an unexpected gift for a client. You can chat with the customer and become friends, and then ask him to help you promote the product; you can also send the customer 10 dollars in cash and ask him to give you a good review.
Every link in the process of doing business is like a blank sheet of paper, there is no golden rule that dictates what you should do, and you can write it in the way you like. This is no different from creating a novel, a painting, a sculpture, or a poem.
Of course, the premise is that you have to like doing business, just as you have to like writing, painting, sculpture or poetry, otherwise this activity will be boring and tormenting for you.
best times
Is this the best era or the worst era, depending on which dimension and aspect we look at this era from.
In terms of global SaaS and independent creators, I think this is the best time. With the help of the lines of code running on machines all over the world, the individual seems to have obtained the lever in the mouth of Archimedes, prying the giant that has never dared to imagine.
Code never sleeps.
I am always grateful that I was born in such an era. You can create and make a living in the way you like, and the products I make can easily reach any corner of the world that is connected to the Internet. And strangers who have never met, use my products to improve their quality of life and work, and give back money and thanks. Some of these clients have even become friends with me.
Living in such an era, I try not to waste the rich resources and opportunities provided by the era, try to do something, create something, connect with the world through the products/works I create, and finally connect with interesting people People and things meet.
If I can do the above, maybe even Mr. Wang Xiaobo will think that my life is a success.
To make friends
Wang Xiaobo said, “I live in this world just to understand some truths and meet some interesting things. If I can get what I want, my life will be considered a success.” Here, I want to change “interesting things” to “interesting people”, because I think people are more interesting than things, and interesting things are likely to be done by interesting people.
When I was working hard to write this article, Mr. Roy asked me if I was going to sell lessons? Hahaha, according to my observation, selling courses is indeed the final destination of many independent creators, no matter at home or abroad. But I don’t have this idea for the time being. If I have to say that I have some selfish intentions, it’s to throw myself out and see what the universe echoes.
Derek Sivers left such a sentence on the homepage of his website,
I love meeting new people, and I reply to every email, so say hello.
I really like the way he does it.
So before the end of the article, let me follow suit (refuse IM, let’s use email to connect
I like to make friends with interesting people, email [email protected], come and say hello!
Title map
Credit to Hawstein
This article is transferred from: http://hawstein.com/2023/07/12/five-years-of-an-indie-hacker/
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