Short, bite-sized conversations with indie hackers that have started small, profitable and bootstrapped businesses. You'll learn how they come up with ideas, what they do to validate, find those first customers and make a sustainable income.
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Growing Dependabot to $14k MRR before selling to Github - Grey Baker, Dependabot
Grey Baker is the co-founder of Dependabot, which is a bot that makes it easy for developers to keep the third party dependencies up to date, which grew to $14k MRR before being acquired by Github in 2019. Grey’s story is a long an interesting one, so there is an extended version of this podcast available on the indie feast membership. But the best bits are here about he started out at McKinsey, before being a pivotal early employee at London FinTech GoCardless, to then cycling around the world and then coming back to accidentally launch Dependabot.👉 Extended version available on the Indie Feast membership here.What we covered in this episode Landing a gig at consulting firm, McKinsey Learning how to code in 6 months Joining VC-backed GoCardless as employee 6 Growing GoCardless to 100 employees Why Grey left after 4.5 years Cycling around the world Eating a petrol-ey snickers bar Starting Dependabot as a side project A failed launch Doing things that don't scale The growth inflection point - GitHub marketplace Advice for bootstrappers Recommendations Book: The Design of Everyday Things Podcast: N/A Indie Hacker: Pete Hamilton Follow GreyTwitterFollow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) Sponsor - Tiiny HostTiiny Host is the simplest way to host and share your web project online. It's loved by thousands of freelancers, agencies & developers across the world to quickly upload demos, landing pages or websites. Just drag & drop your web files or even a PDF to share it with the world in seconds. 👉 Try it here
r/SaaS moderator making $6k MRR with his own SaaS - CH Daniel, Simple.ink
Ch Daniel is the co-founder of Legit Check, an app that authenticates luxury items, that grew to $6k MRR in just a few weeks. He’s also building simple.ink, which is a simple way to make a website from Notion, it got #1 product of the day and got 1,300 users in the first month. He’s also got his finger in many SaaS pies, running the r/SaaS subreddit where he arranges AMAs and facilitates discussions with some of the biggest SaaS founders out there. As for podcasting, Daniel’s dipped in there too, with his show The Usual SaaSpects an extension of his brand. Most recently, Dan acquired Emojics.comWhat we covered in this episode: Making $200k with an authenticator business How does one fall into authenticating luxury items? How Legit Check became legit Turning a one-time purchase business to a subscription Taking over the r/SaaS community on Reddit Favourite AMA with Sabba and Tim from VEED The real reason he started his podcast, The Usual SaaSpectsJames interview on The Usual SaaSpects Does the world need another Notion web builder? Pre-launching to build a list of 5,000 Acuiring Emojics.com Should more indie hackers acquire businesses? Recommendations Book: Power of Now Podcast: Prof G Show, Succession Pod Indie Hacker: CH David Follow Daniel Twitter Personal site Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) Sponsor - Tiiny HostTiiny Host is the simplest way to host and share your web project online. It's loved by thousands of freelancers, agencies & developers across the world to quickly upload demos, landing pages or websites. Just drag & drop your web files or even a PDF to share it with the world in seconds. 👉 Try it here
Multiple successful exits to making lemonade - JR Farr, Lemon Squeezy
JR Farr is the co-founder of Make Lemonade, a product studio behind Lemon Squeezy (a platform to sell digital products), Dunked (to showcase your portfolio) and Iconic (a set of cracking looking apps). But this isn’t JR’s first foray into entrepreneurship. Back in 2008 he sold his first startup, College Connecting, before starting and selling another, MOJO marketplace back in 2012. From here he worked at the acquiring company for 5 years, before starting ANOTHER startup, called Weav, a product to help with customer retention. I could list out JR’s CV in more detail, but you can tell that this chap a seasoned entrepreneur.What we covered in this episode: JR's entrepreneurship background Building Mojo (Wordpress marketplace) Mojo getting acquired in 2012 Why JR stayed for 5 years in a big company Getting a mini MBA Spending $75k on a domain for a failed company Meeting the Make Lemonade folks Should more founders band together? Building Lemon Squeezy Taking on the digital products space Going into a crowded market Advice for entreprenuers Recommendations Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things Podcast: My First Million Indie Hacker: Jon Yonfook Follow JR Twitter Personal site Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) Sponsor - Ramen ClubMy favourite community has just got a significant upgrade as it rebrands to Ramen Club, the best community to help you get to Ramen Profitability.Ramen club has 4 remote coworking sessions a week, masterminds, accountability calls, live AMAs, a fractional CFO, in-house VA, discounts and so much more. But most of all, the founder Charlie has done a wonderful job at cultivating a wonderfully friendly and supportive community.To join the world's most supportive community for bootstrapped founders to reach ramen profitable and beyond, head to ramenclub.so and use code "INDIEBITES" to let Charlie know I sent you and get 50% off your first month.
Behind the success of Trends.vc - Dru Riley, Trends
Dru Riley is the founder of Trends.vc which at its core helps people discover new ideas and markets through expertly researched reports. Trends is a bootstrapped company that makes money through it’s Trends Pro reports and community.In 2017, Dru took on a mini-retirement, sold a second home and set out with 3-5 years of savings to strike out on his own. After launching various newsletters, products and even book he eventually landed on Trends, which didn’t actually make any money for the first few months. But just 6 short months later, he was at over $20k MRR and growing fast.Now, Dru is working through the challenges of scaling a rapidly growing business and even hiring people to take over that juicy core. The reports. Here's a link to the Indie Hackers episode he did where he talks more about what went into that growth.What we covered in this episode: Hiring for the core competency of the business, the reports What Dru’s day-to-day looks like Challenges with context switching Starting Trends for fun The idea behind framework based research The first Trends report on cloud kitchens How does Dru decide on topics for Trends Choosing to persevere with Trends Launching a community How comfort challenges led to Trends success When to stop projects What Dru does for fun Recommendations Book: Sapiens, Caste Podcast: Founders Indie Hacker: Pat Walls Follow Dru Twitter Personal site SEO Course Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) Sponsor - AhrefsThank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/awt.
Solo founder running 3 profitable bootstrapped businesses - Monica Lent, Affilimate
Monica Lent is a founder running 3 profitable indie businesses after leaving her full time job 2 years ago. She runs Affilimate, a SaaS product which allows you to manage and track affiliate commissions, the Blogging for Devs newsletter and paid community for developers looking to grow an audience and finally, Not a Nomad, a travel blog that accounted for almost 50% of Monica’s revenue last year, as she grew her portfolio of projects from $30k to over $100k.What we covered in this episode: How Monica splits time between her projects Is it detrimental having split attention? Delegating and outsourcing as an indie hacker How content and SEO ties her projects together Benefits of a VA Starting a blog that makes thousands Having a travel blog during covid Starting a community for developers How to start your own successful blog The downsides of sharing revenue numbers Is Monica having fun? Recommendations Book: Founding Sales Podcast: Tropical MBA Indie Hacker: Josh Ho Follow Monica Twitter 2021 Retro on personal site SEO Course Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) Sponsor - AhrefsThank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/awt.
Growing ScrapingBee to $1m ARR - Pierre De Wulf, ScrapingBee
Pierre De Wulf is the co-founder of ScrapingBee a web scraping API that grew to $1M ARR in 2 years. Before starting ScrapingBee, Pierre and his co-founder Kevin had quit their jobs to follow the indie dream. 9 months later, their product PricingBot couldn’t generate the traction they were hoping for so they sold the business and pivoted to ScrapingBee.What we covered in this episode: Pierre's background; inspiration from his father Running a business within World of Warcraft Meeting his co-founder, Kevin Starting a project for his girlfriend Leaving his job to work on something for 9 months Knowing when to stop and move on Starting and selling PricingBot How to sell a failed company Using SEO as a marketing channel How to write SEO content effectively Starting ScrapingBee How ScrapingBee grew so quickly Taking TinySeed funding Recommendations Book: Hello Startup Podcast: My First Million Indie Hacker: Matt Wensing Follow Pierre Twitter Personal site Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) Sponsor - AhrefsThank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/awt.
Bootstrapping Testimonial to $13k MRR after many failed products - Damon Chen, Testimonial
Damon Chen, who is the founder of Testimonial, a product that collects video testimonials that he launched back in December 2020, and has grown it to $13k MRR since then. Damon quit his stable job of 8 years at Cisco to pursue his dream of building a better life for himself as an indie hacker. This didn’t come easily for Damon, as he launched several products which made 0 revenue before hitting big with Testimonial. He’s also built some other fantastic products, such as embed.so and channel.so, as well as acquiring Supportman off fellow Indie Hacker Noah Bragg.What we covered in this episode: Damon's failed startup attempts Why he builds for fun Quitting his job and pivoting to Testimonial Using code from other projects How he went from 0 to 3k in 3 days Damon's approach to validation Growth tactics used to get to $13k MRR Having other projects for fun (Embed and Channel) Acquiring Supportman Growing his Twitter to 30k Recommendations Book: Getting Acquired Podcast: My First Million Indie Hacker: Pieter Levels Follow Damon Twitter Damon's blog Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - PodQueueThis podcast is brought to you by PodQueue. Don't you hate when you find something you just want to bookmark and listen to later as a podcast, but there's no easy way to do it? Try PodQueue, and you can save audio from anywhere around the web and easily listen to it later in the podcast app you already use. PodQueue works with links from YouTube, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, NPR, the BBC, and more! There’s a 15-day free trial, and it’s just $5 per month afterwards, with no credit card required at signup. Use promo code “INDIEBITES” at signup to get an extra month free!👉 Try it here
Building a mentorship platform to $1m GMV - Dominic Monn, MentorCruise
Dominic Monn is the founder of MentorCruise, a marketplace that connect mentors and mentees in Tech, which is currently doing $15k in monthly revenue and processed over $1m through the platform. Previously, Domm was a Machine Learning engineer at Doist, a job that he left in Feb '22 to pursue MentorCruise full time.What we covered in this episode: Why Dom left his full-time job at Doist How going full-time has impacted MentorCruise What Dom’s day-to-day looks like Not feeling guilty about unproductive hobbies How Dom’s discovered mentorship through Udacity Taking 5 months to build an MVP Why validation wouldn’t work for MentorCruise How it took 3 months to get his first paying customer Why he decided to push through regardless How persistence pays off Why building a business is like building a muscle How programmatic SEO works Recommendations Book: Built to Sell Podcast: My First Million Indie Hacker: Julian Canlas Follow Dom Twitter Hire him as a mentor Personal site Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - AhrefsThank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/awt.
Bootstrapping vs venture capital & lessons from a veteran - Spencer Fry, Podia
Today I’m joined by Spencer Fry, founder of Podia, a platform helping creators make a living online through selling courses, digital downloads, webinars and more. 7 years in, they have a 35 person team and have an awesome product for creators. But this isn’t Spencer’s first rodeo, bootstrapping and exiting 3 businesses between 2003 and 2014, notably Carbonmade and TypeFrag. What’s interesting about Spencer is that he's actually raised funding for Podia, and I wanted to find out why a seasoned bootstrapper like Spencer went down this route, and if it’s a an option that more indie hackers should consider.👉 50 minute version of this conversation.What we covered in this episode: Why Spencer raised funding for Podia Why you should look at funding as a tool Beer ≠ funding 3 interesting predictions on the creator economy Spencer’s article with those predictions Bonus: Spencer’s famous vodka pasta dish Opportunities to build in the creator economy Why entrepreneurs are different gravy Solo founder vs co-founder Recommendations Book: Ben Horowitz Book 1 / Book 2 Podcast: Axios Today / All In Pod Indie Hacker / entrepreneur: Tobi Lutke Follow Spencer Twitter Personal Blog Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - AhrefsThank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/awt.
Why your product needs marketing - Dagobert Renouf, Logology
Dagobert Renouf is the founder of Logoloy, a logo and brand design service that he started with his wife, doing around $3k in monthly revenue. This is an awesome story. Dago started building Logoloy in September 2018, then completely failed the launch after building for almost 2 years. It wasn't until May 21 that Dago realised he actually needed to find a marketing channel that worked for him -which was Twitter. Dago went for 15 years chasing money, but then realised that wasn’t the course to happiness. So after a turbulent few years, he’s now in a place of fulfilment, with plenty of the journey to go.👉 Extended episode here.What we covered in this episode: Making his first internet money in high school Getting a cease and desist at 15 years old The dangers of being focused on money Finding the idea for Logology Taking 1.5 years to launch his startup Having a failed launch after 1.5 years of building Marketing when you don’t want to do marketing Discovering a distribution channel that works - Twitter Growing to $3k per month Recommendations Book: Zero to One by Peter Thiel Podcast: Wannabe Entreprenuer Indie Hacker: Tony Dihn Follow Dago Twitter Logology Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - AhrefsThank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/awt.
Bootstrapping a portfolio of SaaS products to $3k MRR - Jim Raptis, BrandBird
Jim Raptis, an indie hacker from Greece who is working full-time on his portfolio of projects, including BrandBird and Magic Pattern, which are both doing $1,500 MRR. If you’ve seen those cool screenshots on Twitter with the nice drop shadow and gradient background, those are made with Brand Bird. What we covered in this episode Quitting running a funded startup for indie hacking Earning that first dollar Learning design as an engineer Launching a product with less than 300 followers Choosing to do a portfolio of small bets Splitting time between multiple projects How Jim went grew from 300 to 9k Twitter followers What do to do when things aren’t going so well Recommendations Book: Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares Podcast: Flow State Indie Hacker: Peter Levels Follow Jim Twitter Personal Site Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - TestimonialTestimonial allows you to easily collect testimonials from your customers and automatically embeds them on your landing page.You might have seen a wall of love with a bunch of supportive Tweets and videos on various products you’ve signed up for. That wall is created using Damon Chen’s product Testimonial. All you have to do is sign up, paste the nice things people have said about you and it will generate a beautiful set of testimonials that you can easily embed on your site or share online.Head to Testimonial.to o to create your Twitter wall of love for free. If you want to sign up for a paid plan, get a whopping 25% off for 12 months with the code “INDIEBITES” at checkout.
Candle dealer builds $5k MRR software to solve own problem - Dianna Allen & Jeremy Blalock, Inventora
In this episode I’ve got my first ever returning guest with Dianna Allen and first ever double act as we’re joined by her fiance Jeremy Blalock. I spoke to Dianna about a year ago after growing her handmade candle business from $100 to $50k in that year. Since then Dianna is still running TERRA and doubled the revenue in 2021, but has also co-founded Inventora which has just hit $5k MRR. Inventora is inventory tracking system for handmade businesses, solving Dianna’s own problem with TERRA.What we covered in this episode: How TERRA is going Handmade business vs SaaS business. Which is better? Solving her own problem with TERRA to build Inventora Spreadsheet to SaaS Asking Jeremy (Dianna’s partner) to build the product Growing without paying for ads Leveraging existing relationships Choosing to raise a small funding round Why raise money if you’re an indie hacker? Spending $25,000 on a domain Tactics for growing to $5k MRR Hiring a videographer to make a documentary Recommendations Books: The Innovation Stack, The Gardeners Almanack Podcasts: Acquired, The Product Boss Indie Hackers: Elon Musk, Jon Yongfook Follow Dianna & Jeremy Dianna's Twitter Jeremy's Twitter Inventora Instagram TERRA Instagram Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - AhrefsThank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/awt.
Gumroad founder's framework for a bootstrapped business - Sahil Lavingia, Gumroad
Sahil Lavingia is the founder of Gumroad, the platform that allows creators to sell products online. The beating heart of the creator economy. You'll likely have heard Sahil's story about his failure to build a billion dollar company with an article that went viral, but let me summarise for those that haven't.Sahil founded Gumroad in 2011, aiming to build the next unicorn, leaving Pinterest where he was employee #2. He raised $1.1m from angels, then $7m more in 2012. Things started growing, then they didn't. Sahil laid off 75% of the company to keep the product alive, moved to Provo, Utah to figure where to take Gumroad from that point. Almost a decade later Gumroad is growing quicker than ever, making millions in revenue and helping creators make a living online.Sahil has just launched his book, The Minimalist Entrepreneur, where he shares a decade of learnings on how to build a profitable, sustainable business and how entrepreneurs can do more with less to make more impact on the world.👉 I'm giving away 5 copies of Sahil's book on Twitter, enter here.What we covered on this episode: Sahil’s approach to funding Bootstrapping vs VC Why Gumroad runs so differently to most companies Why longevity has helped Gumroad Sahil’s book: The Minimalist Entrepreneur Building a project in a weekend: Verification Letters Livestream of building Verification Letters The framework for starting a business Why you should start and then learn Barriers people have to starting their business Fear of failure Importance of writing Recommendations Book: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely Podcast: All-In Podcast Indie Hacker: Naval Follow Sahil Twitter Website Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - ilo AnalyticsSahil has 280k followers on Twitter and he sure knows the tweets that will engage his audience. If you too want to get a deeper understanding of what engages your followers on Twitter, you should check out ilo Analytics.ilo helps you easily see which kind of tweets get more impressions, likes, profile clicks and more so you can get grow your Twitter audience. ilo's has beautiful graphs for the most important metrics for both tweets and threads will be sure to help you build your following.Head to ilo.so or hit the link in the show notes and use the code INDIEBITES to get 25% off your ilo subscription for life.
A solo $130k MRR productized design service - Brett Williams, Designjoy
Brett Williams is the founder of Designjoy, a one-man productised design service that is doing over $130k MRR, charging clients up to $5k a month for unlimited design. You indeed hear that right, Brett is running a million dollar business solo with over 40 clients.What we covered in this episode: $50k per year with a Tumblr blog Dropping out of college and getting a regular job How Brett started Designjoy Being inspired by Design Pickle Launching Designjoy Taking 3 years to get to $10k MRR Non-traditional marketing and growth methods Launching Scribbles, a side project What does into a good landing page? Different routes to success Waiting till $80k to quit his job Should entrepreneurs be more risk-adverse? How run a successful 1-man productised service? Recommendations Book: Company of One Podcast: The Dave Ramsey Show Indie Hacker: Suhail Follow Brett Twitter Instagram Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - AhrefsThank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/awt.
Growing an online card tool to $23k a month - Valentin Hinov, Thankbox
Val Hinov is the founder of Thankbox an online group card tool that grew to $20k p/m throughout lockdown. Now Val is facing the challenges of what to do when your product scales, what to do when the wave that brought you success starts to slow and when your product has one-time purchase pricing model.What we covered in this episode: Where the idea for Thankbox came from? Lessons learned from a failed startup How he built Thankbox in 2 months How he got his first users for Thankbox Building a virality model Using Google Ads to grow quickly Advice for people apprehensive of using ads Why social ads didn’t work The effect of a one-off purchase pricing model Having a big drop in usersIndie Hackers Pod The seasonality of online cards Outsourcing vs solo When to go full-time Recommendations Book: Atomic Habits Podcast: The Revolutions Podcast Indie Hacker: Andrea Bosoni Follow Val Twitter PersonalSite Follow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays. Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Personal Website Buy A Wallet 2 Hour Podcast Course Sponsor - 4dayweek.ioAs indie hackers we’re always trying to squeeze extra hours in our day to work on our side projects. What about if you had a whole extra day to work on your projects, while still getting a full-time salary?4dayweek.io is the place to get a Software Job with a better work-life balance. All jobs have a 4 day work week contract and most are only 32 hours per week. Find the best remote tech jobs from companies with a great work-life balance at 4dayweek.io or hit the link in the show notes.👉 Try it here.