
Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers - scribu
http://www.toomas.net/2017/07/18/reverse-engineering-a-successful-lifestyle-business-heres-everything-ive-learned-from-reading-indiehackers-com/
======
donmatito
What I find interesting with Indie Hackers is that it covers a wide range a
personal/business situations. It goes from real lifestyle business, to beer-
money-making side-projects.

I feel that there is a world of difference between a side-project that is
free, to one where you ask customers for their credit cards. Of all
professional experiences, I have never learnt as much as I did taking a side-
project idea from idea to MVP, then to beta users, then to paying customers,
scaling server issues, and marketing strategies. It's not so much about the
money, than the fact that you learn so much on so many dimensions.

Sincere thanks + shameless plug, the interview about Smooz was fun, a good
self-reflection exercise, and a good source of traffic too
([https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/smooz](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/smooz))

~~~
mrisoli
Exactly! What I love about IH is that it doesn't define success as 6+ figures
revenue streams, many of them are in early stages or making <$1k/month and are
people happy with what they are building even if it is not their main job yet.
Which is good to divert from the nonsensical thinking that only unicorn
status/IPOs/acquisition equate to success often spoken in the startup world.

~~~
donmatito
Me too :-) Lots of people around me were dismissive of the early days of
Smooz, that it would never be a "real business". My big goal is 1000€ /
months. Not a billion-dollar company : just a life step I'd be really proud of

------
ThomPete
In other words. Reading about success to become successful is like reading the
autobiography of lotterywinners. There are no secrets to success other than
luck, timing and actually shipping your product (or play the lottery).

Contrary to the lottery though much fewer people ship and there are much more
winning lottery coupons.

There is nothing to learn about how to build a successful product.

If you want to read anything read about specific obstacles you get into.

Great read!

~~~
jansho
Reading about success _might_ create a feedback loop to yourself so that you
feel more motivated and possibly more guided to get to success. Kinda like
hanging out with games enthusiasts, and you gradually become one yourself?

~~~
komali2
I have definitely read in one of those exact type of books that surrounding
yourself with successful people helps you become successful. Same for
surrounding yourself with the rich. Something about feedback loops, and
greater access to opportunities through networking.

~~~
jansho
On the other hand you could start experiencing imposter's syndrome. In any
case, it's not easy to get that golden ticket for such circles, let alone
maintain your rep once there!

~~~
komali2
>Imposter's syndrome

To be fair, there's about sixteen million articles on how to eliminate this.

>it's not easy to get that golden ticket for such circles

Not sure I agree. I want to remember the book I read this in but I can't, but
in this case the dude just rented in an super expensive apartment complex. I
guess he was able to do that because he had a job, sure, but the point was he
rented higher than he was comfortable doing, yet it paid off in the end.

Most of the ways I'm thinking of involve money (get VIP badges at conferences,
clubs, whatever), but a simple and free way is to go to shitloads of meetups
and other "people gathering" events, being gregarious and meeting everyone you
can. No reason you couldn't bump into a high falutin CEO at a motorcycle ride
day or on the Frisbee golf course or something.

~~~
jansho
Well, I'm not sure if I'll ever have the wit and guts to hustle my way to that
circle, dunno if I even want to in the first place. But there's truth in "it's
who you know, not what you know" so ya, feedback-looped, thanks ;)

------
bigtunacan
The 4-Hour Workweek is the first book listed and I have heard of it so many
times I finally decided to read it. I picked up an old copy from the local
library and I'm a little over 1/2 way through.

So far I have not been all that impressed. Just in general it seems so light
on anything really concrete and more just a motivational book. Where it does
have concrete things though they are just really out of date (One example is
that they recommend Yahoo Stores where today someone would probably use
Shopify or another alternative. Another example is there is a LOT of talk
about using magazine ads, but how many people are actually still
reading/buying print mags today?).

What are other people's thoughts on this particular book, and what about the
updates in the latest edition? Has it changed enough to be somewhat current
when the realities of today?

~~~
arthurwinter
It was a groundbreaking book _at the time_. For me, certainly. But I hear it
mentioned in nearly every SMB interview podcast I listen to.

Many things are outdated now or simply more mainstream, as it's been read by
almost everyone and part of the culture of many.

I consider it a book marking an "era", at least to myself, much like "The Web
Startup Success Guide" or "Micro-ISV" by Bob Walsh.

You can't ask Tim to "update" the concrete steps, as those are the ones that
worked for him at the time, and now he's doing very different things and he's
a very different person.

------
noxToken
I've always wondered what the advice would look like if you compiled a list of
what not to do from failed companies. TFA is a list of the successful ones who
got it right, so we know what they did to make it. Yet I'm sure many people
follow this advice and still fail.

You can find wildly varying statistics, but somewhere between 50% and 90% of
startups will fail within 2 years. What did those companies do (or failed to
do) that made them close up shop?

~~~
ihaveajob
Virtually all of them ran out of money because they didn't have enough
customers to cover their expenses. It seems silly but if you put it in basic
terms, this usually maps to something very concrete in your domain.

~~~
rhizome
_if you put it in basic terms, this usually maps to something very concrete in
your domain._

For those of us who didn't go to college, can you translate "maps to something
very concrete in your domain" into concrete terms? It's pretty abstract.

~~~
yathern
It means that in the area in which a (failed) business tried to operate, the
failure can be more specific than "couldn't cover expenses". For example, a
shoe company that makes very cheap shoes. Costs 5 dollars to make, sells them
for 10 dollars. They have basic operating expenses of 50 dollars a day. They
need to sell 10 shoes a day to stay in business by the skin of their teeth. If
they don't, they 'failed to attract enough customers to cover expenses'. But
they could have a more specific view:

1) We didn't have any advertising since we were operating on a shoestring
(hehe) budget - losing customers

2) Our low prices actually made us seem like a low quality entry in the
market, and hurt our sales.

3) We could have invested more into our production line to reduce recurrent
costs.

Or any number of things. But it ultimately comes down to "we didn't have
enough money"

------
konpikwastaken
Heh, something I read earlier on indiehackers made me chuckle.

"Honestly, negativity about my business model is more likely to come from a
community like Hacker News than it is from my readers."[1]

He's not wrong.

[1]: [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/site-builder-
report](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/site-builder-report)

------
rb808
Yeah this is the best for me:

> Ship. Ship. SHIP. The overwhelming failure case among people who read
> interviews like this one is that they spend 98 units of effort reading about
> running a business for every 2 units of effort running a business. Flip that
> on its head.

I wonder how many successful entrepreneurs actually spent time reading advice
blogs when they were starting.

~~~
kelukelugames
Haha, I've read 4 books on writing by famous authors but have written 0 books.

I think I enjoy reading about writing more than actual writing.

~~~
armenarmen
Finished writing my first novel, waiting on cover art now, and yeah. Reading
about writing is a lot more pleasant than the actual writing. Rather, it's
editing that sucks.

~~~
stevenj
Good writing is great editing.

------
zapperdapper
All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary
to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance
_don 't start a business!_

So what's the alternative?

Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you
do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K
from that - I know many developers making double my rate. That £24K is more
than double my expenses though. If there's a 6 month contract I really like
the look of I will do it (especially if it's remote working) - but then I'll
take at least a year off.

The great thing about a contract is you go in, do your thing, get out. Job
done. No stress. No worry. No customers giving you grief and wanting their
money back. No infrastructure going down with admin alerts at 3.00am. No
hassle. I don't even have my own limited company. I use an umbrella company
and while not as tax efficient I have no dealing with accountants, HMRC, tax
returns and all that nonsense.

I think there are many good reasons to start a 'lifestyle' business. I'm just
not convinced it's the way to go if work-life balance is what you are looking
for.

~~~
dejv
Second that.

My way was to find maintenance contract where I do programming few hours a
week that pays my bills and mortgage + occasionally taking some contract work
(about once a year, month - three months long).

Contracts could be very stressful (as I am usually picking on some VC type of
startup as they use to pay more), but I know it is going to be over soon so it
is easy to just go through it.

I am doing that for more then a decade and it works, the only thing is to
figure out what you are going to do with your off time: I used to start
startups, side projects, travel the world, but for past few years I am just
farming and spending time with my kid.

More people should really think about this alternative.

~~~
adlq
Where/how do you find those types of contracts?

------
Silhouette
A lot of this seems to reflect the consensus among experienced HN posters as
well: you have to actually ship something and charge for it, it has to be
something people actually want instead of just what you enjoy making, and so
on. Arguably much of this is just common sense, but maybe that's just
hindsight talking.

The only one I strongly disagree with is "raise your prices". While this is
common advice on HN as well, I think it should come with a caveat that it
mostly applies to B2B businesses. If you're running a B2C business, your
customers are spending their own money, and possibly on something that isn't a
necessity and isn't immediately going to make or save them a greater amount of
money in return. Customers in this situation may well be extremely price-
sensitive, and even small adjustments in pricing can have dramatic effects on
conversion rates. As a counter-example showing that a big price cut can be
effective, look at the way that games suppliers like Steam and GoG run their
sales.

------
superasn
Very interesting post. I think the author can head his own advice and could
have hosted it on a domain like startuptools.com or something, because this
blog post is going to be backlinked heavily and with a touch of SEO this can
be a regular source of targeted traffic.

Just add a pdf checklist at the bottom that needs an opt-in (anybody who reads
this will have a very conversion rate) and soon you've got a small list. Pitch
them the startup tools or whatever you think is best for the list (using
affiliate links) and soon you have a site that is making a passive income.
It's easier said than done, but creating a passive income is really that easy
and if you're doing the effort you may as well reap the rewards.

------
tmaly
One other thing not mentioned in the article is the community on Indie
Hackers. If you are working on a side project, the majority of the people in
the forum are there to help you. They have given me great feedback and ideas
for my project.

------
soneca
I believe this list is missing what I consider to be the most important factor
for success, an underlying strength that the most successful business I read
on IndieHackers (and elsewhere) have that is systematically underestimated as
a reason for success: _previously acquired audience_.

I believe audience is the most important currency in today's world, especially
for digital products. Audience may be followers on Twitter, Instagram,
Youtube, etc. Audience may be an email list. Audience may be traditional
networking (as if you are in a B2B niche business). If you do not have
audience, you can buy one with ads (even so it is easier said than done); or
you can borrow the audience from _someone_ else, an influencer (I know there
are ways to pay for influencer's audiences, but I do not believe it is very
effective, to get some influencer to legitimately love your product and act as
your referrer seems to me to be more effective, if harder). Or you can borrow
the audience from _something_ else, like HN, Reddit, PH.

All of the steps of launching and building a business, especially the very
first ones are enormously easier if you have an audience. And enormously -
some times impossibly - harder if you do not have one. This is derived from
the adage that your first idea is always wrong. You have to learn everything
by shipping early and talking to customers, but if you ship early to 20
eyeballs and talks to luckily one or two potential users, this feedback loop
just doesn't count. But if you launch to thousands to eyeballs, even if you
are making the mistake of no shipping early or not focused on talking to
customers, you will receive unsolicited feedback from some of them.

And a previously built audience of people who trust you at a basic level will
be much more responsive and engaged in rationalizing and vocalizing their
opinions about your product. They will be "early adopters" type (hard to get
that when you buy an audience). And they also will (likely) be people that are
your target audience (hard to get that when you borrow an audience from HN and
similar).

Some of the most impressive successful business in IndieHackers (according to
my own criteria) are the ones who had _years_ of building an audience. Through
foruns, email lists, blogs.

A genuine audience is hard to plan ahead. Does not seem plausible to have the
vision, the will, and the diligence to think about the industry/niche where I
want to launch a business years ahead. So it is good to launch a business
where you have genuine passion, somehow you will have the network (even so,
not necessarily a large audience).

If you are in that position of having a large audience, seriously consider
launching a business because you have a very big unfair advantage (and follow
all the advice on this list). If you are not, pay a lot of attention on how to
reach your target audience. It is a very tough problem to crack.

~~~
ivm
This is an underrated comment. Breaking through the public's indifference for
the first time is mostly luck, snowballing with some existing audience is much
easier.

Here's another great comment about the "minimum amount of attention":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7207943)

------
Oras
Nice article, I would add:

1\. "Be patient" as success does not appear overnight. 2\. "Don't be afraid to
fail". It's hard to get it right from first time.

I guess second point is covered in ship,ship,SHIP :)

~~~
Silhouette
Indeed. A remarkable number of overnight successes take ten years to reach
that night.

(Apologies for the absence of credit; this isn't original, but I can't
remember where I first saw it.)

------
jacobrobbins
this is a great resource, a lot more stuff in here than a typical blog post

------
cbar_tx
digital nomadism doesn't mean anything.

------
dahoramanodoceu
I work one hour a morning. W00t!

~~~
dahoramanodoceu
Actually I should rephrase thatand say, the way I make money, my profession,
takes up 3 hours of my day, counting commute time. I can live off that money.
The rest of the time I just do what I want, which is what I generally consider
to be 'the work.'

~~~
yeahsure
Your comment would add more value if you actually explained what you do and
something related to the link. Right now I only know someone, somewhere, can
work for 3 hours a day and play for the rest of time.

