
Learnings from a Year of Being Indie - wallflower
https://ryanashcraft.com/a-year-of-being-indie/
======
semicolonandson
Lessons I learned in my first year (prolly 2010)

\- Dip your toes into a few different markets in as inexpensive a manner as
possible. The difference in ease of marketing you'll see between lackluster
ideas and winners will literally be 50x - i.e. you will _know_ when you've got
product-market fit. If you are in doubt, you don't have it.

\- You gotta spend money (or serious marketing sweat labour) to make money.
Nothing happened for me when I first released my product. It was only after
taking out some AdWords and planning a sensible, scalable SEO strategy (more
here: [https://www.semicolonandsons.com/episode/seo-strategies-
for-...](https://www.semicolonandsons.com/episode/seo-strategies-for-web-apps-
part-i)) that I started getting sales.

\- This one is embarrassing to admit but I'll put it here anyway: keep every
receipt - you'll need it for accounting (and can save a lot tax deductions)

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mtlynch
> _While I wish that I had made more than just $7.5k in my first year doing
> indie development, I am more concerned about the lack of downloads and
> growth._

I'm surprised the author sees $7.5k as a low number. $7.5k in your first year
as an indie developer is great! That's 3x what I made in my first year and
even slightly higher than what I made in my second.[0] I'd estimate that $7.5k
in the first year puts one in ~90th percentile or higher of revenue.

There's maybe survivorship and availability bias at play because you only hear
about massively successful startups, but I think the vast majority of startups
or solo software projects struggle to find revenue, especially with their
first product.

[0] [https://mtlynch.io/solo-developer-year-2/#how-i-made-and-
spe...](https://mtlynch.io/solo-developer-year-2/#how-i-made-and-spent-money)

~~~
jlokier
That may be "great" for an indie, but it's a disaster for a business you're
hoping to live off, unless you have reason to believe it's going to change
radically.

As an indie you almost certainly have no investment and are living off
personal savings during that time.

$7,500 won't cover essential cost of living for most people. And if it does,
you're probably doing without healthcare, aren't investing in a pension or
generally in your future, and are living in a shithole.

If revenue is that low and there is "lack of [...] growth", even if that's the
upper 90% of indies for the first year, you're probably going to end up
running out of savings and desparately looking for a perm job in due course.

At least, with those metrics it's advisable to have some kind of second
project, part-time job or similar.

EDIT: Above assumes you don't have a partner paying for your costs of living
during this time. I didn't think about that.

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Jack000
sustainable customer acquisition is the hardest part of being an indie dev,
it's a lot more difficult than building the product itself.

You got amazing press coverage though, should be able to leverage that for SEO
and content marketing.

~~~
mtlynch
My friend Matteo Mosca (@matteomosca_, also an indie dev) is working on a tool
called HustleJet[0] to help founders find customers. You give him your product
and the type of customers you want, he scours social media and forums to find
people who have recently posted about the pain point your product solves. Then
he finds contact info for those people and provides a dashboard with the
relevant screenshots and contact info.

I'm not involved with the product at all. He just did a recent demo for me,
and I thought it was neat.

[0] [https://hustlejet.io/](https://hustlejet.io/)

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jokethrowaway
I've spent years tracking my food intake and indeed most apps (even from great
brands) are crap.

I built my own web tracker and diet creator but I ended up not using it at
all. These days my diet is stable enough that I know roughly what I'm going to
eat. When I'm lean cutting or lean building I just throw in / remove a snack
rich in protein.

The app look really amazing but the value it provides is not life changing. If
I were a potential customer I'd be put off by it being subscription based.
Sure, it's great for you to have MRR but as a user I'm not adding a monthly
cost for a fancy ui and the hope to lose fat.

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vivekweb2013
I like this article a lot. Such learnings has the power to shape the path of
indie development journey.

------
volkk
slightly off topic but what app do you use for the blueprint style
notes/drawings? ive been googling around but all i get are CAD programs

~~~
mguerville
Not OP but the Carbo app does this, you take a picture of a drawing and it
converts to faux chalkboard or blueprints

~~~
volkk
can i write in the faux chalkboard/blueprint style or is that only an export
functionality? hoping to edit that way

~~~
mguerville
You can adjust the sensitivity of the writing scanner so it looks more organic
if you want, and you can draw directly in the app although that doesn’t allow
for sensitivity or pressure based influence on thickness of the lines of the
things you draw

