The opportunity for Indie Hackers is growing right now. More and more people are trying to build businesses online. More and more people are happy to try out new software. More and more people expect to use software while working and to pay for it. I truly believe one simply has to pick a market and do a decent job, not even great, or amazing, just good and they can make a living wage.
Think about it, I am not trying to start a company of 15 people. I don’t need to manage a payroll of 15+ people. Assuming that I was paying 15 people on average £2,000 a month that’s £30,000 a month. £360,000 a year. Thats before the office, desks, computers, software… I would be happy with £30,000 a year from my next project LOL …I wouldn’t stop there but it would be an amazing start or benchmark to hit.
Let’s look at some numbers – to hit £30,000 a year for something I could charge £29 for a month – I would need 86 users throughout the year. If it was an ebook, I would need to sell 1,034. Now there is obviously a cost per acquisition but, these numbers are obviously achievable.
Going back to look at where I am with my project for getting there. I currently have a few app ideas that I like and want to build:
- Digital Downloads Cart, which I am thinking of calling “Soobu”
- The AirBnB for ads platform
…there are others, but the main issue here is that these are not monthly subscription businesses. They are businesses that rely on the customer making sales so I can in turn make a percentage from the sale. While I know there is a lot of demand for these businesses, it also means it will be hard to get decent unit economics from paid traffic. I would have to rely on content and referrals. While I don’t think this would be impossible, it’s ideal. I want to have as many options as possible.
I will have a look through some of the other ideas I have…
- SMS blaster – send out SMS rather than just email
- Simple Dojo – this could be monthly but I haven’t figured out what to do about video hosting
- Excel course for accountants…
None of these ideas are in the right vein. I will go look at the funnel of one of my personas to see what they are currently doing…
Looking at Cici the “Six Figure Chick”…
She has an Instagram profile, which she updates daily. This is where new followers find her, and where she keeps her community engaged until they are ready to buy from her.
She keeps people engaged with a mixture of Inspirational content and advice on building personal brands and businesses on Instagram.
While at first glance it would seem like there is nothing original here, she is one of the best people in the game as far as I can tell. Her delivery is rough around the edges, but she is VERY consistent and knows her market inside out. She’s built an amazing business and should be commended for it.
Back to her funnel – The link in her bio leads to a landing page with links in it…
The design of this page is very simple, clean and, to the point. It’s simply buttons with text on them, pretty much what I was trying to achieve with lnks.to
When you click on the links they all lead to a samcart.com page selling everything from free ebooks to $1,000+ consulting packages…
When you sit back and think about it, it’s classic internet marketing: “Buy my ebook on how I got rich selling ebooks” LOL, but it works.
While I have never used or even looked at SamCart in the past, it looks like a solid, feature rich platform…
Interestingly, you pay monthly for this platform…
This is good to know, while it would take me some time before I am able to compete from a features perspective, it means the market may not be against paying monthly for platforms like this. Having said that, I wouldn’t know what to do about transaction fees. I would have to pay these myself. While they could be rolled into the monthly fee, I think that would be a risky play.
It just occurred to me that it might be worth making a membership site, so form people pay to have access to your entire volt. Or maybe they pay to get access to the information, which is kinda in the site so there can always be ads to other things right by the content. You can add ads to ebooks as I have done lots of times in the past, but they will be out of date shortly if not handled well. I could potentially do a video on how I went about building ebooks.
Back to looking at the funnel…
Looking at Cici’s SamCart landing pages, it looks like you’re buying ebooks
Doing a quick search to see if many instagram accounts are linking to SamCart pages…
Only 413 results. This suggests that I am looking at this in the wrong place.
I will check twitter and then see if I can search linktr.ee
…again, not much with twitter…
Not much here for now, but back to looking at Cici’s funnel…
When you go to her site, interestingly the home page is the collection of links as seen above but, there are other pages…
She’s got…
- A blog
- Earn with Cici, leads to the page with links
- About, is her story
- Contact page
Very simple site, most of her efforts are on Instagram so, not sure she’d need much else. Interestingly, she (and I have seen this on many other sites) has a page where she talks about tools she uses on a regular basis…
This post allows me to see what tools she uses and what she likes about them. It also has comments from some of her followers. This means I can see what some of them are interested in and what their likes and dislikes are.
I can go through this to work out what she’s using and look for subscription based tools. Knowing that this is one of the common behaviours in this market makes it much easier to look for ideas. It also means I might be able to reach out to these creators to see if they would be interested in creating a review for sharing with their followers. This can be a really powerful way to grow, especially when linked to an affiliate or referral program.
I’ve got to take a break for now as I have to make something to eat and sort out some stuff before the day is over, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.
