🗞 What's New: Can procrastination be....productive?

Procrastination hits many founders, but it doesn't have to be a bad thing:

• Is there a way to turn procrastination around to make it work for you, instead of working against you? The guide below can help you turn incognito procrastination into something productive!
• Cross-promotions can be a huge factor in moving the needle for your newsletter or product. Check out these tips to make the most of creator swaps.
• After 6 years of failed products, Ollie Efesopoulos accidentally built a profitable startup in one night. Here's how he got the idea for Roastd, a tool that will roast your product within 48 hours, and how he plans to grow.

Want to share something with over 110,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

⏱ Productive Procrastination

by James Fleischmann

Procrastination hits most of us in one way or another. Sometimes, it can be hard to spot. However, if you can identify it, you can actually turn it into something productive.

Let's explore this further!

Incognito procrastination

Traditional procrastination consists of consciously doing things other than what you know you need to do. Examples include scrolling social media, daydreaming, etc.

Incognito procrastination, however, is trickier. It sneaks up on you because you don't know that you're doing it.

I started thinking about this when I posted about whether incorporating a company is really necessary when you first get started. Filing for an LLC seems productive, but it is so often just administrative procrastination.

Where else does incognito procrastination happen? Here are some other examples:

• Incorporating before it's necessary: You typically don't need to incorporate until you're making a good amount of money.
• Building new products or features: Don't let shiny object syndrome distract you.
• Over-optimizing: Your product doesn't need to be perfect!
• A/B testing: Some founders get lost in the data and make small tweaks forever, instead of doing what matters.
• Design: Your design is probably fine. Make it look decent, then move on.
• Learning: Some folks just love to learn. But, if you're always learning, you're never doing.
• R&D: Some research is good. Too much is not.
• Any work that is easier or more fun than the work you should be doing!

This type of procrastination is more dangerous because it's hard to spot. You can do it all day and feel good about yourself, but it never truly pushes the needle for your business.

Leveraging incognito procrastination

1: Notice it:

Turning incognito procrastination into productive procrastination is all about awareness. If you're aware that you're procrastinating, you can make decisions about how you do it.

Create a list of all the ways that you incognito procrastinate. Keep adding to it. Once you've identified the ways that you do it, it'll be much easier to notice when it's happening. Ask yourself:

• What is the level of priority? Is there something else that is higher priority?
• How long have you spent on it? Too much of anything will become procrastination at some point.

2: Harness it:

So, you're wasting time while pretending to be productive, and you notice it. Here are your options:

• Stop doing that thing, and start doing something that is higher priority.
• Stop doing that thing, and start doing something that will give you a break, while still being productive. This includes exercising, meditating, journaling, etc.
• Keep doing that thing, but be mindful about it. Admit that you're procrastinating, time it so that you're only doing it for a short period, and consider doing something related, but more productive.

If you feel that familiar pull to check Reddit or do some traditional procrastinating, consider doing some productive procrastinating instead. You could even have a list of fun, productive tasks that need to get done at some point, even if they're lower priority. Then, use those things as a break!

3: Get back to work:

Nothing special to say here. Just get back to it!

Avoiding procrastination

I posted a while back about how to be productive and how to get into flow state, so check those out for more tips. Here are some things that have helped your fellow indie hackers:

• Know your goals and mission.
• List and prioritize your tasks. Here are some tools that can help with that.
• Break your tasks into tiny pieces.
• Track your progress.
• Hold yourself accountable.
• Give yourself positive reinforcement.
• Build in public.
• Team up with a partner.
• Create new habits.
• Turn off social media notifications: But, if you've got to be on social media for business purposes, define what actually counts as "work."
• Schedule your time, and start as early as possible.
• Temptation bundle: This is when you pair something you love with something you need to do, like listening to your favorite podcast only when you work out.
• Follow the two minute rule: If a task takes two minutes or less, do it now.

How do you procrastinate? Share your experience in the comments!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko

⌚️ Here's the best time to post on TikTok.

💸 Nearly 70% of consumers will cut back on nonessential spending.

💞 Instagram Broadcast Channels are a new way for creators to deepen connections with their followers.

🔊 How to use estimated brand reach as a meaningful marketing message.

💻 Opportunity time: More than 30% of apps on the App Store and Play Store are abandoned.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

🤝 Using Cross-Promotions for Growth

by Jens Lennartsson

Launching a newsletter or a product can be challenging. Before word-of-mouth and organic growth take off, it might feel as if you are shouting into a void. By teaming up with other founders and creators, you can grow through cross-promotion.

Here's how!

The audience matters

Cross-promotion works best when you both have audiences that have similar interests. Start identifying newsletters with similar audiences (check out the tools and resources below), and craft an offer. Reach out to the creator with your offer, and negotiate on the terms. Be sure to track your progress!

The successes

Cross-promotion works:

• Josh Spector ran a cross-promotion in For The Interested, and 1.2K people visited his signup page. 250+ subscribed!

• Emanuel Cinca started running cross-promotions when Stacked Marketer crossed 2K subscribers. Out of the newsletter's 50K current subscribers, between 4K-8K are from cross-promotions.

• Dylan added a "GC Newsletter of the Week" column to his Growth Currency newsletter, and is doing weekly swaps. This helped him hit 3K subscribers.

• Greg Bussman got 30% of his subscribers from swaps with other newsletters.

• Lenny Rachitsky is getting 78% of his new subscribers from Substack's referral feature.

Mistakes

Don't make these mistakes when running cross-promotions:

• Not tracking the results: There's no one-size-fits-all. Make sure you track the return for each cross-promotion. That way, you know if it is worth repeating a few months later!
• Not using Google Analytics UTM tags: By adding a simple UTM tag on the link to your opt-in page, you'll be able to see the exact number of subscribers from each collaboration.
• Not keeping an eye on the numbers: Once you hit 10K+ subscribers, swaps seem to be a time sink, and are not scalable.

Tools

• Organize your cross-promotions with this free Notion template.

• Lettergrowth is a fast, simple way to find and connect with newsletter owners open for cross-promotions.

• Sparkloop's Upscribe is a cross-promotion tool that works with all major newsletter platforms.

• Collab Match currently has 200+ newsletters in its database, all open for swaps.

• Refind offers a one-for-one; you send them one, they send you one.

• Post on Indie Hackers: Katt Risen posted, inquiring about other founders interested in cross-promotion. She received dozens of replies.

• Discover other amazing newsletters at Inbox Stash.

• InboxReads helps you find the best email newsletters for any topic.

Resources

• The Newsletter Blueprint: A vibrant community for newsletter owners.

• Cross-promotion email template.

• r/tech_newsletter opened a thread for connecting other newsletter operators.

Check out my newsletter here!

Have you tried cross-promotion for your product? Share below!

Discuss this story.

🧠 Harry's Growth Tip

from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry

A memorable header:

• Old way: “Enough of this...”
• New way: “It's time for a new doc...”

Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.

Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.

🔥 Ollie Efesopoulos Will Roast You in 48 Hours

by Ollie Efesopoulos

Hi, indie hackers! I'm Ollie Efesopoulos, and I've had my fair share of failed startups. I want to share my story about how I built a profitable startup, Roastd, in one night.

The first text

I've thrown away thousands of dollars on ideas that were never going to work, and came out the other side feeling like I'd learned absolutely nothing. About a week ago, I got a text from a friend linking me to his startup.

I've seen variations of his idea a thousand times. He had launched a while back, but wasn't seeing any paying customers come through the door. He was convinced that he just needed a few more weeks to clean things up, and that his landing page was the greatest interface to grace the internet. He just knew that it was only a matter of time before the subscriptions came pouring in. I texted him "Good luck!"

That's when it hit me.

The second text

Before wasting his hard-earned money to bootstrap this startup, which was to likely fail, my friend needed to hear the truth! I design for a living, so I sent back another text saying: "Pay me, and I'll roast your landing page. Let's keep this transactional so there are no hard feelings."

After a while, he got back to me with a payment receipt, and the chains were unshackled. I let loose on his landing page and roasted his countless hours of hard work, reducing the front page of his startup to dust. I sent him the brutal feedback, and waited.

The next day, he responded with "Done." He had stayed up that night making the changes I had recommended, and when I saw the improvements he'd made, I was super impressed. He did it all within a matter of hours!

The idea

I'd accidentally just validated my startup. I put my phone down and opened up Framer, a web design tool that I knew I could use to rapidly build a landing page.

I whipped up a site in a couple of hours, and Roastd was born. I spent another few hours cleaning it up, and decided that I'd post it on Product Hunt for fun. Within a few hours, I got my first paying customer!

Years of what felt like an unbreakable curse, clinging to second grade ideas and sinking money into them, had been broken. It's been two days since launch, and I've already got a small backlog of customers.

My friend also made his first sale because of my roast. Life is good!

The next steps

I've started a dedicated Discord for people to join, and roast each other's work. I've also added another pricing package, since a few people have requested more than a single page to be roasted. I'm taking a very rapid iterative approach, without thinking too far ahead!

I don't want to keep expanding the service too much until I see more traction, but I'm considering expanding into a marketplace at some point. For now, I want to optimize what I'm offering until I know that people get a lot of value from it.

I've created a promo code for indie hackers! If anyone is considering getting a roast, just go to Roastd and add code ROAST20 at checkout for 20% off. Only 50 codes available. Enjoy!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

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Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to James Fleischmann, Darko, Jens Lennartsson, Harry Dry, and Ollie Efesopoulos for contributing posts. —Channing