🗞 What's New: Staying up-to-date on your industry (on autopilot)

Staying up-to-date as an indie hacker can be tough:

• Between industry updates, your market, and your competitors (among other things), founders have a lot to keep up with. This guide can help you put updates on autopilot, freeing up more time to focus on your business!
• Looking to increase your conversion rate, but working with little to no marketing budget? The tips below can get you soaring in no time. Hint: Start by simplifying your marketing funnel.
• Founder Nico Jeannen sold his AI logo generator, MakeLogoAI, for $65,000 just 3 months after launch. Here's how he built the app and acquired users with no budget, and why he decided it was time to sell.

Want to share something with nearly 115,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

🛩 Putting Industry Updates on Autopilot

by James Fleischmann

Between understanding your wider market, your niche, your discipline, demographic trends, economic trends, and so on, indie hackers have a lot to keep up with!

So, how do you stay on top of everything and still remain productive? Let's dive in.

Sources

First off, let's talk about where indie hackers are getting their intel from:

• Customers: This is super important. One of the best ways to stay relevant is to understand what's happening for your customers. Talk to them about your product and the industry. Engaging with your customers is just good business.
• Competitors: Keep tabs on your competitors. Get on their email lists. Read their blog posts. Follow their socials. Check out their roadmaps. Read what their customers are saying on review platforms like G2 and Trustpilot.
• News: Read the news that is specific to your product.
• Industry newsletters, podcasts, and blogs: Invest some time into finding the best resources for your purposes. Look to the people you respect; what are they reading? Here's a list of good newsletters for indie hackers.
• Social media: Follow and interact with folks who have their finger on the pulse. Follow your competitors. Note specific hashtags that you want to stay on top of, and set up social listening for keywords, including your product name, your competitors' products, and relevant words for your market. Twitter lists are a good option, too.
• Communities: Communities and forums are some of the best places to discover information before the masses catch wind of it. People in the know are having conversations all over the internet. Be sure to read the posts and the comments.
• RSS: There are plenty of RSS readers out there that will help you stay on top of updates from your go-to websites. That way, you don't have to waste time checking each of them.
• Books: Because this is very time-intensive, be very selective about what you read.
• Ongoing education: This includes trainings, courses, bootcamps, and certifications. Be discerning about which ones are actually worth your time, though.
• Conferences: If there's one in your industry, this can be a decent option for connecting with people and staying updated.
• Industry organizations: Lots of industries have organizations that you can join for networking purposes.
• Mentors: Mentors are hard to come by, but if you can find a good one, you've struck gold. Stay in contact. Meet with them regularly. MentorCruise might be an option for some.
• Cofounder: If you've got a cofounder, leverage them. If you're sharing what you learn with each other, you won't have to search for information on your own.
• Working in the industry: Continue working in the industry while you build your side hustle. Your work, in addition to paying you, will keep you up-to-date.

Routine

So, how do you do all of this? Here are a few tips for staying efficient:

• Time-box: Schedule time to stay in the know. This will help you remember to do it. It'll also prevent you from doing it for too long, or procrastinating when you should be working. Try to figure out when you're least productive, and schedule it for then.
• Batch it: Do it all at once.
• Be discerning about content: Identify topics and sources that you want to learn from, and don't go outside of those. Rabbit holes are not your friend here!

Set it on autopilot (sort of)

• Spend a little time finding and signing up for newsletters.
• Set up Google Alerts for relevant keywords.
• Set up a product (see below) to send you email updates. Don't forget to target relevant communities with it.
• Set up social listening with a product like BrandMentions, targeting not just your product, but also competitors and relevant keywords.

And, voila! You're getting a ton of information on autopilot. Information is sent to your inbox, and all you have to do is read it. Block out time in your schedule to regularly consume this information, then get back to work!

Pro tip: If you're already consuming this content, perhaps it wouldn't take much longer for you to create a newsletter where you post or summarize the curated links. That way, you can monetize something that you're already doing.

Tools

Here are some tools that can help maximize efficiency:

• Google Alerts.
• Flipboard: A news feed of what matters most to you.
• Feedspot: All of your favorite sources, from YouTube to RSS, in one place.
• Feedly: Similar to Feedspot, but it comes more highly recommended by indie hackers.
• Vivaldi: A browser with a great RSS feature.
• Paved: Use it to find quality newsletters.
• Mention: A social listening platform where you can track content sources to find mentions.
• Social Searcher: Search for mentions for free.
• BrandMentions: Allows you to track mentions of your brand and competitor brands. The company also has a hashtag tracker.

How do you stay up-to-date? Share your experience below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko

💸 Twitter's new API access charges could price many apps and researchers out of their projects.

🏛 HSBC has acquired Silicon Valley Bank UK in a historic last minute deal.

💻 Every advertiser should perform these keyword maintenance tasks regularly.

🏦 Silicon Valley Bank’s depositors will be fully protected, according to the US Federal Reserve.

🧙‍♀️ Custom AI chatbots are quietly becoming the next big thing in fan fiction.

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

📈 Eight Tactics to Increase Your Conversion Rate

by Dan Kulkov

No founder has ever said: "No thanks, I don't need a higher conversion rate."

That's why I collected eight non-trivial tactics to increase your conversion rate in 2023, even if you don't have a marketing budget. Read on for more!

1. Simplify your marketing funnel

Companies with 50 person marketing departments can have complex multilevel marketing funnels. Most founders can't.

The more complex your marketing funnel is, the more optimization you need to make it work. That's why you should shoot for minimalistic marketing funnels:

• One or two acquisition channels.
• Two or three activation moments.
• One or two sales offers.

Sure, you will lose some customers who need extra attention, but you will also make life easier for 95% of your users. That's how you get more paying customers.

2. Acquire better users

Acquisition channels are not equal. If you acquire users from a crappy marketing channel, they will not buy your product, not because you are not convincing, but because traffic quality is poor.

Trying better acquisition channels for your product will help you get more website visitors, and help land you more customers with less effort.

3. One offer at a time

Want to overwhelm your users? Offer five freebies, 10 main products, and four upsell products. People will get analysis paralysis, and end up not buying anything from you.

Or, you can have one freebie, one main product, and one upsell product. Some people will leave unsatisfied, but most users will have an easier time agreeing to your offer.

Help your users focus on buying one thing, then direct them to focus on purchasing the second thing.

4. Two or three pricing plans

You should have one offer, but not just one pricing plan.

Each product should have 2-3 pricing plans. Always include an upsell pricing plan for people with money, and a down-sell pricing plan for people on a budget.

Expensive pricing plans make your main pricing plan look better. The same goes for cheap pricing plans. Your goal is to define the most desirable plan for your business; don't offer more than three. That's too much. You don't want your potential customers to get paralyzed from comparing each price.

5. Choose your discount strategy

Discounts are growth drivers for founders, but only if you pick the right strategy.

Here are four different approaches:

• If you have a B2B SaaS, only give discounts for upgrading to an annual plan.
• If you have a productized service or e-commerce brand, give discounts for the first order.
• If you have a content product, run quarterly sales with huge discounts.
• If you have a premium product, don't give any discounts.

Understand when to play the discount card!

6. Get more social proof

Many indie hackers think they need to change how they describe their product to increase sales, and that's true to some extent. But remember, you already have the best promoters: Your customers. Use them to impress your website visitors with the love your product gets.

People trust people way more than they trust companies. Leverage that. Collect video testimonials, reviews from opinion leaders, and success stories from satisfied customers.

Your users need to feel that buying your product is a risk-free decision, making it a no-brainer.

7. Sharpen your positioning

Your users don't know everything that you know about the industry.

They have no idea why your key competitor sucks. They only remember 2-3 features in your product. They are clueless most of the time.

You don't have a lot of time to persuade them. You need to be convincing, clear, and concise. That's why your positioning must be irresistible:

• Who is this product for?
• What benefit can I get from using it?
• Why shouldn't I use the competitor?
• How much does it cost to achieve the promised result?
• Why should I believe that you can deliver the result?

Answer these questions. Embed this data in your marketing copy. Repeat it over and over again to be consistent.

8. Reactivate undecided users

Not everyone is ready to buy on the spot. People need time. Use this as an opportunity to nurture potential customers to become your loyal fans.

The only way to do this is to talk to them. Send free content, hang out in your community, and surprise them with limited deals.

Don't give up on users that didn't buy your product on the first try. Reactivate them.

Conversion rate optimization is all about making it easier for your users to buy your product. It's a win-win for everyone!

Will you implement any of these tips into your strategy? Let's chat below!

Discuss this story.

🧠 Harry's Growth Tip

from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry

Apple built a portable media player, but sold what it can do for you:

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

Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.

💰 Nico Jeannen Sold MakeLogoAI for $65K

by Nico Jeannen

Hi, indie hackers! I'm Nico Jeannen, and I just sold my app, MakeLogoAI, for $65K.

Here's the story!

Out to launch

I launched the platform three months ago, with zero budget and less than 600 followers. I learned to code just nine months ago.

In December 2022, I had a sudden idea. What if I made an app to generate logos using AI?

I was making AI logos already for my other projects, so I knew how to do it. However, I needed to validate two hypotheses:

1. Can I make logos in an automated way?
2. Would people pay for it?

I decided to make an MVP in 48 hours, as deadlines are the way to go when launching anything. 48 hours, one earthquake, and two power outages later, I had my crappy MVP ready!

By crappy, I mean a static HTML page linked to a Typeform to collect payment. The backend was literally me generating the logos and sending them by email. No framework, no fancy stuff, just text and pictures.

I posted on Twitter a few times, and generated a couple of sales from it.

Sales = validation. The next step was to make an automated version, so I challenged myself again to create that in 48 hours. And, oh boy, things went crazy!

Up, up, and away

I launched on Product Hunt on December 11, and generated $1K+ in sales. I hit Product of the Day and got tons of followers on Twitter, so I knew that I was onto something!

However, it was far from perfect. Lots of logos needed additional editing, or ended up looking weird because the customer inputs and prompts weren't good.

So, I started from scratch again, and launched a brand new version in January. The new version offered way more options and better results overall.

Then, I added the app to every startup directory I could find. That's how I got most of my traffic. I also kept posting on Twitter. Every time someone asked: "What are you working on?" I replied with the name of the app. I also replied when someone asked for AI-generated logos.

I tried to run ads on Twitter and Reddit, but that didn't really work because they weren't targeted enough.

Time to sell

I don't have much interest in logo design, and I don't have the technical skills to improve the app further, so I decided to sell it in February.

Acquire.com made the process pretty easy. I received a few offers and chose the best one. I did the transfer, and here we are!

In total, the app made $23K+ in sales and $15K in profit. If you want a more detailed post, I wrote about everything I was doing in real-time on my blog.

Now, this wasn't my first shot at indie hacking. In the last five years, I've launched around 35 projects. Most were total failures. Just between October and December 2022, I released seven different apps.

I never gave up. I kept showing up. It's a number game. The odds are against you, but at some point, you'll build something that sticks! Don't be discouraged. Failure is part of the process!

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?

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

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, Dan Kulkov, Harry Dry, and Nico Jeannen for contributing posts. —Channing