🗞 What's New: Lessons from launching a paid community

Thinking of launching a paid community?

• Check out this guide for tips on what to be mindful of before putting all of your eggs in the paid community basket. Hint: While niching down is a good thing, don't narrow it down to too small of a market.
• Custom fonts may provide an extra pizazz, but are they worth the toll they may be taking on your site? Explore more on this below!
• Founder Marilyn Magnusen spent 28 months building Headstack, a Meetup alternative for tech founders, and recently launched. Below, she shares how she used a personal touch to land her first users, and how her philosophy on building has changed.

This issue is sponsored by guidde AI! guidde is a generative documentation creation platform that can help you capture your know-how across any app, and produce stunning video documentation, complete with audio narration, storyline, voiceover, screenshots, and more, with a couple of clicks. Register for free (no credit card required).

Want to share something with nearly 75,000 indie hackers? Reply to this email. —Channing

🏘 Consider This Before Launching a Paid Community

by Pete Codes

I created a group for founders to get to know each other over Telegram and Zoom calls, and you had to have a certain amount of revenue before you could join. The idea was to cut down on spam, and make sure that everyone in the group was an actual founder.

I attracted a small group of friendly people based on this idea, but after almost two years of working on the community, it simply doesn't make enough money to justify moving forward. In a little under two years, I made $4.6K+. Here's what I've learned about running a paid community, and what I wish I'd known before launching!

Sunk cost fallacy

Let me briefly mention the sunk cost fallacy, where you keep on doing something just because you've put a lot of time, money, or effort into it.

I was inspired by how Pat Walls decided to ditch his SaaS, Pigeon, and focus on Starter Story after realizing that it was the better business. The lesson is to focus on the business that is actually working!

Why did my community fail?

I think there are many reasons, but here are some:

1. Communities are hard:

Communities seem deceptively easy. Get a group of 100 people with a common interest to pay $10 a month, and you have $1K already! Get 1K people to sign up, and that's $10K MRR. But if it was easy, everyone would do it!

What makes it very difficult is that everyone wants something different from a community. Take organizing a running club as an example. Some people will want to run super fast, some will want to run at a shared pace as a group, and others will want to run on their own and not talk to anyone.

You have to make sure that the right people join, and are happy with the rest of the members. In short, there are a huge number of variables when organizing communities, and it's hard to please everyone.

2. Too small a market:

Requiring community members to have a certain amount of revenue drastically cut down on the number of potential customers.

As founder Chris McCormick once wrote on Indie Hackers, many founders aren't making much. Indie hacking, particularly without VC funding, is tough! Check out his full post here.

Then, add the fact that many founders don't like Telegram, preferring Discord or Slack. Also, many just don't want to pay for a community.

Adding to that, I'm based in the UK, so our calls were suitable for founders in Europe, Africa, or Asia, but that cut off the whole of the Americas as a market.

So, in summary, I was looking for bootstrappers with profitable businesses, who were based outside of the Americas, who like Telegram, and want to do Zoom calls!

You can see that I was fishing in a pretty small pond.

3. Selling to indie hackers:

One of my friends is making $14K MRR, but won't pay $10 a month for Zoom. Most founders are pretty cheap, myself included! So it is always going to be challenging asking them to pay to join a community when there are free alternatives, like other Telegram groups, Slack groups, Twitter, Reddit, Indie Hackers, etc.

4. No geographic basis for the community:

I think that communities created in huge cities definitely have an advantage. My local startup scene in Edinburgh is tiny, especially for indie hackers. If you can start a group seeded with founders from a big city, then you have a big advantage over someone purely meeting people online. It is what it is.

5. Poor design:

I'll throw my hands up and admit that I didn't put enough effort into polishing the landing pages or the product page on Gumroad. There are some impressive members in the group, so I could have done a better job of showing off their achievements to entice people to join.

6. People want in-person meetups:

Another possible reason is that people want to get back to in-person meetups. It could be that there is less appetite to join another Zoom call, compared to when I started the group in July 2021.

Moving on

It's sad to shut down a project, but it's good to be able to put my time and energy into something that works better. You usually have a lot of failures on the path to success. Check out this list of failed startup ideas from other founders.

With the extra time and mental bandwidth, I'll be focused on building the High Signal newsletter, plus working on my Twitter ghost writing service.

Have you tried running a paid community? Let's chat below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko

🎯 Six proven techniques for ultra-effective TikTok ads targeting.

💸 Tips for marketing during a time of economic uncertainty.

💲 Check out these new insights into setting your pricing.

📖 Everything you need to know from Google Marketing Live 2023.

🧠 The psychology behind why people buy what they buy.

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

🔠 Is It Time to Break up With Custom Fonts?

by SaltyWaffle

Web development, like any other dynamic landscape, seduces us with its endless parade of shiny new things. One such allure is the tantalizing promise of custom fonts. They whisper of uniqueness and branding, helping your your SaaS landing page stand out in the digital clutter. But hold your horses, dear indie hacker! As you already know, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Let's take a step back and explore a hidden goldmine, a fantastic strategy that packs a triple punch: Efficiency, impact, and comfort. Here's the secret sauce that can revamp your SaaS typography: System fonts.

Read on for more!

Beyond the glamour of custom fonts

Imagine a world where users are already familiar with your website's typography, the text feels comfortable, and doesn't strain their eyes. It's not just about familiarity; it's also about your precious resources. With every stroke of custom fonts, you're silently trading performance for aesthetics. Now, take a moment and think: Why make your users wait for something they may not even notice?

As a SaaS founder, your to-do list brims with more pressing concerns. Don't lose yourself in the labyrinth of custom font aesthetics that might add to the load time, and ultimately, will likely go unnoticed by the end user.

Efficiency in familiarity

System fonts are fonts that already exist on the user's device. If I may get a bit poetic here, they are the unsung heroes, waiting patiently on a user's device for their moment to shine. Here, we have fonts free of HTTP requests and ready to render. They're fonts that are already familiar to your users.

With a tiny bit of CSS, we can breathe life into system fonts without the burden of additional HTTP requests. A well-crafted system font stack is your secret weapon:

<code class="language-css">body {
  font-family: Inter, Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', 'Arial Nova', 'Nimbus Sans', Arial, sans-serif;
}
</code>

Need a touch of monospace elegance for your <code> tags? Fear not, system fonts have got you covered:

<code class="language-css">code {
  font-family: ui-monospace, 'Cascadia Code', 'Source Code Pro', Menlo, Consolas, 'DejaVu Sans Mono', monospace;
}
</code>

But those are just examples. You have a lot of options while still sticking to system fonts. If you're going for a particular style, be sure to check out projects like Modern Font Stacks for a vibrant palette of options. (I am not affiliated at all, it's just a cool project).

Now, how do these work? In a nutshell, the browser goes through the list, and stops at the first font that it recognizes. There's literally zero overhead. It's already on the user's device.

One minor note is that I probably would not recommend using system-ui as a value just yet (for non-mono fonts). There's a little bit of a hiccup with that on some setups, but that's another story. You can read more about that here, if you're interested. Please keep in mind that it's only specific to system-ui as a value, and not system fonts as a whole.

The custom font mirage

Yes, custom fonts have a charm of their own, but let’s confront the hard truth: Can your users really tell the difference between Open Sans and Arial, or Roboto and Helvetica? Is the slight aesthetic advantage worth the performance toll? Think twice before you sacrifice load times for minimal aesthetic gains.

Custom fonts may look swanky, but they're not as innocent as they seem. Each custom font that you bring onto your site, with its sly HTTP request(s), subtly slows down your load times. Sound harmless? Not really! Studies suggest that even a meager 400 millisecond delay can make users bid adieu to your site. As you add more fonts, this sneaky issue multiplies, leaving your website to bear the burden.

A closer look at Google Fonts

Google Fonts, often seen as the go-to for custom font integration, isn't without its pitfalls. The process, an HTTP request for a CSS file with only at font rules, followed by additional HTTP requests for the actual font files, is not the most efficient in itself.

Furthermore, the introduction of cross-origin isolation in 2020 severely limited the performance benefits of using something like Google Fonts. This security-boosting measure comes with a tradeoff: Fonts are cached on a per-domain basis, rendering the benefit of a shared cache across sites obsolete.

This change means that each site has to fetch the same font independently, prolonging load times. Cross-origin shared cache is not a thing anymore. It's a bitter pill to swallow for something that might not even consciously register with your users.

Where custom fonts might be worth it

Don't get me wrong, custom fonts aren't evil. They have their place, especially in creative portfolios or high-end marketing campaigns, where they can sprinkle some personality dust. But let's face it, for most SaaS sites, these are special occasions, not daily business.

Simplicity and efficiency are your secret weapons! This is mostly a gentle reminder that, as an indie hacker, you should always be looking for places to cut overhead. The mission has always been simple and clear: Sculpt lean, impactful, highly-effective businesses, and cut the fluff.

Do you use custom fonts? Share your experience below!

Discuss this story.

🔥 Landing Page Hot Tips

by Rob Hope

Strengthen your landing page with these design, development, and conversion tips:

Create a text color hierarchy.

The biggest tell that a landing page was built by someone with little design experience is black text with maximum contrast on a white background.

Soften the blow with an off-white background and a subtle gray, or other color text hierarchy.

Some time spent here goes a long way towards creating a more pleasurable reading experience for your visitor. These tools can help:

• Contrast for Mac: Great tool that I’ve been using to ensure my text color hierarchies are within accessibility standards.
• Accessible Color Generator: Useful to find the nearest accessible-passing color based on your color inputs that are failing.

Subscribe to Rob's One Page Love newsletter for his favorite UI, design, and development finds.

🚀 Marilyn Magnusen Launched and Landed Two Users

by Marilyn Magnusen

Hi, indie hackers! I'm Marilyn Magnusen, and I've been working on HeadStack, a Meetup alternative, for (checks GitHub) 28 months. I finally launched, and have my first two users! I've been lurking Indie Hackers for ages, and thought it was time I joined in.

Read on for more of my story!

Landing my first user

Even with all of the lessons that everyone has shared, I spent way too long building. There were always bugs that needed fixing, features to add, and the obligatory dark mode! With all the information on here about launching, I was paralyzed by how to do it. Product Hunt? Waitlists? Twitter? There were so many choices that I couldn't focus on any of them.

It was hard to keep up motivation while working in the dark. HeadStack is a Meetup alternative, specifically for tech meetups. I've recently started using Twitter again, so I reached out to a Meetup organizer via DM, asking if he'd be interested in using my new website.

We arranged a Zoom call where I told him about what I was building. I also asked about his meetups, how he organizes them, and what he needs the most help with.

He's now my first user! We talk almost every day, and he reports bugs, provides feedback, and offers ideas for improving the app. The first meetup is scheduled for June 6. I'm working every minute that I'm not at my day job to make sure the site is ready. I'm incredibly grateful for his candid feedback, and for the motivation that this is giving me to improve my site.

After the success of getting my first user, I used a similar approach to land my second user. I'm trying to focus on the two users that I have, and on building something that will really help them. It feels good to be speaking with people, instead of just building by myself all the time!

Staying motivated

I've started projects before, and have gotten 75% of the way through before giving up, or getting distracted by another idea. I just really wanted the satisfaction of finishing something, so I promised myself that I would finish building this before I could do anything else.

The site isn't perfect, but it's usable, and people are getting value from it. I'm stoked to be at this point!

What I'd do differently

Everything that my first user has said made me realize that I spent too much time building features that I don't need yet. I should have been focused on shipping earlier. Then, I could have used this whole time to build features that he would actually use. I've decided not to build anything new unless a real user has specifically asked for it.

Wrapping up

This victory may not sound like much, but for me this is huge. After so many failed products, this is the first one that is actually seeing the light of day, and has real users. I'm hoping to keep working the same way, and building connections with real people.

I can feel a spark forming, and am trying with all my strength to fan the flames!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

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

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Pete Codes, Darko, SaltyWaffle, Rob Hope, and Marilyn Magnusen for contributing posts. —Channing