🗞 What's New: Tracking your users ethically

Tracking users is necessary for improving your business:

• But tracking ethically and lawfully is crucial. Store as little data as possible, get explicit consent, and lean on your privacy policy.
• Google Chrome can't cater to everyone's unique needs. That's where Chrome extensions come in. Build with ChatGPT and index into existing markets.
• An AI-powered media aggregator, a $3K sponsorship, and 6K readers. A targeted social media marketing strategy helped Techpresso grow.

Want to grow your business? Try running a promo in the Indie Hackers newsletter to get in front of 80,000+ founders.

by James Fleischmann

As indie hackers, we need to know what visitors and customers are doing on our sites so that we can optimize our products and marketing strategies. But we also have to balance that with ethics and the law.

Disclaimer: None of the following is legal advice. Please do your own due diligence, and consult an attorney for advice specific to your situation.

Drawing the line

Marko Saric:

Plausible wouldn’t be here if GDPR hadn't taken effect, and we stay as close as possible to the GDPR approach. No long-term identifiers, no cross-site, cross-app, or cross-device tracking, no behavioral profiling for advertising purposes, and no sharing of personal data with third parties.

Siobhan Solberg:

In general, any tracking that is done without consent, or not anonymously, [is unethical]. Tell the user, and respect their choice. Or, do it in a way that doesn't identify anyone.

Channing Allen:

We use basically every kind of tracking available. The only exception I can think of is heatmap tracking: Software that screen records each user's cursor movements and mouse clicks.

I'm big on science, measurement, quantified self, and all that stuff. That said, I find heatmap tracking a bit creepy, and I really dislike the idea of governments covertly slipping through the back door of corporations to surveil citizens through products in the private sector. So, that's probably where I'd draw the line.

Can focusing on privacy help businesses?

Siobhan:

In my experience, using [unethical] tools doesn't end up helping growth in the long-term. They are short-term fixes to hit your KPIs quickly.

In the end, the ethical route is better. It's slower, but more consistent. It helps you develop trust with your customer base, thus improving retention.

Channing:

If you're serving a niche that cares about privacy, put this front-and-center in your marketing materials, landing page, mission statement, and so forth.

Marta Poprotska:

Non-compliance with the GDPR can cost a company as much as 4% of its annual turnover, and reputational damage.

How to become privacy-friendly

Tash Postolovski:

1. Practice data minimalism: Store as little data as possible about customers, and only what's required to provide your service to them. Store it securely, encrypt it, and avoid storing it any longer than needed. Give users the ability to opt out.

2. Get explicit consent.

3. Lean on your privacy policy: List all the data you collect, and your legal basis for collecting that data.

4. Give users power over their data: Allow them to review their data that you've stored, and update, erase, or download it.

5. Check GDPR or other legal compliance of the services you use to store and process user data.

6. If your user data is leaked or breached, communicate that immediately.

Discuss this story.

from the Growth Trends newsletter

🧵 Threads launches its search feature in several countries, including the US.

📱 iPhone users spend seven times more on apps than Android users.

🧲 Creating compelling content that converts.

📺 The beginner's guide to advertising on Hulu.

🤖 AI porn generators are getting better, while their ethics are getting murkier.

💪 Product for Engineers builds your product muscle. #ad

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

from the Trends.vc newsletter

Why it matters

Google Chrome has billions of users, and each person has unique needs.

Solution

Chrome extensions improve your browsing experience with custom features.

Players

Chrome extensions:

• Wappalyzer: See what technologies websites use.
• Grammarly: Check spelling and grammar mistakes.
• Mailtrack: Track your email open rate.

Chrome extension makers:

• Tony Dinh: Black Magic adds analytics and CRM features to X.
• Ajay Goel: GMass automates cold email outreach.
• Peter Coles: GoFullPage takes a screenshot of an entire webpage.

Predictions

• No-code tools will help anyone build, test, and publish Chrome extensions.

• More Chrome extensions will turn into SaaS platforms. They will cover complex use cases with advanced features.

• Freelancers will offer productized services for building Chrome extensions. They will offer a clear time scope, feature list, and cost.

Opportunities

• Use ChatGPT to build Chrome extensions. Save time writing and debugging code.

• Index into existing markets. Take competitor risk instead of market risk.

• Niche down to lower competition. Serve customers with unique needs that nobody else is serving.

Risks

• Platform risk: Manifest V3 changed the way content-filtering extensions work. All extensions using Manifest V2 had to migrate or get shut down.
• Copycats: Chrome extensions run locally. Anyone who has knowledge can crack and copy your code.
• Competitor risk: Many Chrome extensions focus on the same job-to-be-done.

Key lessons

• Chrome extensions can boost your reach.

• Having badges can help you build trust and get more users. They prove that an extension follows Google’s best practices, and was published by a verified developer.

• Chrome extensions are hard to debug. They rely on third-party websites that may or may not work properly.

Hot takes

• Chrome Web Store is a pink ocean. There are 137K extensions for 3B Chrome users.

• Many Chrome extensions are SaaS apps that offer features for a recurring price.

• You can succeed by offering alternatives to obsolete Chrome extensions.

Haters

“The problem I’m trying to solve is too complex for a Chrome extension.”

Chrome extensions often excel at simple actions. If you have a complex workflow, build a full SaaS platform.

"You underestimate how hard it is to build complex Chrome extensions.”

While you can build a simple extension in one day, a complex one may take months to build.

“I can obfuscate my code so that nobody can steal my Chrome extension.”

This goes against Chrome Web Store policies.

Links

1. Building a Report on How to Grow and Monetize Chrome Extensions: The tweet behind this report.
2. Chrome Extension that Steals Everything: Building a malicious Chrome extension.
3. Build It and They Will Come: How app stores help you get organic traffic.

Related reports

• Ecosystems: Extend platforms with useful tools and services.
• Freemium: Lower your customer acquisition costs with a free version of your product.

More reports

Go here to get the Trends Pro report. It contains 200% more insights. You also get access to the entire back catalog and the next 52 Pro Reports.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Trends.vc for more.

🔎 How I got my first 100 users. Posted by Alexander Chen.

✅ Takeaways from one week of trying to validate my idea. Posted by John Yeo.

🤔 Is ChatGPT the holy grail for building side projects? Posted by Darko.

🚫 Lessons from being permanently banned from X. Posted by Alexander Isora.

🛠 What are your go-to tools? Posted by Mathilde Neau.

🌅 Your morning routine is a waste of time. Posted by Joshua Voydik.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

by Louis

I launched an AI-powered media aggregator, Techpresso, which gathers and summarizes the best tech news every day to save you time!

Developer woes

Techpresso summarizes pieces from 50+ media outlets. I developed an algorithm to choose which articles I want to use, based on factors like the credibility of the media and the size of the article. The main challenge was finding and gathering the right data!

The days after the launch were difficult because, after months of work, I had only managed to gain several dozen readers.

I had to persevere and face the facts: You can have the best product or content in the world, but if you can't get it out to the people who would love it, then it will never work!

So, I asked myself: Where are my potential users? I realized they were on LinkedIn, X, and Reddit.

This is when the real grind began. I started posting on X and Reddit, publishing the same news that my product was sending out on those platforms. Finally, the subscribers started pouring in.

I plan to launch on LinkedIn later!

The strategy

My strategy is simple: I focus on what works, and abandon what doesn't work.

After four months, I've reached 6K readers! It's now read by people from OpenAI, Meta, Google, and many more awesome companies.

Last Monday, I launched the paid version. I haven't managed to attract many paid subscribers yet (seven, to be precise), but it's still $200 coming in from people that love my work! And it doesn't require any additional work from me.

I've also started to accept sponsors, and was contacted by a reader that loved the product so much that he was willing to sponsor it for $3K.

Finally, after all of this grinding, I've got two things:

1. People who love what I've made with my own hands.
2. A project making me money.

Great feeling!

Discuss this story.

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 James Fleischmann, Darko, Dru Riley, and Louis for contributing posts. —Channing