🗞 What's New: A scalable content strategy for founders

Need a scalable content strategy?

• Try Semantic SEO. Build pillar pages, content clusters, and content briefs. Add them to a spreadsheet, and publish through your favorite CMS.
• Launching on Product Hunt? Show yourself and your team, thank every single supporter personally, and be creative with your marketing.
• Arrested for cyber crimes at 17, Steven Goh has now hit $100K MRR. Subscribing to Crunchbase Pro ended up being a game changer.

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

by Flavio Amiel

I write travel guides at Porto Travel, and I'm sharing my scalable content strategy for indie hackers, implementing a technique called Semantic SEO.

Pillar pages

You know when you open a book and the author gives you detailed information about what you’ll read in the coming pages? Well, that's what a pillar page does.

It’s a piece of information that will summarize what a visitor can expect on your website.

Content clusters

When searching for “Sightseeing Chicago," check out the results:

What does this mean? If you were to create a “Sightseeing Chicago” page, it should include the most essential landmarks to visit in the city. Cluster your content including the most crucial, essential information.

Clusters are not always related to URL structure. A content cluster can just be related to connections and internal links (i.e. page A points to B,C,D,E).

Content briefs

An SEO content brief is an overview about the post. It includes some, or all, of these elements:

• Search intent.
• Content angle.
• Internal links.
• Meta title.
• Title (H1).
• Other headings (H2, H3, etc.).
• Format (listicle, guide, comparison, etc.).

Planning your semantic SEO strategy

1. Think deeply about your users and their different intentions.
2. Brainstorm different types of content your potential user looks for.
3. Create ideas for your pillar pages and content clusters.
4. Set up a spreadsheet and add the right pillar pages with as many content clusters as you can.
5. Create an editorial calendar to publish these articles. Start writing the proper content brief. Try using Swiftbrief to save time.
6. Publish in your favorite CMS, making sure everything is well interlinked. Track your changes and new additions, and follow up every week with optimizations.

Discuss this story.

from the Growth Trends newsletter

📱 The iPhone 15 Pro is the next AAA game console.

🤖 Self-publishers have to disclose whether content sold on Amazon is AI-generated.

📘 Guide to starting an e-commerce business.

✅ Add custom domains as a feature to your app. #ad

📧 Maybe you shouldn't use your own domain for email.

🖱 Don't optimize for clicks, optimize for custom events.

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

by Lera Kuntsevich

Two months ago, we launched Momentum Page on Product Hunt. We hit number one Product of the Day and number one Product of the Week in the marketing category.

People have asked me how to launch on Product Hunt, and today, I'm sharing some tips that might help others!

Product Hunt launch tips

After our successful launch, I analyzed what went right.

Here are tips that helped us achieve our amazing results:

• Show yourself and your teammates! People need to see the people behind the product. Show them what you look like to help them remember you.

• Be creative and wild! The first thing that comes to your mind is likely to be the most correct and cool. Don't limit your creativity and exploration, even if it's a meme with a cat holding your product logo in its paws!

• Don't be afraid to go outside the canvas. Your marketing doesn't have to consist of just pictures and videos. You can also try things like making a playlist for your product, designing cute merch around your product, crafting funny memes, or using cool user-generated content (with permission, of course).

• Speaking of marketing pictures, it's better to make a lot. Make sure they are bold and memorable. You don't want just one.

• Thank every single person who supports you with a comment or repost. I created "Best Supporter" certificates for the most active folks, and put their photos and names on them. I still think that was one of my best ideas for launch day.

• Repeat everything that works!

Next launch

I plan to launch on Product Hunt again with my new product, ClipWing. To prepare, I'm accepting preorders and adding people to the waitlist, so they can test the product as soon as possible and give me feedback.

Hope these tips helped!

Discuss this story.

This issue is sponsored by Mercury

Startups looking to fundraise in today’s market should be laser-focused on these key metrics to land the funding necessary to realize their ambitions.

We shine a light on the numbers investors have their sights set on in this article. #ad

by James Fleischmann

Steven Goh of Proxycurl, a data enrichment service provider, recently hit $100K MRR. But his indie hacking journey started in an unusual place: Jail.

The background

I was arrested for computer crimes when I was 17. I was in the lock-up cell crying because I thought I was going to prison. At the time, I was making $20K MRR from illicit botnet activities.

I later became a founder right out of school. The best time to fail was in university, because any project I worked on was just a side project. They were just for fun.

I never considered working for anyone because I don't think I have the temperament to be an employee.

I've launched several products since university, some major successes, and some failures.

On being a founder

It's about grit. I was in the special forces (Naval Divers) during conscription in the Singapore Navy. The biggest takeaway from my two years there was that my mind is capable of much more than I imagine. I never give up.

I'm a software engineer, but my core expertise is in product management and design. I lead product management at Proxycurl, and answer most customer support tickets since it’s the only way for me to understand the bugs that my customers are experiencing. I am also the only person getting on sales calls with customers.

I don't get on sales calls unless you have already spent a large sum of money on our product. Our product is self-serve, and pricing is transparent.

Admittedly, I do think I am losing out on customers who are not sold because we aren't actively upselling them. But self-serve has allowed us to ship quickly, at a cost that is 90% cheaper than our competitors.

There's no way I could get on 20 calls a day and be productive, but with a self-onboarding product, I can easily strive to convert 20 new paying users a day.

We invested in writing good, detailed documentation. All our new customers need is an API key, which they get after registration.

Growing to $100K MRR

After launch, I knew I had to talk to as many customers as possible. So, I purchased a Crunchbase Pro subscription, and performed a search for all recently funded companies in the space of marketing and sales automation, recruitment tech, and web scraping. Then, I exported the results with their corresponding general emails, and began a series of cold email outreach to their general emails.

I sent thousands of cold emails and received hundreds of responses. My calendar was booked with calls for a whole month. We made a few thousand dollars in MRR in the first few months. You can read more on that here!

Discuss this story.

by Tweetmaster Flex

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

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 Flavio Amiel, Darko, Lera Kuntsevich, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing