🗞 What's New: Build around these untapped keywords

Looking for a vetted business idea?

• Building a product around untapped keywords can help you rank on Google fast, and can bring in customers on autopilot.
• When launching on Product Hunt, tweets and retweets don't go as far as you may think. DMs can be a game changer.
• $8.6K MRR with a virtual real estate staging product. Pauline Clavelloux leverages subscriptions and credits to offer a dynamic pricing plan.

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by Katt Rizen

Every two weeks, I use Build The Keyword to look for untapped keywords and uncover profitable product ideas. Here's the latest!

The untapped keyword criteria

A keyword is "untapped" if:

• You can build a digital product around it.
• It has a monthly search volume of > 500.
• It has low competition. The keyword difficulty should be < 20.
• It has several relevant related keywords.

If the keyword fits all of these criteria, there's a great opportunity to build a product around it, and get some backlinks (~20). Since it's "untapped," you will be able to rank in the top 10 on Google, and bring in customers on autopilot.

1. Voice memo transcription

• Monthly search volume: 880.
• Keyword difficulty: 12.
• Product idea: An AI-powered app that converts audio files to text.
• Monetization: Free limited version. Upsell a pro version with more powerful features, including summarizing, tagging, improving text, removing filler words, structuring, etc.

2. AutoCAD online course

• Monthly search volume: 1.6K.
• Keyword difficulty: 16.
• Product idea: Capture emails and gain trust with a free seven day crash course, delivered over email.
• Monetization: Upsell to a paid course, and offer AutoCAD services or guidance.

3. Analytics for agencies

• Monthly search volume: 4.4K.
• Keyword difficulty: 16.
• Product idea: B2B SaaS analytic tool customized for agencies. The tool should make it easy to create, set up, and manage a large number of accounts. Include automated reporting for clients, and make it easy to share accounts with them.
• Monetization: Monthly subscription.

4. Airbnb property

• Monthly search volume: 880.
• Keyword difficulty: 14.
• Product idea: A podcast about buying Airbnbs.
• Monetization: Sponsors (i.e. AirDNA) and advanced courses.

5. SEO influencers

• Monthly search volume: 480.
• Keyword difficulty: 18.
• Product idea: Directory of SEO creators with an audience.
• Monetization: Upgrade for contact details.

For more, check out Build The Keyword! You can look for your own untapped keywords, or access our growing library of pre-vetted untapped keywords.

Discuss this story.

from the Trendy Software Ideas newsletter

🧵 Threads turns one, with 175M active users.

🤖 AI is rewriting internet meme history.

💲 Link to your product here. Our most affordable ad.

💰 Four tips for closing a deal that has hit the wall.

👎 X is considering downvotes for post replies.

🎼 Here's why 7-Eleven plays classical music outside its stores.

Check out Trendy Software Ideas to discover more software ideas inspired by recent news.

by Scott

Six months ago, I set out to build something to help indie hackers validate their startup ideas before they build, by understanding the market and their competitors from day zero. Last week, I finally went through the Product Hunt right of passage! Validate My SaaS spent the full 24 hours dancing between 10th and 11th place, before finally tying for 8th place.

Here's what worked, and what I should have done differently!

Lesson one

This is my most important takeaway: Tweets and retweets don't go as far as you think. DMs are your friend.

Despite tweeting multiple times about the launch, and many retweets, I found out that there were still people who had no idea! They were happy to support me when I DM'ed them. I should have been DM'ing folks much earlier than I did.

Lesson two

Check to make sure that your product is featured right away.

Around six hours into the launch, people started messaging to tell me that Validate My SaaS wasn't on the Product Hunt homepage!

During the most critical hours, those at the beginning of the launch, we weren't receiving any organic traffic from Product Hunt.

After reaching out to Product Hunt support, we were finally added to the homepage. If I had thought to double check this immediately, we may have been able to be featured much earlier in the day, which has compounding effects.

What worked well

Two weeks before the launch, my pinned post on X linked to the trailer, inviting people to "like this post and I'll DM you a reminder the day of."

This built my initial list of 40 people to DM about the launch. Having people opt-in to these prevented any feeling of discomfort about sending the DMs.

What didn't work

I spent a lot of time the day before the launch creating reports (custom samples of my product) for indie hackers with ~10K-20K followers.

I thought that including these when I DM'ed them would make it easier for them to upvote and share. In the end, a few of them were kind enough to upvote the launch, but none of them went on to share it with their audiences. Instead of spending time on the reports, I should have devoted that time to sending out more DMs, casting a wider net.

Also, for a week before the launch, I was fairly active on Product Hunt. I was upvoting projects, commenting, and even sharing the launches on X. I didn't notice a high ROI from these activities.

Wrapping up

What really worked for me was this: Spending over six months being active in a community with my target audience, giving value without worrying about what comes back.

If you enjoyed this post, join my newsletter for more tips!

Discuss this story.

😩 This is why marketing is hard. Posted by Alexander Isora.

🛠️ Try these SaaS founder productivity tools! Posted by Markuss Baltais.

🧐 Why BeReal failed. Posted by Martin Adolfsson.

📆 I created an AI startup in one weekend. Posted by Ayyoub Bhihi.

📈 Micro-SaaS trends. Posted by Upen.

💻 How do SEO factors impact website conversion rates? Posted by Smoteria.

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 James Fleischmann

Pauline Clavelloux built an AI-powered virtual staging product for real estate agents, with no real estate or marketing experience. IACrea is now at $8.6K MRR, and a few weeks ago, Pauline left her full-time job to focus on her business.

Build for an audience you can reach

During COVID-19, I wanted to dabble in automated trading. I contacted a friend, proposing that we work on a project together. We created a prototype that traded for us 24/7, yielding a return of over five times our initial investment.

We tried to monetize it by providing customizable alerts for traders, but it was a failure. I spent months trying to get customers, but I sold zero alerts.

I wish I had known the importance of building a community and validating ideas with potential users before diving deep into product development. You need to build for audiences that you can reach!

We eventually stopped the trading project and moved on to other SaaS projects, making sure not to repeat the same mistakes.

Projects and side hustles

My main project now is IACrea, a tool that stages house photos in seconds. It helps people sell homes faster by allowing the buyer to visualize the rooms with furniture.

I came up with the idea when a relative was having trouble visualizing a room. I realized that I was good enough with AI and image processing to solve the problem, and I thought I'd also be able to reach a large market.

I created an MVP using NextJS with Typescript and Supabase. I ran into issues with NextJS, as I was still learning it at the time, but my mentor helped me. I really recommend finding mentors. It has made me a better developer!

With the MVP done, I got feedback from specialized real estate groups by attending real estate events and hanging out in forums. I also organized webinars. A few months later, my tech cofounder joined.

IACrea makes money from both subscriptions and credits. The credits allow people to enhance their photos without a subscription.

I also have NextJSDirectory, a boilerplate in NextJS for building directory websites in minutes. This product is monetized through one-time payments.

It's also worth mentioning that I built unrealme.io last year, and sold it three months later. There was no MRR when we sold it, but we had made about $500 in that three months. I sold it on Microns for four figures.

Growing a personal brand

One of my most significant breakthroughs as an indie hacker came from leveraging X. I started tweeting daily about data science, indie hacking, and SaaS. Consistency helped me increase my follower count to 18K+.

My audience doesn't really overlap with the target audience for IACrea, so I don't get many sales directly from my followers. But it does overlap with some of my newer projects, and it also helps in other ways. It helps me find business opportunities and top talent, and get support from other founders.

If you give, people will give back to you. Consistently provide value. Building an audience is difficult in the beginning. To stay motivated, I tried Tibo Louis-Lucas's "100 tweeting days challenge," and I recommend it.

Lastly, remember that building your brand doesn't mean sharing every personal detail about yourself. I wrote a full post on building a personal brand here!

Advice for indie hackers

Don't overthink. I almost didn't start because I was in my head.

Don't be afraid of competition. Competition is a good signal.

Stay consistent. Stay confident. First projects usually fail, but you'll learn from failure, then have assets that you can use to launch faster in the future!

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 Scott, Darko, Katt Rizen, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing