🗞 What's New: Engineering as marketing 101

Create free tools for your users to guide them to your paid tools:

• Your free tools should be valuable, generate leads, and complement your core product. Think calculators, widgets, apps, guides, and more!
• You know that sinking feeling in your stomach when you're nervous? That's the vagus nerve. Build products around this $483M health trend.
• Sold for $200K just 11 months after launch. Nico Jeannen built quickly, burned out after a few months, and decided to sell to focus on self-care.

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by Martin Baun

Engineering as marketing involves creating free tools that showcase your company's ability and provide value to potential users.

The overview

Engineering as marketing can:

1. Generate leads: Collect emails and follow up with your users when you have new products.

2. Improve SEO: Build backlinks by having your products linked on high-authority sites.

3. Set you apart from the competition: Your free tools can showcase the creativity and quality of your products.

4. Improve customer retention: Free tools can raise customer satisfaction and inspire customer loyalty.

5. Build traction: A free product can be a great way to create brand awareness.

Vital elements of engineering as marketing

Here are some basic principles to keep in mind:

1. Identify your customer: Focus on one customer persona.

2. Your tool should be valuable: Provide a product that has a tangible benefit to your potential customers.

3. Your product should generate leads: The tool should ask for something from the user in exchange for access.

4. The tool should complement your core product: Your tool should align with your top offering, so clients can purchase your product if they desire increased functionality.

Examples

1. Microsoft introduced a free tool to market Bing's visual search. It showcased the company's image search feature, and drove users to the search engine.

2. DuckDuckGo launched DontTrack.us, an illustrated guide that shows how Google tracks its users. It garnered press attention, driving the unknown search engine's brand awareness.

3. Wix used a free business name generator to attract potential clients. This raised brand awareness among business owners.

4. Shutterfly built a free wedding hashtag generator. This tool targeted betrothed couples likely to buy Shutterfly's other products for their wedding.

5. Hubspot released a free website grader that allowed businesses to see their website performance. Hubspot markets its services by offering a free trial to anyone looking to improve their website.

6. BaunIT: Our team launched ElegantDoc, a free document generator. We also built a free online tools website, Toolbun, that provides IT specialists with easy-to-use solutions.

For more thoughts, guides, and insights, check out my blog!

Discuss this story.

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from The Hustle newsletter

You know that sinking feeling in your stomach when you're nervous?

It's the doing of your vagus nerve (or "wandering nerve"), a highway in the human body that connects to almost every internal organ.

It lets your brain talk to your gut (hence the stomach churn), but also regulates your digestion, heart rate, breathing, and a lot of other things.

*Source: Google Trends, six-month rolling average

As folks increasingly prioritize their mind-body connection, vagus nerve care has gotten its share of internet attention in recent years:

• "Vagus nerve exercise" gets 185M+ views on TikTok.
• "Vagus nerve stimulation" gets 54K searches per month, per Ahrefs.
• Amazon's bestselling stimulator raked in $1M+ last month.

The global vagus nerve stimulation market was worth ~$483M in 2023, and is set to exceed $1B by 2031.

It's primarily driven by medical procedures and devices, but with rising awareness of everyday, non-intrusive nerve care, there are plenty of opportunities for the average business to cash in.

Vagus nerve care spa experience

The $21B+ medical spa market can be a solid investment, and a good fit for vagus nerve care.

Single-location spas get an average of ~$2M ARR, with a 20%-25% profit margin. On average, a medical spa owner can make $300K-$375K a year.

You can incorporate vagus nerve massages or non-invasive stimulation into existing spa experiences, and market this feature to draw in more customers.

*Source: Precedence Research

Content and product curation

This YouTuber focuses on nervous system healing and pain relief. Her most viewed videos are all about the vagus nerve, the highest being a vagus nerve exercise tutorial that got 6.8M views.

You can easily create content based on this trend. And don't limit yourself to video tutorials; it can be as simple as curating a music playlist, like this video that hit 1.4M views on YouTube.

Or, use content as the funnel to a e-commerce offering, like a "vagus nerve self care kit" that includes:

• Vagal massage gadgets (i.e. the ZenBud headset).
• Books on taking care of your nervous system.
• Snacks with Omega-3 fatty acids (good for the vagus nerve), like flaxseeds and walnuts.

Supplements

With a $182B+ market size and average profit margins of 38%, the supplement piece can stand on its own, too.

Almost 40% of supplement takers are early adopter types eager to try the newest thing, and vagus nerve support will likely play well with this crowd.

You can take a page out of Hims's playbook and white label vagus nerve supplements with your own branding.

*Source: SEC

Niche down

Everyone and their dog (literally) has the vagus nerve, but solutions vary for different demographics, and even species.

So, there's opportunity to take all the ideas above and apply them to specific niches:

• Video content about vagus nerve exercises to calm kids down.
• Vagus nerve supplements and spa care for postpartum moms.
• Ice packs or cold plunges for those who need intense vagus nerve healing.

Don't forget about Fido! With any human health trend, expect pet solutions to follow.

Whether it's pets with anxiety issues, digestion problems, or even epilepsy, there could be a product or specialized service that helps pet parents care for their fur babies' nerves.

*Source: Frontiers

One last thing: You can also think outside the box. Good ol' vagus might be the longest cranial nerve in our body, but other cranial nerves, like the vestibular nerve, can achieve similar health effects when properly stimulated.

And there's already an FDA-approved device for that.

Subscribe to The Hustle newsletter for more.

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

by Nico Jeannen

Last August, I was looking for a startup idea I could grow. I found something, built the MVP in a week, then launched it. A couple of days ago, I sold it for $200K!

The idea

I got the idea when trying to write a tweet using Google Doc's transcription tool, which was terrible.

I was pretty sure I wasn't the only one too lazy to type. I made my own solution, using AI to transcribe and reformat voice notes into any kind of content. I called it Talknotes, mainly because it was the only domain available!

Validation

My rule is to only reinvest what the project generates. After listing on startup directories and posting on X, I generated $700 in 10 days. It wasn't much, but it was enough to show interest and keep me motivated.

I added features requested by users, but the launch effect wore off, so daily revenue dropped to $0 after a few weeks. I almost gave up, but friends encouraged me to continue.

In October, I launched on Product Hunt. It blew up! It hit the number one Product of the Day, and reached $1.5K MRR, thanks to media coverage.

I initially built everything using vanilla JS/CSS/HTML + Node for backend. But that's pretty limited for apps with lots of interactivity, so I rebuilt the app using Nuxt.js to make it easier to ship new features.

Then, I launched ads on Facebook, and I implemented a feedback loop:

1. Get new users.
2. Learn about them through onboarding.
3. Create more ads based on onboarding data.

This doubled MRR in just a few months.

Burnout and sale

In May, I had bad burnout after emergency bug fixes. This made it hard to work on the app. At this point, MRR was ~$7K, and total revenue was ~$70K.

I listed it on Acquire.com for $200K, which was a very good price for the buyer, considering revenue and growth. I could've gotten $300K with buyer financing or earn-outs, but I wanted cash. $200K today was more appealing to me than $300K a year from now.

Everything was smooth until we tried using Escrow, which almost messed up the deal. Long story short, we had to threaten them with legal action, and told them that we'd also create a sponsored post on X explaining what they did. They sent the refund the very next day, and we completed the transfer directly.

Now, this isn't an overnight success. It's the result of seven years of grinding. I've launched over 40 projects since I started, and most of them failed. I often work 100 hours per week, and I don't go out or meet many people. It's not for everyone, but I'm good with it!

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 Martin Baun, Darko, Cyan Zhong, and Nico Jeannen for contributing posts. —Channing