🗞 What's New: Google Search is prioritizing user forums

Google is prioritizing user forums in its search results:

• Leverage this by paying more attention to Reddit as an acquisition channel, and creating and claiming subreddits.
• Seaweed is an $18.4B industry, with untapped opportunities. Pet food, dyes, communities, and infoproducts can all make you bank in this space.
• $8.5K MRR from a screenshot API. Dmytro Krasun had a baby and launched a business at the same time, and is learning to balance it all.

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from the Trendy Software Ideas newsletter by Darko

Google's "Helpful Content Update" was a Google search algorithm update that was released last year.

Unlike other updates, this one dramatically reshaped the search landscape, judging by the increase and decrease in traffic. This update drastically increased the search traffic to user forums like Reddit and Quora.

The data

According to data from Semrush, Google's traffic between August 2023 and April 2024 tripled.

To put this into perspective, Reddit got 132M visitors from Google in August 2023. In April 2024, that number was 346M.

According to SEJ, Reddit's traffic from Google is growing 39%+ YoY. Mashable also confirmed this.

The opportunity for indie hackers

There's a clear trend: Google is prioritizing user forums in its search results. Here's how indie hackers can leverage this:

1. Pay (more) attention to Reddit as an acquisition channel: I've seen many founders on Indie Hackers post about their success using Reddit as a marketing channel. I posted about this back in 2020. There are also recent success stories about this.

2. Create (and claim) subreddits: Did you know that there's a subreddit for claiming unmoderated subreddits? It's called RedditRequest. Use it to find subreddits related to your niche.

3. Create your own user community: As time passes, Google will probably keep prioritizing user forums over other types of content.

In the age of AI, where ChatGPT can give you an amazing answer to almost any question, Google wants to distinguish itself by focusing on content written by actual humans.

If you've ever thought about creating a forum related to your niche, now might be the best time to do it!

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Trendy Software Ideas for more.

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from The Hustle newsletter

Back in 2020, the Trends team discovered a type of seaweed that was trending like crazy: Irish moss. Interest in Irish moss (aka "sea moss") has remained high since then, with 448K global searches per month, according to Ahrefs.

*Source: Google Trends, six-month rolling average

But there's so much more to seaweed, the versatile marine plant that has taken the business (and tech) world by storm in recent years:

• Startups that work with seaweed got generous funding.
• The US Department of Energy is granting ~$19M to algae-related projects.
• The global commercial seaweed market reached $18.4B in 2024.

So, why the obsession? Let's get into it.

The basics

Seaweed. Algae. Kelp. Here's a highly simplified explainer of these organisms:

Why do businesses find seaweed so valuable? It's:

• Versatile: It can be used in a variety of industries, like food, biofuels, bioplastics, cosmetics, and even fashion.
• Easy: It grows fast and requires minimal resources to cultivate, compared to land plants.
• New: It's not widely adopted in the US yet, so there's a ton of untapped potential for innovation.

Opportunities

• Pet food: Studies show that seaweed-derived food and supplements can improve digestive or skin health for 88% of dogs. The seaweed-based pet food industry is worth $1B+.

*Source: World Bank

• Dye: You could extract color pigments from seaweed, and turn them into a natural dye. Partner with eco-conscious fashion brands (SeaDyes, an up-and-coming Scottish startup, does this), or create your own seaweed dyed clothing line, and market on social media with eye-catching content.

• Community: 40% of seaweed startups are led by women, a much higher rate than other categories. You could build a community for female founders in the seaweed sector (or the blue economy in general), and offer them resources, education, and networking opportunities.

Finally, don't overlook the more traditional, low-tech ways to make money from seaweed, such as selling white-labeled supplements, smoothie mixes, or curated snack and culinary kits. You could also monetize infoproducts, like a seaweed research database or blog, through reports, ads, or affiliate programs.

Subscribe to The Hustle newsletter for more.

from the Trendy Software Ideas newsletter

📹 Twitch rolls out video stories to challenge Instagram.

💻 How to do a social media audit in six steps (templates included!).

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

❌ Google is killing one of Chrome's biggest ad blockers.

⭐️ Write an amazing value proposition.

🍕 The tragedy of Domino's 30 minute delivery guarantee.

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

by Katie Hignett

Dmytro Krasun launched his screenshot API, ScreenshotOne, right after his baby was born, and is now at $8.5K MRR.

Starting out

My core expertise is software engineering. I have a master's degree in computer science, and have been writing code for more than 17 years.

I worked as a software developer for about a decade, and became passionate about building APIs. I didn't know it then, but APIs would become my key to financial independence.

New baby, new business

The Indie Hackers Podcast changed my life. It showed me that I could build everything on my own, without any funding.

Then, the stars aligned. My partner and I had a baby, and I thought it would be cool to try bootstrapping both: A new baby and a new business!

ScreenshotOne is a screenshot API for developers. It helps businesses of all sizes automate screenshots, in areas like website competitor intelligence, open graph image generation, personalized videos at scale, and much more.

I use Next.js for the dashboard, Astro for my marketing website, Puppeteer for rendering screenshots, and Go for API key management and rate limiting.

I'm often tempted to try new tech, but business-wise, it's not worth it. It would make it harder to hire devs, and to support the product in the future.

I do use three different servers, which will probably make most founders laugh. It might seem like over-engineering!

I started off with just one $5 server. Then, I moved to Render, which allowed me to scale a bit when I started to get customers. Next, I moved to Google Cloud, because I got free credits.

That ultimately became too expensive, so I moved to DigitalOcean. I still use their managed Kubernetes. Cloudflare handles my edge caching, computing, storage, and more. They also actually interviewed me once!

A simple pricing model

I launched ScreenshotOne just over two years ago, and my MRR is now $8.5K. You can check out my monthly reports here, for a detailed breakdown.

I have three paid plans, based on user needs. The top plans give you access to more screenshots and costlier features, like video generation. I also added a pay-as-you-go option to each payment plan. Once you reach a certain threshold, you can pay for more access.

Be curious and don't quit

I thought about quitting every week when I started. I had a huge runway of more than two years, but I was still stressed; I knew that it could eventually run out. So, I found a gig to cover my family's expenses, but I wish I'd started it earlier, then gradually switched to my own products once MRR grew.

I was determined not to give up. I wrote about that once in my newsletter. Ultimately, I'm just curious to see how far I can go!

My advice? Define your ideal customer profile right away. This will make your life so much easier. I found these resources on positioning to be particularly helpful.

Since becoming an indie hacker, I've got more freedom in some things, and less freedom in others. I don't need to ask for permission when I want to fly to Italy for a week, and I can play with my kids whenever I want.

But, on that vacation, I did spend some time on my laptop. Don't be delusional...you won't have complete freedom from everything! But you will able to choose who you want to serve, and what problems to solve for them. And, that's completely worth it.

Discuss this story.

by Tweetmaster Flex

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Darko, Cyan Zhong, and Katie Hignett for contributing posts. —Channing