🗞 What's New: WordPress escalates feud with rival with a hostile takeover

Here's what you'll find in this issue:

• The ongoing feud between WordPress and WP Engine just reached a breaking point.
• Tibo, a popular indie hacker, was banned from beehiiv this week, after 6 months of growing tension. We're breaking down the beef, shot-for-shot.
• $125K+ in revenue with a growth newsletter. Dylan Redekop's decision to niche down hard accelerated growth and opened new opportunities.

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WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg just had WordPress conduct a hostile takeover of Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), a popular plugin owned by WP Engine.

This is a big deal. WordPress powers 43% of all websites on the internet. And all of them are at the mercy of a back-and-forth dispute between Mullenweg and the executives running WP Engine.

So what exactly is going on?

Here's an explanation of what happened, how we go tJourney through the blocked web to see deep the revenue hole goes.

Here are the top products that launched on Indie Hackers on Friday:

1. 🥇 BuildForm AI: Build Al-powered forms to drive conversions and boost sales.

2. 🥈 Uneed: A launch platform for your products.

3. 🥉 Build The Keyword: Find ideas that bring in customers on autopilot.

Last week, newsletter platforms ConvertKit and beehiiv threw (online) hands. This week, it's beehiiv vs. indie hacking legend, Tibo.

This beef actually started six months ago, and includes pricing increases, a strategic acquisition, shady tweets, and ultimately, a ban.

Here's what happened, and how indie hackers are responding.

SaaS Watch is a roundup of all the latest micro-SaaS acquisition opportunities. Here are the top three for this week!

1. Website revitalization platform that automates design updates: $0 per month, 10-100 users, $5K asking price.

2. Real time marketing strategy and reporting tool: $1K MRR, 100-1K users, $6K asking price.

3. Privacy-first analytics for Web, Android, iOS, and React Native: $10K asking price.

Dylan Redekop started a marketing newsletter before newsletters were cool. Then, he niched down hard with Growth Currency, a newsletter about newsletters.

While niching down resulted in a few lost subscribers in the beginning, it was responsible for accelerating his growth to 5.5K subscribers and $125K+ in total earnings. And he plans to niche down even further soon.

Here's his step-by-step roadmap for growing subscriber count and revenue.

Skill issue. —@channingallen

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Stephen Flanders, Dustin Cha, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing