🗞 What's New: A report from Upwork has great news for freelancers

Upwork recently released a report on the future of remote work:

• Over 1/3 of managers reported that they plan to hire freelancers this year. They are increasingly scouring freelancing marketplaces, which presents a golden opportunity for founders to acquire new customers.
• Signing up for Twitter's Revue gets you free access to premium features (for now). But what if you'd rather buy an existing or dormant newsletter instead? Be sure to make your first email count, this expert says.
• Founder Nena Furtmeier makes a living by selling her open source software. Her primary sales come from a demo version directly on the homepage, reset once a day, which allows anyone to try the product without login or setup.

Want to share your ideas with nearly 70K indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

🔮 A Report From Upwork Has Great News for Freelancers

from the User Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko G.

Upwork recently released its The Future of Remote Work report, and found that more than a third of managers in the US plan to work with freelancers this year. Managers are increasingly scouring freelancing marketplaces for talent, and this presents a golden opportunity for founders to acquire new customers.

Using freelance marketplaces for growth

Freelancing Marketplaces: You might think that UpWork, Freelancers, and Fiverr are marketplaces that only benefit service providers. Think again.

I've seen creative SaaS founders leverage these marketplaces to acquire customers. Take StoreMapper ($21K MRR), a SaaS that enables you to put a store location map on your e-commerce website. They used UpWork to successfully acquire customers:

You want to be careful with this. Sending a message saying "Hey you don't need a dev, get X instead" is likely to get you banned from many platforms. In many cases, you can pitch a win-win scenario by using a combination of your software + custom coding. For example, if I'm looking for a referral marketing platform, I'm more likely to pay attention by someone who says: "Hey, I can help you do this for $500 instead of $7K by using a combination of [my software] + [the custom thing you'll be doing]."

Other channels that consistently work

SEO: This is a pretty saturated channel, and it usually takes months to start seeing decent traffic on Google.

Most of the people who were successful with SEO were successful on other acquisition channels first. Many founders also noticed that SEO success was often by accident. Take Snipcart ($100K MRR), for example:

Product launch platforms: These are websites with millions of users that feature new products on a daily basis.

Product Hunt and BetaList are the top platforms (in terms of traffic) for tech founders. Product Hunt worked very well for many bootstrapped companies, like Standuply ($20K MRR):

App exchanges/marketplaces: Many huge platforms like Shopify, Slack and Salesforce have their own respective app stores. A surprising number of companies have had success on them, like Shogun ($4.5K MRR), a drag-and-drop page builder:

Reddit: There are over 100K active communities on Reddit. Chances are that one or more are related to your niche. Creative Tim ($118K MRR) sells UI templates, and they've used these communities to successfully acquire users:

Check out the other 6 top channels in the original post here. This post will be updated on an ongoing basis with more channels and examples.

Do you use any of these channels regularly for growth? Which have worked best for you?

Discuss this story, or subscribe to User Acquisition Channels for more.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🖼 NFTs remain controversial as artists struggle to actually receive the money from their sales. Instances of theft are also increasing, as people steal from artists and sell their work.

👑 Queen Elizabeth II has joined the WFH trend by attending an event on Zoom for British Science Week.

💲 Stripe's valuation has nearly tripled to $95B in under a year as it raised $600M in its latest round of funding.

🎧 Clubhouse's first creator program will pick 20 creators from applications until March 31. The program will help creators build audiences, contact brands, and monetize their shows.

🏦 Bitcoin critics and defenders alike agree that, unlike gold-backed currencies, Bitcoin doesn't have intrinsic value.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

📩 So You Want to Buy a Newsletter?

from the Indie Airwaves newsletter by Nicky Milner

Twitter has announced that the users who have signed up to create newsletters through its partner, Revue, can access the platform's premium features for free. For some, acquiring an existing or abandoned newsletter is a more attractive option than spinning one up from scratch. But how easy is it to buy a newsletter?

How to acquire a newsletter

I interviewed Stefan von Imhof, Head of Product for Flippa, the top marketplace to buy and sell online businesses. He recently purchased the MakerList newsletter.

NM: First things first, Stefan, where are the best places to find newsletters for sale?

Stefan: There are several resources to help your search, including:

• Subscribing to Jakob Greenfeld's products such as Newsletter Spy or Product Explorer databases to find dormant or abandoned assets.
• Reviewing the listings on Duuce.
• Searching through Flippa for newsletter opportunities.
• Cold email outreach to dormant or desired newsletters (this is the avenue that Stefan used for MakerList).
• Dormant or defunct Facebook pages: This is a decent DIY place to start your research, and can provide additional avenues to search through.

NM: How do you decide on the right prospects for you?

Stefan: Adjacency. If you already have an existing offering in the market, your best opportunities are constrained to options that can compound or leverage your previous assets.

If you already have experience and skills in a specific area, it only makes sense to pursue a newsletter with a pre-existing subscriber base that's already interested in that same topic. It means that your new content has a better chance of providing value to that audience, which should reduce the early attrition rate.

Choose something you'll enjoy doing, or it can be difficult to sustain passion once you've been up and running for a while. You also need a solid plan for growth and monetization. Without some, or all, of the first three points on this list, you may have a more challenging route to success.

How to price a newsletter

Once you have verified the subscriber count, and open and click-through rates, Stefan offers three different methods for establishing an appropriate purchase price:

1. Revenue: If the target newsletter is already monetized, typical valuations run between 3-4x annual net profit.
2. Subscriber acquisition cost: If the newsletter is not generating revenue, but has a decent audience size, it's possible to work out a mutually acceptable valuation based on how much it would otherwise cost to attract that number of strong leads.
3. Monetization potential: You may be planning to convert a previously free newsletter into paid content. Once you've factored in the potential conversion rate, multiply by your anticipated subscription fees; this could give you some insight. Alternatively, if you already have some experience in selling advertising, sponsorships, or other marketing revenue sources, that should offer some ideas.

Outreach & Purchase: Once you've got your vetted list of potential acquisition targets, Stefan recommends knowing your budget going in and making your first cold email count.

For the purchase structure, he outlined several creative approaches. Although an outright purchase would be simplest, there are other options, such as revenue-sharing. Alternatively, the seller may want to keep the brand alive through an earn-out strategy, or may be more interested in a merger or combined approach, versus a full sale.

Risk Management: The most significant concern you face will be the "Key Man Risk." Original-content newsletters are the most challenging to transfer seamlessly, since the subscribers opted in based on the original creator's skills and charisma. The risk is lessened somewhat if the newsletter is mainly driven through aggregation or curation, but it's still an issue to monitor carefully.

Bottom Line: These are very early days for the newsletter acquisition model, so there aren't many precedents or established patterns. The market is barely developed at this point, and almost any approach could be successful (or not, as the case may be).Your mileage may vary.

However, a newsletter is by far the easiest digital business asset to transfer and sell. Once the new owner is provided with the admin account, the next steps to success are wholly up to their own ingenuity and capabilities.

Are you thinking of buying (or selling) a newsletter? Feel free to share your process in the comments!

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Indie Airwaves for more.

🧠 Harry's Growth Tip

from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry

The cold email that started a $100M ARR company:

The results: 100% agreed to talk to me. 30% agreed to pay $50/month.

Before Jason Cohen had a company name, a PowerPoint presentation, employees, or a server, he already had 30 customers willing to pay.

Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.

💻 This Founder Makes a Living by Selling Her Open Source Software

By Nena Furtmeier

I'm the founder and sole developer of open3A, an open source web-based invoicing application.

I initially developed open3A in 2007 to create invoices for my customers. Once I got it going, I put it out on the internet because I thought someone else might find it useful. It was one of the first (or maybe the first) web-based solution of its kind in this space.

As more people started using it, I began getting requests for more features. I was still at university, and did it for free because I didn't think much of it. After a while, one of the users wanted to pay me for my work; I wasn't going to decline that offer!

open3A continued gaining users, and I kept getting more feature requests. I implemented them, getting paid for some and adding others for free. After some time, I had built the software to a high level of functionality. I started thinking about how I could sell open3A as a product, as opposed to selling just my time.

I wanted to stay true to what's important to me in a software:

• Open source
• No licensing keys or dongles
• No subscription
• No time limits
• No other stuff that annoys me in other software

After 14 years, I still do it this way and my business is better than ever! Why? Because I let the product speak for itself.

I have a demo version directly on my homepage where anyone can try open3A without login or setup. It's reset once a day. It is my primary mode of sale.

I have a free version of open3A which I designed to be as useful as possible without any limits. Of course, the free version does not incorporate the advanced functionality, but it gets full phone and email support provided by me. This is the bait that I put out there, and I'm sure there are hundreds of people who use it this way and it's fine for them.

For customers who want advanced features, I have a shop! In my shop, users can buy many of the extensions I have developed over the years. The prices are reasonable; they start at 20€ (~$24) and go up to 80€ (~$96). The price contains updates for this extension for one year, which means the next two versions.

Here comes the crucial part: My shop remembers all the extensions a customer bought, and every time she downloads her version it puts all the paid for extensions together in a zip file for the update. This is how I sell open source. The customer gets the code (and functionality) after she bought it.

In 2013, I added a cloud service where open3A can be rented from me and I take care of all the technical things like backup and updates. This is great for steady income.

In 2018, I also added a subscription model after several customers asked me for it. With this model, users can always download the most current version and get a discount. In return, I get steady income.

In 2021, I launched my newest product: It's called open3ABox and it's a raspberry pi with open3A pre-installed. I deliver this to my customers who don't have the technical skills for their own server but don't want a cloud version either. It's fully remote-managed and monitored by me: This means more steady income!

I am passionate about providing really good support. I think this is a very important part for keeping the customers I already have.

In this post, I have focused on the things that worked. But I have literally sunk hundreds of hours and thousands of euros along the way for things that didn't work. I tried to sell open3A on a CD in 2010 and sold exactly one copy. I had someone program an installer and never used it. I built several websites for sub-applications of open3A until I realized it was way too complicated. Selling software B2B is the one of the hardest things I've done in my life!

I'll have my first part-time employee starting April 1st, and next year I plan to have two full weeks of uninterrupted holidays. I can't even remember the last time I've done that. It's been a really long road, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Thank you, life, for continuing to teach me the lessons I need to learn.

AMA in the comments!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

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 Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Darko G., Priyanka Vazirani, Nicky Milner, Harry Dry, and Nena Furtmeier for contributing posts. —Channing