IndieHackers - 🗞 What's New: Is Web3 just a buzzword?

Web3 is dividing folks in the tech space:

• What exactly is Web3? Should you be paying attention, or is it just a marketing buzzword? Indie hackers break down thoughts on Web3 below.
• Stock platform smallcase has seen major increases in search popularity since the start of the pandemic. We dig into its content marketing strategy and pull out three tips to help founders level up.
• Founder Sven Frese bootstrapped his cloud gaming company, airgpu, to $2,000 in monthly revenue. Here's how he reached profitability by cancelling all of his subscription plans.

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🤔 What the Heck is Web3?

by Lookingforamillion

I don't understand Web3 at all. I get the Web1 and Web2 paradigm, but Web3 just isn't being explained well by anyone. I get the feeling that it's just a marketing term that people are taking advantage of at the moment, while waiting for the bubble to burst. No one who has written about Web3 has really done so in a way that the average person can understand.

Is this obfuscation on purpose to keep people out? Is it just me?

Web3 101

Norbert Jurga, a member of the indie hackers community, broke down three elements of Web3:

1. Ownership:

With Web2, when you sell something in your project, the client has to trust that you will keep your word (and that the funds deposited will really stay in his account). For example, when depositing funds to an SMS or email sending service, the customer must believe that these funds will be in his account, and that he will be able to use them to send these messages.

In this scenario, admins can manually overwrite this database, including user funds. That's where the element of trust comes in.

With Web3, the situation is different. Funds are allocated on the basis of tokens living in a decentralized blockchain. The customer totally retains possession of them. They can keep them in their wallets and spend them in your app, but they can also exchange or sell them in any way. If they change their minds, or fail to use all the funds, they do not have to depend on you to refund them the money for something purchased two years ago.

2. Transparency:

One of the many features of smart contracts is that, once they appear in the blockchain, they cannot be changed. Also, everyone can see what their functions are. If an app says that it allocates 20% of its revenue to a tree planting foundation, and writes it in the contract, we don't have to just take their word for it; we can be sure of it.

Yes, it is true that a company can be open source oriented. But we as users have to believe that what is on the server is what is actually in the repository, and that it will not change over time.

3. Privacy, security, and non-discrimination:

In most Web3 applications, you don't need to enter any personal information. You just connect your wallet. No more sharing your email address to countless entities and risking data leaks as we know them. No more having to come up with difficult passwords.

Since we do not share any data, the user can be sure that he will not be discriminated against by his location, sex, race, or age, even when applying for a loan or insurance.

It isn't just the tech, it's the mindset

The best analogy for Web3, according to Jatacid, is that it's the content of websites (whatever is in the server) being distributed and accessed like torrents.

That's the technical side of it, anyway. What's bigger is the paradigm shift in thinking.

It's about moving away from big companies dictating your experience. Through Web3, you can get a digital identity and structure contracts that allow you to be able to log in on any website without credentials, or providing sensitive data.

You are the owner of your digital footprint.

It has a long way to go, so this is still very speculative. But it's the same as the beginning of the internet; no one knew, or could imagine, how it would change lives. The risk of investing is asymmetrical. There's little downside (you lose your investment) and massive upside (early investor in the next internet and foundation for the next wave of innovation).

Not everyone's impressed

Indie hacker Farouq Aldori believes that Web3, as it is defined today, is not much more than marketing fluff being pushed to continue the cryptocurrency pyramid scheme.

Sergiy Cheredko sees Web3 as a vague term to indicate an alleged "new era" of the Internet. Many suggest it should solve current problems, such as centralization of services and privacy. However, Web3, as it is now, doesn't solve the issues, he said.

Moxie Marlinspike's piece, My first impressions of Web3, dives into some of the drawbacks of the space:

Founders looking to get started in building Web3 products can check out this post for resources!

What's your understanding of Web3? Please share below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

💻 Here's why the metaverse could become a breeding ground for terrorism.

💰 Take-Two Interactive is buying Zynga for $12.7B.

📉 Bitcoin has fallen below $40K as US stocks continue to decline.

🚀 PayPal is looking to launch its own cryptocurrency.

🔠 The internet is obsessed with a new game called Wordle.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

🛄 Content Marketing Lessons From Smallcase

from the Content Marketing VIP newsletter by Sk Rafiqul Islam

Smallcase offers a modernized way of investing in stocks and ETF baskets with a preferred broker. The company helps its clients easily build a diversified, long-term portfolio at a low cost. Let's break down smallcase's content marketing strategy, and the three key lessons to note!

Smallcase outreach background

Smallcase has seen huge demand in terms of search popularity, especially since the pandemic began.

Why? Here are some possible reasons:

• A great product that makes investing easy.
• Creating brand awareness by providing educational content.

The smallcase newsletter is a great example of delivering educational, useful, relevant content consistently.

Let's have a look at the newsletter's conversion-optimized landing page:

Every Sunday, smallcase delivers an insightful newsletter to over 300K investors. The company has been doing this for nearly two years.

Content marketing elements

Education before promotion:

Most businesses and B2B brands use a newsletter to send occasional sales messages or special offers to their prospects. The smallcase newsletter is the opposite. It helps investors to be more knowledgeable about the market (thus helping with decision-making), and doesn't read like promotional content.

Here’s a glimpse of the newsletter:

In the end, businesses need conversion to survive. Smallcase's newsletter does this well by providing informational insights, in what we call a product-led content approach, as explained by Dr. Fio Dossetto:

In this case, the newsletter shares the performance of one of the company's smallcases. Here’s the example:

Even though smallcase is promoting its product indirectly, investors are more likely to click on either "Read more" or "See smallcase" to learn more about the client and what smallcase is doing for them.

Content distribution strategy:

One of the biggest mistakes that brands make is focusing on creating more content, and less on distributing existing content.

Take note of how smallcase repurposes its content on various platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.):

The benefits?

• Repurposing existing content for multiple content platforms increases its effectiveness.
• It helps create cohesive brand awareness on official social media pages.
• And, of course, it saves money!

Smallcase also publishes its newsletter on the website to make it accessible for all.

Lessons for indie hackers

1. Newsletters are still one of the best ways to have the most control over your audience. Consider starting a newsletter that digs into educational, relevant content, not promotional content.

2. Be consistent. One study says that it takes around 12-18 months of consistent delivery of helpful content to see any significant growth.

3. Always have a content repurposing strategy. Instead of creating more and distributing less, focus on distributing more and creating less content.

What's your top content marketing tip? Share in the comments below!

Discuss this story, or subscribe to the Content Marketing VIP for more.

🛠 Crafting Your Sales Page

by Ivan Romanovich

Always mention your refund policy. Sharing the refund upfront shows confidence in the quality of your product.

Discuss this story.

☁️ Sven Frese's Cloud Gaming Platform Hit $2K MRR

by Sven Frese

Hi everyone! I'm Sven Frese, founder of airgpu, a cloud gaming company that I bootstrapped to $2K MRR. I recently cancelled all paid subscriptions for the service.

I have been indie hacking for over four years next to my day job. My projects haven't been very successful, though. I either haven't finished them, or I failed to get paying customers.

Last year, out of frustration about GPU prices, I started getting into cloud gaming. From following cloud gaming communities on Reddit, I found that many people don't have cloud gaming services available that offer the games that they like playing.

So, in December 2020, I started building airgpu. It gives full access to a gaming pc in the cloud. This allows users to play the games they own from any of their devices. I launched into closed beta in April 2021, offering 30 hours of use for $30 per month. I messaged a few people on Reddit who were looking for a service like mine, and got the first beta signups that way.

My journey with airgpu hasn't been as straightforward as I would have liked, and has had many challenges on both the technical and business side of things. However, I'm excited to work towards getting airgpu into public beta, and ultimately, out of beta next year.

AMA!

Which acquisition channels have worked for you?

One of my early beta users connected me with someone running a fairly large YouTube channel on cloud gaming, and they agreed to do a review of my service. The review turned out very positive. I got roughly 1K signups over the weekend after the YouTube video was released. The YouTuber gets a few dollars for every paying customer they refer.

I've also continued to gain users from Reddit posts.

Have you experienced churn?

While continuously working on improving the service in the months after launching the closed beta, and onboarding more beta users, I found a few problems with my offering. Churn was fairly high, as were the server costs. An update to the software used for streaming games caused additional unexpected costs, which led to the service no longer being profitable.

From in-app user feedback, I learned that many of my users churned out because they only gamed occasionally, picking up a game every few months. They didn't like the idea of an ongoing subscription. Based on that feedback, I decided to revise my offering to be more attractive for occasional gamers. I cancelled everyone's subscription and switched to a pay-per-use model with new pricing, guaranteeing profitability for me and more flexibility for my users. I expected complaints about the higher price tag, but luckily, I received nothing but support from my user base.

I launched the new offering in early December 2021, and invited some of my most loyal customers to test it. I'm now turning a profit again!

What hosting service are you using?

Currently, everything is running on AWS. Getting the required GPU quota requires a special application, but after contacting the AWS account team, that wasn't a problem.

A few users have reached out to me to ask for Android support, and that's actually on my list of things to experiment with next.

What games to do your users want to play most?

I'm mostly seeing users play games that are not on GeForce Now, Xbox Game Pass, or other library-based cloud gaming services. Otherwise, there's no real pattern to it. My customers are from all over the world. I'm seeing a lot of demand, specifically in Asia.

The industry is definitely in an interesting place right now. The nice thing about this project is that I'm not trying to win cloud gaming, but find my niche. The big providers undeniably have an advantage in manufacturing their own hardware and growing their own ecosystems, but there are lots of niches in gaming that they are not serving.

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 Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Lookingforamillion, Priyanka Vazirani, Sk Rafiqul Islam, Ivan Romanovich, and Sven Frese for contributing posts. —Channing