Is there a such thing as "bad" users? - **Customers who constantly complain, open countless support tickets,** and seem generally impossible to satisfy can be a drain on your resources. Do you give these users the boot? - **Programmatic SEO helps you
Is there a such thing as "bad" users?
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Customers who constantly complain, open countless support tickets, and seem generally impossible to satisfy can be a drain on your resources. Do you give these users the boot?
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Programmatic SEO helps you build thousands of pages for high-intent, low-volume keywords. This could be your key to acquiring users in the most cost efficient way.
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Founder Goutham Jay has multiple failed companies under his belt, but has come out on the other side with extremely valuable lessons. Below, he shares more abut his indie hacking journey, including what he's learned along the way.
Want to share something with over 90,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
🚷 Handling "Bad" Users
by Darko
If you have a product, you more than likely have encountered "bad" users at some point. We all have those users. They constantly open support requests, complain a lot, and make unrealistic demands.
How do you handle these users? Do you ever get rid of them? Founders weigh in below!
Examine your signup process
Joe Howard shared his guide:
If it's a nice customer who just sends in too many support tickets, simply be honest with them. You can let them know that you don't feel like your tool is a great fit for them, and that perhaps they'd be better served with another.
If they're a rude customer, try setting up a code of conduct for your support channels. Include it in the footer of every email reply sent, and in the initial email sent out to new customers.
The next time they're rude, point them to the code of conduct. If it becomes too extreme, you should let them know that you think it's best for everyone to part ways. Give them a refund of their last payment proactively. This is necessary to make it less likely that they'll give you a bad review online or harass you on Twitter.
The most important part is to learn from your users, good and bad! Analyze of all your "bad" customers to determine what made them a bad fit. Use those learnings to implement a vetting system on your website and in the signup process, so that ill-matched users won't even sign up in the future.
- Have too many rude customers? Have everyone check a box during signup that says something along the lines of: I understand that harsh communication towards the support team will not be tolerated.
- Have too many customers sending in tons of support requests? Make sure that everyone has to check a box during signup that says something along the lines of: I will search the Help Docs for answers to my questions before sending in a support request.
This seems simple, but you'd be surprised how effective this has been for me. The best way to deal with bad users is to try to prevent them from signing up in the first place.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to raise your prices. People who are willing to pay more are less likely to churn, require less support, and are typically much easier to work with.
Feel free to check out Driftly if you want to try integrating product tours onto your platform. Our customers have found that giving folks a little tour makes onboarding a breeze, helps with new feature adoption, and minimizes support requests.
Set healthy expectations
Jon Douglas recommends thinking of it like a lawn. To get rid of all the weeds, you need thick, healthy grass.
The more engaged and satisfied your customers are, the easier time you'll have getting less satisfied users off of your platform.
I would challenge the definition of "bad" here being assigned to people who open support requests and complain a lot. These could be dedicated users who desperately want to be heard by the product team.
If it's just negativity and net detractors to your morale and team, perhaps set your expectations of support better. That could be through a quick email or call to ask about their recent dissatisfaction, and chat through it.
There's something to learn from everyone.
What are your tips for addressing problematic users? Share below!
Discuss this story.
📰 In the News
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
🧠 VC money keeps flowing into psychedelics-based mental health.
📚 Taliban leaders have halted education for girls, despite previous pledges.
☎️ Landline phones are making a major comeback.
💊 Male birth control pills may start human trials this year.
📱 The Head of Instagram says that adding hashtags does not increase views or distribution.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
💻 Trend Alert: Programmatic SEO
from the Trends.vc newsletter by Dru Riley
Why it matters
You need to acquire customers in a cost-effective way.
Problem
Writing editorial content is slow, expensive, and hard to scale.
Solution
Programmatic SEO helps you build thousands of pages for high-intent, low-volume keywords.
Players
Programmatic SEO examples:
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Failory: Resources and interviews for startup founders.
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MentorCruise: Find programming, marketing, and product management mentors.
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Legislate: Get employment, property, and freelance legal contracts.
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Zapier: Targets long-tail keywords around integrating apps.
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Tripadvisor: Targets "best {thing} in {city}" keywords.
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Wise: Runs a programmatic SEO strategy around exchange rates.
Programmatic SEO tools:
Predictions
Opportunities
Risks
Hot take
Editorial content will continue to work best for high-volume keywords. It's worth the effort. Programmatic SEO is an efficient approach for long-tail keywords. Dominic Monn works with an agency to write long-form content alongside generated pages.
Key lessons
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Keyword research is the foundation of effective SEO. This includes programmatic SEO.
- Long-tail keywords have less traffic, but high-intent visitors.
Haters
"This sounds technical. I need to learn how to code."
We shared a no-code recipe for programmatic SEO in the Opportunities section.
"This sounds spammy."
The goal should be value, not quantity.
Links
Related reports
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Marketing Funnels: Getting search traffic is one step in a marketing funnel.
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No-Code: No-code tools are used to capture, transform, and display data.
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Growth Tools: Engineering as marketing projects have programmatic SEO elements.
More reports
Go here to get the Trends Pro report. It contains 200% more insights. You also get access to the entire back catalog and the next 52 Pro Reports.
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Trends.vc for more.
👥 Audience Defined
from The Steal Club newsletter by Alex Llull
audIence → It’s your own organic distribution channel.
This is extremely powerful when you are a founder or creator.
Subscribe to The Steal Club for more.
✨ Goutham Jay Has Learned From His Failures
by Goutham Jay
Hi everyone! I'm Goutham Jay, and I started building products two years ago when I was 22. I've always wanted to start something of my own ever since I learned more about money and how certain assets work while you sleep. I've failed at multiple business and learned many lessons. Read on for more!
First venture: Recruitment platform
I started out building a recruitment platform for developers with help from a friend, who later became my cofounder. We put together a simple project and integrated with GitHub APIs to push code repositories in under three weeks. I also began doing cold outreach to over 100 companies. Finally, four of them responded.
We managed to make $300 (we charged companies for successful hires), but it turns out that it's hard to consistently bring in candidates for every job listed by a company. Since I was the only one focusing on the business side of things, I eventually burned out.
Second venture: Social media for developers
We pivoted from the previous project, but with a special focus on distribution, which we thought might solve the hiring problem.
We called it Astramind: Taking our community minds to the stars.
Our master plan was to make it a place for the most creative developers to hang out so that developers would be readily available when jobs were listed. It was meant to be a productized version of the service that we'd offered previously.
We built a community platform for developers where they could share their blogs and code repositories, while getting to know other developers. Though the plan looked good on paper, the hardest part was getting developers to create posts and engage with each other. We realized that developers can be pretty reserved!
After working on it for three months, we realized that we really couldn't make it work. We only had 20 developers onboarded as users.
Third venture: Community for makers building in public
After taking two months off, both of us were somewhat refreshed, although I could see that my cofounder's energy was deteriorating with each project.
While working on the developers platform, I had interacted with a lot of founders. I realized that they were people I resonated with the most. Also, the Build in Public movement was starting to become popular on Twitter.
Having built a platform before, we both decided to make a community platform for SaaS makers who were building in public.
We used the boilerplate code from our previous project. We added comments on posts and notifications to keep makers engaged.
We onboarded 60+ makers (mostly the audience from previous projects), and had a soft launch on Product Hunt. Things were going well at first, but then the issues started to creep in. Growth was stagnating. My cofounder was losing interest since the focus was then on marketing, not adding features.
This shifted a lot of the responsibilities onto me, and I had to handle marketing and bug fixes. I burned out again, and took a break in December 2021. I also parted ways with my cofounder.
The end...?
Although I've had a lot of failures, I've learned a lot, too:
- I realized that I have the ability to quickly build new products. This is a skill. If you're able to do this, don't underestimate its value!
- I kept my full-time job throughout, and it saved me from having to deal with financial strain while building.
- We kept costs low. We had the free tier on AWS, plus startup credits. We had very few expenses: Company incorporation, domain hosting, and emails, all of which amounted to ~$300 in total.
- Developers often like solving their own problems. It's really hard to build a business around them (though many have).
Most importantly, I still had the desire to build a profitable business. So, in January 2022, I began looking for problems that I could build a SaaS solution for as a solo founder.
I am currently building Famewall, a social proof testimonial platform, in public. I guess a taste of freedom makes you unemployable for life!
Discuss this story.
🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
by Tweetmaster Flex
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?
Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.
Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.
Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Darko, Priyanka Vazirani, Dru Riley, Alex Llull, and Goutham Jay for contributing posts. —Channing
