Issue 026 - Indie Development Marketing
The first issue of the New Year, wishing all readers a Happy New Year. May you make lots of money this year. Therefore, this issue's theme is about marketing and growth.
This weekly is open source, documenting weekly sights and sounds, focusing mainly on frontend, AI, indie development, open source tools, etc., published every Saturday/weekend. Feel free to contribute and look forward to your follow/subscribe -- fav0.com
>> Topics to Discuss
Marketing and Sales
In indie development, the code is often the easy part; what's difficult is marketing and sales. Recently, I watched Li Ziran's Overseas Market Growth Practical Guide, and one point that impressed me was: [You need to tell a good story about your product right from the start.]
- Good story: Users trust you more, and when it's time for secondary dissemination, bloggers can refer to your story for promotion; otherwise, they wouldn't know how to write the content.
- From the start: The internet has memories. A product can iterate, but once a story is captured and indexed by other sites, it's hard to modify it.
Here are some other points:
- Product Hunt: If you want to drive traffic, post between Tuesday and Thursday. If you want to rush the daily chart, post on Sunday when it's relatively less competitive. For weekly or monthly charts, post at the beginning of the week or month.
- Product Hunt is a good way to verify secondary dissemination; tech media and influencers focus on the products there. A ratio above two indicates good secondary dissemination.
- SEO is the most reliable and important strategy. Focus on building backlinks first and then content. Once you have basic authority, devote your energy to content creation. Your website should also have a sharing mechanism.
- Google's aim is for your website to solve users' problems, not necessarily to keep them there longer. A critical metric is whether your site is the final stop for users' search queries.
- Besides having a few curated articles to tell the story of your site, you also need a lot of medium-quality articles to cover your site's keywords. Ensure articles are indexed and manually submit them if needed.
- AI-generated content might be discriminated against.
- PSEO (program-generated content) is permissible but should help users.
The video is full of valuable insights, so I recommend watching the full video.
Additionally, there's a discussion on this week's Hacker News about how indie entrepreneurs learn marketing and sales, where many Hackers share their experiences and advice, such as:
- Networks (friends of friends, customers' friends, etc.)
- "Long game" (SEO, word-of-mouth, etc.)
- Finding customers is hard. You need to get close to them, understand their pain points.
- "The Sales for Founders" book is a great resource
- "Start marketing from day one of coding"
>> Must Read
GitLab China Banned
>> Useful Tools
Drawl.ink - Turn Links into Beautiful Cards
A card application that turns links into beautifully designed cards, with multiple templates available to use.
Open Source Social Image Creator
A great OG image creator, many websites' OG images are based on this product.
Notably, after the author open-sourced this, someone else did SEO on it and published, achieving higher rankings for the "og image generate" keyword.
RSS Beauty
Transforms RSS feeds into a visually pleasing reading format for a better reading experience.
Another Export Toolbox
AI Shadcn Theme Generator
A tool to generate Shadcn themes via AI with real-time preview. For example, to generate a "parchment style" theme:
Super Snowflake Maker
Enjoy a childhood favorite: fold a paper, cut part of it, and unfold to reveal a beautiful symmetrical pattern.
Paint Blending Tool
A simulator for mixing different paint colors, with implementations in C/C++, C#, Java, JS, Python, Rust, etc.
3D Animated Portfolio Template
A breathtaking effect:
More
- Twtxt is a decentralized, minimal Twitter service for hackers
- Generating infinite real-world programs
- Open source, RAG-based chat with documents ## >> Interesting Finds
Prioritizing Domain Names
Bought a lot of domain names in 2024, but haven't completed many projects:
Grok's New Logo
>> Worth Reading
Design Newsletter Recommendations
Ahrefs' Complete Guide for SEO Beginners
In Praise of the Hundred-Page Idea
I prefer a light non-fiction book to a detailed tome. As an amateur in many interests, my attention span for any specific topic is more likely to sustain for 100 pages than 600. The ideal length is longer than a long-form internet article but doesn’t require a month-long commitment: a 2-3 hour read.
Top comments (0)