Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you did to market it?

Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by csallen on Sunday October 16, 2016 @06:47PM (#12721502)

Hi Tapha! I run Indie Hackers (https://IndieHackers.com), a site where I interview the founders of profitable business and side projects. I just passed $1k revenue this month (you can follow along via my timeline here: https://IndieHackers.com/blog).

My number one marketing approach by far has been to tailor the site to the HN audience.

I do this primarily by asking questions that people on HN always like to see answered (how much money are you making? how did you come up with the idea? what tech did you use? what are your best marketing channels? etc). Lots of similar sites don't ask any of these questions, especially not the revenue one.

I tend to share the most interesting interviews with the HN audience every couple weeks or so, and they usually do pretty well!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by mschwaig on Monday October 17, 2016 @01:18PM (#12727021)

Did you just answer a HN question on side projects with your side project which aims to answer questions about side projects for the HN audience?

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by csallen on Monday October 17, 2016 @01:28PM (#12727118)

Yes.

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by cx42net on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @03:40AM (#12732755)

That's so meta :)

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by bbcbasic on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @09:19PM (#12740209)

That's so WarriorForum

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by altuzar on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @11:13AM (#12735241)

Are you planning to auto-interview you? :p

Love ur website btw. Thanks a lot!

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by csallen on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @09:39AM (#12743639)

I think this was meant for me? No, I'm not planning to interview myself, but you can read about my progress on the blog: https://www.indiehackers.com/blog

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by elorant on Sunday October 16, 2016 @08:30PM (#12721938)

How on earth do you monetize? I can't see any ads on it. BTW great site, I visit it at least once weekly.

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by goodJobWalrus on Sunday October 16, 2016 @08:50PM (#12722002)

There is a word "sponsored" on top of some of the cards, so "native advertizing"

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by csallen on Monday October 17, 2016 @01:28PM (#12727123)

Yep, this is it. I charge sponsors on a CPC basis. In the near future I'll be doing actual interviews with sponsors, so readers will get to know all about how they started their companies, too.

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by thepredestrian on Thursday October 20, 2016 @09:24PM (#12757567)

Where / how did you reach out to these sponsors? I run a website in the travel industry and would like to add some advertising on it as well

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by georgiecasey on Sunday October 16, 2016 @08:47PM (#12721997)

good day of HN marketing today!

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by csallen on Monday October 17, 2016 @11:19AM (#12725757)

Yep, the SubmitHub story hit #1 and got 42.8k pageviews and 25.2k uniques yesterday. Today it's fallen off the front page, but I've still gotten 14k pageviews and 6.8k uniques.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by csallen on Monday October 17, 2016 @06:27PM (#12730374)

I posted a screenshot of the Google Analytics from the past 28 hours here: https://twitter.com/IndieHackers/status/788141583199719424. It shows pageviews and unique visitors to https://IndieHackers.com.

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by manuelflara on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @03:32AM (#12732733)

Quick question about your /blog page: it's more of a /timeline with some milestones + blog posts on it, rather than a blog, right? Is it custom more or is it made with some Wordpress plugin? And third question: you have $450 MRR as of last month. Did you more than double it this month? Is it recurring, or you just had some extraordinary income that you don't expect to last in the next couple of months? Thanks and kudos for the good work!

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by dalerus on Monday October 17, 2016 @05:34AM (#12723662)

Great work on this site! Very helpful resource. I looked at the timeline, how did you launch to 1000 email subscribers and get 300k page views in the first month?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by csallen on Monday October 17, 2016 @11:10AM (#12725650)

Check out the blog post here: https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/launching-to-300000-pagevi...

I started with 0 subscribers and pageviews, but was at the top of HN for something like 30 hours (Thu morning to Fri afternoon), then only a couple days later I hit #1 on Product Hunt. That weekend alone got me to something like 200k pageviews and 800 subscribers. After that, I just added as many interviews as I could every week, and started sending out weekly newsletters.

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by dalerus on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @10:22PM (#12749402)

Awesome! Great work!

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by taphangum on Monday October 17, 2016 @11:23AM (#12725802)

Thanks for sharing Courtland!

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by tixocloud on Monday October 17, 2016 @09:59AM (#12725031)

Great work and thanks for the tips! How did approach people for interviews?

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by csallen on Monday October 17, 2016 @02:05PM (#12727528)

I wrote about it here (https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/launching-to-300000-pagevi...), but basically I scoured "Ask HN" posts, built a list of 120 companies, tracked down most of their email addresses, and asked them to do an interview and share their revenue numbers for the site. I ended up launching with 12 companies a few weeks later. Since then most of my interview requests have been inbound.

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by aerovistae on Sunday October 16, 2016 @11:25PM (#12722510)

Love your site.

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Re:Ask HN: $1k+ side projecters, what was the best thing you... by csallen on Monday October 17, 2016 @11:17AM (#12725733)

Thanks!

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