1 year of being an Indie Founder 🎉

Hello there, Product Hunters 🧡 It's been a year since we got our first payment notification for www.makerbox.club products and I want to share the story behind it. That was a $9 customer from a waitlist for our first product - a collection of tools with great free plans for Indie Founders. Not a SaaS, not revolutionary, and not solving humanity's greatest problems. We built it with Airtable, made a no-code landing page with Typedream, accepted payments through Gumroad, and launched it on Product Hunt. What a tech stack 😄 But it was a product that the Indie Founders needed. Even though it was not a fancy tech solution, It saved time and money. So, the biggest lesson — focus on solving real problems and save either time or money (or bring people joy). Here're 4 simple tips that helped us build products people need: 1. There's a high chance your first product will fail (sorry!). So, don't start with brainstorming problems and solutions. Instead, start with choosing your target audience. Perfect scenario — you're a part of this audience. Even if your first product fails, your knowledge about this audience's problems will stay with you. And you'll already have some authority and connections. 2. Don't build SaaS before validating the idea. Validating idea = getting $. If you already have an audience, launch an early bird option. If you don't have an audience, launch a coming soon page and collect emails. But don't expect high conversion to paying customers, it'll be around 10-20%. 3. Create a content product around the problem you want to solve. If it's a successful launch, then start building SaaS. Here are a few ways to validate your SaaS idea with a content product: 🔹 Challenge 🔹 Checklist 🔹 Swipe File 🔹 Workbook 🔹 Curated list 🔹 Template 🔹 Newsletter 🔹 E-book 🔹 Email course 🔹 Closed community 🔹 1-person agency 4. Collect feedback and beta-test. There's a high chance your product won't be perfect from the first iteration. And your landing page, too. So, spend some time and find beta testers. They will help you fix the bugs and make your product better. Also, they will be the first testimonials for your product. Win-win, isn't it? Here're some places where you can find beta testers: 🔹 Product Hunt discussions 🔹 Polywork 🔹 Yesramen 🔹 Indie Hackers 🔹 #buildinpublic on Twitter __________ Why am I sharing this? Cause during 1 year of building Indie Products, I've seen a lot of people burning out. Most Founders I followed in the beginning abandoned building in public and gave up on their products. Shiny idea -> building for 3-6 months -> zero paying customers -> the end. I don't want it to be like that.