The hypothesis: Customers are more likely to click organic search engine results featuring content that is commercially focused, using language like “free” or “best value”. Instead of simply changing page titles to commercial content, I decided to hedge my bets: I tested commercial VS functional VS emotional. At the core of this test is dive into consumer psychology.
A powerful network or an engaged audience is vital for success as an Indie Hacker. Otherwise, it can be hard to get eyeballs and feedback on your project. Especially in the early days. A network helps you understand the problems of the users and build the right product from the start. These are 3 very different examples of how founders leveraged their network to build successful businesses.
Start content with the most important piece of information so readers can get the main point, regardless of how much they read. This style of writing is perfectly suited to writing for the web. In journalism, the inverted pyramid refers to a story structure where the most important information (or what might even be considered the conclusion) is presented first. The inverted pyramid is perfectly suited for the web - on any screen size.
It’s time to pay attention to People Also Asked questions asked around and about your brand in Google’rs SERPs. They are generally viewed as an opportunity in SEO and often seen as an underexploited opportunity. A brand SERP is what your audience sees when they search Google for your brand name. These questions Google suggests are not an opportunity. They are a must-have. Why? Because it’s essential to control as much real estate as possible on your brand SERP.
I originally joined Reddit because I wanted a place to share music I’d made, but it quickly became clear that the platform is heavily policed for self-promotion. One day I found out that the self-promotion wasn’t the problem. What is spam in one subreddit is gold in another (usually more niche) subreddit. Here are a few tips for navigating Reddit.
You probably don’t think about your SaaS product documentation when you think about growth channels. But what if I told you that you could turn your documentation into a powerful lead generation channel? One business saw a whopping 12% of all trials come from three support pages. This means that if you do it right, you can use your SaaS product documentation to generate more leads for your product-led growth strategy.
SavvyCal is a startup designed to provide a better scheduling experience than Calendly. We love it when companies bet on UX, so it was only a matter of time before we dug into their onboarding. After exploring all the nooks and crannies, we decided to share our thoughts with you in a full-fledged TEARDOWN.
Building in public is scary, and as humans, we’re hardwired to avoid pain. But I don’t believe that toiling away in secrecy is the safer path. Hiding your work and building in private is the risky approach to entrepreneurship. You only need to look at the ProductHunt page of the day to see where that leads. A few products do exceptionally well. But almost all products launched on any given day get just a few upvotes.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for success as an indie hacker, everyone is on their unique journey. Yet some common patterns emerge that help founders succeed with their startups. Over the last 11 months, I’ve deeply analyzed 30+ indie hackers and their startups. This is the documentation of traits that I’ve found common to these stories. Hope it helps you in your own journey.
After reading through 111 post-mortems since 2018, we’ve learned there is rarely one reason for a single startup’s failure. However, we did begin to see a pattern to these stories. From lack of product-market fit to disharmony on the team, we break down the top 12 reasons for startup failure by analyzing 110+ startup failure post-mortems.
As a manager, everything is your fault. I believe almost all first-time founders burn out their first employees as they learn how to manage groups of people. If this advice helps avoid a few cases, it’s worth writing it down. I wrote this article for managers of small teams/startups. I’d assume that most might not apply to management in larger enterprises.
The other day, while scrolling through a list of major IPOs from 2021, I came across a successful launch that really caught me by surprise. Toast went public in September 2021 despite catering exclusively to businesses bearing the brunt of pandemic lockdowns. So, how did Toast survive the darkest days of the pandemic and emerge on the other side, ready for launch?
Balancing free user growth and monetization is difficult, especially when deciding which features to give away for free and which to keep for paying customers. At Vidyard, we launched free and entry-level Pro offerings, which meant moving the entire company to a product-led growth model. But, how did we decide?
The core risk of content marketing is creating something that nobody cares about. You pour time and energy into a topic that your audience ignores. You focus on the wrong angle. You take a bet, and for whatever reason, it doesn’t pay off. One way to to reduce the time it takes to create content, and to increase the likelihood of its success is to use content arbitrage.
We sourced PLG wisdom from some of the smartest people in SaaS, ranging from department heads to CEO/founders. Here’s what they had to say: Product-led growth is anytime that your prospect or customer interacts with your product before making a decision. Solutions best-suited for PLG inspire viral adoption. Product-led growth is a go-to-market strategy that puts your product at the core of everything your company does. Read on for more nuggets.