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Ask HN: What to do if you are not good at building an audience?

36 points by mhrnik ↗ HN
I am a maker and right now working on 2 side projects. I am decent at coding but I am bad in marketing and building audience. I am working on that skill but what to do if you are not good at building an audience?

Is it fine we if the focus on making a product that people really want and let organically build an audience around the product?

Do share your thoughts.

23 comments

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1cvmask
What are the projects? This is a good platform to inform us and get feedback and suggestions.
mhrnik
1. plankarma.com (Making simple and minimal playground for a remote team to share todos, work availability and moods)

2. trytwig.com (Community where we can ask friends for a recommendation on movie, music, food place)

gus_massa
One method that sometimes get traction here is to write a technical blog post for each of these sites. Don't make a single post for both, unless it make a lot of sense.

It must be technical enough, but if possible not too technical. Add a few relevant graphics and photos.

The more important part is that it must be interesting. Did you solve an interesting technical problem while making the sites? If an old friend meets with you after a few years, and you are drinking a beer, and the friend ask you about something weird in the site, what anecdote would you tell?

It is not foolproof, so you may try write a few interesting articles and post them, and look what get's traction.

The second is just a landing page.

About the first one: https://www.plankarma.com/

The video in the front page is nice, to have a fast idea of how the site works.

The strikethrough of the complete activities is does not handle long task in the video. Have you fixed it? It looks difficult if the fonts and zoom in each computer may change the number of lines of the task. (If you have solved it, it may be an interesting story.)

I guess there are problems with characters with accents and time zones. Something interesting here?

How did you select the emoji that are implemented? Is this list culture dependent? Is it already working? Do you accept real users? Price?

mhrnik
Got your point. thanks for taking checking sites and sharing detailed feedback.

Once MVP get ready, will update landing page.

:)

tstewart161
In my experience:

real problem + good messaging + good mvp + right audience = strong response.

Strong response is lots of page views, lots of comments, lots of likes, lots of signups, STRONG replies and REAL excitement (if you’re questioning, it’s probably too vague).

If you DONT get a strong response, one of the above on the left hand side isn’t satisfied (including that it may not be a real problem at all).

lmiller1990
If you want to make money from your product eventually, you need to get good at building an audience. Start small. Blog posts about the problem your tool solves, post on Twitter and Reddit. It takes some time and effort but anyone can do it. Coding is the hacking part of been an indie hacker; the I die part is doing everything else (marketing, sales, etc).
santa_boy
I face the same problem. I've developed an integrated listing and CRM platform for real estate agents in the US.

I'm planning to cold email realtors to fix up discussions and try to take it from there.

I'm thinking of writing and spreading the word around from any success stories or feedback that come out of the above efforts.

I'm also thinking of targeted FB ads and need to see how that goes.

mhrnik
Thanks for sharing. I am noting some points from you. I am glad that you have clear action plan.
amerkhalid
Hey great idea! I am a part-time real estate agent and if you want to email me.

Personally, I have been using self hosted Monica CRM. I have tried various CRMs and they all seem to have some issues, especially for part-timer REALTORs. MonicaCRM works for now.

Full disclosure, my goal to pivoting to real estate is so that I can work on my startup ideas, one of those ideas is CRM for REALTORs.

idoh
First, bravo for being a maker! You shared two projects below, one of which only works if there is a community. The other one is arguable. If you like to build, but aren’t good on the community side (which is totally fine) then maybe focus on products and projects which are useful just to one person. You could also try things like some type of SEO play, or selling things via advertising, etc.
mhrnik
You are right. Twig is a product which only can work if a community is there. Based on other greats feedbacks from fellow hackers here, I think I should step out of my comfort zone and should start with writing around my solutions, my problems and journey.

Come to your comments, I think I SEO can be a good point to start. Thanks :)

mindhash
Its hard to organically grow a product on its own without network effect. If you think you are better off just working on product then consider affiliates. They will do this thing for you. You will have to price your product accordingly to include their commission. But its an easier path to start with. Over time you should focus on developing your own brand and presence in the market.
inshadows
How do you make sure that affiliates don't send you just bot traffic?
mhrnik
Not sure right now but maybe we can count only paid user signup over free account or views.
mhrnik
Got you. I can start with affiliates but for a lon term I need to develop this skill. Thanks.
vladmk
Find someone who is, teams build make great companies
type0
Get a good mic and record some tutorials, write some blogs, ask others to share etc. Be transparent with your future plans
mrgreenfur
Depends on the offering, but often a channel strategy can help plug your product into a larger audience without having to build it from scratch.
mhrnik
Right. Thats why for twig app, I am more focusing in instagram channel where people likes to talk about foods, movies, music etc
jlevers
I'm in the same boat.

This seems like a great issue/challenge to build a community around...if anyone would be interested in starting something like that, let me know!

I'm part of one (quickly growing) community that's doing something similar -- it's a private Slack-based writing group, with group feedback and accountability built in. I'm not financially involved with them, I just think it's an awesome community.

It's called Compound Writing: https://www.compoundwriting.com/

mhrnik
Can you share their pricing?
zzo38computer
I too, work on several projects and would want those who are interested in it to know it, to help, bug reports, feature requests, complaints, etc. In my case, I don't care much about the money, so perhaps the consideration are difference from whether or not there is money involved (as well as other differences too I suppose).

Unfortunately, I don't know much what to do, either.

But, I can say I think that it is best not to bother people too much (by sending unwanted email messages, telephone calls, etc; of course if such messages actually are wanted, that is different, and should be sent).