Why Most Indie Hackers Stay Broke (And How I Didn’t)
Only practical stuff, no fluff.
Most starting solopreneurs think they need a perfect product, a fancy landing page, and a 12-month roadmap before they make a dollar.
On the other hand, there are those who think that all they need is a week to figure out if something is worthwhile or not.
Both stay broke.
If you want your SaaS to make money, the game in the beginning is stupidly simple:
Talk to people. Give them something to try. See if they actually care. Fix it. Repeat.
This is exactly how I built WriteStack to almost $36,000 in revenue, and growing.
And I’m gonna walk you through the real process it took me to get that first dollar.
1. Your First Goal: Verify the idea
At the start, you don’t need to overthink your idea.
Heck, I’ll say something even harsher:
Your first idea doesn’t matter.
Many builders obsess over finding the perfect idea that will solve a problem right from the get go.
Well, if that you, stop.
Almost any idea can make a few hundred bucks a month.
And almost every idea will change shape completely once people start using it.
Your job in the beginning isn’t to find the right idea, but to find the problem other people are looking to solve.
And you only get that truth by putting your ugly little MVP in front of people and asking them to give you feedback.
Let me give you my own example.
What I thought I was building… was not what people needed
WriteStack didn’t start as a the Substack Notes engine it is today. It didn’t even start as “WriteStack.”
It started as ArticleGenerator.com. a long-form article generator.
I thought people struggled to write articles (I know I did).
I was convinced this was the pain (It was for me).
So I built it, showed it to people, and was sure this is going to be my breakthrough. After 600 days of nothing, to was my killer idea.
You know what I got instead? A unanimous:
“Writing articles isn’t my problem.”
Dang.
That was hurtful. The good think is that every DM that repeated that was hurting less than the one before it.
So I kept it up!
After several DMs of people who didn’t like the idea, I started getting this type of message:
“My problem is Notes.
I can handle long-form.
What I can’t handle is consistent short-form posting.”
Coin drop. Suddenly everything made sense.
Tools like Taplio, TweetHunter, Hyperfury and others all solve short-form problems, not long-form ones.
And Substack writers have the exact same pain.
So I pivoted and dropped the long-form idea. From a killer idea it turned into a feature that was later completely removed from WriteStack.
2. Build an MVP
“an MVP is a way to let users interact with your vision.”
Your MVP shouldn’t include everything you wished for. Even if your dream product is huge, your first goal should be to dumb it down to a single feature.
Something that won’t take a lot of resources to build and change.
When I built the first version of WriteStack, everything was awful.
The design was bad.
The UI was buggy as hell.
The UX was crap, I had to explain everything
No onboarding, no emails, no guides.
It was literally:
“Here’s a box.
Paste your newsletter URL.
Click this button to generate a new outline.
Edit it and copy paste it to Substack.”
And that was enough, because the people who tried it weren’t judging the UI. They knew it’s an MVP.
They judged the idea and the problem it tried to solve.
3. Talk to People
Once you realize your first idea isn’t holy, the next step is to talk to the users.
Not read about them.
Not guess their problems.
Not imagine what they “probably” want.
You need to hear it straight from their mouths.
On Substack you get 10 outbound DMs a day. That means you get to send 10 DM requests, per day, to people who are not subscribed to your newsletter.
Use them. All of them. Every day. No exceptions.
And then, after the hard part’s done, start sending DMs to your subscribers list. As many as you can, the goal is to reach everybody on your list.
Here’s what you’ll ask tell them:
‘Hey X. I have built a tool that does Y and I wondered if that’s something that could be useful to you? I’d be happy to give it to you, for free, in exchange for feedback.’
And yeah, most people won’t respond.
Some will say ‘interesting’ and never reply again.
Some will ghost.
But some will help you and give you feedback. Especially people with whom you have a connection from before.
Pro tip:
Follow up on people. Like I said, most will ghost/will show interest but never give it a go.
One of my favorite ways to follow up is to send a meme. Something like:
Very high response rates compared to text.
P.S.
Here’s where the term ‘Build a well before you’re thirsty’ comes into play. If you don’t have an idea yet, start creating connections. Start sending DMs to people and build a community.
It’ll be much easier for you down the road.
4. Pivot!
Sometimes you’ll need to pivot. Either by changing direction completely, like going from long-form posts to focusing on Notes, or by doing things differently.
In my case, it was changing the product completely.
And when you have a chance to pivot, it’s good. It means that you learned something valuable. Your job is to get to it, complete it as fast as possible, and get back to finding more feedback.
Especially from those who gave you the feedback.
5. Get More Feedback. Then More. Then More.
Once you pivot, you don’t just disappear and build a giant version 2.0 in silence.
You go back to the same people.
The ones who:
• tested your first version
• gave you a minute of their time
• cared enough to answer
• told you what sucked
• told you what didn’t
People who help once will probably help again.
People who tried your crappy first version will try your slightly-less-crappy second version.
Follow up with them. Even if they ghost, follow up again.
You have nothing to lose, and they have a lot to gain. After all, you are solving a problem for them, for free.
6. Build → Get feedback → Fix/Pivot → Repeat
Your goal is to keep repeating points 3-5 until you see that people are using your product with you telling them.
That’s when you know you’re close. You have a product that people like and that you need to improve. Your job is to:
Fix the bugs
Polish the obvious rough edges
Remove dead features
Add the stuff everyone keeps asking for
Make the flow smoother
Generally improve based on feedback
It will take time, but you’ll eventually reach a point where people praise your product and tell you that you’ve build something valuable (those who use it).
That will be your cue to put up a paywall (the moment of truth).
7. Put Up the Paywall (The Right Way)
Before you set a price, ask your early testers one question:
“What’s your no-brainer price?”
or
“What amount would you pay without thinking, right now?”
When I asked my early WriteStack testers, the answers were all between $5–$10.
There are 2 reasons I asked.
The obvious one, to figure out how to price the product.
To prime those users and prepare them for a paywall that’s coming up.
So I priced WriteStack around double the no-brainer:
• ~$9.99/month for annual
• ~$13/month for monthly
Then I messaged them.
“Hey X.
First of all, I want to thank you for trying Y and giving me so much feedback. You helped shape the product for years to come, and it means a lot.
Now, I decided that Y is good enough at this stage to put up a paywall. And as an appreciation token, I want to give you a 30% discount forever.
Thank you for believing when the product was awful <3.”
Final Thought
Build an MVP. Talk to people. Pivot aggressively. Repeat until good. Price fairly.
You don’t need to have everything figured out from day one.
Heck, to this day WriteStack still has so many bugs that people report/I find as I use it. I still have tons of things that I don’t know, and the more I progress, the more I understand how much more I have to do.
Start simple, build an MVP, get feedback. That’s it. You’ll figure out the rest along the way.
I believe in you.
Thank you so so much for this Article
It came right on time
when I needed it the most
Many advise out there are trash but yours is solid Gold
I have been working on a Digital product creation Dashboard on Notion it’s Like 80% ready as we speak but I haven’t talked to anyone about it
But with your advice I think I now know what to do
Thanks so much Orel
Sharing your journey has really inspired me 🙌🙌🙌
So many of us get paralysed trying to create a flawless product when, in reality, the key is to dive in and learn from the feedback, even if it stings a little. - Been there and worn that t-shirt : )
But you're right, if you want to be successful, you must embrace imperfection and adapt quickly.