+2,167 new subscribers in 48 hours (one tactic you should try)

The man himself!
Thanks Harry, that's very kind man.

In fact, let me just share a screenshot of our Analytics 🤓 :

Does that help?

👔 RE: CEO:

• Haha 🙂. Fun fact and total disclosure: we sent him the wrong email after he signed up and he unsubscribed 😅. Oh well. We live and we learn!

🏡RE: Home page:

• TLDR: Very good point. In fact, @louisxavierl and I were just discussing in Slack the idea of putting back the nav because it just doesn't feel 100% right.
• BACKGROUND: We have a cookie. Normally if you're an identified subscriber on the same device, you should see the nav. We set that up as an experiment while doing a email promotion campaign (squeeze page). We had very strong signals since most people who come through the home page are referrals, so 20-60% optin rate depending on the source. So we left it that way and started an AB test, but yeah—it feels a bit off so we'll stop the experiment. 🙂

Microsoft?

Woah, that's very kind Lukas—thanks! 🙏
I'm curious, what was your biggest takeaway from this post?

Thanks Leticia :) I'm sure you'll do great.

Wow, that's very kind of you to say. Thanks Vee! :)

Thanks Alex! Honestly, starting one card at a time in Notion can be surprising. Just make sure you pick the right topic with some user research first 🙂 .

Hey Benas 👋 Good job for trying that out!

💡 SEO tools:
I think it's definitely a good idea. In fact Brian DEan (the person from whom we bought the course with the RLL strategy), did a RLL on SEO tools: https://backlinko.com/seo-tools . Ranking against him for that keyword might be hard from a strictly SEO benefit to be honest, but it clearly shows that there's value there, big up!

💵 RE: Free post vs Selling:
We did have people who hinted that we could sell this, but after some deeper user interviews, we realized that our gains from putting it out for free and monetizing our premium content would yield a better overall experience for our community (and potentially higher revenues for us, but that's too early to tell).

🛠 RE: Tools
I pretty much custom coded the whole thing. Made some Wordpress shortcodes tied to our Notion so that we could import quicker. It's a bunch of hacky JS etc (I'm not a dev so that took me a while, but oh well!). As long as it gets the job done!

Hey Leo👋. Sure thing, happy that it helped. Just by asking your early fans (if the signal is strong enough, it could be literally 10 at first), you should find a great topic for a RLL worth sharing!

When people sign up, do you reach out personally to ask them something like:

PS: I'm curious… what made you sign up?

We did that for most of the first 10,000 signups.
Built relationships and learned a TON about how to position our content.
Probably the most under-rated startup tactic (especially since it's free).

Thanks @tobiaslins!

We built a custom Slack bot in a Google Cloud function.
It enriches every new signup with Clearbit and does some cool stuff.

That allows us to

• 💛 Make our feed more human
• 🦠 Notice virality pockets by countries/source
• 🎖 Manually reachout to VIPs (we do some very basic binary lead scoring)
• 🌚 Keep an eye on spammers

We talk briefly about it in tactic #1 here: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/growth-design-case-studies-2/9-000-subscribers-in-9-months-5-key-tactics--LuiEi5_6rrGrhNko448

What are you considering trying for your RLL?
(Your niche is product analytics and AB testing?)

Hey Maurice, thanks for the kind words. We had some stack issues with the UX of unlocking case studies. We removed every limitation for now so you can freely read them until we fix things up.

Hey @rarahustle , thanks! Most of it is custom coded.

My instincts tend to be better for B2B content/niches, but this sounds very interesting! Good luck!

Thanks @felix12777 ! Sure thing—the key is to make it digestible for your audience. Best of luck!

Thanks @Acheilies . Welcome to the community!

I often use Screenflow :)

Thanks man! That's really appreciated 🙂 .

You'd be surprised the extent to which mental models are cognitive biases shape your brain.

I'll just requote Gabriel Weinberg (same quote I used in https://psychology.design ):

Knowing the names of cognitive biases and mental models is important. That’s because once you have a name for something, you can start to spot it in the real-world. And once you start to spot it, then you can really start to use the tools [and reap the benefits].

No single model mental is a make or break.

But together they make a lattice of frameworks that allow for better decisions.

(Charlie Munger talks exhaustively about that).

So to answer your questions, 3 things:

• 👁 Pattern recognition: The time we spent studying the principles allows us to spot the patterns way faster that before.
• 📚 Frequency & Depth: We look at hundreds of product per year LX and I. (And I'm talking about really deconstructing the core foundational user psychology at different steps, not just scanning a Product Hunt release for example). I've been in SaaS products since 2010. Even exited one. But I've never learned as much about high-quality user experiences that convert as in the last 16 months with Growth.Design.
• 🌍 Diversity: As you probably saw, we're industry and medium agnostic. B2B, B2C, Fintech, SaaS, Physical (Tesla). It doesn't matter. We don't operate in any specific niche. It's a HUGE advantage for us because we do that full-time. We can take deep niche best practices from one area and detect (or use) them in other industries.

Does that help? 👋

That's very kind, thanks Wit!

I believe in radical candor so I'll give you my first reaction:

"What's the real benefit of being a Twitter pro"? (is that a thing?)

I mean sure—social signalling is interesting for some.
Having a few thousands followers is cool for a bit…

…but I'd assume that most people use Twitter with a clear goal in mind.

• Attract users.
• Reach leads.
• Growth.

You get the idea.

I'd focus on that end goal first.

Then merge in the Twitter elements if that's really what you want, assuming you validated your niche.

Does that make sense?

PS: Full disclaimer: I'm also probably biased, because Twitter is statistically our worst traction channel in terms of lead conversion rates etc. Linkedin is 2-3x more valuable for us. I know some folks have better success though so it might be very contextual—take this PS with a grain of salt. I just like to challenge ideas to push them to their optimal potential. Best of luck!

Thanks Zen! :)
Screencast videos?
Which ones?

Thanks for sharing Mark!

RE: Repro:
Yes you're right: a key point that we'll cover in a later piece of content is that the emotional state of the person drives a LOT of the repro of a concept.

• I could show you Coconut Water drink now, and no amount of priming would work.
• But the same priming right after you completed a marathon might have a much higher lift.

What happens before a key actions matters a lot.

It's also why I'm always a bit uncomfortable when people share AB test results without the context (e.g. the classic button color crap). It's the context that makes something work and tap into the psychology of user experience.

So yes, I agree!

In fact, someone left a related comment on our blog.
Thought you'd find it relevant:

A point often missed in behaviour science is that before using any of these tools the user needs to be in a certain state.

Example lets take Social Proof. The pre-condition for that to work usually is that user has to be in an uncertain and unknown state. Then the human behaviour of going with herd kicks in. Say if the user is in a certain state then probably time & authority will work better.

My request, therefore, is that if we can have a say a section informing that this works best when a user is in XX state and is complemented by YY another tool

Definitely something we'll add post-MVP!

Talk soon! 🙏

Thanks Jake, that's very appreciated. :)

I'm curious… what's your number #1 takeaway?

Thanks Neo. 🙏

Depends on your sub-niche.
(e.g. "aspiring digital nomads" or "hardcore veteran nomads"?)
I like to say that the nich-er, the better.

Many DN are pre-nomad.
They "want the lifestyle" but don't know where to start.

But assuming that you're targeting the aspiring folks, to freestyling a bit, something like:

The Ultimate Digital Nomad Checklist: 101 Things You Must Do Before You Quit Your Day Job
(a bit long to my taste, you could probably remove "the ultimate", but you get the idea)

It really comes down to finding the what's their biggest pain point preventing them to getting to their desired state (i.e. a "happy successful digital nomad").

I'm sure just talking with them you've heard a TON of great examples. 🙂
Pattern recognition will point you to the right topic.

Hey Curtis! 👋

Thanks man that's very kind.
The 💎GEMS will be back in a new format soon—so stay tuned!

Indeed we paused the Sniper Link for now.

Two reasons:

1. We paused the double-optins until we launch phase 3 of our roadmap. The 15% email gain (of single optin) is worth is so far. Most people really do subscribe to receive our content so we have a low unsubcribe rate so far.
2. We wanted to use the Sniper Link for the bonus delivery, but we noticed that our email provider is too slow to deliver the bonus email. We had a UX dead end where our sniper link led them to a gmail with 0 results for the search query 😅.

Very interesting!

I'm probably the worst person to ask about fashion (I always dress in all black—weird, I know.) to be honest 😅.

But first the first question that comes to my mind is:

Is finding ethical brands they can support their biggest concern?

In other words, what's the most common/important JTBD in their day-to-day?

(e.g. I would have assumed that finding clothes that last longer would be more interesting for the outdoorsy type)

But again, I know veeeerrrrrry little on the topic. If you spend a lot of time in Quora & Reddit, that's a great way to be exposed to that language (kudos!)

🙏 I appreciate that 🐰🦶, thanks!

💡RE: RLL Idea That's a good start, maybe add "101 ideas to get more clients as a freelancer" at the end. You target persona should read it and know EXACTLY that it's the holy grail for him/her.

🕵️‍♀️ RE: User Research: Even 5 phone interviews can be more than enough if they are the right people. You'd be surprised how willing to help people are when they know you genuinely just want to help them. Alternatively, a dozen good emails threads of deep emotional copy and yield very good results too!

🏢 RE: OV: Indeed I was! It was a fun ride and a great team. Tons of learnings (both on the human-side and product-wise). Useful product too (but I'm biased!). Back when we started the space was wiiiiiide open. Side note: I remember when VCs and many companies laughed at us during our pitch in the beginning:

Oh, you want to engage people at work? There's no money there. I'm out

5 years later it became obvious that there was a $$$ impact. It became the "hot new thing" and VCs were prowling. Oh well, I'm just happy that it gives a voice to employees personally, especially in those COVID remote-working times. 🙂

Hope that helps. Cheers!

Hey! Great question.

It's a way to map the emotional state of a user and how that affects his decisions (#affect-heuristics).

We originally thought we were innovative when we started GD and used that point concept. Then we discovered that Darius Contractor (former Head of Growth at Facebook) had a very similar mental modal for that called Psych Framework.

It was a nice surprise.
He became a subscriber in the mean time.
We'll try to release a deep-dive piece of content on the topic this year, probably invite him to co-author the thing.

Hope that answers your question. 🙂

👆 You're awesome.
No but seriously, thanks Hide.

Glad to hear you liked it Abhit. Yes give it a try. It's a big time investment so the user research to get the right topic is by far the most important step, but it's worth it. Cheers

Hey Marc, great question.

📝 RE: RLL for Doopoll
It really depends on your niche persona's deepest pain points. Assuming your optimal target audience is really "people who need help to build an email list", I'd imagine a indiehacker looking for ways to grow an email list and doesn't know where to start (vs for example a marketer in a growing team).

So the person seeing your title should clearly feel it's for them.

Your answer will be in the user research you'll do when you ask your users:

"PS: what's you biggest challenge these days when you try to grow your list"

I'd imagine things like

• "Oh man, I don't even know where to start."
• "I feel stuck, I've been publishing on Twitter, but it feels like I'm talking to a wall."
• "I'm alone, just getting started and just the idea of building my email list is intimidating" etc

I'm freestyling a bit here and haven't done the SEO research, but something like:

113 Ideas To Build You Email List Fast As A Solopreneur

…would be a refreshing take on alternatives like https://sumo.com/stories/grow-email-list

The key for your list would be the categorization and the reduction of cognitive load to make it easier to start.

That could become a "go to place" for many indie hackers who are trying to get started and need a kind of roadmap of things to test to grow faster.

There are a few other very valuable tips in Brian's course to ease that process and make sure you're picking the right topic. (WARNING: it's not cheap, but in hindsight, that course paid itself numerous times over for us already. And no: I'm not an affiliate or whatever. I just like valuable online course that are well-structured. Quite rare these days.)

PS: Love the survey niche. Recently exited a 8-fig ARR business that focused mainly on pulse surveys (for employee engagement). Slightly different, but I've always been fascinated by the user research / customer experience side of surveys! Best of luck!

Yes! Kudos for noticing that Daniel (nice name btw).
Very few people did.
(@harrydry was the first I believe since he saw the beta version)

Three benefits indeed:

• Allows us to release earlier
• The layout blends them in smoothly.
• Curiosity gap for the folks who want the updates = more signups.

Very appreciated Filipp, thanks. Yeah we thought it'd be cool to show a bit of behind the scenes. What's the fun of building something if we never share the learnings along the way 🙂.

Thanks @partEngineer !

I've seen many posts focusing on Twitter growth tips on IH.
Not enough on subscriber list growth through pure content.
Especially since SEO will kick in in the next months as well.
Hopefully a gold mine of community growth.

We were originally intimidated by the RLL challenge to be honest.
But we're very happy that we didn't give up.
Hope many more will try it as well in IH.

Thank you Samuel! That's very appreciated! 🙌

Ohhh man. Great question.

• @louisxavierl and I discussed the initial concept back in Jan 2020.
• We already had the list of concepts in our private cheatsheet.
• But we still have to rephrase each line to have them fit in a one-liner format, find the examples in our case studies + the coding.

Overall I'd say it took us about:

• 📝 Content: 80 hours
• 💻 Coding: 100+ hours
  (mind you, I'm not a dev I had to learn some JS stuff along the way)

Nice Volkan, glad to hear it worked well!
What do you have in mind next?