A typical fuc*ed-up day of an Indie Hacker

1. Breathe.
2. LinkedIn is like FaceBook, full of happy faces with shitty lives.
3. People don't report failed milestones.

The good news is you are clearly passionate about something and on a mission. The bad news is your topic sounds like it is in the "Trough of Disillusionment". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle. But that's OK, because you should keep plugging away and build a capability and an audience for when the topic climbs the "Slope of Enlightenment".

You seem to focus on tech + devs. What about value + users? Can you not help push this up the slope by engaging with non-tech & non-devs to explain how they would benefit from blockchain. If customers engage devs will follow.

Where do you want to get to ?

1. Business developing solutions that use blockchain.
2. Business training/educating developers in blockchain.
3. Become leading blockchain evangelist.
4. Save the world's privacy.

I would drop these from your landing page:

• I can't promise the blockchain way of programming will be easy, but
• It's certainly not for everyone, but it could be for you if:

Grow your twitter audience.

Good luck!

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE, DUDE. Obviously what you're making is for the ultra programmers. HackerNews and Reddit were a good start, are you active on Stack Oveflow as well? For Reddit, try writing an explaning text post and then add the link at the end, tbh as a reddit veteran i (and the algorithm) think this is spam, if you only post the link.

If you want some feedback on your landing page: it should provoke me to take action. im reading the headline and the lines above the fold and i still have no idea what you're trying to sell to me.

Remote blockchain developers can earn up to $200,000.
you already have attention-grabbing text, so don't hide it. Emphasize that this is a wanted job.

You're doing better than me

7:00 - woke up. hit snooze.
9:00 - finally woke up
10:00 - still reading the news and random hacker news / indie hacker articles
11:00 - somehow still browsing reddit
12:00 - well this day didn't go as planned...

It's your titles man. They ain't intriguing.

This one is intriguing! At least that's why I clicked.

The Internet is a scam. What looks like a pretty rainbow on here is actually not IRL.
People pretend their fast success on Instagram but it takes years to build something that lasts long & makes you happy.

Don't jump in the trap. Take your time & build as you go. If it was easy, we all would be chilling in the Panama Islands!

Does anyone else have days like this?

Yes.

Here is everything I've ever shared on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=chr15m

Almost all of them have less than 10 upvotes. Every one of these things I poured my heart and soul and time and effort into. Two times something I made has made it to the front page (one was not submitted by me so it's not in the list).

Smarter people than me say you must take a lot of swings to hit home runs, and so far this is spot on.

Expect to strike out. Hope for home runs. Work for home runs.

@Web3Coach Maybe its just me but something like I left my job because Blockchain is great doesn't tickle my fancy as much as Look I made this using Blockchain and here's why its better than the alternative way or This is how I built ____ with Blockchain.

That along with getting really focused towards your audience is definitely the way to go. Find a reddit that is small enough to notice new contributions but active enough to give you feedback and share there with proper context just as @Nikoisonfire said.

Keep pushing! By the way, you misspelled fuck :)

Well done for posting the not so rosy side we all feel like this at some point when trying to build something.

Totally feel you, Lukas. Focus on your mission, and try your best to not get consumed by the Linkedin feed. I purposely turn away from it.

The other thing I do is journal once a week and refer back to my personal mind map (has my goals mapped out). Helpful reminder when I've had a terribly week.

Happy to connect and chat if you're ever interested.

There is so much fuc**ng noise on internet and when starting out it feels like talking to a wall even though it took years to collect the knowledge I want to share for FREE and weeks of sleepless nights editing the posts.

You're on the right track.. the problem is that at this moment, you just don't understand how marketing works yet.

It's not really your fault either.. Most of what you read is written by fruitloops that don't know either.

Marketing is not the sprinkles you put on the sundae to make it a little nicer.. which is what you're doing now and which is why you're struggling.

Marketing is as inherent to your product as the code you've written.

If you want people to listen, you've got to learn to listen first. Just because you're trying to help doesn't mean the world suddenly has to stop to appreciate your genius. I know you know this.. but it's worth taking a second to be mindful of.

Remember that a deeply religious Jehova's witness feels the same way, and yet most people get annoyed when they come knocking. < not a moral analysis, merely a description of the way things are.

If I see a cute girl (and I were single) I can try to strike up a conversation with the aim of making her day a little brighter, but just because my intentions are good that doesn't obligate her to do anything. There are many reasons why she could respond differently than I had hoped.

This is an analogy for your product.

SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO IN THE FUTURE?

Start with an incredibly small group of people for whom you're gonna solve a specific problem.

That way you already have your audience.

That way you also avoid building in isolation, but rather in collaboration with your users.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO NOW?

Share it with all your friends, all the people in your contacts that might benefit from this, ask all of them to refer 1 person (describe what kind of person that should be), keep posting every where (on HN, IH, PH, Reddit etc.) and try multiples angles.

Just like you wouldn't be reduced to a sad puddle of tears when you talk to a girl and it doesn't immediately go the way you want, this is no different.

Try different headlines on HN and IH, try to make extremely good posts on reddit and drop a small link to your product, I've found that trying to write great comments with a link to smth helpful works well for me, there's also Quora, and so on.

Marketing is a doing sport so keep trying different things and when you find something that works, double down. If you can't get in through the front door, bribe the waiter to let you in through the kitchen in the back.k

Ask the people that visit your site for feedback because you might just be solving something that no one cares about. I.e. Having a key and venturing into the wild, desperately searching for a lock that it opens. (In the future, choose a lock, build a ghetto key, doesn't open the lock, keep grinding the key until it opens the lock.)

If you can't get 5 people that absolutely love what you've done so much that they don't want to live without it, keep going and iterate with them.

If you can't find even 5 people, pet yourself on the back, you stepped in the amphitheater and didn't come out victorious, like the majority of people. That's fine. Kill your baby [1] and move on to the next idea, this time with an audience-first approach.

Wrote in 1 go so apologies if typos etc.

NOTES
[1] If you're idea is your baby, you're handicapping yourself. You're a founder. Your job is to improve the lives of people around you by solving their problems in exchange for money. The thing that should be your 'baby' is other people's problems or needs.

I have actually read your post on reddit, maybe I am upvote number 2

"I am relatively young (27) and I don't want to compete for Java positions against developers with 20+ years of experience."

And now you are teaching web3, sounds legit. Anyway, good luck, I am a Blockchain developer also, so I know that this tech is here to stay.

I feel your pain and frustration.
Don't post anything @20h or after. It's too late. You lose momentum.
Try 11h .. when people start procrastinating on their phones waiting for lunch time.
20h people are having dinner or watching Netflix. Your blog post can't compete with that. Lol

Imagine teaching JS and spending 80% of your energy convincing people that it's good for web development...

Dude... Never try to convince anyone over the internet. 90% of the people you talk to has bad motives in their actions (trolling, stealing others' work, putting others down because their mommy didn't love them enough). Do what you want to do and have fun doing it. You'll build recognition and attention over time.

I have been sharing snippets and whatnot at Twitter for years and I still don't get much interaction. Even though almost all of my followers (400+) are software developers and related people.

What works for me on Twitter is replying to people to help out, share a related knowledge or simply making conversation. I've had a lot new followers lately just by "being around".

I had the same frustration, I started indie hacking full time a year ago. Started a bitcoin investing site for the layman, poured 4 months into it, and epic fail. I initially decided to only focus my energy on that, and each day was draining.

I eventually changed direction and moved on. I did some consulting in-between to get re-energized and I have found 2 projects that I am absolutely passionate about.

The point at which this happens for you is entirely subjective.

Another thing I can't quite seem to understand looking at your website is who is your ideal customer. If I look at your site you are appealing developers from banks and larger businesses. Business with legacy systems. Paul Graham mentions in http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html this post what the ideal customers are. Big businesses take a long time to make decisions and even longer to actually implement anything.

I have learnt that this is a marathon and not a sprint. The day to day really does not get me down anymore. I am more driven and determined than ever and tap dancing to work.

Keep hacking.

You really need to find a pain point about what your audience need to get release from and post about that for a longer period of time. Do some reposts and tweak it slightly for different platforms. Persistancy is key.

Twitter is hard to crack, I got 1,6K followers but still a very low rate of response. I got once a viral tweet but that was for something I just posted casually and has nothing to do with my actual business.

Reddit is a great place, even though the people could be annoying as well. You get very honest feedback, sometimes too honest or simply "you are shit" - If you can handle some backlash, go with it.

My favorite is Quora. Last 7 days I had 5.6K people views on my answers I wrote about cryptos and blockchain topics. Not shabby for a niche that is not that prominent as e. g. love or health advise.

You need to fool around and try and error as much as possible to eventually find a suitable community that eats up what you give them. ;-)

You're not alone man. Every time when I've tried social media I was disappointed because almost inexistent engagement. Or when asked for feedback (tried on multiple platforms), most of the time near to zero.. I've got more engagement when buying reddit ads, but most of the comments where nonsense (were looking as bots, but i've found out that's typical "answer" for people that don't like ads) and / or not positive vibe. So there's that.. Got used to it. Anyway, i have a regular job so the side project remain a project that i've made with passion.

Personally, i'm not interested in blockchain domain..

I guess it's a combination of:
wow factor + interest + persistence + audience + social presence

I agree you should put some work out explaining what big names are doing with it and how. Doing my own research since I read your book, I struggle to grasp less abstract uses of it. It seems like there's a huge dearth of info regarding what blockchain is used for outside of currencies. Maybe I don't know what to ask Google, but all that I find when I try to learn about what companies are doing with blockchain is a very brief overture that doesn't get technical at all.

I feel your pain. Been blogging for about 8 months and most of the time my posts on reddit are ignored. I've been too scared to try sharing anything on Hacker News. I cross post to Hackernoon, Gamasutra, and Medium (codeburst publication) which has been more successful but if I stopped sharing my stuff when I published new posts I'd be lucky to get 300 views a month. Even after stepping up my SEO and using some services to increase my Twitter following it is still VERY MUCH a constant uphill battle.