What has become of Indie Hackers?
I've been posting lately on IndieHackers, and it seems that either my posts are not good enough (even when I am reaching out for help) or the community is now focusing mostly on trending posts.
Which one is it?
(If my posts are bad, I am all ears for feedback.)
Trending on Indie Hackers
Protect your momentum like your life depends on It
Opsgenie vs. Splunk: Choosing the Right Incident Management Solution
I believe the real problem is IH manually pushing/pinning a few posts to the top. Now we have mods for all groups who are actively reaching people and requesting long form quality posts. You must have seen this already where the mods reach out to you from IH and reply on your comments (only post owners can see the mod comments) to convert the comment into a detailed post and once you write a long form form, I believe this is where mods have some control to pin the posts to top.
To be honest, I'm not a fan of how some posts get pinned. I visit the site a few times a day and always see the same posts at the top. Even with the "TODAY" filter selected, I see posts that were clearly posted more than 24h ago.
I've also gotten the mods messaging me, but the UI is kind of weird. I couldn't tell at first if it was a post that everyone else was seeing and was surprised there were mods at all since I didn't normally see them advertised on the site.
Indeed, it's something I noticed too, that's why I was starting to think that there was some "favourites" on the platform, or almost some sort of algorithm in play, rather than acting like a proper community. Maybe the concept of community have changed too much, and it's not like the good old days when phpBB was the thing. Maybe I have expectations that I shouldn't have... just a bit disappointing that it doesn't seem to act like a proper good old community :P
Agree with you. But I think IH wants to bet on some SEO with long form content. So, mods might be requesting people to write that content.
Yes. The time-based sorting is broken.
Dang! And I thought I was special. lol
FWIW we don't actually pin posts to the top of the forum. The ones you see at the top got there through some combination of newness + upvotes + comments. Then they automatically fall over time as they age out and new posts replace them.
The only thing mods tend to do is add posts to the homepage, but from there it's up to the community whether they sink or swim. Many posts that hit the homepage don't end up getting a ton of engagement.
Go to “Building in Public” and click “Newest”. https://www.indiehackers.com/group/building-in-public/newest
None of the first 4 posts are from this year or last year. They’re from 2020. Are those not pinned?
I think there is a confusion in between group moderators and site moderators.
When a user creates a group, they automatically become that group's moderator and can pin posts on that group's page.
However mods in this topic I believe the latter. Have overall power on the homepage, pinning might be metaphoric but basically I believe they have the ability to boost any post to homepage.
If community picks up from there via their comments and upvotes those posts may stick to the top ("Popular - TODAY") for longer than hardcore indiehackers anticipated, who refreshes the page within 5 minute intervals.
Oh, interesting. Thank you!
Oh I didn't know that, so far no one have ever reached out to me, but it's good to know thanks you :) That might actually be the issue, I don't post long form posts, I am more of a no fluff straight to the point type of person, so I might need to work on that ahah
I have found that more controversial opinions (in a good way with reasons to back yourself up) are also noticed
For sure! It's often the case in every platform :) Humans love drama ahah But I think that my disappointment was coming from the fact that I was trying to get some help from the community and my posts got zero traction...
I have the same problem. My software products have started getting signups after 4 years of failure and now, a new problem has arisen.
I don't think you need to lengthen your posts necessarily. I've read about mods reaching out to people but they seem to be doing so manually...I can only assume they're dedicating time into improving the substance of posts, which I think is a good thing for the community overall. So I wouldn't feel discouraged - keep posting, it might've just been down to timing.
Yeah, I think that the intention is good too, and that it's tricky to find the balance between having short and sweet posts, and long valuable posts. I also think, based on other comments, that I need to be more mindful of putting a bit more efforts into my hook and make sure that I keep attention by giving better context.
Yeah. Mods will reach out when you write good comments and I was reached a few times but I could never take out time to create a long form post.
So, if you are just writing a "no fluff straight to the point" 😉😉 , add a little more value with examples and make it a few more lines so mods can notice.
Make sense, I will do that. Who knows, maybe it's a good opportunity to use the power of AI to help me add some more fluff around it hehe
You got it!!
I'm not sure what you mean when you refer to "trending" posts, but the algorithm and mods try to prioritize posts that a large % of the community will find helpful and engaging.
The mods have been experimenting with lots of outreach to nudge commenters to turn great comments into posts. I think this is a good thing, and has resulted in lots of great posts. But we'll probably cut down on the quantity of reach outs somewhat.
Overall, I want there to be more unique and fresh content on IH that people haven't already read 100x before, as opposed to so much quality-yet-repetitive content.
That said, there are lots more "modest" posts that get made to IH, that won't necessarily appeal to, entertain, or education everyone, but which nevertheless deserve some eyeballs and responses. I want to give them more of a spotlight if I can. I think I'm going to use the extra columns on the homepage to do so, and the groups, too.
For sure! I think that in the comments of this post there was a lot of good useful insights and feedback. What I meant by "trending" was that there was often the same posts being promoted in the Popular section, and it was hard to get traction.
Ironically, this current post, I did it out of an experiment to see if there would be anyone that would reply to it, because my previous post "Benefit of connecting Wise (TransferWise) to Stripe" where I was asking for help on how other IndieHackers were doing it, got only 10 views (compared to this current post that got so fa 935 views).
Overall, this post came from a place of disappointment for now having got any help from the community and not having got any traction for it, when there was plenty of posts on the Popular section of the homepage that in my opinion that wasn't as useful. I say useful, because I believe that Stripe and Wise are often use online, and that even after searching in the community, there was no post that was talking about it and answering my questions.
This new solution introduced more repetition then before. Discuss something on the comments section then move everything to the new post with the same content and extra fluff/examples. Nested replies turns into top-levels.
Community were deciding via their votes and comments, new algo seems to not care about it as much. As a next iteration/experiment mods may try to decide what shouldn’t be on top rather than what should be.
It feels like indehackers niching itself down to only content creators. Not everyone comes here to read educative MRR posts which feels solely written for marketing purposes. Plus that content easier to consume on a newsletter format, “Daily top 5 mod picks”.
IndieHackers market itself as a community, build on a forum structure. Some people like me thinks this is a place to ask and answer questions. Be clear about where it stands so people can set their expectations right.
IndieHackers
for content creators
My last post/question seen by at most 10 people. It doesn’t worth it anymore. My previous account was filled with them. Instead of discussing, being helpful, people spend their time plugging their product under popular posts. Which seems to be my next step. That’s the working method and unfortunately not discouraged.
p.s. It might be better to keep moderator replies anonymous, at least to decrease the suspicions of “ih favours some creators.” IDK it’s more than that but hard to explain.
I've been an IHer since the beginning, it's been interesting seeing the community grow and shift over several years.
From my experience, most traction is gained once a post reaches the front page. It's tricky because a lot of quality posts slip through the cracks because I don't think enough people upvote new posts. If you compare it to larger communities like Hacker News or popular subreddits, there seems to be a dedicated part of the community that quickly upvotes or downvotes good/bad posts.
I think something that hurt this for IH was the "Era of Spam" that took over IH for a while, it felt like a huge percentage of posts and comments were spam. I remember scanning "new posts" during this time and it felt like a waste of time because so much spam was there.
@csallen has done a lot since to crack down and reduce spam, even going as far as making IH invite-only for a while. IH has been a lot better since then IMO.
In short, I hope more of the core IH community spends time in the "newest posts" sections and helps moderate content so less quality posts slip through the cracks!
Specifically for Hugo:
As for your specific posts, Hugo. I think you posts have quality content but your titles are very plain and are not very descriptive.
Example: "Just launched on Product Hunt (first launch that I put that much effort into it)"
A lot of people post their PH launches on IH to get extra traffic, so you need to give them a reason why they should check yours out. I would've titled it: "I just launched my first info product! A free financial spreadsheet to help entrepreneurs"
Another example: "My first product that officially made money"
What is your product? How much money did you make? Adding more detail will help a lot.
Lastly, try to add more formatting and headers in your posts, especially the longer ones. People like to scan first then decide if they want to read the whole thing. If it's as wall of text, people might be intimidated or just unsure if they want to commit.
That is truly helpful, thank you so much for your feedback. I think that I indeed need to format better or at least make it more appealing. I guess I was too straight too the point and was forgetting to think about hte psychological aspect to why would people want to open it (basically create a hook) and then keep the attention.
Sorry I clicked on "The published posts are bad" by accident.
I haven't really seen your post. Unfortunately there is no undo button.
But as far as I see, IH is really active, and perhaps the reason some posts get more attention is simply because they're solving the same problem for many people, or they're about the something more people resonate with.
No worries ahah You are forgiven :P Yes, that's what I see too, IH is still active, but so far, I didn't manage to get any traction at all. I guess that I should reverse engineer a bit more successful posts...
Yup, it's really important to learn.
It's not a hack or shortcut, I just calling it a simple learning.
It's really a skill to be able to write the content that attracts people, makes them excited to click, read, reply, and engage in general.
Also, I believe just by being active you start to build a relationship and become a familiar face in the community which can help in gaining traction.
For sure, that's a good point. I think that I also had higher expectation based on previous experience with the community and I got deceived since even when I was simply asking for help, for simple things, I wasn't getting any type of help, when on the other hand, on Reddit I was getting a minimum of help.
Well Reddit has a highly active community as well, but again it really depends on what you ask, and even how to ask I guess.
Good point, I might be too much straight to the point where I don't tell beautiful stories enough to appeal to the reader ahah I'll work on on emotional intelligence then :P
I found it hard to navigate it lately, especially now that I can't find where the groups I followed are. That was the navigation method I enjoyed the most, because it allowed me to browse IH like I browse Reddit. But now I can only browse the top posts (which in 50% of the cases is just shameless plugging or link dropping, with no actual indie hacking substance), plus that the topics of the "front page" are all over the place, most of the time topics I'm not really interested in.
Totally agree with you that the current changes haven't been done in a way that support the community to be built and engaged with properly... There's definitively a need for improvement here.
I find this really confusing too - I've followed groups but there doesn't seem to be a place to go to to easily access the groups I've followed?
I participate semi-weekly. Regularly when I comment on posts, I have a moderator asking me to write an article. The first time was exciting, but the second/third/fourth/fifth time? Just more work for me for something that doesn't have more to say nor has the validation to warrant it. Sure it's nice to be asked, but hard to continuously respond to everyone. I just wanted to comment and contribute, not be asked a favor each time I do. I think IH does a good job to promote a diverse group of people to create longer form pieces, but the beauty of other communities like HN or reddit is that nobody cares who you are, how you participate, nor encourages it as much.
I appreciate what the IH mods are doing, but it comes off a little strong and feels unfair that these posts have a ticket to the frontpage. These platforms should be like stock markets, where the best content floats and the worst sinks. Platforms that do promote without you knowing sometimes make you feel like there's an illusion of control. This is pretty true for most platforms, but transparency helps for what is making the front page. The usual factors are luck and timing. For some platforms, that's curated promotion.
P.S. IH Mods, you're doing great. These are just feelings that I feel when using this platform.
Its a WIN-WIN-LOSS.
Totally agree with both of you, I think that the intention is good, but down the road it's adding a bit too much friction that is irritating the end user...
Maybe posts that are being pushed by the platform shouldn't appear in the Trending but in a sidebar Featured section. I think that might work better.
Agreed! I felt the same way at first. it was so cool and i spent a whole half hour to write up a nice post and it didn’t even end up getting pinned or get lots of traffic.
Total waste of time. I don’t like this system.
I ended up promoting mine outside of the platform as well because I assumed it wouldn't get any traction. That helped a bit.
The problem is, indiehackers is not the small platform it once was anymore. it attracts a lot of users and a lot of users most of the times mean a decrease in quality and a raise im quanitiy of podts where the chanche is higher that good post gets lost.
The super long blog posts can get kind of tedious to read when you really just want to get to the discussion. Maybe a max word count on posts would be good too.
True, that's a good point!
I think IH moderators are actively encouraging more meaningful, meaty, authentic, full-form posts where you present context, experience, and advice. Seems like a shift toward education and support.
That's really good to know, I think that it might have been something that I've not done enough: "add more fluff or context around it"
Your posts are alright. Things are a bit moderated here and getting traction is more random than one might think.
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Nope, just someone who also isn't successful with his posts all the time.
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No, mods are listed here:
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Yes, it is. I thought that was what was mean't, Sorry.
Some of my posts do not get any responses, and others get answers.
I didn't A/B test it, but I suspect that different times might get different results.
Since the home page starts with the top posts, I wonder how many times you check the new posts tab?
I'm sure that there's different factors into play here, but I have to admit that I don't check much the new posts tab, and go in communities instead.
Like you, I don't regularly check the newest tab, and I think that most of us don't do it, so I guess since this is a large community that generates a lot of posts, some of my mines will remain without responses and maybe (I didn't do it before) repost it in other time.
That's a good idea to repost at other times of the day to test if the post would get more traction.
Also nothing has become of Indie Hackers. I just got here and I love it. Just fix the home page so that we can get to the new stuff more I guess...
I'm sorry for what I'm about to say because deep down I love IH, but it's the worst interface and ergonomics I've seen in years on the internet.
The strength of the site, for me, is the threads, and thus the "forum" side. But I hate how everything is presented to the user, I hate the fact that there is an algorithm behind the ranking of the threads, I hate the difficulty to find the different categories, and I hate above all the reading of the threads and the different answers.
I really miss Vbulletin's time. Easily readable threads, with the replies in chronological order, and not some weird thing with incomprehensible indentations all over the place.
I'm still an avid user of "old school" forums and finally, reinventing the wheel all the time isn't all good.
I can totally relate with you, the Vbulletin/phpBB time was definitively the good old days.
I saw a really interesting take on the current state of algorithms - in that they should be programmed to be ANTI-viral. When things start gaining popularity it doesn't get boosted. It encourages interesting content to propagate organically and lets engagement happen on the new stuff.
That's interesting, never saw that before.
Whenever visit, find and read some posts, there should be something organizing those posts for readers easily find out the most fit. In other words, listing posts according to some criteria or category that people want to prioritize.
Also if you want to write posts, maybe don't allow ppl to write super clickbait stuff. I feel like these are a spam on a platform like this. Everyone knows you are doing it to start a tired argument we've had already
We downvote these on Reddit and it's made it a lot better lol
[CONCEPT] Is Dead
How I Made $7 Gazillion With No Audience
Just came in here to say that I had to search the full exact title of a post in order to find it in the search results.
Also couldn't find it in Google before typing the full post name when I think it should have appeared at the top of the search results but it didn't:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/why-so-much-hate-for-marketing-987801e04c
The search is harder than it needs to be for posts. I need to see the results for what I searched for and not just posts that are matching only one keyword of my search key phrase.
Hope this helps!