What's New: Is blogging obsolete in 2022?

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Blogging has long been a game changer for generating traffic:

• But is blogging for your startup still worth it in 2022? Founders share their advice below.
• Returns cost online retailers an average 21% of the retail price, and up to a whopping 66% in some cases. Here are 3 strategies that retailers are adopting, and the opportunities they present for indie hackers.
• Founder Davor Egyed hit over $18,000 in monthly revenue 3 months after launching DerokkiDev, a webflow productized service. Here are the key decisions that brought him massive growth in such a short time!

Want to share something with over 100,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

🔎 Are Blogs Obsolete?

by Getscreen

We are Getscreen, software for remote access from a browser. A couple of months ago, we decided to set up our own blog to gather more organic traffic. We write about general topics related to remote access, working from home, and helpful software. So far, there aren't many articles; it's more of an experiment.

Do you have a blog on your website? If so, is it producing results?

It's all in the stats

Arz says that blogs are still very relevant in 2022:

According to Hubspot and Optinmonster:

• Companies who blog get 97% more links to their websites.
• Businesses that blog get 55% more visitors than businesses that don’t.
• Marketers with blogs are 13x more likely to generate positive ROI.

These are pretty convincing statistics for launching your blog! We handcraft SEO articles that get clicks for startups, and blogging helps with SEO.

Consistency counts

Justin Ferriman says that it's foolhardy to not have a blog:

My first software company started as a two page website consisting of a homepage and a blog page. I grew an email list to 3K people before launch, and when I launched, I was profitable from the very first day.

The first year, I posted to my blog four days a week for the entire year. Google loved it, and traffic grew on the site. By the time I sold the company, it was getting over 1M visitors a year, in large part because of the blog.

I'm doing the exact same process now for my new company, and it's working. It's a bit harder than it was 10 years ago, but I know it to be a proven way to get visibility.

One piece of the puzzle

Eddie Forson says that blogging should be one piece of your overall content strategy:

Having a blog and investing in content marketing is a great way to drive traffic to your landing page. But it does take time, and it typically doesn't feel as intuitive as coding because the results are not deterministic. Besides, no one knows how Google really works.

We started investing in SEO a few months back, and things are paying off now. Our blog post on UX discussion guides is now ranking in the top five for some keywords on Google.

I'd say to be good at SEO, you need to be able to do the following:

• Write useful, high-quality content.
• Focus on long-tail keywords. Find them using Ahrefs or a similar tool.
• Share your posts on as many relevant channels as possible. Get others to do the same.

Have patience. It won't come overnight, but you will eventually see results!

Ben Sibley agrees:

We're a few months post-launch, and I'm getting our blog off the ground now. I started with unscalable, high-impact marketing tactics to get the ball rolling first.

Content marketing is great, but it's a long-term effort that won't provide significant results for months. If you're getting into blogging for your site, make sure to also focus on SEO, social media, and email list building. These things all gel together to create a ton of value for your company over time.

Do you have a blog for your business? Share your top tips below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🤯 Twitter staffers are spiraling after Elon Musk's renewed offer to buy the company.

💻 Big Tech is getting smaller. Could founders cash in?

🚪 Facebook is shutting down its Substack competitor, Bulletin.

😈 The creepy marketing campaign for the horror movie "Smile" helped bring in $37M.

🌅 Climate change is threatening global coffee crops.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

🏷 Fitting Solutions for Fashion's Returns Problem

from the Hustle Newsletter by The Trends Team

The Signal: Returns cost online retailers an average 21% of the retail price, and up to a whopping 66% in some cases. Plus, less than half of returned goods are resold at full price, and as much as 25% gets binned. All of this squeezes margins for fashion retailers, who face a particularly high return rate of 30%-40%.

*Source: Statista

The biggest reason for this is bracketing: The practice of buying items in multiple sizes with the intention of keeping only what fits. Bracketing boomed during the pandemic, and remains popular.

Returns are especially problematic at the moment because:

• They’re on the rise. For example, the 2021 holiday season saw a 46% YoY increase in returns of online purchases.
• There’s a warehouse space shortage, with rent prices up 11% in the last quarter of 2021.
• Shoppers are cutting back on clothing purchases amid soaring inflation, pushing retailers to drop prices.

Here are three strategies that retailers are adopting, and the opportunities that they present for founders:

1. Improving sizing:

44% of clothing returns happen because the item didn’t fit, or the shopper was bracketing.

*Source: Bored Panda

Retailers are investing in solutions like:

• Truefit: A widget for retailers' websites that uses customer data to make sizing recommendations. The company has raised $157M, and claims to reduce bracketing by 24%-50%.
• Zeekit: A virtual fitting room featuring 50 different models. Zeekit was acquired by Walmart after raising $16M.
• 3DLook: An AR try-on app that lets users create a personal avatar. It has raised $14.7M.

*3DLook uses your camera and personal data to create your avatar. Source: YouTube

You could create a service that measures clients in person to provide personalized sizing recommendations for all major brands. Or, customers could send in items from their wardrobe, which could be used to create their sizing profile.

Style advice would add extra value so that customers know not just whether the item will fit, but also whether it will flatter.

2. Optimizing reverse logistics:

Sending things back is more complex than shipping them out because they need to be checked and repackaged, and you lose economies of scale. Innovators in this space include:

• Happy Returns: A network of multi-retailer "return bars." Previously valued at $55M, the company was acquired by PayPal.
• Recurate: A service that facilitates resale of returns, including via peer-to-peer shipping. It has raised $17.4M.

You could go a step further than Happy Returns and offer multi-retailer try-on hubs where customers can collect, try on, and return items that they’ve ordered. This would streamline retailers’ logistics and make life easier for customers who don’t live near a store.

3. Data-based solutions:

Newmine uses data to help retailers reduce returns before they happen. Its clients include giants like Gap. You could niche down with a consultancy firm or software that tackles identifying serial returners, or optimizing item descriptions and photos to ensure that customers know precisely what they’re ordering.

Would you enter the retail returns space? Let's chat below!

Subscribe to the Hustle Newsletter for more.

🚀 The Spector Report

by Josh Spector

I'm sharing growth tips for creative founders! Here's this week's:

Create for someone, not everyone.

Deciding who your work is not for is as important as deciding who it is for.

Subscribe to Josh's For The Interested newsletter or I Want To Know podcast for more.

👨‍💻 Davor Egyed Hit $18K MRR in Three Months

by Davor Egyed

Hi, indie hackers! I'm Davor Egyed, founder of DerokkiDev, a webflow productized service. In September, DerokkiDev reached over $18K MRR!

A quick recap on my past journey:

I’ve been full-time freelancing on webflow design and development since the beginning of 2022. In May, I came up with the idea of productizing my service by offering it as a subscription.

I launched 90 days ago, on June 17. In July, I hit $8K MRR, and I stopped accepting new clients in August. For September, my goal was to surpass five figures in MRR.

So, here we are! Read on for more about how I hit my September goal. Also, if you want more details about my journey thus far, I broke it down in previous Indie Hackers posts here and here.

Changes along the way

These key decisions brought massive growth in a short time:

1\. Offering webflow development only: Two weeks after launch, I dropped web design as an offer. At the time, all of my clients had booked me for webflow development only, so I leaned into that. Coding has been my strong suit for a long time, and I decided to play to my strength.

Why didn’t I offer webflow development from the beginning? Well, I was trying to appeal to a wider clientele. The thing is, once I niched down further, running my business became so much easier. I was able to take on high-value, paying clients and offer them the best service. This helped me almost double my hourly rate.

2\. Implementing a new user process flow: I heard this valuable piece of advice from Brett Williams of DesignJoy on a podcast. Brett said:

It's quicker to sign up to DesignJoy than to buy a t-shirt.

Essentially, he said that the primary key to DesignJoy's success was making the service as easy and accessible as possible. No forms, no contracts, and no sales cycles.

I took inspiration from it, and took a week off of client work to completely rebuild my website. This is what I did:

• Changed my unique selling proposition: Sign up in two minutes and have your website developed in days. Simple, flat fee packages for all of your needs!
• Rewrote my copy: I rewrote my website copy based on the new problem that I was solving, which was getting rid of the unnecessary complexity of the traditional service model.
• Displayed my pricing: In the beginning, I wasn't showing my prices. While I was still able to secure my first clients this way, it didn’t fit the new problem that I was solving. Hiding my prices made my service less accessible, so I started showing them!
• Became more transparent about deliverables: I previously struggled to articulate the value that my clients would receive with a premium subscription. I worked on explaining my pricing better so that my clients could understand and value the subscription.
• Added flexible payment options: All of my clients hesitated to pay for a month upfront, so I offered them a weekly payment plan for the first month, and...everyone took it. People tend to make small commitments at first, but the longer they work with a service provider, the bigger their commitments can become.

Serve better

In the last few weeks, I've shifted away from doing things exactly the way I want. The goal of productizing is to scale a highly standardized service.

I’ve come to realize that every client has different needs. Some founders seem to forget the most important part: To provide a good service. Service originates from the Latin word “servare,” which means “to guard” or “take care of.” It’s a mindset shift that, if taken, will change your perspective on business, relationships, and life. My goal is to take care of my clients, whatever it takes.

Of course, there are boundaries. I don’t work on weekends, my clients can’t call me via phone, and various other things. But that’s all in place to protect me and my clients so that I can serve them better!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Getscreen, Priyanka Vazirani, The Trends Team, Josh Spector, and Davor Egyed for contributing posts. —Channing