What's New: Use AI to disrupt these industries

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

DALL-E 2 is still so new that we don't know what it's actually useful for:

• The founders who figure this out first have a major competitive advantage. These industries are ripe for AI disruption, creating new opportunities for founders.
• You've recently launched a newsletter...now what? Below, check out resources on where to promote your newsletter, and how to help it grow.
• Founder Josh Sherman went full-time on his side project, and couldn't maintain. He got a job, went full-time on his side project again later, and...couldn't maintain. His side project has now hit $6,500 in monthly revenue as he works full-time. Here's what he plans to do differently this time.

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

🤖 New Opportunities for Founders With DALL-E 2

from the Growth & Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko

One of the problems with new technology is that, initially, we don't know what it's useful for. The founders who figure this out first have a major competitive advantage.

For example, Copy.ai was one of the first to figure out that you can use OpenAI GPT-3 to generate marketing copy. The company has hit $40K MRR in under four months, all bootstrapped.

GPT-3 startups with good use cases are still making, and raising, a lot of money. This startup writes emails for you, and it's raised $2.6M. There are many "generate text using AI" products on AppSumo, and 99% of them are bootstrapped.

My theory is that the same thing will happen with people who figure out the best use cases for DALL-E 2, and its competitors. Here are industries that DALL-E 2 has the potential to disrupt!

1. Stock photos

OpenAI's DALL-E 2 might mean that we never need stock photos again. AI stock photo directories have already started to appear: StockAI by Danny Postma is one of them. It received close to 90K visitors in its first month.

AI search engines are websites that don't advertise themselves as stock photo directories, but as AI image search engines. OpenArt and Lexica are the top two, and they've been growing like mad. Just take a look at Lexica's SimilarWeb page:

And OpenArt:

These sites show no signs of slowing down.

This Reddit post gives you an idea of how close we are to making stock photography featuring humans. This photo was made entirely with AI:

2. Graphic novels

This person created a graphic novel that ended up on Amazon's Best Seller list:

This novel was also entirely generated with MidJourney, a DALL-E 2 competitor:

Some people have managed to create children's books in two hours with text-to-image AI. Here are the results:

3. Game characters and graphics

Here, a person is playing with an Unreal Engine integration where players can create content in-game:

DALL-E 2 also has the potential to create variations from popular game characters, fix game textures, and so on.

4. E-commerce product ideas

Would you buy this bottle?

With text-to-image AI, you can create variations of bottle designs, and gauge interest before making them a reality.

5. Newsjacking

Newsjacking is integrating your business with a trending event or a breaking news story.

Let's say you're selling antique rifles. You wake up one day and learn that everyone is talking about The Lord of the Rings. You want to attract some attention by placing a rifle in Gandalf's hand. With AI, this can be made in seconds. This quirky picture of Gandalf got over 798 votes on Reddit:

6. Logo designs

Some people have already successfully used DALL-E 2 to make logos. Here are some of the results:

The nice thing is that you can iterate an unlimited number of times to create what you truly love.

7. Marketing

One of the main problems with images is that people get bored with them. With text-to-image AI tools, you can potentially create an unlimited amount of relevant images.

Let's say you're in charge of promoting Oktoberfest. Using AI, you could come up with something like this:

8. Tattoos

Here's an actual tattoo designed with MidJourney:

9. Sketching

You can upload a sketch and get a full-fledged picture in return. This is what I mean:

This can be really useful for parents, who want to turn their children's sketches into art. You can literally draw an owl with some circles:

10. Clothing designs

Draw a rough sketch and feed it into Stable Diffusion:

I can imagine brands doing this for quickly testing a clothing line, gauging feedback, then creating the product.

11. Photo shooting and editing

DALL-E 2 recently started allowing users to upload faces.

To give you an idea of what it can do, here's an image of the original, and the rest of the images generated:

I can imagine this having use cases for photo shooting and editing. For example, you could generate photos for your Instagram and LinkedIn profiles:

12. Interior design

InteriorAI allows you to upload a photo of your current room, and it creates ideas for different arrangements and styles to help you update your interiors. The company hit 10K visitors in September, according to SimilarWeb.

Image.computer is another product that helps you generate your next interior design idea:

The company recently launched, and had close to 14K visitors in September.

13. Content writing

Some publications have already started using text-to-image to generate featured images:

This trend will likely continue, since a lot of writers want to enhance their text with images.

14. Getting people interested in a topic

Text-to-AI is amazing at combining something that people are interested in with something they don't know about.

Let's say you want to get more people who like animals interested in CyberPunk. Here's a cool image that might do the trick:

DALL-E 2 recently became available to everyone. I can imagine that there will be a lot of indie hackers creating products around these industries!

Have you created something with DALL-E 2? Share your experience below!

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Growth & Acquisition Channels for more.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🎧 TikTok now plans to take on Spotify.

⌚️ The secondhand watch market is booming. New opportunities for founders?

🐅 There's a new Tiger King in town: Mimi Erotic has been illegally selling jaguars online.

🤝 Google is testing giant video booths for meetings.

🍷 The "Negroni Sbagliato with Prosecco in it" has the internet buzzing.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

📥 Promoting Your Newsletter

by Nathan

I have been working on a weekly newsletter for two months now. It has been slow to attract traffic, converting about 1-2% of new visitors to subscribers. I've read that this is somewhat typical.

While I work on increasing that conversion rate, I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction for where to post about my newsletter. What sites or services do you use?

Contact check

Philoinvestor3000 says that there are two main channels that can help you get traction in the early days:

First, Twitter. Second, existing channels that you have already set up.

Existing channels can be your personal network and your contact list, which is the lowest hanging fruit when you start writing online. Existing channels also include forums that you already have a presence on. Just consider this question: Where do people already know me?

That is how I started Philoinvestor. I had a personal network, and I was already writing about investing in a forum. Then, I created a Twitter account and started creating content there. It's been a year, and I am approaching 2K followers.

Don't look for quick solutions. Consistency over time is the only solution that you need!

Starting and growing

Xavier Coiffard started the Marketing for Makers newsletter a few months ago, and mostly promotes on Twitter:

This brought me 600 subs. Now, I want to grow it. Here is what I have found:

• Post your newsletter in niche forums and communities like Indie Hackers, Hacker News, and Reddit.
• Try cross-promoting. This resource from Jakob Greenfeld is a great place to learn more about it.
• Try newsletter directories like InboxStash, InboxReads, LetterList, Rad letters, and Newsletterco.
• Launch it on Product Hunt.
• Invite guests to post or be interviewed for the newsletter. They will share your publication!
• Lean into SEO or ads.

A quick list

Weston Walker has grown his newsletter to a couple hundred subscribers:

Almost all of it has come through posting my content to dozens of other communities. Harry Dry has a great example on how he does this.

Below is my personal list of where I post. I tweak my content based on the platform.

Longform:

• Indie Hackers.
• HackerNoon.
• Hashnode.
• CodeNewbie.
• Dev Community.

Midform:

• r/webdev.
• r/learnprogramming.

Link form:

• YCombinator.

Facebook Groups:

• Fullstack Developers Network.
• Laravel Developers Forum.
• Self-Taught Programmers.
• Developers and Programmers.
• HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• JavaScript Developers.

Recommendations spree

Andrew Kamphey says that it depends on what the newsletter is about:

Who is it for? What does it do for them? Post that in the relevant forums. It's not just self-promotion if you're helping others.

Get into the habit of recommending other people's Substacks in your own, and ask to be recommended in other Substacks that you think are relevant.

Consider also publishing longer form pieces on Gumroad; there might be some crossover on Gumroad's Discover.

What are your suggestions for places to promote a newsletter? Share below!

Discuss this story.

🌐 Best Around the Web: Posts Submitted to Indie Hackers This Week

🛠 How I built a startup with no money. Posted by Ryan Randall.

⚖️ Niche or large market? Posted by Eren Gunduz.

🔎 Finding your first 10 customers. Posted by Navdeep Yadav.

🤷‍♀️ How are you different from your competitors? Posted by Dan Kulkov.

📚 Learning to code if you're not sure where to begin. Posted by YakAttack.

💻 Who's actively using Reddit? Posted by Mike Tempest.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

🎅 Josh Sherman's Side Project Hit $6.5K MRR

by James Fleischmann

When Josh Sherman first went full-time on his side project, he was able to maintain for a while, but not long-term. He tried again down the line, and failed again. Now, he's working full-time, and his side project has hit $6.5K MRR.

Turns out, he's learned from his mistakes! Here's how.

On going all-in on a side project

My primary side project is Holiday API, a Data-as-a-Service provider for calendar and holiday information. I currently have 300 active subscribers, and growth of upwards of 50% YoY. We also offer a limited free tier, which pushed our monthly active users to 10K+.

I've gone full-time on side projects twice in the past, leaving six figure jobs to do so. I have every intention of doing it again. It's more of a "when" than an "if."

But for me, especially after doing it twice before, going full-time on a side project has to make sense. In retrospect, both times I went full-time came about more out of frustration with my employer than an actual desire to be full-time.

This may not be a popular opinion, but not every side project requires 40+ hours a week to grow. Keeping a job and doing stuff on the side is a time constraint that will ultimately help keep you focused on doing things that matter, instead of doing all the things.

On why he went full-time twice

I was working full-time at a startup, and was attempting to take my first real family vacation in over a year. Before going, I told the CEO that if he called me while on vacation like he’d done in the past, I'd be done. Wouldn't you know it? The dude figured out how to call the cruise ship that we were on to get in touch with me!

I immediately drafted my resignation and enjoyed the rest of my vacation. At the time, I was sitting at ~$6K MRR with my side project, and it was growing. I was full-time on it for about two years, and ended up growing revenue to ~$15K MRR before it took a fall. Side note: I don't think I'll ever venture down the path of using advertising as a sole source of revenue on a project again.

I eventually ended up taking a full-time job again.

The second time was significantly different. My partner and I were working on a project, and we applied to YC. We got an in-person interview and did not get in, but we decided to roll the dice anyway. We were at $0 revenue when we went full-time, and we worked on it for about a year. We just couldn't get the traction that we needed. We burned some savings and learned a ton, though, so no regrets.

The reality is that I probably won't roll the dice again until my side project is sitting at $20-30K MRR.

Don't quit your day job

I wouldn't suggest that founders quit their jobs until they've proven that their project can generate some revenue.

Product-market fit rarely comes out of your first iteration, and most try to go full-time with their first iteration. Financial runways are always shorter than you estimate, so going full-time needs to be pretty calculated.

When you do it, have a plan B…and C. Obviously, plan A is that everything goes perfectly, you find product-market fit immediately, and you grow to a bajillion users. If that doesn't happen, plan B is to freelance to generate income while still trying to focus on the side project.

Plan C is to acknowledge the failure and get a job. While I've kept some projects alive after going back to employment, they tend to not last forever.

Coding isn't how you find product-market fit

I've learned that, sadly, coding isn't how you find product-market fit. While my days with those first two side projects revolved around coding, I wouldn't do that now.

Going full-time for me would now look more like a user research role than an engineering role. Getting in front of potential customers would be of the utmost importance. Coding would be in the form of interactive prototypes, in an effort to figure out the right things to build.

Time is a very limited commodity, so making sure that the time you invest is always hyper-focused on the right things is key.

Wrapping up

Think about the underlying reasons that you want to quit your job and go full-time on your side project.

Are you dissatisfied with your job? Find a new job. Are you struggling to find time for your side project? Take inventory on how you currently spend your time, and cut out the unnecessary bits.

While there are some success stories, most startups are doomed from the start. It's not being defeatist to go in knowing that you have an uphill battle. Thus, you should think about how you can operate in a way that will allow you to do your best work. This often means cutting out television, video games, or any extraneous activity that takes up time. Instead of quitting your job to find extra time to devote towards your project, examine your days for time that you can free up.

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

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

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

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Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Darko, Priyanka Vazirani, Nathan, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing