Indie Bites

Today I’m joined by Jijo Sunny, who is the co-founder of Buy Me A Coffee, one of the most popular donation and membership platforms on the internet. They’ve processed 10’s of millions for creators and have built a 26 strong team. Since founding Buy Me A Coffee, Jijo has dabbled in all sorts of projects, including a stint in YC with a podcasting app. Now though, Jijo is back building a new product, Voicenotes, a voice driven AI note taking app.👉 Listen to the full 1 hour conversation with Jijo here: indiebites.com/membershipTimestamps00:00 Intro01:48 Background02:27 Buy Me a Coffee Origin Story03:37 How did Buy Me A Coffee grow05:35 Jijo on multiple products06:35 Making products cheap to run09:21 Starting voicenotes.com14:02 Parting advice15:56 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook: Friendly Ambitious NerdPodcast: DitheringIndie Hacker: Danny PostmaMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Kyle Roof is the co-founder of High Voltage SEO, PageOptimizer Pro and Internet Marketing Gold. An agency, software and course business respectively which all focus on mastering SEO. I’ve spoken at length on the podcast before about how SEO can be such an effective tool for indie hackers to use, so Kyle is the perfect guest to talk to today.Timestamps00:00 Intro02:58 How Kyle learned SEO04:31 Being Scientific with SEO05:47 Why you should try paid ads07:17 Ranking top of Google with Lorem Ipsum10:15 Where do people start with SEO12:13 Encouraging word of mouth growth13:56 RecommendationsMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Tibo Louis-Lucas is a serial founder, most well known for starting Tweet Hunter and Taplio in 2021, before selling the company in 2022 for 8 figures. Since then, Tibo has gone on to acquire an AI video creation tool, Typeframes, which he spun Revid.ai recently. He actually announced after recording this that he has left Tweethunter and is back to focusing on his early stage products, which we touch on in this episode. He’s also started a newsletter with over 50k subscribers and has over 115k Twitter followers. Tibo is a bit of a legend in the indie maker sphere right now.Tibo and I covered so much ground in this episode I couldn’t fit it all in, so the the full 40 minute conversation available on the Indie Bites membership for $60 a year. Head to indiebites.com/membership to get access.Timestamps:00:00 - Intro01:46 - Why failing is important for indie hackers03:30 - 1 product every 2 weeks05:16 - From $3 to $20k MRR with influencer partnership06:41 - Selling Tweet Hunter to Lempire08:40 - What did Tibo buy with his money10:34 - Acquiring Typeframe16:16 - RecommendationsRecommendationsBook: It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at WorkPodcast: AcquiredIndie Hacker: Marc Louvion; Damon ChenMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Matt Medeiros is the founder of WP Minute, a weekly podcast highlighting WordPress news in less than 5 minutes. He’s a podcasting expert, having previously worked as Director of Podcasting success at Castos and now hosts & produces Breakdown, a podcast by Gravity forms. This episode talks about how you can make a sustainable 5-figure side project, with a niche audience while working a full time job and increasing your opportunities as you do it.Timestamps00:00 Intro01:32 From the family car business to digital agency with his dad03:35 Becoming a Wordpress Expert and Starting Matt Report04:45 Using podcasting as a networking tool05:56 From Matt Report to WP Minute08:08 Monetizing WP Minute09:36 Making money from a small audience10:58 Having a profitable side project alongside a full time job12:08 Does Matt want to sell WP Minute?14:48 RecommendationsRecommendationsPodcast about Books: Six Pixels of SeparationPodcast: Podcasting 2.0Indie Hacker: Carl HancockMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Max Haining is the founder of 100DaysofNoCode and 100DaysofAI, which are bootcamps designed to help non-techies gain tech skills. Max wanted to be an entrepreneur from a young age and started 100DaysofNoCode as a challenge for himself to learn NoCode tools during covid, but as more people joined in, he realised he could bootstrap the challenge into a learning platform which he’s now working on full time.Follow Max:TwitterTimestamps00:00 - Intro01:28 - Max early life03:31 - University student inspired by Zuck04:59 - Discovering indie hacking06:13 - Starting 100DaysofNoCode09:45 - Turning 100DaysofNoCode from a challenge to a business13:39 - What marketing tactics has Max used15:09 - RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - Get Together Podcast - My First MillionIndie Hacker - Marc LouvionMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Today I’m joined by Randall Kanna Franson. Randall is a senior software engineer who has written 3 books, including one published by O’Reilly and a self published one which made over $70k. She also created a course called Hack the Tech interview which made $20k in the first 24 hours and $50k in the first month. All of this has been through Randall’s efforts to share her learnings from almost a decade being a software engineer and growing her twitter audience to over 50,000 followers. She’s also dabbled in SaaS products, notably launching and growing CodeTutor which she sold after the birth of her first child.Timestamps00:00 Intro01:43 Randall's background03:33 Coding bootcamp to senior software engineer05:05 Getting a book published with O'Reilly06:37 Going hard on side projects in 202008:01 Audience building and writing another book10:04 Randall's course11:42 Randalls advice to early stage entreprenuers13:13 Why Randall hasn't started a successful SaaS15:47 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - The DipPodcast - Software SocialIndie Hacker - Kyle GawleyMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Today I’m joined by Val Sopi, the founder of Blogstatic, a lightweight blogging platform built to take on the likes of Ghost. Currently Val is sitting around $1k a month, but with a low-priced annual plans approach, he’s relying on new sign ups and plan upgrades instead of recurring subscriptions. So he’s at a crossroads of needing to pour fuel on the fire to grow his low-cost blogging platform, or attempt to build a B2B SaaS, which he believes is a much more sustainable option for an indie founder. Val has been hardened by business successes and failures, so I love his pragmatic approach to the decisions he’s making.Timestamps00:00 Intro01:39 Val's background - web design shop to failed SaaS04:10 Learning to code and starting Claritask04:53 Selling Claritask05:52 Launching Blogstatic06:42 Taking a loan to bet on himself07:40 The crossroads of stagnating growth08:39 Being a low cost alternative in a competitive market12:30 Why Val won't take VC14:06 Why Val is trying B2B instead of B2C15:45 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook: The Inner Game of TennisPodcast: Startups for the Rest of UsIndie Hacker: Joe AshvilleMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.