Learn from indie hackers
who've been there.
Case studies, hard-won lessons, and practical advice from our community. Every tip is extracted from a real journey, no generic fluff.
Journeys
View all
Mircea
From agency burnout to $4k MRR
The $5 Fax: How a Weekend Project Became a Micro-SaaS
Why I built the simplest possible fax service and let SEO do the selling
Raul
Software engineer turned curator and community builder
Building the Anti-Hustle Job Board: $19/year for Calm Companies
How getting fired for caring about culture led to a curated community of sustainable workplaces
Vlad
Backend engineer turned indie hacker
Building sisif.ai: an AI Video API
How I went from 0 customers to growing MRR by abandoning traditional marketing
Events
View all
April 22, 2026
Cowork Timisoara - The Office, Timisoara
Indie TM #7: News as a Traffic Locomotive
What we learned at our seventh meetup at Cowork Timisoara
April 3, 2026
Cowork Timisoara - The Office, Timisoara
Indie TM #6: From ThemeForest Rejects to 70k/Month
What we learned at our sixth meetup at Cowork Timisoara
March 19, 2026
Cowork Timisoara - The Office, Timisoara
Indie TM #5: SEO Tactics That Actually Work
What we learned at our fifth meetup at Cowork Timisoara
Advice by Category
Browse all
Latest Advice
Raul Ride news cycles for organic traffic spikes
When a news story drives sudden search demand for a topic, pages that genuinely answer the underlying question capture a disproportionate share of the traffic. If you see an unexplained spike in analytics, open Google Trends and look for a matching jump in search volume on related terms, then confirm with recent news. Once you know a news cycle is driving the traffic, publish more supporting content while the cycle is still hot. News stories are locomotives: the trick is having something already on the tracks when one arrives.
Raul Optimize for users not returning to search
The most important SEO signal in modern search is whether a user returns to the results page after clicking your link. If they do, Google reads it as "this page did not answer the query" and your ranking erodes. If they do not, it reads as "problem solved" and your ranking compounds. This reframes SEO from "rank for keywords" to "fully resolve the intent behind each query." Audit your top pages: does the reader actually get what they came for above the fold, or do they have to scroll through filler and ads? Fix the ones that force users back to search.
Flavius D. Build for a practice everyone agrees is right but nobody does
The richest product territory is the gap between "known best practice" and "what people actually do." Structured interviews are universally accepted as the strongest predictor of job performance, and almost nobody runs them. Double-entry bookkeeping, security key logins, automated tests, pre-commit hooks: same pattern. Look for a practice that experts in your industry agree is correct and operators skip because it is inconvenient, then build the tool that makes the right thing the easy thing. The onboarding pitch writes itself.
Flavius D. Ask specific questions that reveal the real role
Generic interview questions ("tell me about yourself," "what are your weaknesses") produce rehearsed answers and almost no signal. Two questions that consistently produce the opposite are "What does a typical day look like in this role?" and "What separates a great hire from an average one?" The first forces the hiring manager to describe the real job instead of the job description. The second forces them to articulate the dimension on which people actually succeed or fail. Use the answers to design the rest of the interview. If a hiring manager cannot answer either clearly, the role is not ready to be filled.
Flavius D. Price against the cost of the mistake, not your competitors
For tools that sit on top of high-stakes decisions (hiring, compliance, security, legal), the wrong benchmark is competitor pricing. The right benchmark is the cost of one bad outcome. Pace is built for hiring, where a single bad hire typically costs one to two times the annual salary once you factor in ramp, opportunity cost, severance, and team drag. A tool that prevents one bad hire a year is paying for itself many times over at almost any price. Teach your prospects to do that math in the first five minutes of the demo, and pricing objections mostly go away.
Have a story to share?
indie.md is built by the community. If you've learned something the hard way, your experience could save someone else months of struggle.
Share your journey