Alan Newman

bsky.app/profile/ofal...

I will be putting together the MVP for maqoro.com over the next couple of weeks.

Once it is up and running, would you be interested in a using it for free for 3 months in return for feedback?

#buildinpublic #saas #indiehacker #indedev

Maqoro.com to automate their invoicing. Free up time for more development.

Yeah wow, that's a nice site. Nicely presented product. Might be good to have more idea on how you would use - why you would use it to give more inspo. The mobile site gives some nice examples, but they are missing from the desktop - would be useful.

Sure thing, tell me more.

Exactly. I read the same is true for LLMs too and getting listed in ChatGPT.

I think it comes in stages. Your first user is golden, just like getting your first WaitList sign up. But we are in it to earn an income and the focus should always be paid customers.

That is where the erm, ahem the real money is....

One of my long tail articles on maqoro.com has been referenced in the AI Overview search results.

I've not done anything special, but I have made sure the front matter for each piece is consistent, and I have also included a schema on each page.

#buildinpublic #saas #seo #indiehacker

Visibility in Google for maqoro.com continues to rise as more of my content surfaces in search results.

Still nothing above page 5, but really great progress.

- Search phrases now 77 up from 31 last week.
- Search appearances now 132 up from 29 last week.

#buildinpublic #indiehacker #saas

Yeah for running a waitlist this is all you need.

I can't remember the onboarding being annoying. I've so far only used it for transactional email. Not needed to do any double opt in stuff for that.

Drop a sign up for WaitList form on your home page. Save the emails to Loops, and then send out a thanks to the user.

Have you tried Loops? Really nice API, really nice admin console. handles transactional email as well as marketing email. Generous free tier.

Reading this made me think perhaps: hybrid marketers/techies = entrepreneurs.

I think the creativity in the marketing probably comes from knowing your have PMF. And I'd argue marketing is part of teh validation stage.

But I don't think everyone would agree.

Building a boring business, solving problems that need to be solved.

Building Boring in Public.

The moat isn’t your tech.

The moat is owning the messy, unsexy parts of a workflow that people need solved.

If your product frees up time, they’ll find budget for it

Solve problems people *need* to pay for, not to *want* to pay for.

#buildinpublic #saas #indiehackers

Validate before building. And yes a landing page can help you do that. You can also use your landing page to test search demand too. Build content, see if people are searching for solutions you provide.

Is that true? If you have costs, then you are going to be making losses over time. So you need to be sensible about how long you keep going. Sometimes ideas are just that. They are not businesses.

The site gave me a 404 when I went to it without the www

Otherwise all good!

Yeah. With a *lot* of planning, researching, structuring, revising and reviewing.

I want to test demand, and I want to generate a funnel over the longer term. I can review the content as things change....

I've posted all of those over the last 3 weeks.

Growth of Maqoro content indexing in google.

74 pages indexed and another ~20 currently being assessed by Google.

The content is growing and we now have 50 search phrases surfacing Maqoro.com in search results.

Two Pillars done, 3 more to go in my initial content build.

Building content before the app.

#buildinpublic #saas #indiedev

Today, I have found 2 developers on Reddit building/validating exactly what Maqoro.com does.

One is validating, the other is looking for beta testers.

What does this mean?

- The market is crowded?
- I need a moat?
- People aren't happy with current solutions?

#buildinpublic #saas #indiedev

Very true. And can be done just as easily as the building when you think of things like SEO and content.

2/ You need to know your audience and really understand the market you are operating in, alongside what problem you are solving for your potential users.

Once you know that you can start riffing content ideas and building up a content structure.

1/ Yeah. It might be worth reading the replies I made earlier today to get an overview of how to put together the content. Also look at the site itself and you will see the structure under the Guides section.

3/ And thanks!!

2/ Whilst I have never developed with it, I can read it once it is written, I know all the pitfalls and know how to make it secure.

So I can do that with Claude Code.

If it really takes off, then let's see what I need then...

1/ I will be able to rewrite it myself if I need to. I used to program with Java and Visual Basic back in the day. I tend to think Javascript is the way forward these days.

I am hosting on Digital Ocean. I've built the marketing site in Next.js wit the help of Claude Code. I am going to build the app itself in Bubble.io. Faster to market. Less faff. I will probably end up with an external API written in Node.js at some point too.

Yeah, thanks. That image is annoying. It is a square peg in a rectangular hole. I need to do something about it.