Only 9% of people achieve their New Year's resolutions:

• Instead of resolutions, set strategic goals. These 3 popular frameworks can help you get on track to achieve your goals in 2024.
• Thinking of hiring someone for marketing? Be sure to have total clarity on expectations, give them space to be creative, and start with a trial period.
• 6 months. 2K newsletter subscribers. Charlie used online forums to grow fast, and recommendations and sponsorships to monetize.

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by Jared Tyler

According to researchers, only 9% of people achieve their New Year's resolutions, and 43% of people quit them by the end of January. That's where strategic goal setting steps in. It's not just about setting goals, but setting the right kind of goals.

Framework one: SMART goals

SMART stands for:

• Specific: Define what you want to achieve.
• Measurable: How will you know you achieved the goal? Numbers and metrics are great, if possible.
• Achievable: Set the bar high, but be realistic enough to stay motivated.
• Relevant: Does this goal line up with your vision?
• Time-bound: When will you achieve your goal?

A good SMART goal: I will increase my website traffic by 40% over the next six months through SEO.

Framework two: OKRs

Next, we have objectives and key results (OKRs). There are three main parts to OKRs:

1. Objectives: This is the big goal you want to achieve. Objectives are typically qualitative; they don’t specify the specific details of how you get there. Your objective may be something like: Make enough money from my side projects to quit my day job.

2. Key results: Key results are the milestones you are targeting to get to your objective. These should be specific and measurable. Your key results might include growing side project A to $1K MRR by July, and launching side project B by April.

3. Initiatives: Initiatives are the actions taken to get you to your key results, and ultimately to your objective. Traditionally, OKRs don’t include initiatives, but I believe that adding initiatives helps make these goals more manageable for indie hackers. Your initiatives might include publishing two SEO blog posts every week for side project A, and launching side project B on Product Hunt on March 15th.

Framework three: HARD goals

HARD goals stands for:

• Heartfelt: The goal must be significant to you. It must be personal, and draw on your passions, values, and emotions.
• Animated: You must be able to visualize what achieving the goal looks like in your head.
• Required: The goal must be necessary to achieve your vision.
• Difficult: The goal should push you to your limits, and stimulate learning and growth.

Your HARD goal might look something like this: I will achieve financial independence through side projects, in order to spend more time with my family.

Pro tips

When it comes to selecting the right framework, the important thing is to choose which one resonates with you.

• Review and adjust your goals as you go along. Set regular check-ins to make sure you're on track.
• Create a plan. Goals without a plan are just dreams.
• Break down your large goals into smaller ones to make them more manageable.
• Be accountable through regular reflections, or with an accountability partner.
• Prioritize your goals.

Discuss this story.

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😣 2023's badly handled data breaches.

👀 Should you focus on zero search volume keywords?

💲 Link to your product here. Our most affordable ad.

💻 How to do a full backlink audit in 30 minutes or less.

🤗 Crafting a thriving online mentorship community.

💡 Looking for new video ideas? Here's how to generate them.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

by Anthony Villa

I've been the marketing partner at three SaaS businesses. Here are the pitfalls I've observed when it comes to hiring someone for marketing.

Ensure clarity

In the first instance, we had no real clarity on what the terms would look like, including ownership.

I took on cold emailing, but I didn't have the bandwidth to do demos. He didn't want to do it either, so that went nowhere. He was also quite resistant to my ideas, which defeated the point.

I got the impression that what he really wanted was free labor to do cold emails and demos, so we called it off amicably.

Lesson learned: Be clear with incentives and ownership.

Be open to new ideas

In the second instance, I was going be the company's fractional CMO. We agreed on a heavily discounted first month, but I called it off after one week.

Similar to the first example, they didn't seem willing to let go of ownership of marketing. Additionally, there was misalignment with the expectations. They were expecting me to put in the time and effort you'd expect from a cofounder.

There was a lot of talk about a long-term partnership, but we both had different ideas on what that meant. I leaned more into agency partnership, while they viewed it as more of a fractional CMO partnership. The problem with the latter is that they weren't paying me enough, and it wasn't very clear to me what my future incentives were.

I refunded them, and we parted ways amicably.

Lesson learned: As a SaaS founder hiring a marketing partner, give that partner space to do what they do best.

Don't make a huge commitment right away

With my third (current) arrangement, I'm on the cofounder track. I was looking to buy a startup, and the founder was looking to sell. We realized we had a lot of synergies, so we decided to work together. We've discussed how equity split and ownership would work.

Currently, we're in a two month trial period which will earn me my sweat equity, then I'll potentially buy in.

This one is the best so far. There is clear deference to me to make the final call on all things marketing, and a relatively clear idea of what to expect from a partnership.

Lesson learned: Make it a win-win by setting up a trial period before diving into a longer commitment.

Discuss this story.

🗣 Don't quit your job yet. Posted by Jay.

🤷 Am I making something no one needs? Posted by JustOneDev.

😫 Frustrated by development delays. Posted by Walking Alive.

🎨 How important is landing page design? Posted by Abhishek.

😳 Share your most embarrassing lesson from 2023! Posted by Sean.

🩺 A treatment for "developer's disease?" Posted by Ludwig Sonneck.

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.

by Charlie

I'm a B2B SaaS product manager, and I build my own products on the side. Back in June, I decided to embark on a new venture and start IdeaHub, a newsletter sharing growth strategies, marketing tactics, and product development tips for founders.

The stats

• Website traffic to date: 14.2K.
• Email subscribers: 2K+.
• Monthly revenue: $250.
• Monthly costs: $100.

What worked

Indie Hackers:

Each week, I tailor and post my articles here, including a link back to the original. Doing this can drive anywhere from 100-300 clicks when working well, and usually ~20 newsletter subscribers.

I was also featured in the Indie Hackers newsletter, which is sent out to nearly 75K readers. This was completely organic, and I was honored to be included! This one link brought ~250 visitors and 100 subscribers over three days.

In total, Indie Hackers has accounted for roughly 30% of all traffic and subscribers.

Dev.to:

Dev.to is more focused on technical writing. Each week, I tailored and posted my articles to fit the style of the site. What worked best was making use of tags.

There are a few tags (#watercooler and #discuss) that have dedicated slots on the homepage. So, instead of fighting through the crowd of posts, I just curated additional posts to fit into those tags. That brought me a lot more traffic. Most posts to those tags would bring in 20-30 subscribers each time.

Dev.to has contributed roughly 20% of all traffic and subscribers.

Collaborations:

I didn't have any audience to start with, so it was difficult to find people who wanted to collaborate with me. Plus, if you both only have small sites, neither gets much value from it.

But, as I grew the email list, my offer became far more valuable. I started reaching out to other sites to swap links. That has brought in ~100 new subscribers.

To anyone starting a newsletter, my advice is to hold off on collaborating with others until you have at least 1K subscribers.

Reddit:

I commented on people's posts who were looking for advice, trying to offer some help to them.

Then, if it made sense to do so, I included a link to my site. I also always tried to include another resource alongside mine, so people had a choice on whether to read mine or not. This has worked well! I've gotten very supportive feedback from people, with very little backlash from self-promotion rules.

I've also met a few friends on Reddit, and set up calls with them where we have shared our ideas and journeys.

Overall, Reddit has brought ~ 30% of all traffic and subscribers.

What didn't work

Hacker News, social media, and SEO were all misses for me. I didn't do any intentional SEO for this project, as I've mainly been focusing on posting on sites that already have high traffic.

I think this is a big reason I was able to grow faster than most.

Monetization

Currently, I receive ~$1 per new subscriber through recommending other related newsletters as part of the signup flow.

I also run email sponsorships at around $100 each, where I add a featured section to an email. I get leads from the existing subscriber base, and from Passionfroot, where I run the sponsorships. I currently get one slot booked a month.

Discuss this story.

by Tweetmaster Flex

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

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

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 Jared Tyler, Darko, Anthony Villa, and Charlie for contributing posts. —Channing