Launching Bootstrapper Directory: Would love any feedback
I've been working on this project for the last 6 months and think it is finally time to make it 'public'.
Bootstrapper Directory is a curated directory of interesting Indie Hackers, developers, infoproduct creators and bloggers. Basically, anybody trying to bootstrap a business. I currently have 78 profiles completed and have 80 where the research just needs to be written up.
Each profile provides a comprehensive overview of the persons bootstrapping journey. I've gone through blog posts, newsletters, tweets and interviews to show how a person has built their business(es).
I've also got a connected newsletter that would be sent out every second week.
I need to work on improving the flow of some of the features, in addition to writing better profile overviews.
I'm seeking feedback on whether this is something that you would be interested in. If so, is there anything I could to do to make it more useful?
Do you have any suggestions for making the profiles more readable? (currently looking at table of contents plugins).
Are there any people you would like to be featured?
Any help would be appreciated. I have multiple health issues and am struggling to find traditional employment atm. A couple of extra hundred dollars a month could make a huge difference.
Hello Jade, Took few minutes to spread the word
https://my.productstartups.com/c/community/bootstrapper-directory
I could see your hard work in getting this done.
Good luck
Venkat
Wow. This clearly took a lot of time and effort. Way to go! Excellent platform to build on. Best of luck with your next steps!
This looks cool.
Well done man.
One question, how do you plan to monetize this? Ads? Sponsors? NL subs?
Affiliate income. Part from the recommended resources page, especially as I plan to focus on super specific niches. Others from the profile pages themselves: people will be more inclined to buy a product after reading more about the creator.
Later, will monetize the newsletter. Will wait until I have 1k subs before seeking sponsors.
cool, make sense
Cool site!
@jimzarkadas has a really inspirational journey. You should check him out.
Apart from that, I don't think you need more features. You need eyeballs. Asap. Find a way to get in front of your audience. (Ideas off the top of my head: Interview bootstrappers and get them to share their profiles on Twitter. Reach out to the people you created profiles for. See if they're willing to share your page.)
Thank you. I do agree 100% with getting in front of my audience. Ironically, my brand 10 years ago was focused on generating word of mouth for bloggers. I've always been better about getting attention for other peoples projects than my own.
I have been doing outreach and that has proven to be success. I will be doing more. I did think about interviews, but that would take time away from creating new profiles. I believe that profiles will be the standout, compared to the many websites that host interviews.
My goal was to create in depth pages on specific topics (Google Sheets, SaaS) and create round up posts that then link to the profiles. To do so, I'd need more people in a number of categories. List posts have proven to be hugely successful in the past. Pat Flynn covered one I did here: https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/explosive-targeted-traffic/
You are right though and others have bought up the same issue. I'm so obsessed with getting to a certain number of profiles that I'm ignoring outreach altogether - and that doesn't help anyone. I need to have a big think about what the best balance is. Thanks for your advice
Thoughts:
To drive traffic to your primary content (the profiles), you want to create other content? Why? That sounds
The number doesn't matter.
If you have only 3 profiles on your site and they are good, I'll subscribe or bookmark your page to come back later.
No need for more profiles in the beginning.
For now, I'd stop writing new profiles and promote the existing ones instead.
Thank you.
I have debilitating social anxiety and will do anything to avoid outreach or self promotion. I have always relied on creating something so amazing that it generates worth of mouth with little involvement from me.
My goal is to get out of poverty ASAP so need to be more practical. Thanks again
You can do this. I believe in you. :)