Photo credit: Iwaria

Indie makers are driven by freedom. The freedom to build and ship working products and make a living from them without having to report to any executive or board. Indie makers build products independently and make revenue directly from their customers. One important quality of indie makers is bootstrapping.

You might think Indie makers are not founders because most of their products may not go viral but the thing is; makers love to make things whether the odd is to their advantage or not, it is not about winning but the chance to fail and try again.

I can arguably call Mark Zuckerberg an indie maker because before co-founding Facebook, Mark built cool products like Synapse Media Player and CourseMatch in high school and college respectively. Although, no records of making revenue from these Apps but the good thing is that he loved building and shipping things. Same as Elon Musk who generated revenue by building (Blastar video game, Zip2, X .com) in his early life before SpaceX and Tesla.

Anyone can be an Indie Maker

In the past, only a few people who knew how to write code could be indie makers, but now, that barrier has been significantly lowered by the No-code movement. It doesn’t matter what your background or skills are. Anyone can be an indie maker and launch their product without writing code.

Below are some No-code tools you can use for your project:

• Botamp to build professional websites and email campaigns in 10 minutes.
• Voiceflow to design, prototype, and launch voice and chatbots without code.
• Coda to bring all of your words and data into one flexible surface.
• Zapier to connect all your apps and automate workflow.
• Bubble for building web apps without coding.
• BuildBox to create unique and professional 3D games with drag and drop.
• Canva for graphic design.
• Webflow to design a sophisticated website via drag and drop.
• Notion to make a public template or plan and organize your items as a database.
• Unsplash for free professional photo and Iwaria for free African photo.
• Stripe to receive payment from customers and Paystack for customers in Africa.
• Shopify for creating an online store and Bumpa if you prefer to use a mobile App.
• Softr to build web apps and client portals on Airtable
• Airtable to build a public library or Content Management System.

To see more tools for your startups, check out this tweet from Bereket

Promoting your product as an indie maker

Promotion is a crucial part of marketing. Being an indie maker is not good enough, you need to learn some techniques to promote your product. Good marketing can buy you some time to get the feedback you need to improve or pivot your product in a VC-funded competition. No need to learn it all. Be good at:

• Promotion
• Use of words
• Listening to users and identifying opportunities from Feedback

In this article, I will cover promotions. Especially, the right places to promote your product as an indie hacker. Most of these platforms only require you to sign up, fill their form and submit your product. For some of these websites, they are ways to increase the engagement of your submission but that will be covered in another article. For now, have it in mind that your product is in front of a large audience of which an X number of product lovers will see and take action.

15 websites to promote your product

1. ProductHunt : It is a great platform to promote services on technology, games or books, and well, pretty much everything. And can speed up the growth of your startup if it gains ample engagement.
2. Indiehacker: A community of founders/makers sharing real stories, advice, and revenue numbers from profitable businesses. Submit your startup, share your milestones and get feedback from like-minds.
3. Hacker News Just like Product Hunt, Hackernews can skyrocket a startup when it makes it to the front page. It is a powerful forum to show off your work and get huge signups.
4. Betalist: A place to get your startup featured for free if you have the patience to wait for a long time to get accepted or you can pay $129 subscription-free to promote your new products in 48 hours.
5. AngelList You can promote your product on AngelList by creating a profile for your product as a company. Doing so can make your startup discoverable by investors if you're looking for seed funding. It's a good place to build strong connections. AngelList also allows users to submit a post under a topic. The SaaS topic is an example of a place to submit your product if it's SaaS.
6. Index: A free community to show the world what your company is up to and get news and data insights into top ecosystems and track your competition.
7. Makerlog: If you love the Build in public framework as a maker, then, Makerlog should be your public to-do list to keep you creating daily. It is not a platform to get users but most important, quality feedback from fellow makers.
8. Reddit: With cool subreddit communities like Side project, SaaS, I made this, Startup, Entrepreneur, and many others dedicated to startups and makers, you can get very quick feedback and tell stories about your project.
9. Facebook groups: Facebook groups, though, not highly recommended, are important places to promote your product and win some audience if only you do it right. I've previously explained how to do that in a Twitter thread.
10. Twitter: With 192 million daily active users, Twitter has become a startup booster for many founders. Recently, startups have started raising funds and hiring on Twitter. It is the #1 place for building in public. You can naturally gain users or build a community around your solution by tweeting about your startup progress, failures, and wins.
11. Makerpad: Are you a No-coder, this platform support No-code founders/makers with abundant resources and tools to build and grow their ideas from side project to a business workflow.
12. Startup Buffer: Startup Buffer is another fantastic platform to discover new startups or promote your startup.
13. Bootstrappers: A site for bootstrappers to promote their products, services, or articles and news related to their projects. Your product must be one you're bootstrapping or a side project.
14. Startupbase: A community of makers and early adopters to share & discuss the latest products and ideas. It is a place to discover and get early access to exciting new startups.
15. Startups Galaxy: Startup Galaxy is a platform to grow your startup. Add your product, increase exposure, get exclusive offers, deals, and partners.

Thanks for reading. I hope this article helps you grow your startups as an indie maker. Don't give up! Catch me on Twitter anytime - I share stories about my startup, how I work, and market in public. See ya!✌🏽