Is building in public still worth your time? Indie hackers with BIP experience weigh in.

Building in public has been hailed as the end-all-be-all of indie-hacker marketing. But of late, I've seen more and more people criticizing it. Is building in public effective in 2023 or is the BIP era at an end?

I caught up with indie hackers who have given it a shot with varying degrees of success to find out what they think. 👇

Here's where indie hackers stand

Cory Zue of SaaS Pegasus:

In the early stages, you might think building in public is the only form of marketing you need, when in fact it is usually a pretty terrible channel (unless your product is targeted at other indie hackers). So it's the opportunity cost of investing in that versus learning actual marketing channels that are more relevant to your product's user base.

In the later stages, the biggest problem is making competition aware of how much money you are making and giving them useful information about how your business works. It attracted and helped copycats. Also, I found that sharing revenue numbers past a certain stage felt a bit like bragging, and I didn't like how it made me feel (chasing likes instead of being authentic).

Ayush Chaturvedi of Indie Masterminds:

People starting out unnecessarily romanticize BIP. The people who do it the best and have been doing it successfully for a long time treat BIP as one marketing strategy in their larger business.

If you want to do it to build your network, you can build more genuine connections in DMs or in private communities. You don't need to BIP for that.

Danny Postma of HeadshotPro:

Building in public is like having thousands of co-founders, freelancers & boards of directors, helping you out at every step.

Invaluable as solopreneur. Source

John Ladaga of Sturppy:

Choosing to do it as a means of growing a quick audience and attracting a TON of users is like writing 1 blog post and hoping to rank super high in SEO - it's a long-term game. Source

Marc Louvion of MakeLanding.AI:

Everyone should build in public.

The downsides of building in public

Cory Zue of SaaS Pegasus:

As you get more revenue and more mature it starts to have diminishing returns and the cons can outweigh the pros.

Ayush Chaturvedi of Indie Masterminds:

• Copycats
• Too much effort/time to produce content
• Get misled [into thinking] that you're actually doing marketing for your product by building in public.

Some products don't need to be built in public

Ayush Chaturvedi of Indie Masterminds:

If your audience is on Twitter and you're building a Twitter tool then it definitely makes sense. If you're building a SaaS that will be used by HR professionals and you expect to get customers for it by building in public on Twitter, then that is not going to work out.

Marc Louvion of MakeLanding.AI:

Products don't need to be built in public if:

1. You already have a user base and know what they want
2. It's SEO-based

There are still a lot of benefits to building in public

Cory Zue of SaaS Pegasus:

It helped hugely in the early stages. It was my primary marketing strategy for my first two projects and helped me get my first customers, as well as helping with SEO (by injecting backlinks into "building in public" blog posts).

The main pro is just being able to reach an audience and build awareness of your product without having to do direct marketing in a way that feels less genuine. Also, it can be quite low-effort, you can literally just share whatever you're doing that day. It works best when you have a product that targets the type of people interested in building in public (e.g. developers, other indie hackers, etc.).

Harrison Broadbent of RailsNotes=:

It's been super motivating to post what I've been working on. Even though I don't really have an audience to post to, I think it's really helped keep me accountable to myself. Source

Kevin DeGods of Dust Labs:

Startups are hard. Building in public with transparency and openness to feedback makes founders better. Source

Marc Louvion of MakeLanding.AI:

Building in public got me out of depression. [Additionally:]

1. You're much more likely to build a product people need
2. You'll make some friends [along] the way
3. You get valuable feedback
4. It sells

Ayush Chaturvedi of Indie Masterminds:

I think BIP is good to build a community around yourself of like-minded people. It's good for your mental health to share your story and learn from the stories of others like yourself. Otherwise, entrepreneurship can get very lonely very quickly.

[It's also good for] early validation/feedback (only if you have a sizable following) and [getting] customers (only if the product is for the very community where you're building in public).

If you're going to do it, here's how to do it right

Cory Zue of SaaS Pegasus:

There are two ways to do it that both work well.

1. Put very little effort into it and just literally share what you're doing at that moment on Twitter. This takes almost no effort and can lead to increased awareness at very little additional cost.
2. Put lots of effort into it and try to write/produce something that goes semi-viral, e.g. getting lots of retweets, getting on Hacker News or similar. This takes a lot of effort, but can really increase awareness of you/your product.

A big mistake I see people making is doing something in between. Putting a fair amount of effort to produce something mediocre that won't get broadly shared. This is a bad use of time.

Danny Postma of HeadshotPro:

Showcase your skills, values & uniqueness by building in public - not for sales, but to create incredible connections. The rest will follow. Source

Marko Saric of Plausible:

In general, personal accounts tend to get better engagement than brand accounts.

Marc Louvion of MakeLanding.AI:

• Make your content digestible: simple copy, picture, etc.
• Be transparent: show numbers
• Be creative: AI unlocked tons of possibilities

Ayush Chaturvedi of Indie Masterminds:

• Don't pin all your hopes on it. This is not ALL of your marketing
• Share what you're comfortable sharing.[But don't post] user data, specific marketing strategies, or technical details from the core of your product.
• Share regularly and just enough so that you can show your credibility, and can build a network in the DMs and in private communities beyond Twitter.

How to deal with the issue of copycats

Marc Louvion of MakeLanding.AI:

Ideas don't matter, only execution.

Cory Zue of SaaS Pegasus:

Early stage this doesn't matter at all, your ideas are not that useful. Where it can hurt is making potential competitors aware that there is a certain market opportunity in your space, when they might not otherwise know or see that. But that only happens after you are making real money (e.g. $10k/month or more).

Also, you shouldn't post MRR numbers all the time even though they consistently get engagement. It's a cheap hack that attracts an uninteresting/uninvested audience.

Kevon Cheung of PublicLab:

That will happen sooner or later, you can't avoid it. But if you can leverage building in public to build trust with your circle, they'll stick to you even though someone else creates the exact same product.

And one thing important is that building in public actually doesn't mean sharing every single bit of product details with the public. It is about storytelling, and you pick out the best learning you have in your journey to share with people. You don't have to talk about what tech you use, how you build your secret sauce, etc. Source

Ayush Chaturvedi of Indie Masterminds:

It can very much happen. To beat that, you have to go all in on BIP and attach your entire personality to the product. That is the only way it cannot be replicated.

Are there too many people building in public to get noticed now?

Cory Zue of SaaS Pegasus:

It is getting noisier, but there's always new people trying to get into indie hacking and the best ones to reach them are the ones who've just started, so I think it's still viable. But I wouldn't make it my primary/only marketing channel if I was starting from scratch.

Marc Louvion of MakeLanding.AI:

The whole world changed after COVID. More and more people will quit their jobs to live their best lives. Yet, none of my non-build-in-public friends know about our movement.

There is still a LOT to do

Ayush Chaturvedi of Indie Masterminds:

Yes, it's very hard to grow an audience on Twitter these days, especially because people are there just for the sake of building an audience.

A better approach would be to do cool stuff outside of Twitter and then share your lessons on Twitter by building in public. Without the expectation that you will get customers here. The space is never crowded for people who can share real lessons from quality work they've done beyond Twitter.

You probably shouldn't ONLY build in public

Ayush Chaturvedi of Indie Masterminds:

[BIP is] not a sustainable long-term marketing strategy. At best it can be used to get initial validation or feedback, but eventually, we need to explore other marketing strategies.

Go down the rabbit holes of reddit, niche communities and Google. Do SEO research and write content on your blog. Promote your product in communities. Do some customer interviews. If you have money, run some ads. There are tons of strategies you can try beyond BIP.

Tejas Rane of Affiliate Corner:

Your actual customers don't [care] which tech stack you are using or which programming language you are building with... Yes, build in public, but don't forget content marketing. Talking about how your product solves the problem [trumps] talking about your product. Source

Cory Zue of SaaS Pegasus:

[As an alternative,] learn actual marketing. :) I prefer content marketing, but there's many good paths depending on your product's customers.

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