I was listening to an Indie Hackers podcast today – an interview with Katie Keith of Barn2 Media, on how she and her husband turned small ideas into a $35k/month business.

Like many aspiring Indie Hackers, they started off designing Wordpress websites for clients. But they went on to develop plugins as a business because they were first trying to help solve specific problems that their clients was facing. They released a free version of that plugin after helping the client with it, it became wildly popular, one thing led to another and they went on to monetize the plugin by providing Pro versions. The plugins eventually became semi-passive, scalable income streams and they since stopped doing web design services.

I thought that’s a pretty refreshing take on the service vs product approach for indie makers and entrepreneurs. Very often, people starting up ask if they should provide services first, or just go ahead and make a product. Like it’s an either/or dilemma. It’s doesn’t have to be. I certainly wrestled with this question quite a bit, even now.  

Services are often not seen as the high watermark of achievement for indie makers and internet entrepreneurs. Products are. Products are scalable, have higher leverage, have more passive income potential, and can earn as you sleep. Services do not. They are sold on your time, and it’s an upper limit to how much you can earn from services (due to the amount of hours a human can possibly work in a day). But the risk of starting out with a product is that you might misjudge the market demand for it, because you’re starting out cold. Many months might be wasted developing something that no one wants to pay for. While with services, minimal upfront effort or capital is needed. Just a landing page, some contacts, and you’re up and running. And as you provide that service, you’re learning about the market demand for ideas that emerge from your constant interaction with your clients.

So maybe a phased approach, instead of either/or, might work better? 

Start off providing services for clients first. By interacting with customers that way, you develop a deeper understanding of what they need. Eventually you’ll discover other pain points and needs they have that are unmet. Then go on to create a product for those needs – it could be a tech product like a plugin, or info products like ebooks, blog posts, etc.

With Sweet Jam Sites, I’m providing a JAMstack web design service for a niche crowd. I’d always had this feeling that the work for Sweet Jam Sites isn’t all that scalable. Drawing inspiration from this idea, I could use this service as an opportunity to learn what my clients need, as an idea pipeline, and then go on to develop more products from there. 

I don’t feel so bad about it now.