Hello PH! A few years ago, I got ripped off trying to buy a website on a popular marketplace. I hadn't done my due diligence or even knew where to begin. My eagerness got the best of me; I just wanted to acquire something and start making money fast. It was an $800 lesson I'll never forget. But as they say, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Shortly after, I learned there are many ways to validate the quality of a website. Traditional SEO tools, in particular, can give a complete overview of a project and can quickly weed out the noise. If I only did my homework sooner! Then, about a year ago, I thought, "wouldn't it be cool if I could help other people avoid getting scammed"? That's when I set out to build GoIndie. My initial plan was to build a giant database of projects across multiple marketplaces, then charge an exuberant amount of cash for premium access. But then, as I batch analyzed websites, I realized that there aren't that many projects I could, in good faith, suggest. For example, of the 5000+ websites I researched on Flippa, only 37 made the cut (and even some of those are okay at best). Honestly, it's disappointing and quite eye-opening how many trash projects people are selling every day! With my faith in humanity waning, I still wanted to figure out a way to share my findings, even if it meant not making money. That's when I discovered a blog post by @jakob_greenfeld where he shares details on how he built What to Tweet. If you're unfamiliar, What to Tweet is a lightweight tool that shows examples to get you inspired. I ran with that idea, built my version, and called it GoIndie. So... thank you, Jakob! There isn't anything flashy about GoIndie, just a way to randomly discover new, decent-quality projects up for sale. If you're not into the whole random discovery thing, I also made a dedicated free Gumroad product that includes every website that might show up on GoIndie. Moreover, the Gumroad version includes extra data points not featured on the main website. My plan, for now, is to update the database once a month. Lastly, almost all of the products featured on GoIndie are non-physical. I didn't want to include any e-commerce style websites because that means inventory, logistics, etc. It's just not the indie way. That's it for now. I'd love to hear from the community! What do you think?

GoIndie

Maker