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Here's what you'll find in this issue:

This founder buys defunct domains with existing demand, then rebuilds what people expect. His 30 projects bring in $15k/mo.
5 vibe coding tools. Some of the latest apps for coding with AI.
Yesterday's build board winners, including three new product launches from indie hackers.
30-second growth tip: Throw out your marketing playbook at every growth stage.

Still using ChatGPT for serious work? Try Hatch instead.

Built by the founders of Indie Hackers, Hatch is the most productive AI assistant ever made. Use code INDIE30FREE for 100% off your first month.

He buys dead domains, then rebuilds the demand 🎯

Most founders build first and then hunt for traffic. Not Erik Aronesty. He starts with traffic that already exists. He uses BizSnipe to find defunct companies with parked domains that still rank, buys them before someone else does, and rebuilds what visitors expect to find.

He's turned about 30 side projects into $15k/mo this way, while keeping his day job. His two biggest earners are OnwardTravel, a dummy-ticket service for visa itineraries, and DirtSignal, which sells access to data from roughly 200 municipal code-enforcement portals.

The catch is that inherited traffic only lasts if the replacement actually serves the same demand.

The full interview goes deeper on the domain-buying playbook, the tools behind Erik's portfolio, and more. Enjoy!

Read the full article →

Your biggest competitor isn't ranking above you 😱

It's becoming the default answer.

Google and AI assistants reward brands with authority: trusted mentions, strong backlinks, and category relevance.

dofollow.com helps B2B SaaS teams build that authority with:

Editorial backlinks from DR70–90+ publications
Strategic brand mentions designed for AI-era discovery
An embedded strategist who understands your category
Transparent reporting and continuous optimization

It's how SaaS brands become impossible to ignore.

Own your category

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: Ditch ChatGPT. Use the most productive AI assistant ever made. Thoughtfully crafted by the founders of Indie Hackers.
Bolt.diy: Open-source, self-hosted community fork of Bolt.new featuring total model flexibility.
Devin Desktop: The AI-powered IDE you love, now with an integrated Agent Command Center.
Snyk Code: Find, prioritize, and auto-fix security issues with developer-focused SAST solutions.
Repo Prompt: Open-source context engineering and agent orchestration for macOS.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Throw out your marketing playbook at every growth stage.

Ankur Nagpal built Teachable, where educators host and sell online courses. By 2018, it had gone from zero to more than $1.2M in monthly revenue. He kept rewriting the entire marketing strategy as the company grew.

What got Teachable its first 100 customers stopped working at 1,000. What worked at 1,000 failed at 10,000. Instead of squeezing the same channels forever, Ankur treated every inflection point like a new marketing problem. Teachable now makes more than $2M a month.

Read the full growth report →

The Build Board 🪧

Every day, indie hackers post updates about the products they're building. Here's what the community voted to the top yesterday!

	1. Leado: Find your first users from Reddit conversations. Six months after launching Leado, here's what surprised me.	▲ 28

	2. AegisMeetings: AI meeting notes with an Honest Processing Window — not fake I built AI meeting notes that refuse to claim “true E2EE.”	▲ 10

	3. ATSAlign: Match your resume to every job before you apply. I realized an ATS score wasn't the problem.	▲ 8

Enjoy building in public? Post an update to your product page on Indie Hackers, and it will automatically be added to the daily leaderboard.

AI assistants are evolving. Hatch is the next generation. 🧠

AI models have evolved. ChatGPT has not.

We're still using the same old AI assistant products we were using in 2022, even though the models underneath them keep getting better.

It's time for the next generation of AI assistants.

Introducing Hatch, the most productive AI assistant ever made.

From the creators of Indie Hackers, Hatch was thoughtfully crafted to help you get real work done. From floating windows to tagging documents, we've reimagined every aspect of your daily AI assistant to help you operate at a higher level.

Try Hatch free. Use code INDIE30FREE for 100% off for 1 month.

Channing's Tweet Pick 🐦

AI automation can work for established internet companies with clear operations. But if you're just getting started or still in the early growth phase, I wouldn't recommend outsourcing your operations to AI. Why outsource functions that don't work yet?

—Channing

We'd love your feedback! 🙃

Did you like today's stories? Did they suck? Which ones?

We're constantly changing things up to make this newsletter more useful, so let us know what you think by replying directly to this email. We read every reply!

Special thanks to Yushavel Calderon for the graphic design, and to James Fleischmann for contributing a post.

—Channing

Indie Hackers | 522 W Riverside Ave #6526, Spokane, WA, 99201

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🗞️ What's New: $15k/mo from dead domains, rewrite your marketing playbook, automate everything?