Monetization Playbook #64 —Blue Ocean Innovation

Innovation 101–A blue ocean approach to strategy

The Indie Hacker tribe is an inspiring new breed of IDEApreneur. 

Software, Social, and no small amount of SaaS–powers the build-in public engine that is the new passion or creator economy.

For a digital business, the distribution now almost free.

Attention is the new currency, and building in public is the community method of choice for those monetarily opposed to the Facebook, Google ad duopoly.

Blessed with grit, a little time, and a high failure-pain threshold, the first port of call is establishing a niche.

In reality, it's a micro-niche. A specific product or service that larger competitors ignore but with a vein of demand that, if reached, is super profitable.

One method employed is the canonical Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne.

In fact, along with the 'Seven Powers' by Hamilton Helmer and 'Porter's Five Forces,' it provides an almost complete strategy education for the internet-based IDEApreneur. 

This book has many elements, but my favourites are the value innovation graph and the ERRC grid.

ERRC [Eliminate | Create | Raise | Reduce] is a quick and straightforward way to analyze a market and find a micro-niche.

So let's see this in practice. Given the maturity and 'Battle Royale' nature of the website provider market, one would have assumed that this is the worst candidate for a micro-niche Indie Hacker to have a go.

GoDaddy, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, and many more titans duke it out for market dominance. So, where's the angle?

What could we eliminate, create, reduce or increase in this market?

Carrd–a plucky indie hacker bootstrap took up the mantle. 

Their marketing calling card sets the stage. 

"Simple, free, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything."

Wildly successful, this is the dream blue ocean strategy at play. Let's run through the Carrd ERRC grid playbook.

Eliminate–website providers offer multiple pages. Carrd offers just one. It looks like a risky move but is entirely in line with the behavioural and sales copy shift toward the long scroll.

Reduce–website providers charge anywhere between $10-$50 per month. Carrd charges $19-$49 PER YEAR!

Raise–website providers typically restrict the size of file uploads. Broad low-end providers often limit jpeg or png to <5MB, whereas Carrd sets its limit at 16MB

Create–website providers focused on commerce, business, and design areas. The cost-effectiveness of Carrd appealed to all these existing customers who favoured simplicity over complexity.

More importantly, it unlocked an ocean of non-customers–customers who would not have previously considered a website. 

Arise the one-page digital calling card. An online 'This is me!'

Using the ERRC grid is a great way to unlock new, unseen customer value and create a micro-niche yourself.