Accessibility is one of the most overlooked aspects of being a creator.
But it's also an incredibly powerful tool to make long-term friends
and, ultimately, much more money.
Hey, I'm Arvid, and welcome to The Bootstrapped Founder.
Today, we'll dive into how creators can leverage being accessible
as a driver for growth.
This episode is sponsored by Acquire.com.
More on that later.
Now, let's find out what accessibility is
and how it can make you a better creator.
As a software developer, that's where I come from, that's my background,
I learned about accessibility while working for large companies.
It was pretty much a requirement.
Often, we just had to implement government-mandated guidelines
to make our software products more usable by a wide variety of people.
We implemented screen-reader-friendly websites or high-color contrast,
tooltips, flexible design.
It just became part of my approach to writing software
to think about edge cases, not just for the logic in the backend,
but also in how the user interface that I built was going to be used.
Because accessibility isn't just for people with disabilities.
A useful and an easy-to-handle product helps everyone.
So it's always part of how I approach software.
Now, later, as an indie hacker and a solo founder,
I realized this importance of accessibility
after attending a conference talk about accessibility, obviously.
It made me think about the challenges that people face
when accessing and using software solutions.
And now, as a creator and as an entrepreneur,
I always consider accessibility in the work and the process beneath it.
So here's what I recommend.
To make your work more accessible,
try offering it in different formats that cater to various kinds of consumption.
Long-form text, short-form text, video, audio,
all these formats appeal to someone out there.
And they are necessary for certain people
to just be able to enjoy your work, to read it, to consume it.
For example, when I started my media business,
the Boots of Honor, the thing you're listening to right now,
I focused on writing because I believed it to be generally accessible.
However, some readers emailed me and they told me
they struggled with my long articles because they had dyslexia
or other reading issues, which is hard for them to consume it.
So to help those very highly valued readers,
they had already subscribed to my stuff, right?
So I wanted to make sure that they get the best out of it.
I started a podcast where I narrated my articles.
And I did this instead of using an automated tool,
which was suggested to me by my readers at some point,
because I wanted to make sure it was going to be good.
And I might as well put my full effort into this at that point,
because having already written the article
made it so easy to just put it out there.
And it made it equally easy to create subtitles and transcripts
since I was reading from a script.
And when I then added video to all this, the same principle applied.
The article served as the script and the transcript later.
And offering multiple formats ensures that at least one of them
will be easy for any person to consume.
Some people may prefer reading or listening over watching videos.
Other people really have to have it on in the background as audio
because they can't spend the time reading, they don't have that time.
Providing different options makes your content more inclusive.
And at the same time, it also does one thing
that is really, really important for founders or creators like us.
It diversifies your platform risk.
Because if you're only on YouTube, you're one account ban away from total bankruptcy.
If you have a blog and a podcast and a newsletter and a YouTube channel,
well, you're diversified and you can recover from losing any one of these channels.
Another way to increase accessibility of your content
is by translating it into other languages.
And I haven't done this yet, at least not in an automated fashion.
I occasionally do it on videos that work really, really well.
I translate the subtitles.
But I've seen a lot of creators succeed a lot with this.
There are AI-powered translation systems and they've become so much more reliable
ever since Chat GPT came around.
It's super good at this, surprisingly.
Like it has Google Translate level of translations.
It's really interesting to look into.
And this makes it possible to create subtitles automatically in all kinds of languages.
And there's even stuff where you can synthesize your voice into other languages
and just dub your own videos and podcasts.
It's cool. It's interesting.
It's kind of scary, but it's also super, super easy to do because you can automate it.
And even though it is automated, it can still be quite some effort to set all of this up.
But if you know that your audience struggles with English
and would like to have a few alternative languages,
and you are in a market that supports this,
why not look into tools that allow you to automate that translation step?
They exist and it can be set up.
And as a writer, accessibility also means, to me at least,
simplifying complex ideas and avoiding jargon that only insiders understand.
I used to pride myself on using jargon a lot in my writing,
but I found that it actually pushes people away.
Because instead of using complicated words and phrases,
which sound really smart, but kind of push people away,
aim for clarity so that your work can reach a wider audience.
And this is true for essays just as much as it is for tweets.
Long form, short form, doesn't really matter.
To appeal to a wider audience, instead of using terms like indie hacker,
just use software entrepreneur.
When writing for people outside of the software entrepreneurship business,
I just don't use abbreviations like MRR without explaining them.
I define them first.
And defining jargon terms in your writing makes it much more accessible
to those who are new or come from different backgrounds.
And it also prevents confusion among terms that might have a different meaning
in another context.
Like, abbreviations like this are prone to have a different meaning in another field.
You can avoid that by just not using them or explaining them well.
Translating concepts that are complex into simple ideas
helps make your writing and content easier to parse and easier to absorb.
And as your audience grows, accessibility like this becomes super important
because if you outgrow your initial niche where everybody's kind of the same
or you have your language framework or whatever
where people really understand what you're saying,
you will attract people from other languages and locations
who are interested in what you have to say.
Make this as easy as you can for people to jump into it.
And remember that everyone has a different capacity
for focusing their attention on anything, really,
not just your work, on anything.
So if you create short and well-scoped content,
you allow more people to pay their often limited attention to it effectively.
We all get distracted, and some people incredibly fast.
So give them a chance to learn
before they are pulled somewhere else by some other thing.
The easiest way to do this is by leading with the conclusion
and presenting your arguments afterwards.
This is kind of a writing tip, right?
Just say what you end up with and then explain it along the way to the end,
where you repeat it, because repetition is also great.
Let's talk about another kind of accessibility here,
financial accessibility.
This means allowing people from less financially strong economies
to access your content.
Have you ever thought about this?
Because it took me a while to think about this.
I thought when I write, when I put books out,
people can't afford it, that'll be fine.
But if you consider financial accessibility,
think about whether people can reliably access your content
through the technology that they own as well.
It's not just about buying books.
It's even about reading a blog.
Can they afford the necessary device, like a computer or phone?
And is your content too large or difficult for them to download?
There are places in the world where your 50-megabyte website
that includes big images that shouldn't be as big
and video content that shouldn't be there
might actually cause people not to even go there
because they see it and they immediately stop
because 50 megabytes of download could be a significant portion
of what they have in their budget for the month.
So build a sleek and minimalist website
that really, really helps in terms of accessibility too.
Not just good for screen readers,
just good to be able to be downloaded on a really wonky, shaky connection.
That's another way of including people from places
where this is less reliable, maybe, than where it is for you.
And remember that in some locations,
downloading just one blog article,
just with the speed of what they have, takes minutes or even hours
and might use up their monthly data cap on their phone plan.
So think about saving data and reducing the data footprint
of your content platforms.
I know for video, it doesn't really make much of a difference.
Video is a lot of data to begin with,
but if you write, if you have a podcast,
you might think about decreasing the size of these things.
And here's another thing,
and that's important to understand in terms of technology.
Some people might not be able to access the platforms
that you're offering your content from.
If you're only on Apple Podcasts with your podcast,
people without iPhones or Macs,
they might struggle with reliably accessing your valuable work.
Diversification of platforms is important here too.
And let's talk about the big financial aspect of all this.
The aspect of financial accessibility is making sure
that your products are priced in a way that is affordable,
accessible for people from places with lower purchasing power.
I personally offer purchasing power parity pricing
for almost all my products, which adjusts the prices
based on the financial stability and purchasing power
in a country compared to where it's being sold from.
And this method helps people afford your product
who otherwise couldn't.
And I have some experience with this.
I've been selling eBooks and PDF files of my books, right?
And I've received a lot of emails from people
who are really grateful for my purchasing power parity pricing.
Some people told me that with that pricing,
it's actually the first time they could buy,
afford a product instead of having to pirate it.
And if this isn't a sign of value and respect,
if people tell you, hey, I would have stolen your product,
but now I can afford it and I will buy it,
I don't know what to say.
That was really strong.
And I never really expected people to just have to steal it
because they could not afford it.
That was an interesting revelation for me.
And even if you think you make less money per individual sale,
think about that this is allowing an entire geographic location
to afford your product where they otherwise couldn't.
That's important, right?
There are whole countries where people could not buy your product
if you don't price it lower.
And as a content creator, this is a massively powerful
and severely overlooked kind of accessibility
that you need to keep in mind.
Think about accessibility.
We talked about all the different kinds
as part of your process at every step along the way.
You can still write and record as much as you want
or whatever you want to do,
but providing a baseline of exchangeable media options
gives people a choice in how they want to consume your content.
If you don't want to do video and audio,
you just want to write, perfectly fine.
Find a plugin for your blog engine or whatever you use
that automatically creates an AI-powered podcast out of it
or like an audio version of it that people can play on that page.
Makes a huge difference for people who cannot read your work.
And just turn accessibility and allowing for accessibility
into a process, into part of your process.
Use free tools like AutoAI.
I used it for all my stuff to get a good enough transcript
of all your multimedia content.
Get used to uploading every video to a transcription tool like that
and not releasing content before you have subtitles and transcripts in place.
I know this might sound overwhelming,
but it's the right thing to do because it will make you stand out
compared to other creators who assume everyone wants
or can consume their content in one particular way.
That's not true, and you can be better than them.
And people will talk about this.
Make your work accessible, and your audience will make sure
that it will be shared far and wide,
both for the quality of the content
and the efforts you put into making it accessible to them.
And that's it for today.
I want to briefly thank my sponsor, Acquire.com.
Imagine this situation.
You're a founder, you've built a really solid SaaS product,
you acquired customers, and everything is generating
really consistent monthly recurring revenue,
and you're living the SaaS dream, right?
But it's kind of turning into a nightmare.
The problem is you're not growing for whatever reason.
Maybe it's lack of focus or lack of skill or just a plain lack of interest,
and you feel kind of stuck in your business.
What should you do?
The story that everybody wants to hear
and the story that will get you a lot of retweets
is that you buckled down and reignited the fire,
you worked on the business, not in the business,
and all those things like audience building and marketing and sales happened,
you did outreach, and six months down the road,
you've made all that money, you tripled your revenue,
and you have this amazingly hyper-successful business.
Well, reality, unfortunately, is not as simple as this.
The situation that you're in at this point
looks kind of different for every founder facing this crossroad,
but too many times, the story that comes afterwards
ends up being one of inaction and stagnation
until the business itself becomes less and less valuable over time,
or at worst, is completely worthless.
So if you find yourself here already
or you think your story is likely headed down a similar road,
I would consider a third option if I was you.
And that's why I'm recommending it, because I think about these things.
Consider selling your business on Acquire.com
because capitalizing on the value of your time today
as a founder is a pretty smart move.
There is more to do, and Acquire.com is free to list.
They've helped hundreds of founders already.
Go to try.acquire.com/arvid and see for yourself
if this is the right option for you and your business today.
Thank you so much for listening to the Bootstrapped Founder today.
You can find me on Twitter at arvidkahl,
and you'll find my books on my Twitter course there, too.
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Have a wonderful day, and bye-bye.