Forem: Dan Mindru

Thinking about what am I building on this Sunday

Dan Mindru — Sun, 07 Apr 2024 10:11:38 +0000

Today is Sunday morning and a time for reflection.

As an indie maker, you often think: am I making enough progress? Am I on the right track?

It's quite easy to fall into the trap of "not doing enough".
That's a horrible space, it makes you overwork and seem like no matter what you do, you're not moving fast enough.
That in turn likely leads to burnout or worse.

So I was sitting now and thinking, I wish I had written down a post every where with my status. With what I'm working on.
Right about now I can open those up and see how far I came.

2024 Summary

Things are good today, but I always want more.
Quite a few of my products are growing, making a (relatively) ok revenue.

So every year I'll write this short summary and list all my (active) projects. Next time when I feel it's to slow, I can compare with where I was. Hope this works 😬

Current projects

So let's get into it. I'll just list my stuff and see how it feels. Will probably have to iterate on the format but better to start somewhere.

Last year around this time I had 2 projects: Clobbr and Crontap. This year, I have...

Well, well, well, what do we have here?

Shipixen: Custom Boilerplates with Next.js, Blog & Shadcn UI

First up, we have Shipixen / Page AI, a tool that generates boilerplate code faster than you can say "I shipped it". With just a few clicks, you'll have a stunning website, complete with an SEO-optimized blog and landing page. It's like having a genie in a bottle, but instead of granting wishes, it grants you a beautiful website. 🧞‍♂️


Founded	2023
Tech Stack	React, Next.js 14 with App Router, Tailwind CSS, TypeScript, MDX powered by Contentlayer, Shadcn UI, Lucide icons
Platforms	macOS and Windows

Hunted.Space: A Place to See Product Hunt Launch Calendars, Dashboards & Launch Day Statistics

Next on the list is Hunted.Space, a platform created by Alex, Sandra & I and we clearly had too much time on our hands. This platform provides insights and tools to help you navigate the treacherous waters of Product Hunt launches. With free dashboards, a launch calendar, and historical stats, you'll be armed with enough data to make even the most seasoned Product Hunter green with envy.


Founded	2023
Dashboards	Provides insights on ranking, upvotes, comments, and upvote speed
Launch Calendar	Helps determine the best day to launch
Historical Stats	Displays historical data and current trends
Scheduling	Allows users to schedule upcoming launches for increased exposure
Tech Stack	Next.js, PlanetScale

Clobbr: API Load & Speed Test

Clobbr is like a personal trainer for your API endpoints. It helps you whip them into shape and ensures they can handle the pressure of real-world use. With its user-friendly interface and detailed result history, you'll be able to ship your API with the confidence of a superhero. 🦸‍♂️


Founded	2022
Pricing	One-time payment, no subscriptions
Platform	Mac, Windows, CLI
Data Storage	Local, no data stored on servers
Open Source	Partially open source
CI/CD Integration	Supported
Advanced Debugging	Copy request payload and response for failed requests
Part of	Apihustle suite

Crontap: Schedule Recurring API Calls

Crontap is like a trusty sidekick, always there to make sure your API calls are running on schedule. With its human-readable syntax and integration with popular apps, you'll be able to automate tasks and receive notifications like a true tech wizard. 🧙‍♂️


Founded	2023
Pricing	Free sign-up, no credit card required
Integrations	Zapier, Make, IFTTT, Slack, Telegram, Discord, and more
Use Cases	Automated backups, maintenance, monitoring, payments, reminders, alerts, serverless functions, builds, reports, and messages

Morning Maker Show: A Morning Show That Keeps You Up to Date on #buildinpublic

Last but not least, we have the Morning Maker Show, a live podcast hosted by @TakoTreba and me - @d4m1n. We keep listeners in the loop with all things startups, indie maker, and #buildinpublic. It's like having a front-row seat to the wild world of build in public, without having to leave your cozy bed. 🛌


Format	Live podcast
Schedule	Every Monday and Friday afternoon
Topics	Startups, indie makers, products, #buildinpublic
Membership	Offers exclusive benefits for members
Newsletter	Available to keep up with the top makers
Founded Year	2023 (based on the earliest episode date of December 1st, 2023 mentioned in the content)

And there you have it, folks!

Other notable mentions that I am maintaining (albeit not actively): MRRArt: Create unicode charts from your data, Rare Big Deal: discover deals and discounts on indie apps and my umbrella service Apihustle: tools for testing & monitoring APIs.

Also, I sometimes write on my blog and website 👀

See you in 1 year!

My side-project made >$2k in 72 hours. In pre-orders only!

Dan Mindru — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 11:07:30 +0000

For the 1st time since I started building side projects I am beginning to think.

”Hey, I can do this. It can actually be my full-time job” 🤯

Just a few months ago I'd laugh at you if you told me that.
I've learned an important lesson in being persistent and relentless when building side projects.

Don't give up.

Backstory

I'm been a web developer for more than a decade, primarily working as a freelance developer & occasionally designer.

Throughout the years I've built side projects, like we all tend to do in the industry. Some open source, some in writing and some as tools.

Up until about a year ago I never thought I could actually build something that could ultimately become my full-time job.
At the back of my head I knew I could, because I've worked for so many people that built projects from the ground up with me and managed to make a business out of it (and pay me in the process).

So I set out to build as many things as I could, put them out there and see if anyone is even going to pay for them.
Spoiler: not many did for the 1st ones and to say they had moderate success is an overstatement.

First thing I put on ProductHunt barely made it into the top 20 😃

It's scary the first time and you will most likely get it wrong and have disproportionate expectations.

I've build more than 5 products* this year and only by the last one I thought "I think I'm starting to get the hang of this". While the others still exist and have users, they won't be able to give me a full-time job anytime soon (who knows in the future though?).

What I did

After I took the decision to give side-projects an honest shot, I was slowly getting surrounded by makers building things in public.
On Twitter/𝕏, there's a sizeable community of people making product and sharing their successes, failures & all they learn in between.

Enter #buildinpublic.

I started to talk about what I'm building, how I do it and use the #buildinpublic hashtag.
While this didn't have much traction at first, it kept me somewhat accountable and motivated to post regular updates.

My goal was to send 1 update a day. A goal that I kept for almost 365 days now and still keep.

Slowly but surely, I started to meet likeminded people, learn from them and at the same time get a bit of a following.

How my latest project made $2k+ in pre-orders

Fast forward almost year of doing the exact same: building, posting about it and getting feedback/advice from likeminded people - I arrive at Shipixen.

I wrote a post on X about it. A half-baked screenshot with an ugly-looking PoC.

You see, you don't need much to validate an idea.

Initially I didn't even have a name for it. I made a logo with OpenAI's Dall-e & stitched together a prototype that required many manual steps.

The takeaway here is by being consistent, learning how to talk about products & market them, I managed to understand that 1. don't build a project until you validate it and 2. you don't need to spend months to do so.

I didn't have any expectations, just wanted to see if this idea would resonate with people.

👀 176k views later, I knew I was definitely on to something.
I had to move fast. Come up with a name, make a landing page and have a pre-order link ready.

Making the landing page and first sales

The funny thing about this product is... I could use it to build the landing page for itself 😃

The absolute best proof / dogfooding / whatever you want to call it was ― if I manage to build this landing page with it and make any sales, it's a solid product.

So I set out to do just that.
Came up with a name with the help of ChatGPT.
Then I generate the landing page in literally 5 minutes with Shipixen, deployed and started on the copy & marketing.
Few hours later, I had the website ready.

At this stage, thinking about the copy and your messaging is a lot more important than spending time on developing features etc. Talk about your product in an honest, concise way.

I wrote one more post on X, this time with a website & payment link.
Within the first 5 minutes I got a pre-order.

That post also did 125k views.
In less than 24h, it got me $1k in pre-sales.

Acting quickly on a good idea

After I realized I'm getting many eyeballs on the post, I had to make the best out of the opportunity and double down on this product's value.
In just a couple days I got 8k visitors, that's a significant amount for a product that doesn't exist yet - it's just an idea with a PoC.

I thought if more people saw the value that I see, they'll be more likely to pre-order.

What's the best way to show that? Easy.
Make a video showing how I built & deployed the initial Shipixen landing page & blog.

That post also made it to 75k impressions and ultimately got me to $2k in pre-orders days after announcing.

The launch

After I knew people want this product & are willing to pay for it, I set out to build it.

I spent about 3 weeks on building, launching it on Product Hunt (where it actually became product of the day 🥇) and further wrote about it on Reddit, IndieHackers and X.

The launch and pre-orders amounted to about $7k in revenue.
Not a bad month.

I am now growing Shipixen beyond 5-figures, wish me luck :)

How I build my projects / tech

Since I started this has changed a bit, but I am now settled on this stack:

Next.js
Supabase
Cloudflare (can’t believe what you get for free!)

On the UI side:

React
Material UI or Shadcn UI
TailwindCSS

Design:

Figma

For some projects I used GCP and their Cloud Run service, but it's an exception.

This stack combined with Shipixen allows me to ship a landing page, blog & MVP fast and reuse large parts of applications in new products.

A word of advice

There are a few big lessons I now have learned by embarking on this journey.

X/Twitter is a powerful way for a developer to market their products. But you need to show, don't tell.
When you post online: be yourself, don’t write content that you think others want to see, write your own thought, your own idea.
Be part of the community. Help people without asking for anything back or having expectations.
Learn how to validate ideas and build things fast by using boilerplates or UI libraries or cloud services such as Supabase that save you time with the DB, Auth and more.
Be prepared to be disappointed many times over, but don't stop. Keep building, keep launching products and keep talking about them. I promise you'll see the light given enough time.

Final thoughts

For me, it was important to not go all in all this from the beginning and still have the freelance job as my main gig. It felt less scary and I could do it at me own pace. That might not work for you, but having a community like #buildinpublic helped me ship things instead of giving up.

For others, it's a all or nothing affair. That's fine too, but knowing you'll fail** with most products is going to make it harder to stay motivated when that's all you have.

And finally, keep shipping those side projects.
Do it now, even if it's not "ready" yet.

It's a huge barrier for everybody, but having something out there for people to see is going to give you incredible momentum.

Thank you for reading! 🙌

*here are some of the products I've built

Clobbr an app to load test APIs

Crontap a SaaS to schedule API calls online

MRRArt a web app to make ascii charts that can be shared on SoMe

ContentPal a SaaS to generate SEO content.

Hunted.space product hunt live stats that could support ads

**no launched product is a failure. At the very least, you've learned a lot. But, a product that doesn't give you independence or is not financial sustainable is not a success either.

How I learned to get over tech choices & embrace boilerplates after 1 year of development

Dan Mindru — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 16:55:35 +0000

I've been building many things over the past couple years and this is the result of that experience. The 1st product took 1 year to make and didn't get much adoption at all.
My latest product was made in 30 days and has over 100 sales already.

I used to think:

"I can do it better"

"I can do it faster"

"I'll make something simple"

This only kept me from doing the actual work.

validating my idea
getting the MVP out
testing with actual users

Development is not just coding it's also talking to users, getting feedback & marketing. It doesn't matter how well you can build a thing no one has heard about.

Boilerplates are a cheat code

After I've been a web developer for more than a decade, a sizeable chunk of pride has infected my thinking.
Since I built so many things, I can surely do this better.

But it's not about "better". That's just our ego getting in a way. If you build something that people will use & love, it just needs to solve a problem.

The sooner you understand that and embrace it - the sooner you'll let go of shiny tech and ship something - the sooner you'll find out if this is even worth building.
And it's better to fail sooner too - before you spend months building a technical marvel that has no real world use case.

If you start from a boilerplate, you'll be able to start on the product from day one*.

Why are they so good?

You don't have to take technical decisions (or fewer)
You get to direct your initial excitement into the product
They'll likely include newer patterns, libraries or approaches that you'll learn from
You get indexed by search engines. That takes time and the sooner you do it the better.
And most importantly! They help you ship & deploy early

Why is shipping early important

Most of us have tried to work on projects that end up nowhere. We set up a bunch of clever things and then soon realize... this is a lot of work.
And we let them wait for 1 month and our brain says: "Nope, I am not working on this chief".

We all have problems staying motivated. If you're motivation is all spent on setting up the project, you'll likely never finish that project.

Boilerplates are a magic trick so you can gain momentum.
Once you have deployed something, you will keep iterating on it and tweaking it

And once you have deployed something, you will share it with people that'll validate your idea.
From then on, you'll be working on the product - and that's why boilerplates are worth their weight in gold.

They are a clever "hack" to get your working on the product and avoid early overengineering.

Plus, you will always learn a thing or two by using a boilerplate. Always.

Some practical tips

Since I've been doing this for so long, I've used many different stacks throughout my career. From Angular to Vue to React and all in between.

Today I'm on Next.js and this has to be the pinnacle of webdev. It just has to. Zero config, deployment in < 1 min, no DevOps setup and free plan until you go commercial.

I can't recommend it enough. When it comes to boilerplates, they have an incredible ecosystem. Head over to vercel.com/templates and pick & choose what you need. Everything I tried was great.

E.g.:

We're so spoiled as web developers these days.

Conclusion

To sum this up: start with a boilerplate. Always.
Embrace it and deploy that thing today if you can.

Get over your ego and focus on what's important early. You can always rework it if the project is successful enough.

Some final words.

After building more than 5 products* this year, I have put together all the good patterns, design and tech into an app that can generate a customized boilerplates in literally minutes.
All my projects use it as a baseline and they have great SEO, performant Markdown blog running Next.js 14, Typescript, TailwindCSS + Shadcn UI with whatever theme I like.

The best part? You still get 1-click deploy to Vercel.

Again, all of the templates by Vercel are awesome and a life saver. If you want a landing page, blog or product website up right now, Shipixen could be your cheat code.

*here are some of the products I've built

Clobbr an app to load test APIs

Crontap a SaaS to schedule API calls online

MRRArt a web app to make ascii charts that can be shared on SoMe

ContentPal a SaaS to generate SEO content.

Hunted.space product hunt live stats that could support ads