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Alex Cloudstar
Alex Cloudstar

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Shipping Deserves Better Than a Link-in-Bio

Indie hackers are quietly wrecking their personal brands

And the worst part is that they think they’re doing the right thing.

They ship products, post build logs, talk about revenue, then funnel all that work into the same generic link-in-bio page used by lifestyle influencers selling skincare and supplements.

A neat list of links.

No context.

No signal.

That’s not a neutral choice. It actively makes builders look weaker.


Link-in-bio tools weren’t built for builders

Link-in-bio tools were created for a specific job.

They help influencers redirect attention.

  • Watch this vlog

  • Buy this product

  • Use this code

The page itself is disposable, because the value lives in the personality and the feed.

Software builders are not in the attention-routing business.

They’re in the proof business.


What people actually want to know

When someone clicks a maker’s profile, they’re not asking where to go next.

They’re asking one blunt question:

What are you actually building, and are you shipping?

A generic link page refuses to answer that.

It treats everything the same.

Your main SaaS.

A dusty side project.

A GitHub repo you haven’t touched in a year.

Same font. Same weight. Same priority.

That flattens your story and hides momentum.

And momentum is the whole point.


Builders earn trust through output

Not through polish. Not through vibes.

Through:

  • Commits

  • Launches

  • Users

  • Revenue

  • Experiments

  • Failures

A real builder has things in motion.

Some going up.

Some stuck.

Some dead.

A list of links can’t show any of that.


A maker profile shouldn’t be a menu

It should be a dashboard.

At a glance, I should know:

  • What you’re focused on right now

  • What’s live

  • What’s growing

  • What you shipped recently

  • What you killed without drama

I shouldn’t have to click five times to understand whether you’re serious.


This is where makers.page gets it right

makers.page isn’t another link-in-bio clone.

It treats a maker’s profile as a living surface, not a static directory.

  • Your work is the hero

  • Projects have status

  • Metrics have context

  • Activity is visible

It feels less like:

“Here are my links”

And more like:

“Here’s my output.”

That’s the difference between an influencer tool and a builder tool.


The Maker Marquee

Call it a Maker Marquee.

A public scoreboard for people who ship.

A place where your work speaks before you do.

Where credibility comes from what’s moving, not how pretty the page looks.


Why this shift matters

Indie hacking has grown up.

The space is crowded.

Everyone is building something.

Talking is cheap.

Threads are everywhere.

What stands out now is clarity.

The next generation of respected makers won’t be louder or more polished.

They’ll be easier to understand.

Their profiles will show, instantly, that they build and ship.

They’ll stop hiding behind generic link lists and start using tools like makers.page that respect the craft.

Because shipping deserves more than a stack of links.

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