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.
Top comments (2)
Loved how you doubled down on the early signal, and kept posting! Being able to smell opportunity and chase it like that is something I've been trying to get good at
thanks Jason! Yeah that was crucial early on.
It’s not easy spotting that, also trying to get better at it myself 🙌