DEV Community: Charlie Hun

Forget uniqueness. Do marketing first.

Charlie Hun — Sun, 04 May 2025 10:30:46 +0000

Forget uniqueness. Do marketing first.

When I launched my idea — a simple SaaS for status pages — someone commented:

“You're building the same thing that already exists. Where’s the uniqueness?”

And honestly? That’s exactly why I decided to build it.

The market already exists. Paying customers already exist.
I’m not wasting time validating the idea — that part is already done by the competition.
What I’m validating is: Can I sell it? Can I make money from it?

That’s what really matters.

❌ Don’t build the product first.

There was a time when you could “build → launch → get traffic.”
That doesn’t work anymore. There's no more free organic traffic — not on mobile stores, not on the web.

Now, product-first is a trap.
You might build something nice and… crickets.

Instead:

✅ Start with marketing.

Before writing a single line of code, I:

Built a landing page explaining what the idea is, and who it's for
Defined pricing (based on competitors and positioning)
Started driving traffic
Measured how many leads I could get
Learned if I could "sell" the idea, even without a working product

That’s the real funnel: find traffic → qualify leads → convert → check economics.

💡 What I’m really testing:

Not “does the idea have demand?”
It does — others are making money with it.

I’m testing:

Can I attract and convert leads in this market?
Can I acquire users profitably?
Can I turn this into a sustainable business?

That’s the difference between a side project and an actual SaaS business.

🚫 Uniqueness is overrated.

In a big enough market, there's room for dozens of products.
Coding is easy now. What’s hard is getting attention and converting it into revenue.

Distribution > innovation
Marketing > features

If you can build a profitable funnel — traffic, conversions, retention — you win.
That’s what I’m focused on. The product is secondary — for now.

I’m testing Google Ads before building my SaaS — here’s why (and how)

Charlie Hun — Sat, 03 May 2025 15:59:39 +0000

Most indie hackers make this mistake:

They build a product — then try to find customers.

I’m trying the opposite. I launched a landing page first, and immediately started testing demand with paid ads — even before writing a single line of code.

Why test paid ads now?

Building a product takes time.

And if nobody wants it... all that effort is wasted.

Instead of waiting until launch, I want answers early:

Are people searching for this kind of product?
Will they click?
Will they leave a lead?
How much will it cost me to get one?

What I did:

Built a simple landing page on Framer in one day
Set up a €20 test budget on Google Ads
Created a form to collect early leads
Tracked everything manually — no complex funnel yet

I made a mistake 😅
My first campaign was a Google “Smart” campaign — and it burned €10 showing banners in random mobile apps.

600 useless clicks later, I paused the campaign.

Second try: ✅
I switched to a classic Search campaign, with:

High-intent keywords
Simple ad copy
No display, no video, no smart automation

The result? Lower traffic — but real, relevant visitors. And a few leads.

Why this works

Even with €10–20, I got signal:

People are searching for this
I’m getting a few signups
And I can start estimating my customer acquisition cost

This will help me decide:

Is this idea worth building?
What pricing makes sense?
What channels work best?

Next steps
Some users have already signed up.
In my next post, I’ll share what to do when you don’t have a product yet, but people want in.

(Hint: talk to them — don’t ghost them.)

Let me know if you're testing your own SaaS ideas too — I'd love to hear your approach!

How I Built a Landing Page in 1 Day to Validate My SaaS Idea (Almost for Free)

Charlie Hun — Sat, 03 May 2025 15:21:37 +0000

How I Built a Landing Page in 1 Day to Validate My SaaS Idea (Almost for Free)

Hi everyone! I'm currently building SaaS Status — a simple status page and uptime monitoring tool for indie SaaS products. Here's how I built the landing page in one day and started validating the idea — with minimal budget and no coding.

🧠 Step 1 — Research + GPT Brainstorming

Before doing anything, I researched the market:

What similar tools exist?
What do they cost?
What features do they offer?

Then, I asked ChatGPT to help me brainstorm the landing page structure and copy, based on my product positioning and pricing ideas. It helped a lot with organizing thoughts and turning them into actual text.

🎨 Step 2 — Framer + a Free Template

I found a clean and free Framer template and spent around 5 hours customizing it:

Replaced all text with my own.
Adjusted the layout slightly.
Generated screenshots and visuals with ChatGPT's help.
Designed a simple logo in Figma (inspired by an image ChatGPT generated!).

🌐 Step 3 — Domain + Hosting

This was the only part that wasn’t free:

Domain: $12
Framer Pro plan: $20/month (to connect my domain)

And that’s it — I published it!

🚀 Step 4 — Validation

Now I'm driving my first traffic to the landing page via Reddit, Twitter, Indie Hackers, and dev.to. My goal is to see if anyone's interested enough to leave an email — or ideally pre-order.

If this resonates with enough people, I’ll continue development and turn SaaS Status into a full product. If not — I’ll have only lost one day and $32. Not bad!

👉 You can check it out here: https://saasstatus.app
I'd love to hear your feedback or suggestions!

💬 Why I'm Building This

I’ve launched several SaaS projects before. Every time, monitoring was an afterthought — and I often found myself wondering:

"Is my app down?"

"Did that Stripe webhook fail?"

"Why am I only finding out from users?"

So this time, I’m building what I wish I had:

A simple tool that notifies me (and my users) when something breaks — so I can fix it before the support inbox explodes.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts — and follow your projects too 💬