DEV Community: egeindie

How I'm Preparing for My First Product Hunt Launch (As a Solo Dev)

egeindie — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 19:00:33 +0000

I'm launching my first product on Product Hunt this Thursday, and honestly? I'm terrified.

Not because the product isn't ready — it is. But because I've never done this before, I have zero marketing budget (well, $50), and I'm doing everything solo.

Here's exactly what I've been doing to prepare, what's working, and what's not.

The Product

I built WaitlistKit — a platform that lets you create viral waitlists with built-in referral tracking, customizable signup pages, and real-time analytics. Think of it as the tool I wished existed when I was launching my previous projects.

The whole thing is built with Go + React + PostgreSQL. No fancy AI, no blockchain — just a solid tool that solves a real problem.

My Pre-Launch Checklist (What I Actually Did)

1. Content First, Product Second

I wrote 20 blog posts before writing a single line of marketing copy. SEO takes months to kick in, so I started early. Topics like "alternatives to Google Forms for waitlists" and "how to build a viral referral program" — stuff people actually search for.

2. The $0 Marketing Playbook

With basically no budget, here's where I've been spending my time:

Twitter/X: Building in public, sharing progress. Went from 0 to 25 followers in a week. Not viral, but real people.
Dev.to: Writing articles (like this one). 2 articles so far, both got decent engagement.
Hacker News: Posting thoughtful comments to build karma. Show HN post is live.
Reddit r/SaaS: Carefully engaging (got banned once for being too aggressive with comments — lesson learned 😅)
Product Hunt upcoming page: Listed and scheduled for Thursday

3. Product Hunt Specific Prep

This took way more work than I expected:

4 gallery images — I made these with HTML/CSS and screenshots. No Figma, no designer.
Shoutouts — Added Stripe, Tailwind CSS, React, and Vite. Apparently launches with shoutouts get featured more often.
Promo code — PRODUCTHUNT30 for 30% off. Created via Stripe Coupons.
Tagline iteration — Went through maybe 15 versions before landing on: "Launch viral waitlists in 60 seconds, no code needed"

4. Pricing Strategy

I'm doing tiered lifetime deals for the launch:

First 25 spots: $79
Next 50 spots: $99
Last 25 spots: $129

Plus regular plans at $9/mo (Pro) and $29/mo (Business). The lifetime deal creates urgency and gives early adopters a reason to buy now.

What's Actually Working

Dev.to articles — By far the best ROI on my time. One article about shipping 2 SaaS products in a weekend got solid engagement and drove real traffic.

Twitter build-in-public — Slow but steady. The key was stopping generic tweets and sharing real numbers and stories instead.

Blog SEO — Already seeing some organic traffic trickle in from the 20 posts. Won't peak for months, but it's compounding.

What's NOT Working

Reddit — Got my account suspended for commenting too frequently. If you're going to engage on Reddit, space your comments out by 4-6 hours minimum. Lesson learned the hard way.

Generic #buildinpublic tweets — Nobody cares about "just shipped a new feature! 🚀" without context. Story-driven content with real numbers performs 10x better.

Trying to be everywhere at once — I spread myself too thin across 8+ platforms. Should have focused on 2-3 max.

Launch Day Plan

PH auto-launches at 12:01 AM PT (10:01 AM Turkey time for me)
Twitter announcement thread ready to go
$35 Twitter ads budget for launch day push
Show HN post (already live, will repost if needed)
Email everyone who signed up for early access

The Numbers So Far

Twitter followers: 25
Dev.to followers: 2
Blog posts: 20
Total marketing spend: $0 (saving $50 for launch week ads)
Revenue: $0 (launching Thursday 😬)
Time spent on marketing vs building: 40/60

My Realistic Expectations

I'm not expecting to hit #1 on Product Hunt. I'd be happy with:

Top 10 of the day
50+ upvotes
10-20 signups
Maybe 2-3 paying customers

Anything above that is gravy.

If you're a solo dev preparing for your first launch, my biggest takeaway so far: start marketing way earlier than you think you need to. I started 2 weeks before launch and still feel behind.

I'll write a follow-up after launch day with real results — the good, bad, and ugly.

Wish me luck 🤞

Launching Thursday on Product Hunt. If you're interested, I'd genuinely appreciate an upvote.

Stop Using Google Forms as Your Waitlist (Here's What to Use Instead)

egeindie — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 17:40:21 +0000

Google Forms is free. It works. And it's killing your pre-launch momentum.

I see this mistake constantly — indie hackers and founders using Google Forms (or Typeform, or Airtable) as their waitlist. It technically collects emails, sure. But that's like using a hammer to send a text message. It works if you hit the right buttons, but there's a better way.

Let me break down why this matters and what you should use instead.

The Problem with Google Forms

Here's what happens when someone lands on your "waitlist":

They see a Google Forms link
It opens in a new tab with Google branding
They fill in their email (if they haven't bounced already)
They get... nothing. No confirmation. No position. No reason to share.

You just lost the most excited person in your funnel.

What you're missing:

📊 Analytics — Where did this signup come from? Google Forms doesn't tell you.
🔗 Referrals — Your early adopters can't share a unique link. Zero virality.
🎨 Branding — It looks like a school survey, not a product launch.
📍 Position tracking — People want to know they're #47 in line.
🧩 Embeds — You can't drop it natively into your landing page.

"But Typeform Looks Nice"

Sure, Typeform is prettier. But:

It starts at $25/month for basic features
It's a form builder, not a waitlist tool
No referral system
No waitlist-specific analytics
No embed widget

You're paying premium prices for a tool that wasn't built for this.

What a Real Waitlist Tool Looks Like

I built WaitlistKit because I kept running into this problem with my own launches.

Here's what a purpose-built waitlist gives you:

1. Real-Time Analytics

Know exactly how many signups you're getting, where they're coming from, and what's converting. Not a spreadsheet — a live dashboard.

2. Built-in Referral System

Every subscriber gets a unique referral link. They share it, you track it, and your waitlist grows organically. This is the #1 feature that Google Forms will never have.

3. Embeddable Widget

One line of code. Drop it on your landing page, blog, or anywhere. It looks native to your site — not like a third-party form.

4. Custom Domain

Point waitlist.yourstartup.com to your waitlist page. Professional, branded, yours.

5. Five-Minute Setup

No code required. Create your waitlist, customize it, embed it. Done.

The Numbers That Matter

From my own launches:

Waitlists with referral systems grow 2-3x faster than plain forms
Branded waitlist pages convert 40-60% better than Google Forms links
Position tracking increases return visits by 3x

These aren't vanity metrics — they're the difference between launching to 200 people vs. 2,000.

But I Don't Want to Pay for a Waitlist

Fair. Here's the thing:

WaitlistKit Pro is $9/month — less than a Netflix subscription
There are lifetime deals available right now — pay once, use forever
There's a free tier to get started

Compare that to the signups you're losing with Google Forms. The ROI is obvious.

How to Migrate in 5 Minutes

If you already have a Google Forms waitlist:

Export your emails from Google Forms as CSV
Create a WaitlistKit account at waitlistkit.dev
Import your existing subscribers
Grab the embed code and replace your Google Forms link
Share your new referral-enabled waitlist

Your existing subscribers keep their spot. New ones get the full experience.

TL;DR

Feature	Google Forms	Typeform	WaitlistKit
Price	Free	$25/mo	$9/mo
Analytics	❌	Basic	✅ Real-time
Referrals	❌	❌	✅ Built-in
Embed Widget	❌	Limited	✅ One-line
Custom Domain	❌	$50/mo	✅ Included
Position Tracking	❌	❌	✅
Setup Time	10 min	20 min	5 min

Stop using tools that weren't built for this. Your pre-launch deserves better.

→ waitlistkit.dev — Set up your waitlist in 5 minutes.

Building something? I also made rilo.chat — a lightweight community chat widget you can embed on your site. Pair it with your waitlist and let early adopters talk to each other before launch. Community + waitlist = pre-launch done right.

What tools are you using for your waitlist? Drop a comment — I'm curious what's working for others. 👇

I Shipped 2 SaaS Products in One Weekend — Here's My Entire Stack and Strategy

egeindie — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 22:05:33 +0000

Last weekend I challenged myself: ship 2 working SaaS products from scratch. Not MVPs sitting in a repo — actually deployed, functional products with auth, payments, and real features.

Here's how it went.

The Products

1. rilo.chat — Community Chat Widget

Think Chatango meets Discord, but modern. A real-time chat widget you embed on any website with a single <script> tag.

What it does:

Real-time WebSocket chat
AI-powered content moderation
Custom themes and branding
WordPress plugin for one-click install
Stripe billing (Free / Pro $19/mo / Business $49/mo)

Why I built it: Every community tool is either too complex (Discord requires users to leave your site) or too basic (most chat widgets are support-focused, not community-focused). There's a gap for lightweight, embeddable community chat.

2. WaitlistKit — Waitlist Management with Referrals

A tool for indie makers to collect signups before launch, with built-in referral tracking so your waitlist grows itself.

What it does:

Create multiple waitlists
Embeddable signup widget (single script tag)
Referral tracking with unique links
Subscriber management + CSV export
Public waitlist pages (/w/your-slug)
Email notifications via Resend

Why I built it: Every time I launch something, I need a waitlist. Existing tools are either $50+/mo or missing referral tracking. So I built my own.

The Stack (Same for Both)

Backend:  Go + Fiber
Frontend: React 18 + TypeScript + Vite + shadcn/ui
Database: PostgreSQL
Auth:     JWT
Payments: Stripe
Deploy:   Coolify (self-hosted)

Why Go?

I know everyone's shipping with Next.js these days, but hear me out:

Single binary deployment — no node_modules, no runtime dependencies
Insanely fast — cold starts under 50ms
Concurrency built-in — goroutines for WebSocket connections
Small memory footprint — my chat server handles thousands of connections on 128MB RAM

For a solo developer shipping fast, Go is underrated. The standard library covers 80% of what you need.

Why shadcn/ui?

Because it's components you own, not a library you depend on. Copy-paste what you need, customize everything, no version lock-in. Combined with Tailwind, it's the fastest way to build good-looking UIs.

The Strategy: Product Factory

I'm not betting everything on one product. The plan:

Ship 1-2 products per week (reuse the same stack)
Launch everywhere — DEV, Product Hunt, HN, Reddit, Twitter
Watch the numbers — which one gets traction?
Double down on winners, kill losers

The goal: $10K MRR in 3 months across multiple small products.

Why this works better than building one thing for 6 months:

You learn what people actually want
You build distribution (audience) across launches
Each product cross-promotes the others
If one fails, you haven't lost everything

What I Learned

1. Reusable boilerplate is everything

Both products share the same Go backend structure:

cmd/server/main.go
internal/
  config/
  database/
  handlers/
  middleware/
  models/
  routes/
  services/
migrations/

Once you have auth, CORS, database migrations, and error handling working, spinning up a new product takes hours, not days.

2. Ship ugly, iterate pretty

The first version of both UIs was basic. Functional, but basic. That's fine. Users don't care about pixel-perfect design — they care about whether it solves their problem.

3. Distribution > Product

Building in public on Twitter, posting on Reddit, writing on DEV — this matters more than the product itself in the early days. Nobody finds your SaaS by accident.

What's Next

Product Hunt launch (next week)
Stripe integration for WaitlistKit
More products from the factory
Documenting everything along the way

If you're interested in following the journey, I'm @egeindie on Twitter. Real numbers, real lessons, no fluff.

What's your approach to shipping fast? One product at a time or multiple bets? Would love to hear your strategies in the comments.