When you're deep into building, the code becomes your comfort zone.
You're in flow, you're shipping fast, you're dreaming of Product Hunt #1 and viral tweets.
But then you launch… and the silence is deafening.
What just happened?
You spent 10 days building a killer boilerplate for SaaS products (in my case, SaaSRocket).
You’ve tested it, documented it, polished it.
You hit “Launch” and refresh your analytics.
100+ visitors.
0 conversions.
Ouch.
Here's the honest truth no one told me:
Building is not the hard part.
The hard part is getting people to care.
You could build something 10x better than what’s out there… but if no one knows you exist, you’re invisible.
So what have I learned (the hard way)?
-
Marketing starts before you write code.
- Build in public. Share your problem. Tease features.
- Get 10 people waiting before you build 10 features.
-
Your product doesn’t sell itself — you do.
- Show up online. Tweet. Post. Comment.
- Don’t be spammy, just be real and helpful.
-
SEO, mailing lists, community posts — all matter.
- Dev.to, Reddit, IndieHackers — they’re gold if used wisely.
What I'm doing now:
- Writing daily Dev.to posts like this (meta, I know)
- Posting on Reddit with actual value, not promo fluff
- Making sure every visitor sees exactly what they get
I still want to believe I can make my first $ online from something I built with love. And honestly, that first sale would mean more to me than any job offer.
If you’re stuck in the same loop — building, launching, refreshing, doubting — keep going.
You’re not behind. You're just at the start of the second half of the game.
And if you're trying to build a SaaS, I've open-sourced everything I learned into SaaSRocket.
It won’t write your copy or do your marketing.
But it'll save you 2 weeks of setup hell.
💬 I’d love to know:
What was your biggest lesson post-launch?
Let’s be honest about the messy part of indie hacking.
– Shreyan 🚀
@ShreyanRants
Top comments (1)
I still can't figure out how knowing that building this took 10 days can help sell it. Of course, marketing will be more difficult. Try selling something you built in one day; it will be even harder.