So This is the story of how my side project which is basically a Next.Js SaaS Boilerplate Indiespace, got from $0 to $150 in 4 days without any social media presence.
The Idea:
I have been working on this project for the last 1 and a half months, The initial plan was to create something I could use because I love to start new projects but often get overwhelmed with the feeling of setting up everything from scratch. So I started building this boilerplate which includes 2 landing pages, 2 waitlist pages, and a SAAS kit with a landing page and all the cool features like dark & light themes, subscriptions, one-time payments, transactional emails, authentication, SEO, etc.
The Expectation:
I had zero expectations of if anyone gonna buy it or not or how I was gonna market this as there are like every other developer launching a boilerplate with heavy stuff included and I don't have an audience. So I built it at my own pace and kept adding features.
The Launch:
My launch plan was to post about this on 3 platforms:
- Product Hunt
- SideProject
So on Friday 17th November, I scheduled the launch on Product Hunt for Saturday 18th November, posted on Sideprojects, and went to sleep. I woke up on Saturday around 2 pm and saw Product Hunt notifications on my phone, So I opened my laptop and went into my Gmail and then I saw an email from Stripe, I opened it and:
So now I'm so confused about what the hell I'm seeing too, and questioning myself is it someone who purchased my boilerplate? I opened the product hunt and It has been 1 hour since the launch I'm in 6th position with 30+ votes without any marketing or asking people to upvote and already made a sale. I was freaking smiling like a child whaaaaaaaaaat?
Then I posted on Twitter, and asked some friends to upvote, and after the launch got the 7th position, 150+ upvotes, 1.7k page views, and around 10+ followers on Twitter.
The Lesson:
I know it's not a lot of money and I know it's nothing that I earn from my full-time job but to be very honest, creating your own digital product, marketing it, and earning even a single penny from it will give you so much happiness and relief. If you are a developer like me or someone who wants to build something and is confused about how everything is gonna work out, don't worry put your project out there in public let the people decide, do your effort, and keep moving forward.
At this point, I know my Indiespace is not perfect and there is just so much to do right now I have to add the freaking documentation as well and I already hate setting up the content layer docs ugghhhh, But yeah I will keep adding features which gonna improve my productivity as a developer.
Last but not the least:
I would recommend you guys give Indiespace.store a try if you are someone who wants to build a SaaS app, In case you are someone just starting out and cannot afford it drop me a message on Twitter I'll be more than happy to help you.
That’s a great story told well.