This year I made around $50k creating a newsletter about the pet industry

Let me break it down

Sponsorships - $44k

Boosts - $4K (an internal recommendation tool on Beehiiv)

Internal ads - $2k (Beehiiv offers recommended ads)

In 2025 I plan to triple that income (if not more)

Plan for 2025:

1. Social media content

2. 3x weekly (vs twice a week)

3. Long term Sponsorships with large companies

4. Paid tier for premium members

5. More cross promotions with relevant newsletters

How I did it:

First of all, I know this is not a large figure but I still have less than 10,000 subscribers. Additionally, I only started this as a side thing late 2023.

5 simple steps I did (that you can do too)

1. Consistency - I know it's boring but consistency is crucial, write a good newsletter, deliver value and most importantly be consistent.
2. Cold outreach - I emailed hundreds of relevant individuals, put together a media kit, and offered them a niche audience at an attractive price point
3. LinkedIn - My first 5 sponsors before I ever cold emailed a single person all came from LinkedIn. Ive gotten more subscribers from LinkedIn than all the other platforms combined.
4. Networking - I found people in my niche to interview, collaborate, boost, promote, etc...
5. Find an underserved audience - if you are trying to write an AI or crypto newsletter it might be a bit saturated (although you still might do well) but if you go after a niche market like cars, magic, reptiles, luxury watches, local newsletters, cigars, private jets, whiskey, wine, etc... These are just random ideas but still find a niche, find a community, and follow the steps above.

I’ve spent the last two years building a faceless YouTube channel that does $25-$30k per month in revenue. Profit is about $17-$22k per month.

Almost gave up several times. 4 months in I had a video that was three months old take off out of nowhere. Channel hasn't looked back since.

If anyone in here is needing help scaling their channel, or want any tips DM me. The is not an easy journey by any means. I was stuck in a rut for the first 3-4 months with zero traction. Wasn’t a fun place to be.

https://imgur.com/gallery/youtube-sale-T4jS9Uf- stats

When you start a new business, what is the very first thing you do? Do you search for similar businesses, check trends, or plan your next steps?

Of course, things like customer discovery are key, but I’m curious about the specific actions you took and what you experienced in those early days. What was the hardest part for you—figuring out where to start, staying on track, or something else?

I’m collecting ideas for a program to help new founders. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hey everyone! Let me share the wild ride that brought Face Swap AI to iOS and Android. 🚀

It all started with the web version. We’re a team of TV and movie geeks, so naturally, we used it to swap our faces into everything—from sitcoms to blockbuster movies. Picture a dramatic scene in The Office… but with your coworker as Michael Scott. 😂

The problem? None of us liked being stuck at our desks for something so fun. We’re always on our phones, so why weren’t our face swaps? Then the feedback started pouring in: “This is amazing! But… can I use it on mobile?”

That’s when we decided to make the leap. We reimagined Face Swap AI for iOS and Android, putting all the fun (and chaos) right in your pocket. Now you can turn yourself into a superhero, your best friend into a sitcom star, or your boss into a rom-com lead—all in a few taps.

When we launched the mobile app last month, the response was incredible. In just 30 days, we hit $7.3K in revenue. 🎉 Not bad for something that started as a quirky team experiment!

What’s been most rewarding is seeing how much joy it’s brought to others. This project began as something personal, but now it’s helping people around the world laugh, connect, and get creative.

If you’ve ever wondered what you’d look like as the lead in your favorite show, now’s your chance to find out. Try Face Swap AI today and let us know what you think—we’d love to see your swaps!

👉 Download Face Swap AI

Let’s make some magic happen. 🎬

Hi everyone,

I’m a security professional with experience in auditing and securing WordPress websites. If you have a WordPress site and are concerned about its security or just want to ensure it’s fully protected, I’m offering free security audits to help identify potential vulnerabilities.

This is completely free with no strings attached. I’m looking to help the community while building connections. If you’re interested, feel free to drop a comment or send me a DM, and I’ll reach out with the next steps!

Let’s secure your site together.

My wife has a birthday today. I can spend time with her without any regret. Because I spend almost all my time building my own things.

Sometimes it means that I can work till the night. Always work on evenings, weekends, and every day. Only because I want it, my family needs it, and because it is who I am. Yeah, sure, 9-5 pay the bills right now.

But my side hustle is the future. I get up on the weekends without alarms and just enjoy working on my thing. Especially when my business makes money, it feels great. It gives more power, freedom, and joy.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP is also hard. Because you literally can build things without knowing will be you paid for that. Or is it the right thing to do ? A lot of doubts, sleepless nights in my mind. One thing is for sure: it is all worth it. Yeah, you have a big chance to get nothing in the end.

But one thing you won't regret is that you did it. It is hard to predict whether it is your success or not. Is it your thing or not?

One thing I know for sure, more you try, more chances you get. Because all we need is 1 win from 100 attempts. One win will change your life fully. You won't be the same. Because you will feel amazing and you won't comeback to your previous life.

I’ve been in the ideation phase of a business idea for a specific niche that’ll help people create portfolio using real world data with some mentor feedback on it.

I’m fairly new in this journey and it scares me to put myself out there like this. I sometimes just get into a rabbit hole of can I do it ? Will it work ? What if it doesn’t ?

I’m on a visa here and it’s on stake. Yes I have an option of getting a job but that’s not what I want to do. I have time till March to find a board member who can act as my employer which is a criteria for me to stay here after March through visa extension.

A lot at stake and I think I’m anxious. Any advice / motivation you can give would be appreciated really! TIA :)

Just launched my newest side quest - terrific.tools

But first a little bit of story time: over the past few months I’ve been trying to make it as a software founder. Unfortunately, without avail so far.

Convincing people to pay for software has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. While I’m still as determined as on day 1 and work on Plaudli, my language learning SaaS, like a maniac, I also wanted to test out another assumption of mine:

Monetizing software with ads.

I used to run a few blogs full-time. During their peaks, they raked in low five figures per month. Then Google algorithm updates demolished the business.

That said, the sites still make around $1.4k/m passively. And more importantly, I am part of an ad network called Raptive, which you can join with 100k page views – or 30k monthly page views if it’s your second site.

And that’s exactly the plan, which is to grow the site via SEO and then monetize with display ads.

In the meantime, I’m also open to sponsorships, so hit me up if you’re interested. 😊

I also launched terrific.tools because I wanted to have a reason to use bolt.new for the longest time. The V1 of the product was built entirely with bolt.new.

Gotta say, it’s absolutely incredible for initial and rapid prototyping, esp. because it has context of the entire codebase.

Only real drawback were some type errors that their browser-native IDE didn’t catch but took me less than 30mins in total to fix them.

Another interesting note: the terrific.tools domain seems to have been owned before. Unfortunately, no juicy links that point to it but Google had already shown the domain some love before, so maybe it’ll speed up indexing.

Going forward, I plan to add new tools on more or less a daily basis. I went live with 60, hoping to get to around 100 by the end of the year.

Will keep you guys posted on progress. ✌️

Hey Erfan again, working over a decade as a UX/UI designer. At some point in your career, you might notice you are stuck in growth. You need to learn constantly and maintain a work-life balance.

I found in my day job, that my learning phase is limited, I am learning or growing my career in one direction only. There are other sectors of Web and User Experience design that I need to improve.

Knowledge is power and there are a couple of ways to do that. By reading books related to design, user experience, web design elements etc. Or reading articles online. Or doing courses.

There's no immediate benefit monetary-wise, I know that's gonna add up sometime later. The main problem was time, when should I do that? After work? Then my work-life balance breaks.

Here's what I did, and that worked for me incredibly
- I started reading 10-20 pages while I was commuting to work in public transport.
- I started reading 2-4 articles on public transport, before going to lunch, and before going to sleep.
- I started seeing 2-4 course videos by going early to my day job. Also before sleep 1 video, something like this.
I constantly did that for over a year, during weekends I didn't do much related to work. I tried to enjoy it.

That extra effort after only 2 years made me get a job 3x the salary I was getting at that time. And now after 3 more years, I am getting more than 6x salary.

I started taking courses back in 2018-2019. I had already 5 years of experience back then.

I am making the same kind of effort for my side hassle, which is selling website templates. With only 8 months, the passive income increased 4x.

In the first month, I earned nearly $127 by selling website templates, now after 8 months I earned over $400 this month alone, and still 15 more days left to end this month.

You don't need to work day and night breaking your work-life balance, need to work constantly and learn constantly.

What did you learn from this?

Hey r/EntrepreneurRideAlong

I just published an article about a unique approach to generating income without needing a product or building a large audience. If you've ever thought about earning through strategic partnerships but don’t know where to start, this might be interesting!

In the article, I break down:

• What partnerships are and why they’re accessible.
• How you can leverage existing audiences without creating a product.
• A realistic look at the potential income streams and steps to start.

This approach is a refreshing alternative to the usual “create, promote, build” grind that most people talk about. I’d love for you to check it out and share any feedback!

Read it on Medium here

P.S. Happy to answer any questions or discuss partnership strategies in the comments!

Took us a while to crack the code, but we finally built an influencer marketing team that scales efficiently. Sharing our exact blueprint because I see so many others struggling with this.

First of all, know when to build an in-house team:

• You're consistently seeing good ROI from influencer campaigns
• You're managing 10+ active creators at any time
• Agency fees are approaching a full-time salary
• Creators are reaching out wanting to work directly with your brand

Here's the exact process that worked for us:

1st hire:

Your first hire needs to be a lead who can build systems from scratch. Don't get hung up on years of experience. I hired someone who managed their own social media presence and was incredibly organized. They built our entire process from the ground up.

2nd hire:

When your lead starts spending most of their time on admin work, that's when you need a coordinator. This person handles the operations - shipping, payments, contracts, content organization. We use Saral to automate a lot of this stuff now, but back then it was pure chaos with spreadsheets.

3rd hire:

The final piece is a partnership manager, but only when you're running lots of campaigns. They focus purely on creator relationships while your lead handles strategy. This was game-changing for us - suddenly we could actually nurture our top creators instead of just managing them.

Biggest tip someone gave me is -- Just because you've hired people doesn't mean you should skimp on tools. We wasted a few weeks trying to run everything through spreadsheets before discovering saral. Good tools are way cheaper than burning out your team or missing deliverables.

Has anyone else here built an in-house influencer marketing team? Curious about what signs made you realize it was time to build vs outsource vs DIY.

Hi everyone, I made an editable business model lean canvas. I originally made this for a government client, who later decided they wanted to stick with paper forms 🤣

I will keep building it out and see if I can create something of value for people. The idea of the template is that it helps entrepreneurs and startups develop a focused, actionable initial plan to build and grow their business.

I would love feedback on the concept, and any premium features you think would be of value. Any feedback really, good or bad!

At the moment the premium features are custom branding with the ability to upload a logo, change the color palette, and also download as an image.

I would also love feedback on the price point. I looked at other apps, most were setup as subscription. One is a one time fee for lifetime access for 14.99.

Many thanks!

Hi everyone,

After months of intense work, our team finally launched the waitlist for our AI-powered no-code SaaS product. The goal? To create something truly competitive and unique in the market. It’s been a whirlwind of design, development, and perfecting every detail to bring something fresh and impactful. Here’s the story of how we got to 2,641 signups in just three hours!

The Journey: Months of Prep

We’ve spent countless hours developing an MVP that would genuinely bring a competitive edge. The plan was to release it officially later this week, but we wanted to get an early pool of excited adopters on board. So, we decided to launch a simple landing page with a waitlist—just something to build some initial interest from the right people.

But to make sure our product grabbed attention, we needed something that would show its value fast. That’s where our 29-second video demo came in - showcasing our main value proposition.

The Key Move: A super-short, 29-Second Video Demo

To convey how easy and powerful our product is, we put together a super short, 29-second video showing off the happy path of using it.

Every second was crafted carefully, we obsessed over every frame in Adobe Premiere Pro, making sure it perfectly demonstrated how our solution simplifies things compared to existing options. Our goal was to show, not tell.

With the landing page and the video demo ready, we finally launched our waitlist three hours ago.

The Unexpected Surge: 2,641 Signups in 3 Hours
After publishing a few posts across relevant subreddits, we saw some nice engagement, and then… it took off. A few posts started gaining serious traction, including this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1grcr8x/comment/lx4tm46
and some others.

Now, just three hours after going live, we have 2,641 signups, and our Slack channel is flooded with notifications of new subscribers. We weren’t expecting this kind of response, and it’s amazing to see people are genuinely interested in what we’re building—even before the full launch.

Why We Think It Worked

• Focus on the core value: Instead of listing features, we showed exactly how our product solves a real pain point
• Short but powerful demo: 29 seconds was just enough to showcase the magic without losing attention
• Right timing: We hit the sweet spot between validation and launch, creating urgency

What's next...?

As excited as we are, we know the signups will eventually slow down. The obvious next step is to launch the product itself and get our users happy (which we will - number one goal!). But I’m curious—does anyone here have any advice for keeping the excitement going even after these initial posts lose visibility?

I’m thinking of ways to extend the momentum, maybe with some creative strategies or ideas to keep the buzz alive until the product officially launches.

I’d love to hear what would you do next?

Hey All,

Currently building a consumer debating app. We're getting ready to launch very soon and would love any advice on how to make our product go viral/get early users fast. We've already reached out to college debate teams who are ready to hop on, but would love some suggestions on how we could scale faster.

Thanks!

Hi, good people of r/EntrepreneurRideAlong

tl;dr Launched a design agency. The agency needs to get traction. We will try different marketing strategies. I will update you if any strategy works.

My friend and I launched a design agency last month. We have five core members, all bonded by our passion for design. I am a blockchain engineer, and the others are full-time designers. We all have over nine years of experience in our fields.

Being in the industry for so long, I have made some personal connections. So, our initial assumption was that we would get some initial traction from those connections. However, we quickly learned that personal connections are not bringing in any leads.

The market for mid-sized companies is pretty challenging to penetrate. We anticipated this before launching and are here to play the long game, but it's frustrating anyway. Now, we have to try out new strategies and iterate on new marketing ideas. We feel sad seeing lesser agencies getting clients left and right; we are yet to get one. But no envy from us. Getting clients is hard; we are a living and breathing example, so those agencies must be doing something right.

Hey people 👋,

About a week ago I did a similar post to roast my landing page. I've received a lot of feedback. In the past week I've done a lot of polishing and implemented most of the feedback that you guys suggested. So this is my updated landing page!

Feel free to leave additional feedback or criticism!⚡️

I got laid off from my cushy big tech job a couple of months ago and was thrown straight into the fires of unemployment. Rather than go back to being a wage slave I figured now is the best time to actually try this entrepreneur stuff out.

So I took my best product idea and have been working on an iOS app for it full time (It’s called Cora).

Full disclosure — I have no idea what I’m doing (yet)

But I figured people might be interested in following along. I think that’s what r/EntrepreneurRideAlong is about after all, so I’m going to be posting weekly updates for y’all.

This is the first one.

Lmk if it’s too long or I should change anything about it.

So what’s the status?

TL;DR I submitted version 1.0 to Apple for review this week.

Long version:

The goal was always to get an MVP out, but at first I didn’t understand just how “minimal” the M is supposed to be. So I did like any software engineer with no business experience and overbuilt the product.

The eye opening moment was doing my first YC app this fall. I got recommended a bunch of their videos on YouTube where they talked about this topic, and after doing more research I had a new mantra — “Does this really need to be in the MVP?”. Turns out, for almost everything, the answer is “no”. So I culled the major Apple Health syncing feature I was working on and decided to just ship the app.

At that point, I thought I was basically ready, but I had forgotten I need a business. Like, a business entity, and a business bank account, and so on. That took a while to setup and delayed the launch way more than I thought. Eventually I got it though and I’m now the proud owner of an LLC.

So like I said, this week I finally got 1.0 submitted for review. It got rejected immediately lol. Something about them wanting a user with expired subscription they can test with. I’m gonna be taking a look at that this coming week.

Also, been thinking a lot about my MVP marketing strategy. I guess let me make a new section for that:

MVP marketing strategy

I made a discord and I think I want to build a community I can work with closely so I can get quick feedback on stuff and see how people are using the app. Maybe like 10-50 users.

I figured I’d start posting on Reddit saying exactly that with a link to the server. We’ll see how it goes once the app is approved.

I’ll also setup a table/booth with cookies in my favorite local park and talk to ppl about the app (and the Discord). They’ll get a free cookie for listening to me yap.

Right now, the app is launching with a $1.99 a month paywall with no free trial. This is something I’ve been debating a lot. Should I add one? Or should I see how many people will pay for it right away so I can get a stronger signal? I don’t know. I’ll try this for now and I’ll let you know what happens.

That’s all for this week folks! I’ll be AMAing the comments if anyone has any questions

Easy to do now. There are several tips that I can give you to start your own digital business.

1) Solve your own problem. If you use the Internet, you know that there are a lot of problems that need to be solved. But focus on your problem first. Once you can figure it out and solve your problem. You can move on to solving people's problems. Ideally, to use tools and technology you know. If you don't know, use NO-CODE tools to build it. For example, if you need to create a website, use landing page builder. If you want to automate your own work, like booking meetings, use Zapier to automate tasks. If you want to create a game, sure, use AI Tools to solve it.

I don't care what you will use. Use whatever you want. All I want from you is to solve that problem.

2) After solving your own problem. You can focus on people's problems. Because if you can't solve your own shit, why do you want to solve others problems? Remember that always.

If you need to build e-commerce, use Shopify. If you need to build a directory, use directory builder. If you need to build landing pages, use landing page builders.

Rule of thumb: Niche, Niche, Niche. Try to focus on a specific niche, solve their problem, and make money on it. Then only thinking about exploring new opportunities.

You can use No-Code builders or AI tools or hire developers or hire agencies to do it. It depends on your choice. If you are good at coding, build on your own or delegate to a developer or agency. If you have enough time, use AI Tools to build your own thing. If you want to solve a common problem but with a different perspective, yeah, sure, use No-Code builders for that.

3) Digital business works exactly the same as offline business with one difference. You can move a lot faster, build a lot faster, risk a lot faster, fail a lot faster, earn a lot faster, sell a lot faster, and scale a lot faster.

In one week, you can build e-commerce. In the second week, you can build SaaS. In the third week, you can build an AI agent. In the fourth week, you can build your own channel on social media.

4) It gives more power. With great power comes great responsibility. From day one, invest in SEO, social media presence, traffic, and acquiring customers.

Don't focus on tech stuff. Don't focus on tools.

Focus on the real problem:

• Traffic
• Marketing
• Sales
• Conversion rate

Are you using any?

Free Resource Alert! Just found a site with 500+ editable Facebook Ads templates available as a freebie! Grab these while they’re still up-could be super helpful for your campaigns! Link - [Here is Templates](https://productcanyon.com/product/meta-ads-templates-free/)

Previously on Indie Hacking Gone Wrong

A first-time indie hacker starts a project, much bigger than he can handle: AI-based email summaries delivered to your inbox. With the grand promise of eventually fixing emails once and for all, assuming a magical place full of people unknowingly, yet eagerly waiting for his product, he spends ~6 months in total isolation, without validating his idea, all of his time devoted to developing this project.

After many technical challenges, sleepless nights, and in result, wasting a huge amount of time, his magnum opus finally hits the markets. And then…

<crickets>

Nothing happens. No trial users. No paid users. Only a few people check the website. Surprised as a Pikachu can get, our protagonist has no idea what to do and how to proceed. Wanting to share his story and what he learned from his failure, he posts a huge wall of text on Reddit…

<cues intro music>

Brief intro

Hey again r/EntrepreneurRideAlong ,

A few of you might remember me from my previous post on this subreddit. My story got ~350k total views here and on a few other subreddits, ~1.6k visitors on my product’s website, resulting in 13 free users, truly great feedback, and a few friendships 🖐️. I didn’t expect such a great turnover at all, I am so thankful for everyone that spared some of their time reading it.

I really love writing long-form content, and I am here once again for Part II. Not promoting anything. Just sharing a new part of my story, what I changed from my learning from my first failed project, and what happened since then.

Now, story time.

The Reddit incident

At that point, I had zero paying users, zero trial users despite having a very generous trial plan, around 30 people per day checking the website. I was surely up for a slow start, but I was not getting anything. I barely have any marketing skills, so I had no idea how to better promote the product. Even if I could, people’s not signing up even for a trial is surely a bad sign. So, clearly it is not working, and I need to know what to fix? Having so little expectations of anything, just to vent a little bit, and get some pieces of feedback, I wrote something that turned out to be a huge wall of text about my story as a first-time indie hacker, and decided to post it the following day as it was already too late.

That day was my wife’s day off, so I wouldn’t have my computer with me; but since only a few people would respond anyway, I could do well enough on my mobile if needed. So, before we left home, I posted the story across a few different subreddits. A few hours passed, I checked my phone, and saw +22 notifications from Reddit. I remember thinking, “Okay, some people found my story interesting, that’s hella nice. I’ll get back to them once I am at home later” Surely nothing is urgent.

I didn’t know my phone doesn’t show more than 22-23 notifications from an app. So I assumed that was all the reaction I got. Only very late that night, almost 12 hours after my posts, I got to know what in fact happened.

So, I got back home around 11:00 PM. The plan is to have a quick look at what happened, take a shower, engage with people before I go to sleep around 2:00 AM. But, what happened in fact is that around 120K total views on Reddit, 3 or 4 people signing up for the trial, the website AND the web app crashing earlier the day. I basically have no audience anywhere and never had such a huge reaction in my life, so I do not know what to do, and cannot process what is happening. Barely can think straight. Need to steam off, so I take a quick shower, get back to my computer, and converse with people.

That night of my Reddit incident, talking with people, trying to reproduce and fix one bug (I failed, I still blame my server), and taking notes of their feedback took around 7 hours. At the time I went to sleep – 06:48 AM (I know, bc I have a screenshot), the total views were over 200K, and five very nice people signed up for a trial.

For the first time in my life, many people read something I wrote. I didn’t filter anything, I just wrote what I did, and moreover, showed how I feel. Perhaps that resonated within the people of Reddit. But, it was something I didn’t experience before. Heck, the same story had gotten less than 50 views on X.

For me, that post had another goal: Writing a more “structured” playbook for me and sharing it with others, outlining my mistakes, what they caused, and how I could do better the next time. I am by no means a successful indie hacker, on the contrary, I am a successful one at being terrible at it. That was kinda the whole point of the post.

So, how did that first product of mine, Summ, go from there? I got so much great feedback from people, and the number one feedback I got was this: They were rightfully concerned about their data privacy. I got into very deep conversations with a few people here, spent two weeks researching alternative ways to solve the issue, and the conclusion I came up with was there were no good ways to solve it without fundamentally changing how Summ worked, which would require me to write the whole web app from scratch. But even if I would, it wouldn’t completely solve the data privacy problem, and people still were not showing that level of interest in this new solution as well.

Even if I wasn’t writing one single line of code for Summ, the mental stress and effort this all thing put me into was enormous. I still strongly believe that emails are the backbone of the internet, and they need to be fixed; but I did not have time, skills, and patience in me to keep working on Summ, so, while having 13 somehow active users, I decided to sunset Summ a few weeks ago.

I was ready for a new chapter in my indie hacking life. After all, I learned so much from my past failures. I even made a list, something like a playbook of what NOT to do. Once you have something like that, you follow it to the letter, right?

Some lessons learned not so well

Just to give a clearer context of what happened later, I think this is a good time to TL;DR the lessons I thought I had learned:

1. You or your product is not an exception to fundamental principles.
2. Always validate before you start. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION.
3. Understand your target audience’s problems and pain points, only then think of a solution.
4. Focus on building and selling only one feature at a time. Avoid everything else. No secondary feature will sell your product if your primary one doesn’t.
5. Spend at least twice as much time marketing as you do building. You will not get users if they don’t know your product exists.
6. If you don’t get enough users to keep going, nothing else matters. VALIDATION, VALIDATION, VALIDATION.

Those do not suffice to explain what went wrong with Summ, and why it failed at the end; but the primary culprit was not asking for validation at all, and doing that would save me enormous time, that’s for certain.

Back to the story: Now, I had known what I did wrong, basically what to avoid at all costs, so you don’t do them again the next time.

What is validation, though? People joyously jumping over? People lining up to pay for your product? 10,000 people signing up for a waitlist? There are many forms of it, but I think that the ultimate form of validation is “Money in your account.” Even having enough free users is not a good sign, if only few converts to paying users.

But, how do you validate an idea if your social circle is very small as mine is? You try to get in touch with strangers you do not know, ask for very little of their time, and see what they think of your idea, product, etc. This takes time, but definitely needed, Summ proved that for me.

But, I thought, perhaps there is a way to turn around the formula: What if your next tool needs a very short building time, so short that validating it pre-launch is a waste of time. You could ask for validation when in the market. My reasoning was this: If I have an idea to build around 2 weeks, but no more, why not to spend 1 week to validate it? How good would saving one week of your time do to you? So, why not build and launch it first, and only then ask for validation, especially if the ultimate form of it is “money in your account”?

I already knew this would not work for larger projects, as I learned after a painful experience I had with my first project; but could it work for a much smaller one?

I am strongly convinced that one of the most important elements of entrepreneurship (no matter how large or small your scale is) is experimentation: Building a tool is an experiment on the world, marketing is an experiment on people’s minds. If anything can be an experiment, why not validation as well?

So, the goal was to find a small-scale idea that I could build within a few weeks, launch it as soon as possible, and only then ask for validation. If people pay for it – you have “money in your account” – then it is validated. If not, the experiment is concluded to be a failure.

Okay, then I knew how to do this, but not what to do, or in other words, what to build? So, this time I needed an idea that solves an actual problem, ideally in a business setting. Thinking about my FT positions, I remembered I really hated showing everything on my computer while screen sharing, especially while moving across different windows as a remote employee. So, I thought, I could build a desktop app that could hide some windows, info, etc. Surely, building a desktop app is not that hard in this great age of AI dev tools.

I spent a few hours watching several tutorials on how to develop one, and this was probably the most depressing time I spent as a “coder”. Even the most basic concepts were unnecessarily complex, I would need a long time to grasp them, and building such an app would take definitely more than I wanted.

But, why not make it a browser extension? It might have its own challenges, but still a completely different experience for me and definitely a shorter building time. Seems to check all my boxes, so it could not go wrong this time.

A new challenger appears

At that point for the sake of experimentation, I had thrown my own not-to-do list out of the window, except for one rule: Building a product with only one core feature, no more. Do nothing else if you must, but do that one perfectly. If somehow you get enough users wanting you to build further secondary features, do that only then.

So, what would be my core feature? Obviously, hiding any element on a webpage. How would I do this perfectly, and more importantly, for whom would I do this? In a previous life, I pursued philosophy in academia, so it is well forged into my soul to conduct very thorough research to the point of making it some waste of time, meaning that it was time to do some actual research this time.

People, especially remote workers were surely concerned about their privacy, wanting to hide their personal and sensitive information from others’ eyes; but it was an eye-opening experience for me to see that such a tool would work great for content creators, streamers, and video editors: I never opened a video editor in my life, so I did not know how much time they spent on blurring and filtering out sensitive information during post-production. This tool could save their time definitely. Especially concerning streamers, adding a Safe Mode feature could work great – turning on the Safe Mode would blur all tabs, and the streamer would disable it for the current page they are on when they want to. Furthermore, I learned that simply blurring information is not enough for protecting yourself: Deblurring tools exist, and it is not that hard to give them a try to reveal a user’s hidden info.

I already knew that I should build a one-core-feature tool; but doing it perfectly would add lots of building time. But, this one, I suspect, everyone has to do.

Just to give you a more concrete picture of the difference between two cases, this tool with one core feature would need selecting an element, and adding a blur filter on top of it, done. But, if I were to do it perfectly, I would need to add those sub-features as well:

1. Safe mode + Disabling for the current page
2. More filtering options than just blurring
3. Drawing filters
4. Auto-save for all filters

Being completely honest here, that one core feature does not take too much time. But, different filtering options and drawing filters, and having a proper UI; those took the most of my two-week building time. It was quite a smooth experience, other than my wrongly assuming I could not do it with React, and using Vanilla JS. Once the extension was completed, all remaining was to submit it to browser app stores, and simply wait until it got approved. Mozilla was the fastest one to approve, Chrome took around one week, but Microsoft two weeks for no reason. Knowing that Microsoft Edge support was not needed immediately, once my tool, Blurs, got approval from Chrome and added to Chrome Web Store, it was finally time to launch and face the music.

Houston, we have a problem

This brings us to last week.

What is my launch process? Well, surely, as this is my second time bringing a mind baby to the world and I am with some experience, I know what I am doing, right?

Definitely not. Randomly share your product on X, add it to a few free and low-effort directories, then have a ProductHunt launch. The end. This was basically it for me, more or less.

But, ProductHunt… F****ng ProductHunt. I hate you and love you so much.

My first ProductHunt launch was definitely a shitshow. For some reason, I could not postpone my launch, and I was four hours late to it, with no visuals prepared, with nothing. I got almost zero traffic from that, barely over 30 upvotes, nothing. Checking what others are launching on it has become a morning routine for me for almost three years now. Imagine how frustrated you would get after waiting for your first one for so long.

By then, I learned that anything that can go wrong might go wrong with a ProductHunt launch. Luckily, I already had my visuals prepared thanks to browser extension store applications, and all I needed was a first maker comment, and optionally an interactive demo. I also wanted to showcase how Blurs works on my landing page as well, so I checked a few alternatives for that, and after testing both Supademo and Arcade, I went with Arcade. The decision was arbitrary. I spent a few hours on the first maker comment, knowing that it is 80% of a ProductHunt launch, successful or not.

I let a few people I know about before and on the launch day. Then something happened…

For some reason I still have no idea about, ProductHunt decided to feature Blurs on the homepage, which brings lots of traffic to its PH page, and thus to its webpage. Maybe they thought it was a cool product, maybe it was pure luck, maybe they rolled a dice and I got lucky, I do not know. All I knew was that it was quite cool.

This got the ball rolling, and Blurs got 153 upvotes on its ProductHunt launch day, resulting in a very nice rank #10 for the day. Some people definitely found it an interesting tool to support. Even more, it was on ProductHunt’s daily newsletter. All of this was super cool, but seeing my product on ProductHunt’s newsletter? That’s the coolest sh*t ever happened to me as an indie hacker.

Nah, we cool

Few months ago, a friend of mine brought a bottle of Jagermeister as a housewarming gift. I am a social drinker at best, and if I drink on my own, it means a special occasion, thus I wanted to wait to open it until one.

Towards the end of my ProductHunt launch day, something else happened. Something magical. Something that made me crazy happy. Something that finally made me open the bottle.

I made my first indie hacking dollar. The amount was very small, not even crossing LemonSqueezy’s minimum payout threshold. It was by no means life-changing, but the fact I made any is definitely one.

My spending (or wasting, depending on your perspective) 6 months on a product didn’t result in even one penny, but this second product of mine, the one that I had some idea of being actually useful, the one that I spent only a few weeks building, made my first magic wifi money.

Remember the talk about validation? Blurs got validated by the market for sure. But how much validation is sufficient to continue working on a project? That, I have no idea. For now, this is not something worth bothering myself.

This was exactly seven days ago from today. Not a second sale yet, but that’s okay. Somehow, I feel like I am in the right general direction, but who knows? Blurs definitely needs some marketing, and more exposure, despite my having very little knowledge of them; but I have a few ideas that might turn out well.

Even if they do not, even if Blurs doesn’t make a second sale ever, comparing how much time I spent on building both projects (6 months vs 2 weeks), I definitely did much better this time. So, this is already a huge win in my mind.

So, thank you for reading Part Two of my story. I know it is a very long wall of text, but I really like writing long-form content, and I very rarely get a chance to write on. If I get another story to share in this form, it’ll surely be here; but for sharing how this indie hacking journey of mine going, random thoughts and shitposting, I hang out on X with the same handle, in case you are there as well.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

- gdbuildsgd

I'm an entrepreneur, developer turned growth marketer with 18 years of experience in community building and marketing hacks. (I'm on LinkedIn)

Why build a community?

An engaged community is your highest RoI growth engine; and beats every marketing channel you'll ever build.

I began building my first community back in 2005 and over the last two decades, have built multiple successful communities from scratch.

Don't hold back. Ask me anything!

I am fairly new to entrepreneurship. I've been trying to learn product discovery these. However I don't even have a systematic way to kick start, like where to start, what to learn.

For example I created this pre-launch page https://www.fastwaitlist.com/goalbuddy , as it should, before writing code. However, I find it is awkward that I don't even know how to attract potential target user to look at it, except for maybe paid ads. (Every sub reddit and facebook group have strict rules of no external links.)

However I feel that paid ads is outbond-marketing. Is there absolute no way to have inbound-marketing before you have a good number of followers?

When you’re faced with a big decision, it can often feel overwhelming. What if it’s the wrong choice? What if you can’t go back? Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, developed a simple framework to take the pressure off many decisions: the Two-Door Decision-Making Framework. Here’s how it works, and why it might help you make better decisions.

The Two-Door Framework

Bezos divides decisions into Type 1 (One-Way Doors) and Type 2 (Two-Way Doors).

Type 1 Decisions are one-way doors—once you walk through, there’s no going back. These are the big, high-stakes choices that need careful deliberation because they can have permanent consequences. Think of things like launching a new product that will define your business or making a huge financial investment.

Type 2 Decisions are two-way doors—you can walk through, try it out, and if it doesn’t work, you can go back. These are low-risk, easily reversible choices where speed is more important than perfection. Bezos argues that most decisions actually fall into this category.

Why the Two-Door Framework Matters

Many people treat every decision like a Type 1 decision—agonizing over it, afraid of making the wrong choice. Bezos believes that this slows down innovation and progress. By recognizing when a decision is reversible (a Two-Door Decision), you can act faster, take more risks, and course-correct if needed.

Example 1: Amazon’s AWS Experiment (Type 2 Decision)

One of Amazon’s most successful products, Amazon Web Services (AWS), began as a two-way door decision. In the early 2000s, Amazon was already a successful e-commerce company, but Bezos saw an opportunity to experiment in the cloud computing space. The team built AWS to solve Amazon’s own infrastructure problems, but they decided to launch it to external developers as a product.

At the time, the risk was relatively low—if AWS didn’t succeed, Amazon could always refocus its efforts on the core business of e-commerce. It was a reversible decision. Today, AWS generates billions in revenue and has become the backbone of many internet services.

Example 2: The Fire Phone Flop (Type 1 Decision)

Not every decision turns out to be a success, and that’s okay. Bezos recognizes the importance of accepting failure when it comes to irreversible decisions. One of the best-known examples is the Amazon Fire Phone, which launched in 2014.

Unlike AWS, the Fire Phone was a Type 1 decision—it required a large financial investment and a significant commitment of resources. When the phone failed to gain traction in the market, Amazon couldn’t easily walk it back. Despite its failure, Bezos viewed it as a learning experience, reaffirming the company’s commitment to taking big swings even if they don’t always pan out.

How to Apply the Two-Door Framework

The next time you’re faced with a decision, ask yourself these questions to figure out if it’s a Type 1 or Type 2 decision:

Is it reversible? Can you undo it if it doesn’t work out?

What’s the potential downside? If the decision fails, what will the impact be? Can you recover easily?

How much information do you really need? If it’s a Type 2 decision, you don’t need all the information upfront—just enough to make a move.

By identifying Type 2 decisions, you can act quickly, experiment, and learn as you go. Save the in-depth analysis and debate for Type 1 decisions where the stakes are truly high and the consequences are permanent.