Nothing to listen to this week.

After 31 weeks in a row, I need to pause this newsletter for a while.

I’m not sure if I’ll be back next week or in a few weeks.

I am so locked in building my new app, just coding 24/7 👨🏻‍💻

I am also considering quitting social media for a while.

Thus, I’m lacking creativity and motivation to deliver decent content to you guys.

I just need to be focus without distractions.

This is my greatest bet so far — will share more details soon!

Monk mode ON.

See you soon!

Juanjo

Long time ago, I published in an issue the tools that I used in a daily basis.

Some things changed after then.

Here are my new additions to my workflow.

The last list was in July, but since then, I’ve started using quite a bunch of new tools in my daily work.

And some of them, I use A LOT.

Like, I cannot imagine my life without them.

As in the Episode I, some are included in the Setapp subscription, and some not.

Let’s list them all…

Cursor

I arrived late to this party, but I can’t live without it now.

It’s simply the best AI powered IDE that I’ve tried.

It’s the best taking into account the project’s context, performing changes in different files and creating the new ones. The Composer mode level is something that others cannot reach right now.

However, it is far from being perfect. It has quite a learning curve on how to ask things or guiding the assistant on how it should perform the tasks requested.

It still hallucinates some times and makes mistakes, but now with Cursor, I feel more like a code reviewer rather than a programmer.

It needs setting up some things in terms of using it for iOS. I followed these two guides:

• How to use VSCode/Cursor for iOS development

• Rules for AI Using cursorrules

However, there is a tool getting better and better day by day, that may make me don’t use Cursor anymore for iOS development. It is…

Link

Alex Sidebar

The Cursor for Xcode.

This is literally their headline.

With the recent 2.0, it is getting closer and closer to Cursor.

It is getting that good that I am starting to prefer staying in Xcode using Alex, rather than having to jump back and forth between Cursor and Xcode.

And it is free during beta — I’ve been using it for free for months, unbelievable.

Link

Downie

I use this little tool all the time for downloading videos from YouTube or any social media.

Just paste the link and hit download.

Super convenient!

It makes a perfect combo with Permute for extracting the mp3 audios of videos.

I love this little tools that performs single tasks but they do it damn good.

Included in Setapp.

Mockuuups Studio

This tool is simply INSANE.

The amount of mockups they have available for doing product placement of your product simply makes no sense.

You can find mockups in literally any context, and you can showcase your apps just dragging and dropping your screenshots.

Included in Setapp.

Sip

A super convenient tool that does just one thing: picks colors and save them in custom collections.

It’s super convenient having it in the menu bar always available

Included in Setapp.

PixelSnap

This tool feels like magic.

Measure pixel by pixel any element on your screen, it doesn’t matter what.

I don’t know how the fuck these guys technically built this tool, tbh.

But it is so convenient and can be very useful in some scenarios.

Included in Setapp.

QuitAll

I love this one.

Hit Control + Option + Q and just quit ALL the apps that you have opened.

You can configure it with some exceptions, but it is such pleasant to see all your apps quit instantly.

Peace.

Included in Setapp.

NotchNook

This one is super nice if you have a MacBook with notch.

It takes the same approach as the Dynamic Island on the iPhones: creating a feature from a disadvantage.

Access media controls, calendar events, shortcuts, and more — all from the top of your screen.

And all of it with super duper animations.

So cool!

Included in Setapp.

Xcodes

Yes, in plural, it isn’t a typo.

This is a rather classic one, but I haven’t started using it until last month for installing Xcode 16.2

This is a convenient, simple but powerful tool for managing the Xcode installation.

Update, install several, change defaults, try betas…

And it is way faster than installing it by .xip or App Store.

A must!

Link

Screen Studio

This is simply the best tool for recording demo videos of your products or doing demonstrations, while talking and having a view of your camera.

You probably have been tons of videos made with this tool on Twitter.

The automatic animations while zooming and focusing the mouse cursor are super recognizable.

Kudos to Dan, my guardian angel, that decided to gift me a lifetime license for being member of his awesome community, the Morning Maker Show

Link

And that’s it!

I think this is enough for the Episode II.

I’ll come back after some months with a new episode, when I collect a decent a mount of new tools that deserve to be shared with you!

See you next week!

Juanjo

This year comes to an end.

This was my first whole year as indie hacker.

In this post I summarize how it was.

This year 2024 has been awesome for me.

This is the one year I spent completely as a full-time solopreneur.

It’s probably also the year when I worked the most days in my life.

But, when I started this journey, I had engraved in my brain, like a mantra, that success wouldn’t come out of nowhere.

This was going to be a long term hard grind, specially in the early stages.

And it was.

And it is.

And it still will be.

I am still pretty far from working relaxed 2h/day while my products bring money to the table in autopilot.

Probably that may be the final goal, even though I think the part that I enjoy the most is the early phase of building new things.

However, I don’t feel it like work.

When you work for yourself, and you know all the effort and hours that you put on it will pay off in your benefit, you can’t stop grinding.

For better or worse.

For me the most difficult part was the “disconnection”.

Disconnect for prioritize your health and do exercise.

Disconnect for spending quality time with your family and friends.

Disconnect to avoid burnout.

However, even though you know the disconnection is good for you in the long run, it is damn difficult to achieve.

Mostly, because you don’t want to.

Because you are so addicted to this.

To build things, improve your sales, grow audience, achieve the financial freedom.

You think about it while cooking, while having a shower, while going for a run, while watching a movie with your girlfriend…

It may be stressful, specially in the early stages, when you are not even ramen profitable.

So you have to take in mind, that this isn’t a bed of roses.

Be sure to have a strong mindset and learn to deal with the failure.

But it in the end, damn, it paid off.

I’m starting to see the light.

Things are starting to work.

I enjoyed this 2024 so much and I can summarize it around three pillars:

🛠️ Building things

I built 12 projects this year:

1. WrapFast

2. Marvin

3. Boilermates

4. SurfBuddy

5. Widgets for Stripe

6. 7 days, 7 apps

I’m an iOS developer, but this year I tried doing web things stepping out of my comfort zone, like WrapFast landing page, Marvin Chrome Extension and Boilermates.

My big win was WrapFast.

I rode well the boilerplates wave and created the best seller iOS boilerplate.

My plan for 2025 is growing my App Store portfolio, making it my main income.

I also won two products of the day in Product Hunt with Marvin and Widgets for Stripe 🏆

🤑 Making money

I made this year somewhere around $40.5k

• WrapFast: $25k

• App Store: $2137

• Building AI identifiers as a service: $6k

• Selling two AI Identifier apps: $4.5

• Marvin: $1750

• Boilermates $1035

I could had made way more freelancing or in a 9-5 job.

However, achieving ramen profitability as a solopreneur is a huge milestone for me.

My best months were November with $4k+ and this month, December, where my revenue skyrocketed to $15k+ thanks to the 7 days, 7 apps challenge.

👥 Growing audience

My favorite platform for content creation, and the one I enjoy the most, is Twitter/𝕏.

I started the year with 680 followers.

I ended up the year with 8667 followers.

I posted EVERY SINGLE DAY, never missed a day.

Along the way, I started using Typefully to start cross-posting to other platforms like LinkedIn, Threads or recently Bluesky.

In Threads I grew from zero to 602 followers.

In LinkedIn I grew from I don’t know to 1484 followers.

I also spent some time creating video content mainly for Twitter, and eventually posting it also to YouTube.

I also live streamed for the very first time and made two series:

• Building Widgets for Stripe from scratch to launching on Product Hunt — and winning the Product of the Day

• Building 7 apps in 7 days publishing it to the App Store

My Youtube channel grew from zero to 556 subs.

My Twitch channel grew from zero to 114 followers.

And last but not least, this newsletter.

I started in June 9th delivering an issue every single Sunday, and never missed one.

The newsletter has grown to 527 subscribers!

That’s insane — thank you all for reading my messy thoughts! 🫶🏼

(And apologies to my native-English speakers out there 😬)

Let’s crush the 2025 🔥

My plans for the next year are:

• Build more apps and make the App Store my main income.

• Keep creating content, stream more and keep growing my personal brand.

• Stay more Disconnected and prioritize health

• Meet in person some indie friends 🫶🏼

I wish all of you guys a HAPPY NEW YEAR and great success in all your resolutions!

See you next week.

See you next year.

Juanjo

It’s Christmas time! 🎅

I’m traveling to Galicia to spend a week at home with my family.

My grinding pace will slow down during the holidays.

For those of you taking a break from work, maybe you’ll use the time to start new side projects.

Whatever you do, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

• Spend quality time with your loved ones.

• Enjoy delicious food.

• Gain a little extra holiday weight.

• Watch your favorite Christmas movies — L.O.T.R. is the best one ever.

• Play lots of video games.

• Have fun programming!

Merry Indie Christmas!

Juanjo

My best month so far had been $4k+

It was actually last month, thanks to the Black Friday.

However this month I’ve quadrupled that 😱

This month has been crazy.

I didn’t expect this at all, nor did I plan for it either.

I just do YOLO driven development and apply it to my indie life as well.

It turns out the ‘7 days, 7 apps’ challenge was more profitable that I’d ever thought.

This is how I made this month (so far) $15k+:

• I defined the scope of an app type (AI Identifiers) and packetized it in a service.

• I wrapped it all (pun intended) and marketed behind the brand of WrapFast.

• Started a ‘7 days, 7 apps’ challenge, building AI Identifiers on livestream using WrapFast. Promoting at the same time the service and the boilerplate. Dogfooding as its finest.

• Even though it was accidentally, I made it happen during the Black Friday, so the boilerplate sales skyrocketed.

• Listed for sale 6 of the 7 apps that I made. Leverage the hype for selling two of them.

• Charge an extra for UI tweaks on one of the app sold.

• I had one Plant Identifier order, the very first one of my productized service 🥳

• WrapFast sales doing great in the top 5 of ShipFast leaderboard.

• Still have 4 apps available for sale, so I could potentially do some extra in the rest of the month 🤞🏼

THE PROBLEM

For me it doesn’t feel like the way I wanted to make money when I started this joutney, a year ago.

I still want to live out of my apps’ revenue.

Even I am making money selling products, this is in a certain way, too close to freelancing.

And that, makes me don’t feel totally that sense of freedom that everyone is pursuing in this community.

THE GOOD PART

This is a nice founding to keep pushing for the next months.

Focusing on my projects, spend time on marketing and don’t stress for not having for eating.

I’m learning how to make money from different sources.

I am realizing that, in fact, I am able to.

Realizing that, I’m not an impostor — even though that feeling never goes totally away, I think 🥲

In the meantime I am also:

• Growing audience

• Growing personal brand

• Learning a lot

• Making friends

• Waking up without an alarm

• HAVING FUN

I hope you folks don’t feel this like pretentious shit.

The ones that were following me know that I always was open and public, even while making peanuts, not so long ago.

I hope it serves as inspiration to the guys that everyday DM me.

I hope it serves as inspiration to YOU, that are just starting, or thinking in doing the leap.

Cheers and keep pushing!

2025 is going to be fun! 👨🏻‍💻🤘🏼

Juanjo

Last week I announced the 7 days, 7 apps challenge.

It’s over! (And me exhausted 💀)

Now I’m selling the apps that I built.

Learn how’s the process 👇

So, yes! I finished the 7 days, 7 apps challenge!

To be honest, I think this is the last challenge I will ever stream.

I ended up exhausted of having to repeat all time kind of the same — particularly all the bureaucracy and repetitive stuff of submitting an app to the App Store.

Next streams will be more chill, just relaxed regular coding sessions.

And now what?

As you may know, I did this for promoting my productized service of building AI Identifiers fast in WrapFast.

I cannot do marketing for all of them, and I also have other projects in mind.

Thus, I picked the BonsAI Identifier and care one to focus on it and I listed the other 6 for sale.

I priced each one $2k, same as the service on my website.

I sold the Coin identifier within the first hours after posting it on Twitter, for $2.5k. A little extra for accepting the payment in crypto and guidance on how to deploy the backend and submit updates to the App Store.

The bird identifier also flew away (pun intended) in the next hours.

So I have now available 4!

Just received lots of DMs so they won’t last too much fortunately 😂

What I didn't expect was totally non-technical profiles asking for this.

Had to guide them in everything, even explaining what is a GitHub repo 😅

That's making me realize that I would be a good teacher for a course on how to build these things the ground up.

First productized service sell

Another thing that happened this week is that I received the first request for building an AI Identifier (Plan Identifier) and… we managed the assessment through the Twitch chat, on live stream!

What a time to be alive, dudes.

I’m building this one for $3k as he requested a few tweaks on the onboarding and app’s design, so I charged an extra $1k.

A new milestone

November was my all-time high monthly revenue passing over $4k for the first time.

In December 8th, and I’ll make >$10k!

Totally insane how things can change from one month to other in the solopreneurship world.

See you next week guys!

Take care!

Juanjo

I started indie hacking in late 2023.

Thus, this is my first BF!

WrapFast won’t be ever as affordable as this Black Friday weekend.

I’m running a 60% discount so you can get it for only $99.

Shipping iOS apps and AI wrappers fast wouldn’t be that cheap!

I also listed it in two indie directories created ad hoc for this, and run buy two legends — Dan and Tony Dinh

• Rare Big Deal

• Awesome Black Friday

During this Black Friday week I’m also streaming the challenge of building 7 apps in 7 days.

So far I’ve created a Fish Identifier and a Coin Identifier.

I do this for 4 reasons:

1. Promoting my new productized service of building AI Identifiers

2. Promote WrapFast’s Black Friday

3. Grow audience and engage with them

4. Have fun on stream ☺️

By the time you are reading this, I will probably have launched a Rock Identifier as well and be building another on stream — so come to say hi on the chat!

Twitch: https://twitch.tv/thegalicianjob

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@juanjovalino

I hope you have a great and productive Black Friday!

See you next week!

Juanjo

Last week I wrote about my app going free for 24h.

These are the results one week later.

So it’s been a week after I told you how crazy my app went in downloads.

So, a week later, am I swimming in money?

Ok, not at all.

Let’s break down a little bit some data.

These are the app downloads:

My app used to have 1-5 downloads a day, and after the AppAdvice event, looks like it’s stablished at 20-30 daily units.

I’m quite happy with this result.

The ASO expert, Steve Young says that you need to focus first on getting downloads.

Once you have 20-25 daily, you can start focusing on optimizing your funnel.

So that will be my focus in next weeks: changing the onboarding, making it longer and personalized to the user, do A/B test with paywall configurations, etc…

As you can see, in revenue terms, I have so much room for improvement:

Not gonna lie, to be honest, I was expecting way more sales than that.

Now, I have an app with decent daily downloads and a pretty good ratings amount:

Therefore, it’s time to work in increasing the conversions.

See you next week!

Juanjo

Get an AI Identifier app directly on the App Store and start monetizing 👇

I had a shitty app with less than 1k downloads in a year.

It went free for 24h and skyrocketed.

This is how you can do it.

The other day, while binging on YouTube (as usual) I came across this video by Steve Young.

I cannot recommend enough this guy, his videos are pure gold for indie devs selling on the App Store.

In this video, he tells how he grew an app from making less than $100/mo to $60k/year.

He passed from barely having downloads to… 100k!

The trick is easy: listing your app for free for 24h

This is how to do it:

1. List your app in platforms like AppAdvice or Indie App Santa. I went with AppAdvice because it’s free, and they answered quite fast to give me a slot. To do so, follow the instructions here (at the very bottom)

2. Create a lifetime product. This is important because you will have more downloads if it’s a lifetime than a year for free, for example. If you can’t really afford lifetime, because your API costs are expensive for instance, go for a yearly offer.

3. Set up the price at $0. I use RevenueCat, so I can change products in realtime from the dashboard. Therefore, I created a new product “Lifetime Gift” at $0, and changed it at the proper time. If you don’t use RC, just schedule a price change in the App Store Connect.

4. Request reviews! If you don’t do it yet, prompt the request review during the onboarding process. Set another review request just right after the purchase, so you leverage the user’s dopamine of getting one thing for free. Don’t worry, if they already rated during the onboarding, the second request won’t appear.

5. Leverage the ASO boost! You will obtain thousands of downloads and hundreds of ratings and you will climb up a lot on App Store rankings. Thus, it’s time to pay attention to your onboarding funnel, do A/B tests, collect user feedback, etc…

I tried it this week with PhotoCaption AI and I got 600+ ratings with a 4.8 average. Pretty insane! 🔥

I will report you back in a few weeks to tell how is it going, if I manage to keep the download boost stable and increment the sales.

See you next week!

Juanjo

Get an AI Identifier app directly on the App Store and start monetizing 👇

Some solopreneurs do B2C.

Some solopreneurs do B2B.

Some solopreneurs do freelancing.

And there are some solopreneurs that productize their services.

I quit my 9 to 5 job in 2023 and started freelancing for a client for 6 months.

After finishing the gig, I had saved a 1-year runaway so I decided to full time indie.

It’s been a year now and, even though I managed to be barely ramen profitable, my savings got a serious cut.

So I have three options:

1. Enter in monk mode and spend only for food and living, until shipping a product that “makes it”.

2. Accept some freelance gigs.

3. Productize a service.

Even I’ve been in option 1 for some months, I wouldn’t want to live like that for so many time.

Option 2 would be my last choice, since it means cutting so many time from my indie projects.

Thus, I’m going to try the third approach: sell my development service as a product.

This is a growing trend lately within the indie hacker community.

I came across this term for the first time last year, when I watched a video by Starter Story. They told how Brett was making more than $1M a year productizing his design services.

As far as I know, you can follow two approaches:

1. Selling your services as a subscription

2. Selling a closed package: a design, an MVP, etc..

I will follow the second approach: selling the development of an iOS MVP as a product.

Developing an MVP is pretty broad or generalist to be sold at a closed price.

It depends pretty much on what features the client needs and how complicated are them to implement.

Therefore, it would mean having lots of calls and meetings with clients — and I don’t want that.

However, using my boilerplate (WrapFast), I can narrow down an app type to be sold as a product: AI Identifier apps.

Why identifier apps?

It’s a great trend on the App Store since vision capabilities for AI came out.

They are easy to build, easy to monetize and the requirements are pretty defined.

Plant Identifier, Rock Identifier, Fish Identifier, Insect Identifier… there are plenty of them making insane monthly amounts:

For sure, the App Store is flooded with them and the competition is huge.

With time and patience, playing around with ASO and doing some tactics like launching for free in platforms like AppAdvice or Indie App Santa, you may climb up on keyword rankings and eventually do some decent money.

I have some indie friends on twitter doing it, like Adam Lyttle:

Or Mario, which is an expert in build and selling this kind of apps:

So, from now on, I’m going to experiment with this productized thing and see how is it going.

And, to promote this, I will be live streaming a challenge — starting next week:

“7 days, 7 apps”

I will build and publish to the App Store one AI Identifier a day during a week.

Do you think I would make any sale?

Do you have experience productizing your services?

I would love to hear from you.

See you next week,

Juanjo

Programming used to be like solving puzzles.

We got addicted to it because of how satisfying it was.

LLMs changed everything…

During my 20s, I studied Building Engineering while working in a pizza restaurant.

I literally made and delivered thousands of pizzas.

I thought I’d like to build buildings for a living.

It wasn’t until my late 20s, when I coded a game for fun, that I realized I loved to build software instead of buildings.

It was the feeling of craftsmanship, personal fulfillment, solving problems, facing challenges and breaking things over and over until something finally worked, what made me fell in love with programming pieces of software.

I think that, nowadays, with the massive arrival of LLMs, we are starting to lose this experience.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first one using AI tools 24/7 for building products.

ChatGPT, Anthropic, Cursor, Copilot, Perplexity… which of you doesn’t use any of these in your development workflow?

God damn, I even sell a product for building apps that consume those APIs.

But, I can’t help feeling a bit dirty every time I ask ChatGPT something and it spits out a full solution in seconds, that used to take me all afternoon to figure out.

I think I’m getting dumber because I’m not making my brain work.

In a way, this kind of feels now like if you were in a race of having to build software as fast and effortless as possible.

It is what it is.

We cannot stop the progress, we should embrace it and adapt to it.

Same as we use calculators for doing maths.

Same as a carpenter uses electric jigsaws and sanders.

Same as we use frameworks and we don’t program with 1s and 0s.

We have to embrace LLMs and use them as new productivity tools for our work.

With them, we can ship faster and more products, so for us solopreneurs, it is a game changer for our business.

However, in my opinion, it is making the process less fun.

It is starting to lack of that craftsmanship feeling.

I wonder if in the future, same as there is a market for hand made furniture, hand made knives, hand made bread… there would be a market for “hand made” software.

Tell me, how integrated is AI in your workflow?

And… are you experimenting the same feeling?

See you next week,

Juanjo

I get asked this question every day.

It’s been a year since I jumped into it.

I’ll tell in this issue my point of view about it.

Milestone update: My boilerplate passed the $15k mark! 🥳

As many of you may know, I’m from Galicia.

The northwestern region of the Iberian Peninsula.

Spaniards have a lot of stereotypes about us: we never see the sun, we only eat seafood, only cows there, we are all cocaine traffickers, we always answer with another question and we are so indecisive — we always answer ‘it depends’.

Thus, when I am asked:

When to go full time indie?

Is it better quitting your job and go all in?

Is it better doing it in your spare time and quit when you make enough money?

I’m going to be extremely Galician answering that: ‘IT DEPENDS’.

1. Do you know yourself?

Everyone is different.

You should do an introspective journey for knowing yourself.

How do you use to handle these situations?

Are you more likely to do gradual transitions? Or do you need to drastically change things?

I’m more like the second type.

For instance, when I quit smoking about 10 years ago, I just did it overnight.

I was weighting around 100kg in my teenage. I started drastically diet and exercise and lost 20kg+

I’m not saying it’s the best way or even healthy to do it, but it’s how it works for me.

I’m just not good at doing gradual transitions.

For switching to a full time indie developer, it was the same.

I quit my 9 to 5 and did freelance for 6 months.

I saved money for a 1 year runaway, and took the plunge.

2. What’s your environment?

Ok, for me it is easy to say that.

I have no kids.

I have no mortgage.

I have no pets.

I share the living costs with my girlfriend and she has a stable 9 to 5 job.

I have no constraints or difficulties, other than saving enough money to run away.

My worst scenario would be:

• Anything I make doesn’t work

• I run out of savings

• I have to go back to freelancing to accumulate again enough savings.

• I start again.

IMHO, my worst scenario doesn’t scare at all.

So, why stressing about it? Take the leap.

However, your situation may be different.

Maybe you have kids, mortgage, your family depends economically on you, and so on…

Everyone’s life is different, and you have to evaluate your own.

If you struggle with those constraints, you can try doing it in your limited spare time.

It is possible.

Damn, for sure it is.

I see super heroes doing it like Aivars Meijers or Vladimir Khuraskin.

They both have children and build their successful apps while having their jobs as iOS developers.

There are also exceptional super legends, like Adam Lyttle. He started making indie apps full time, with 5 kids and a $200k debt.

Now he’s making $40k/mo from his indie iOS apps and debt free.

Sometimes, constraints are beneficial and make you more efficient.

3. What are your goals?

Not everyone needs or really wants to quit their job.

Not everyone has the mindset to jump into entrepreneurship.

Therefore, don’t be forced to do it just because there are a bunch of ‘cool guys’ spreading their MRR screenshots on Twitter.

Maybe you are pretty happy with your job, you do things that you like and have nice colleagues.

And maybe, you just enjoy crafting side projects in your free time, just because you like it, as a hobby.

I think that this could be perfectly another case — just coding small projects for the sake of enjoying it.

And eventually, one of them may even succeed.

So, don’t be harsh with yourself, and don’t force what you are not naturally feeling.

Still struggling

I am still fighting to have a comfortable life while being a full time indie hacker.

So far, I just managed to make enough for paying my bills and my food.

In other words, I am barely ramen profitable 🍜

After a year grinding, I still cannot say “I made it”.

But, I knew pretty well when I joined this game, that this was going to be a long term situation.

Most of successful indies failed dozens of times until making it.

Consistency is key.

Keep grinding.

See you next week! 🫡

Juanjo

Last week I told you that I was launching my new app.

So I launched.

And I won the Product of the Day! 🥳

Yes folks, I did it!

Or rather… WE DID IT!

This couldn’t have happened without your support so, thank you all! 🫶🏼

The last Monday was crazy.

The launch started without ‘Widgets for Stripe’ being featured, so I was really worried that we couldn’t make it.

The launch tweet skyrocketed pretty soon — the hilarious launch video helped 😜

After one hour, I was finally featured!

When rankings were revealed, after the first 4h, I was in second place, fighting pretty close for the first position!

Every time a bot wipe was triggered, I climbed to the top 1.

After some position switches, I finally started to increase the gap until staying around +100 votes difference until the end of the launch day.

So my app finally ended up first and collected my second badge of Product of the Day!

So cool! 🥳

If you want to lear how I launch, I wrote this a few weeks ago 👇

(Now as 2x Product of the Day winner 😜)

This is how the stats of my app look after 6 days in the wild:

This is my most profitable app so far, I’m super happy with the result.

I even received a $5k acquisition offer, that I rejected because I think it is too early.

So, finally I launched an app that looks promising!

It is crazy what happened last week.

And even more crazy that I built it entirely on live stream.

In the meantime, I will keep shipping small improvements and listening to users’ feedback.

The first one is adding the ability for customizing colors, which it’s being a feature quite demanded.

I will be also shipping more small bets, and eventually doing more streamings — I ended up enjoying it!

You can help me rating Widgets for Stripe with ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ on the App Store 🥹

See you next week!

Juanjo

My portfolio is growing.

It has been approved in the first attempt! 🥳

My new app that I have been developing during the last 16 days, completely from scratch and sharing the whole process on live stream… is finally approved and ready to release on the App Store! 🥳

If you lack of context, it is called Widgets for Stripe. Since the official app lacks of widgets, I created my owns.

The idea came to my mind when I was trying to add them on my iPhone for having the revenue of my boilerplate WrapFast… and it turned out they don’t have them!

I will launch it tomorrow, Monday 14th on Product Hunt and I will press the release button on the App Store.

I appreciate your support 🫶🏼☺️

This is the app link, but take into account it won’t be live on the App Store until tomorrow morning :)

Thank you all that followed this challenge, journey, trial, adventure on stream or reading here my updates.

I had a lot of fun, so probably I will repeat something like this in the future.

But now, I am exhausted after streaming for 105 hours during16 days in a row — and for the first time!

So, will probably stay a few days horizontally on the couch totally offline haha 😅

See you next week!

Juanjo

Yes, I didn’t finish my new app yet.

I continue to livestream the whole process building it.

These are my takes after 9 days non-stop.

It’s all about to start

As I said on the last issue, I started a challenge.

I am live streaming the whole process of building an iOS app.

Completely from scratch, since creating the GitHub repository and starting from my boilerplate, until shipping it to the App Store.

I’ll also stream the process of launching to Product Hunt — even editing the launch video.

We are building Widgets for Stripe, which is basically an app for having your Stripe data in nice and cool widgets on your iOS or macOS home screen.

The first day I was freaking out.

I was super nervous and felt like shit in the beginning.

I was facing several fears:

• Coding live scares

• Speaking in public scares

• I struggle speaking English

• I am not used to speak for so long in a daily basis

• Feeling super weird speaking alone to a camera in my room

But, I started.

And suffered in the first hours.

And suffered a little bit less the next day.

And suffered even less the third day.

And kinda get used to it on the 4th day.

And so on…

The productivity hack

I discovered one thing.

Once you are connected, on stream, you become a productivity machine.

You are aware that you have eyeballs on everything you do, so you don’t bing on social media and you are full focus on your task.

I’ve never been as focus nor been as productive as I’ve been in the last 9 days.

It is a side effect that I didn’t expect at all.

Lately, I’m having more activity on the chat, so maybe I can get distracted and being talking too much instead of coding.

If this starts to become a problem, I would test the pomodoro technique as Aivars Meijers and Adam Lyttle do on their streams.

Growing your channel for free

I spent 3-4 days planning my first YouTube video, recording it, editing it…

Lot of work, lot of hours…

And it got 1.2k views in 1 month.

While streaming, I am working on my projects and at the same time, growing an audience and growing my channel.

I had three times the views as my first video effortless, and duplicated subscribers as well.

And this is only in Youtube, I also stream to 𝕏 and Twitch at the same time.

So eventually, I am growing three communities.

The virtual coworking space

I also experienced one curious thing.

Lotta folks were saying that they like so much what I am doing.

That they tune in my stream, and they put me on a corner on their screen while they work on their own stuff, and it is like if it was a coworking space, having a colleague.

I’ve never imagined that when I started, but I am feeling as well less alone and more motivated to grind daily — since solopreneurship is quite a solitary job.

I also have a a few folks that never fails a day showing up on the chat, and it is starting to feel kind of a little community.

It is weird, but what started as a thing that panicked me AF, is ending up like a thing that I am enjoying.

It is curious how our brain and fears work.

It is curious what stepping out our comfort zone can unlock.

It is curious.

If have in mind doing this or another thing that scares you, please, do it.

One thing is sure: if you don’t try, you will never know.

See you next week — or on the stream ;)

Juanjo

If you want to join us, do it on:

• Twitter/𝕏

• YouTube

• Twitch

I challenged myself with a quest.

I am developing live on stream an iOS app.

We’ll finish when it is published on the App Store and we’ll launching on Product Hunt.

So this happened!

Last Friday, Sept 27th, I started my very first live stream.

It was a short one, barely one hour and a half.

But man, I ended up exhausted — this is so difficult!

In the beginning, I was pretty nervous and feeling pretty weird. Being alone in your room talking to displays is kind of strange 😁

On top of that, I am very bad at thinking and talking at the same time.

I am in Spanish (my native language), you can imagine how bad I am in English…

But in the final part, I was feeling quite comfortable and had a lot of fun with chat interactions.

I think this thing will take somewhere around a week.

After that, I’ll see if I keep developing more apps on stream, turning it into a habit.

If you want to join us, do it on:

• Twitter/𝕏

• YouTube

• Twitch

See you next week! (hopefully with a new app launched 😜)

Juanjo

Roses are red,

Violets are blue.

If you don’t know how to launch,

Read this to get a clue.

After all the summer without shipping anything, I finally launched my new app!

My super nichy niche app for surfing athletes that compete is live on the App Store.

Yes, I know, I know.

We are all day reading the same things about Product Hunt…

“There’s no honest feedback, only flattering comments”

“Many products from great makers aren't featured for no reason”

“It is infested with bots”

“Support isn't helpful”

“Product Hunt isn’t cool anymore”

BUT.

It is still the best platform to launch your app.

For 7 reasons:

1. You get traffic

2. You get sales

3. You get backlinks

4. You improve your SEO/ASO

5. You get feedback (very few is honest, but it’s something)

6. Eventually you win a badge — which is nice for marketing

7. You earn a bunch of followers on 𝕏

I’ve launched 4 projects so far in PH — follow my profile here.

My first two ones didn’t make it to the top 10.

My third one, Marvin, got the 1st position and won the Product of the Day award.

My last one, PhotoCaption, made it to the top 5 and got the 4th badge.

EDIT: It’s now 6 products and I won another Product of the Day 🥳

All of them were organic. No bots. No payed upvotes. No cheating.

As you may know, reaching the top 5 is quite difficult.

PH is flooded of makers launching products everyday ant it’s difficult to stand out.

Follow these advices to have more chances of success 👇

Getting featured

This is the most controversial thing and important one about PH.

All products are accepted for launching on a certain day.

However, only the featured ones appear on PH’s front page and compete for a badge.

You can be the maker with more votes in the day but, if your product isn’t featured, you won’t earn a badge.

The big problem? There’s no magic recipe or a playbook that guarantees you being featured.

And you can see on 𝕏 every week makers complaining about this.

The most resonant example lately was Janu, not being featured with a super viral launch and hundreds of votes.

In order to increase your chances for being featured do this:

1. Schedule your launch in advance. At least 2 or 3 days.

2. Create a pre-launch teaser. You’ll find the option once you fill the launch form.

3. On launch day, be since the minute 1 promoting your launch on 𝕏 and answering EVERY-SINGLE-COMMENT

4. Pray to Jobs, Musk, Gates, Miyamoto, Miyazaki, levelsio and Jony Ive.

5. Get lucky 🍀 🤞🏼

When to launch

There is a common rule of thumb, depending on your needs:

• Launch on weekend for fighting for the badge

• Launch on weekdays to get more traffic

Since Marc Lou made pretty popular these two rules, there are now more people launch on weekends. That being said, it’s still easier to get a top 5 on a weekend since there is definitely less competition.

If you don’t care about the badge, but you want to have more eyeballs spotting your product, on weekdays there is more traffic.

Creating the launch

Well, hit the red Submit button.

Fill out the info:

• Product name: ONLY THE NAME, don’t put here additional stuff leveraging the free characters. PH will remove it.

• Tagline: here you can be more creative. Be concise. Try to explain your product in few words, grabbing attention. Don’t show features, show benefits, problems to solve…

• Product icon: you can use a gif here, but it only will animate on hovering the cursor. This was a nice hack before, as it was animating all time, but it isn’t that important anymore.

• Gallery: VERY IMPORTANT. This the first one thing that people will see when they enter in your product’s page. Create one thumbnail image with Opengraph’s proportions (1200x630) that will be also used as image when you share your launch link. Upload 4 or 5 more images showcasing your product.

• Video demo: MANDATORY — if you want to have any chances of success. A video of yourself showcasing your product. You have to appear on the video explaining it. This is not optional. If you don’t like it, as we say in Spanish, ‘te jodes’. Step out of your comfort zone and make it anyways, no matter what. No one likes to record videos, it’s a bitter pill we all have to swallow. The more you do it, the more you’ll get used to it. You can use Screen Studio to record amazing ones.

• Shoutouts: This is a nice opportunity to plug some of your fellow makers products.

Launch day 🚀

Product Hunt launches start at 12:01am Pacific Time and end at 11:59pm.

This means that you have to be ready for that time, no matter your time zone.

The first hours are crucial to gain votes and appear on top.

Rankings are not revealed on the first hours so the products appear unsorted in the beggining.

However, you can track how products are performing on Hunted Space.

Before the launch starts, you have to be prepared with:

1. A nice and curated tweet. Not too short, not too long.

2. A cool promo video. This is now a standard nowadays thanks to Marc Louvion.

3. A livestream set up on HuntCaster. If you do this, your product livestream will appear on top of your followers feed on 𝕏 during all the launch day. It’s a cool hack to earn some extra upvotes.

Ok.

The launch day started.

You tweeted your amazing post with a video.

You switched on your product hunt live stream.

You got featured.

Now is when you start to answer every tweet, every quote, every comment on PH — even you answer your mom’s messages.

You spend ALL DAY engaging with everyone as if you were mad.

You reach 100 votes? You tweet “Amaziiing I got 100 votes 🚀 [screenshot]”

Rankings are revealed? You tweet “Amaziiing rankings are revealed 🚀 [screenshot]”

Ok, I think you got it.

I know, it’s kind of cringy. But it is what it is, that’s how it works ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here you have some examples of my launch tweets and another good ones:

https://x.com/juanjovn/status/1789551331310493791

https://x.com/juanjovn/status/1800061291442421939

https://x.com/_MaxBlade/status/1825072861389742269

https://x.com/_MaxBlade/status/1824643158535254069

https://x.com/Kildos19/status/1818183845130240324

https://x.com/marc_louvion/status/1737383470941278325

https://x.com/marc_louvion/status/1723974769593499938

I’m launching next Tuesday 24th

All this post for promoting my own launch?

Maybe.

This is the last lesson 😜

I’m launching SurfBuddy next Tuesday September 24th, as part of the RevenueCat’s Ship-a-ton.

They made an agreement with Product Hunt and all participants that launch that day will compete for winning a customized furry Nikes.

So please, if you made it this far, I would appreciate if you can leave an upvote on my product on next Tuesday.

This is the launch link 👉 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/surfbuddy

I appreciate so much your support! 😘

See you next week! — hopefully with a badge :)

Juanjo

I have YT videos bookmarked for 7 lives.

Programming, entrepreneurship, health, videogames, memes…

I pick today a selection of the 5 ones that you must watch.

I’m in a rush to make it for the RevenueCat’s Ship-a-ton on September 18th, so today this is gonna be a quick one 🙏

1. Our God’s One-Hour Talk

The other day, I had to explain to my gf who was @levelsio.

Told her “if indie hackers were Apple, this guy would be Steve Jobs”

This is a talk he did in Bali in 2018 that everyone should watch.

If this doesn’t inspire you, you can quit reading right now.

2. Masterclass of paywalls

22 minutes of pure gold.

Take a pen and paper and learn how to build and make small tweaks in paywalls that make money.

3. Masterclass of copywriting

Watch this live session in which Nico Jeannen helps Marc Louvion to craft the copywriting for his landing page.

This could be perfectly paid content, so much value here.

3. The 2-2-2 Shipping Method

We are indies, our time is the most valuable thing.

We need to ship fast.

Try the 2-2-2 method for building apps by Jordi Bruin.

5. Motivation boost by Casey Neistat

Keep creating.

Tell me your favourite videos in the comments!

See you next week!

Juanjo

One day I was binging on Twitter — as usual.

I started a joke with a twitter friend.

Ended up buying a domain for 1€ and building a website.

Today is sunny in Gijón! I finally get rid of the curse! ☀️

During the last days, I’ve been watching the Lex Friedman’s podcast with Pieter Levels.

Yes, during days, because it is about 4h long 💀

So I did the same as with the Justice League by Zack Snyder, and watched it in episodes as if it was a TV show.

There was one thing that resonated with me and I’d like to bring to this issue — in fact it resonated a ton of things, I encourage you to watch it.

Some times — or most of times — the very first fresh idea that comes to your mind is the best version of it.

This is a thought that I’m having for a while and it impacted to me when they commented about it.

Have you ever had a tweet idea, wrote it, then tweaked and refined it a couple times, and finally post it after some revisions, and then the tweet was a flop?

And have you ever tweeted the first thing that came to your mind and went kind of viral?

That’s what I’m talking about.

It happened to me also with startup ideas.

Marvin was a sudden decision.

WrapFast was a click in my brain while laying on the couch.

I made PhotoCaption in 8 days impulsively after seeing a tweet.

In fact, Tibo (@tibo_maker) just tweeted today one thing that also resonated with me a lot:

This is an excellent playbook to start indie hacking — and eventually succeed.

Actually, it’s kind of the same I’m doing since I started on this last year.

I was just doing it by pure instinct and also influenced by what I see daily on Twitter.

One of those impulsive decisions was Boilermat.es

I was joking on twitter with Serg, which is the creator of Larafast — a boilerplate for Laravel.

We made a pun about being boilerplate mates, and he found out that the domain Boilermat.es was available.

Funny enough, .es is the Spanish domain (I’m Spanish if you haven’t noticed it yet 😜)

I checked just for curiosity the prices of the domain and… LMAO it was just 1€ (for the first year)

So I instantly bought it because YOLO, without having a clue if I was going to do anything with it.

After some random thoughts, I just decided to make a super simple —almost plain— list of boilerplate creators.

I announced it on Twitter and a lot of folks joined the initiative — we are now 76!

A few weeks later, I started checking the ones that had affiliates and putting my affiliate link on the website.

I also implemented lately the ability to feature randomly the “Boilermate of the day”

This way, I would notify the creator and they’d spread the word on 𝕏 — if they want.

I’m not going to retire with this, but I had fun with the community and made so far 577€ in affiliates.

Eventually I can also sell the directory. I already had a couple of proposals but ditched them.

Boilerplate directories is a niche that is growing lately, so who knows if this effortless passive income continues to grow :)

And this started from a random, quick, subconscious idea.

Thus, stop the overthink mode and jump into the build mode.

See you next week!

Juanjo

Nowadays you can be self-taught in literally anything.

Many people struggle to pick the proper course, the proper tool…

Many people struggle with analysis paralysis.

Guess what? Yes, it’s raining again! 🌧️

I see it daily on Twitter and social media:

How do you learn to code?

What’s the best AI for coding?

What’s the best IDE?

How do you edit videos?

What’s the best boilerplate?

Etc, etc…

Well, the last one has an easy answer.

But there is only one universal truth:

You learn by doing.

Period.

There’s so many guys spending their precious time in the endless wheel of taking courses, and courses, and courses.

Try this new tool, now try this new one because it’s trendy, now switch to Cursor because it’s the new shiny object…

But at the end of the day:

• No app published

• No product built

• No paid users

• No idea of how to start something by themselves

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve also been there — and sometimes I still do.

This is also a letter to myself.

But, the experience taught me that, the best way to learn something is by throwing yourself directly to the lions.

Do you want to learn how to code?

1. Pick the first tutorial you find on YouTube

2. Get the basics

3. Jump straight to build a thing ASAP

4. Search anything you don’t know during it

I apply this for everything.

I started learning Swift 5 years ago with a $5 course that I quit on the halfway.

I jumped into building a real app, publishing it to the App Store.

A month later I got my first iOS dev position — changing my life forever.

I learned lately how to edit videos.

I directly started by installing Davinci Resolve (because I knew it was free)

Watched a 10’ video with the basics.

Just jumped into editing short videos for Twitter and some YouTube videos for my channel.

My first class for getting the driving license?

The professor just put me on the road without me barely knowing how to shift gears.

I passed the exam on the first try.

Please, whatever you are learning these days:

Don’t fall into the tutorial trap.

Don’t fall in paralysis analysis.

Like Nike’s motto, just do it.

Juanjo

The official playlist of the newsletter.
There is a hidden song in every issue, can you find them all?