Rewind what I have made since May 2019 (7 products)
I have been making products every month since May, so I review what I have made this time.
🌸May 2019, SPA LIST
Just after moving to Vancouver from Tokyo, I read about Andrey and found out that there is a word called Indie Maker.
So I started to think of myself as an Indie Maker and make products.
The situation around me has been just changed (from Tokyo to Vancouver (big change!)) so just want to make a product that is easy to make for the first time. So I made it. That is SPA LIST. As it is called, SPA LIST is the list of SPAs(Single Page Applications).
The reason I made this was that Andrey made DARK MODE LIST which is the list of web sites that have Dark Mode. DARK MODE LIST makes revenue, so I thought SPA LIST can be able to make revenue too!?
As a result, nothing really happened. The users care if the application has Dark Mode, but not SPA or not.
The good thing is, I made a post on Product Hunt for the first time!
And SPA LIST got 4 upvotes! It’s quite a few but this was my first, so…
One more thing is, I had a conversation with Andrey in DM on Twitter!
I asked him if I should make it a paid service and he answered I should.
And he told me about Gumroad, which is like a Stripe but very easy to use. You don’t need to write codes.
Thank you, Andrey!
🌻June 2019, Refactoring WordPress Facebook Like Ranking
As it is called, this is the WordPress Plugin to generate and show the ranking sorted by the number of the likes of each of the articles.
I made it when I was joining the internship when I was in the third year of university.
I self-studied programming and did not know how to implement Object-oriented programming at that moment. Thus the codes were so messed up.
So I refactored my codes base on PSR-2, which is a rule for coding PHP just like Eslint for JavaScript.
There is a good enough number of downloading because I have been putting this plugin on public for a long time(6,7 years?). However, Automattic banned my plugin this September because it contains the word “facebook”. I fixed it and am waiting for republishing.
🏖️2019/07 NomadPlaceMap
NomadPlaceMap is the application to show the workplace such as cafes for digital nomads.
I quit my job and moved to Vancouver, which means I don’t have any income. I don’t want to pay money for a co-working space.
That’s why I usually go to a library or cafe. Almost 7 days a week.
So I always wanted to know the place to work on my indie projects and wanted the product for that.
There are some products like that but I just don’t like them, so I made it.
At that time, I really loved the design of Hoodmaps by Pieter Levels, who is the maker of Nomadlist. Many emojis and cute font.
After making it, I just let it go. I haven’t developed it.
I used Mapbox and it was a good experience.
☀️2019/08 Quorie
Quorie is the QA based social network for Indie Makers.
In other words, Quora for Indie Maker.
Quorie is Quora + Indie.
There is a big community web site for indie makers, which is called IndieHackers.
The problem of it is that IH is not good at SEO and the search feature is not so that cool. So I tried to make them great on Quorie.
Then, I struggled with gaining users.
🌳2019/09 AskMakers
AskMakers is also a QA based web site for Indie Makers.
I struggled from gaining users when I am making Quorie, so I made another kind of effort.
That is, I sent lots of emails to make famous/successful makers join AskMakers.
I sent a lot of emails while I wrote codes. AskMakers tweets your answer with your account automatically when you answer the question (however, users don’t like it so I deleted it😅). Usually, famous/successful makers have big Twitter accounts, which means AskMakers can get lot’s of cognition if they tweet their answers. So gaining users is not a problem anymore.
The thing is, people barely sign up AskMakers when they find it on Twitter…
I launched on Product Hunt😸
As a result, AskMakers got 103 upvotes after 24 hours of the launch🙏
🍂2019/10 PinWeb
PinWeb is a Chrome Extension to add your favorite website to the Pinterest board instantly.
Usually, when you do the same thing, you need to take a screenshot of the website and add it to your board. I want to do it with just one click, then I made it.
I have made a lot of community web site(like Social network service), however, I tried a kind of tool product with PinWeb.
The number of upvotes on Product Hunt is 15. I did not really prepare for launch so I accept this result😓
🍁2019/10 GitThungsDone
From Oct 2nd, I had been traveling in Southeast Asia.
GitThungsDone is a synchronized todo-list with Git commits.
Every todo item has its own id and you need to include that id in the commit message and git commit and git push it. Then the magic happens. That todo item gets ✔ mark automatically!
This was the first time to use Stripe.
☔2019/11 I recreated 360gram from scratch
I made the web site to share 360° picture, which is like Instagram for 360° early this year.
I don’t know why, but I rarely post photos on it.
The reason is that I don’t take 360° pictures in my daily life.
I do it when I am traveling or doing some special things.
The use-case is very different from Instagram.
So I recreated 360gram just like 500px for 360°.
500px is a photo-sharing website, but only for high quality photos.
I use React
I made the first version of 360gram with Nuxt.js. Nuxt.js is an awesome framework and I love it.
But, which framework is the most popular framework in North America!?
The answer is React for sure.
I would like to work in North America so I need to get a skill they like.
That’s the reason I used React this time.
💫Summary
The transition of what I have made this year is like community → tool → community.
This seems to mean that I really love making community products.
Yes, I really like making space for people. It does not matter whether it’s on the web or real (I wanna run co-working space in Southeast Asia!).
I think If you really focus on making revenue, then you better make tool products(SaaS).
It doesn’t matter if your product is gaining lots of users if it’s SaaS and that is very different from community web sites.
I think it’s best to make your community web site as big and useful as Nomad List, 750 Words or Visa List and make money from it.
So that’s what I want. I want to make a website like them!
