An Indie Hacker’s Journey
In recent years, a term that has gained significant prominence in the software ecosystem is “Indie Hacker” or “Indie Developer.” If we define it as independent product developers who develop, market, and manage their own products, it wouldn’t be wrong, I believe.
My Indie Hacker journey actually dates back quite a while. Around 12–13 years ago, I embarked on this path for the first time, and I was generating a good Adsense income with a classified ads site I had coded. About 3–4 months later, I made my first “exit” by selling this site on Flippa (the microacquire platform of that time) for around $15k.
One point to remember is that not every product you create will be successful, and in fact, most of the products we create may likely fail. When developing a product, you should also add elements that will add value to you. For example, you might try using a programming language you want to learn in a section of that product. Even if it fails, at least you gain new experiences.
Last year, around this time, I left Webrazzi, where I had worked for approximately 10 years.
After a while, I started working on the web3 version of a product I knew well and was skilled at but faced a lot of competition. I think my first mistake was this move. Despite a 7–8 month development process, continuous pivoting of the product, regulations, and marketing challenges, I had almost brought the product to its final stage. But I couldn’t see my way forward. During that time, I needed a service, and there was no product in the market that could meet my needs. I saw people facing similar problems in searches. I had the option to either create the product only for my own use or turn it into a service that would be accessible to those in need. The loss of excitement for the initial product and my desire to take more ownership of this product pushed me toward the second path.
Chainrel
A service that tracks events triggered in smart contracts on EVM chains and provides this to its users through a webhook service.
Designing and coding a product alone is not enough for success, and I’m aware of that, as are most people. Starting, managing, and marketing a business all have their own challenges. Even if you spend the majority of your time on software and design, all aspects are equally important in terms of the product’s value.
Why Chainrel?
It became the central focus for me both because I needed it for my previous project and because it facilitates the creation of other products using this service.
Plus, I love services and tools for developers, from one developer to another.
As I mentioned earlier, the idea of creating other products using this service is also very appealing. I have prepared a simple demo page for Chainrel usage scenarios. A basic dashboard page where you can see the latest .eth domain names registered on ENS.
I think it can be used for many scenarios. For example, you can track DeFi transactions or, if you are working on a project in the web3 space, you can track all events defined in your contract. If you have a scenario where your contract creates new contracts, you can easily track child contracts.
Today and Beyond
As of today, my focus will be more on marketing. If you’re an Indie Hacker, you know that you’ll fund your own product. In this regard, I will both create more content and try to allocate a budget to the marketing side as much as possible. In addition, if there are micro-products that I can develop using Chainrel, I will dedicate time to them.
Thank you for reading.
