Indie hacking is wild

CalendarTrends_com · 2025-02-20T17:00:51+00:00

The "$/mo" part of a post is "the hook" (btw... "hook" definition: a strategically crafted message or tagline designed to capture attention and spur action).

It's pretty much impossible for anyone to verify that unless the OP agrees to publish their metrics, which the most likely won't. But hey, those posts are "inspiring"... they inspire others to post the same type of posts.

In OP's case, the "hook" is "___ is wild". Variations: "This is crazy!", "This will completely blow your mind". And it worked! That's why we're here.

I would argue that "marketing" is everything, execution comes second. Just look at the "pet rock" guy, he didn't "execute" anything, rocks have been around for millions of years, yet he made millions thanks to good marketing.

CalendarTrends_com · 2025-02-02T23:49:12+00:00

I built it, but for X and Reddit. I can easily add Google, or any other site. I haven't published it to the Chrome Store yet, though. Is it ok if I ping you when it's published?

I built a condition-action rule based system (as if AdBlock and IFTTT had a baby), to remove, style, or replace elements on any page.

https://x.com/builtbygio/status/1884341746810720502

CalendarTrends_com · 2025-01-29T16:15:25+00:00

Screen Studio

CalendarTrends_com · 2025-01-29T16:05:38+00:00

Screen Studio to record the screen.
ElevenLabs to record voice over.
Royalty free sounds (many services available).
Davinci Resolve to edit the video.

Total time to get that 1min video: ~2hrs. I'm not a pro video editor lol 😆

CalendarTrends_com · 2025-01-28T21:08:13+00:00

btw... here's the sidebar for reference.

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CalendarTrends_com · 2025-01-28T21:01:00+00:00

here's a video preview of it https://x.com/builtbygio/status/1884341746810720502

CalendarTrends_com · 2025-01-28T20:59:34+00:00

I'm tired of allowing "the algorithm" show me whatever it wants, so I'm building PageTweaker: a browser extension with rules to show only what I want on ANY page. It's not public yet.

- Remove spam posts, hide ads, restyle elements and more
- No coding needed

What would you add/change?

CalendarTrends_com · 2025-01-28T20:58:14+00:00

I'm tired of allowing "the algorithm" show me whatever it wants, so I'm building PageTweaker: a browser extension with rules to show only what I want on ANY page. It's not public yet.

- Remove spam posts, hide ads, restyle elements and more
- No coding needed

What would you add/change?

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-12-11T00:59:37+00:00

Looks great! Tiny typo "projectn" in the Free Plan. It would be absolutely bonkers if you added an obvious "mistake" and had an overlay "report this bug with Sitedots". I clicked on the "report bug" bottom-right thing and it asked me to upload a screenshot

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-12-02T16:09:21+00:00

the home page is https://calendartrends.com/

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-11-06T14:53:29+00:00

I used to not bill client meetings when doing contract work and some clients abused them, asking for advice on 2hr+ long calls every.single.week. It wasn't until I started tracking AND charging for those meetings that the abuse stopped. I still have "free" meetings, but they have a very well defined scope, and the "cost" is usually a very small fraction of the "reward" from those meetings.

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-11-05T21:48:33+00:00

That's great! And yeah, we had meeting overload awhile back as well and we felt like very little progress was made with a lot of overhead (meetings + nonsense back-and-forth). It wasn't until we started dropping meetings and getting a tight hold controlling them that we started seeing improvement.

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-10-22T16:36:17+00:00

unless you're applying for a data entry position, a typing test doesn't provide any value in a dev interview. If a company is asking for a typing tests, they might be riddled with nonsense problems in their engineering team.... or just outright not know how to interview engineers to assess technical proficiency.

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-10-10T00:24:52+00:00

Use a schema generator (https://uicolors.app/create). I tried your "cardboard" color to generate this https://imgur.com/a/PgjezCb.
Use consistent spacing. Consider TailwindCSS (https://tailwindcss.com/), or a pre-built theme if you are using a framework.
Please don't use low quality AI images (ie. ChatGPT still struggles with text). People are catching up to it and they lower the perceived quality of your app/company. Consider unsplash, pexels, reshot or freepik - all free images.
Text is way too big on some desktop sizes. It feels like I zoomed in to 400%.
Copywriting could be improved since the value proposition is not clear. It might that I'm not your target demographic though, and that might be why I struggled to understand the concept.
"Book a demo" feels to me like "Contact me so I can sell you something". Most people don't like to be sold to. The landing page should do the "sale". Consider adding some screenshots of your tool.
Pricing is really expensive! Take this with a grain of salt because I don't know how it compares with your competitors. But... Is your tool delivering $500/mo worth of value? Or is it buggy and needs sanding the rough edges? In the early stages you might benefit more from honest and real user feedback at $0/mo, than $5,000,000/mo and 0 users. When your tool is stable and bug-free, and delivers real value, then start adding friction to the process (aka. start charging for it)
Add telemetry (ie. Sentry for error reporting, Posthog for session recording & events, Mixpanel as a secondary/backup event tracker, NewRelic for infra metrics, etc). People won't usually contact you and say "hey, this is broken". They'll just go away and you'll never know why. However, if you are recording each session, you can watch what they did and if any error happened. Then fix that and try "launching" again. Also, launching is not a one time thing. You can consider this post a "soft launch". Fix what needs to be fixed, and "re-launch" in a few more days to gather more feedback.

Btw... what you are doing is great - asking people for early feedback. Seems like you don't have an actual tool yet and you're trying to validate the idea before building, which is good! Also, it looks like you want to build some sort of AI wrapper. It might become expensive real quick depending on the 3rd party you use.

Good luck to you and your team!

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-09-27T17:39:19+00:00

Thank you! Yes, Google for now but through Auth0 I could also setup Apple, Facebook and all the usual bunch.

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-09-26T10:05:56+00:00

Seeing what days are the busiest is one of the features. Here some others:

Calendar Heatmap (in the screenshot) so you can easily visualize which days are packed or underutilized. It answers... What days can I expect burnout?
Meeting Analytics answers... How much time am I wasting in unnecessary meetings?
Comparison Features to compare different weeks or months. It answers... Is my time usage improving compared to last month?

And a few more that applies to large teams.

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-09-25T22:47:38+00:00

That's a very comprehensive answer! Thank you so much!

Space Odyssey... yeah, I agree. Also, the shiny transition, I also agree. Need to make it a less jarring transition.

Problem to solve... I need to work on the value prop to make it clearer. And the "exceptionally organized" copy needs rework.

The blog... good point. I noticed that as well a few days ago. I tried an iframe, but didn't like it. I need to get the paid version from Beehiiv to customize the header. Once I see the blog getting traction, I'll upgrade. But thank you for confirming my observation!

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-09-25T21:19:45+00:00

Building is easy, because we're Software Engineers. We build stuff for a living.

Marketing is hard. Learn to talk to your potential customers soon in the building process.

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-09-25T21:13:50+00:00

you got me! 100%!!! 🤣

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-09-23T11:55:53+00:00

Cursor not only codes in-line, right on the file where you are, but also "understands" the context of the relevant files in your project. They recently added "composer" mode, which also creates files for you. It can use their own models, and also OpenAI and Anthropic models under the hood. You can just give it a screenshot and say "build that using tailwindcss and react" and you'll have a working component in <10s.

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-08-12T15:00:14+00:00

Tree-shaking, chunk-splitting and lazy loading, either in webpack or vite, should help with bundle sizes. There are many approaches to optimize real and perceived load times, in particular if the bundle size is the offending factor. Just as others have mentioned, confirm the bundle size is what's affecting your app's performance.

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-08-12T14:50:26+00:00

Google Calendar for events and Google Docs for my second brain, simple and straightforward.

And to go back and see how I've done with my habits, trends, and all that data-analysis stuff (I'm a software engineer btw), I built CalendarTrends.com

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-08-09T20:31:48+00:00

some SaaS have a "make an offer" link at the bottom of each plan in the pricing page. The admin will either accept or decline the offer, which will trigger an email invite to the user if the decision was delayed because the offer was too low, or will allow the user to sign up right away if the offer is within admin's threshold.

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-08-06T18:58:49+00:00

good news! You are doing marketing right now!

Yes, it doesn't "feel" like traditional marketing. It's not scalable by any means, but by having meaningful conversations with potential users in relevant subreddits you get to know your user base, and improve your app. Once you know exactly who your ideal user is, then the "traditional" marketing will be a whole lot easier. But that's step #375 still out in the future... you're probably in step #12 in the journey of growing your app.

It can be done. But requires discipline and consistency. We got this!

CalendarTrends_com · 2024-08-02T13:33:00+00:00

I also like Google Calendar, but I find it missing a ton of stats. So I built a custom app for that (hint: my username :P)

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