My project made $2,800 in the first 2 months. Here’s what I did differently this time

I started building side projects this year.

Some got a few users but they didn’t make any money.

My latest project is different :)

I launched buildpad 2 months ago and it’s my most successful product by far!

I wanted to share some things I did differently this time:

Habit of writing down ideas

I have this notes map on my phone where I write down ideas.

I made it a habit to always think about problems to solve or new ideas, and whenever I got one I wrote it down.

So when I decided to build a new side project I had tons of ideas to choose from.

Most sucked but there were at least 3-4 that I thought had potential.

Validate the idea before building

This was the most important thing I did.

After I had picked the idea I believed in the most, instead of building the project immediately, I wanted proof that the idea was actually good.

By getting that proof I would know that I’m building something valuable instead of wasting my time on another dead project.

The way I validated the idea was by posting on Reddit and X, asking to exchange feedback with other founders (this worked for me because my target audience was founders).

Asking users what they want

Now that I actually had people using the product I could ask them what they wanted from the product.

This made developing new features and improving the product a lot easier.

I only built things that users told me they wanted. What’s the point of building something if nobody wants it?

Tracking metrics

Having clear data of the different conversions and other metrics for my product has been huge.

  • I know exactly how many people I convert to users that land on my website.
  • I know how many of those users become paying customers.
  • I know what actions users should take to increase the chance of them converting to paying customers (activation).

With all the data it becomes clear where my bottlenecks are and what I should focus on improving.

For example, in the beginning my landing page conversion was around 5%. I knew I could improve that.

So I took some time to focus on improving the landing page. Those changes led to a landing page conversion rate of 10%.

Doubling landing page conversion will also lead to about a double in new customers so that was a big win.

TL;DR

I had a lot to learn before I was able to build something that people actually wanted. The biggest key was validating my idea before building it, but I also learned important product building lessons along the way.

I hope some people found this helpful :)

I started building side projects this year.

Some got a few users but they didn’t make any money.

My latest project is different :)

I launched buildpad 2 months ago and it’s my most successful product by far!

I wanted to share some things I did differently this time:

Habit of writing down ideas

I have this notes map on my phone where I write down ideas.

I made it a habit to always think about problems to solve or new ideas, and whenever I got one I wrote it down.

So when I decided to build a new side project I had tons of ideas to choose from.

Most sucked but there were at least 3-4 that I thought had potential.

Validate the idea before building

This was the most important thing I did.

After I had picked the idea I believed in the most, instead of building the project immediately, I wanted proof that the idea was actually good.

By getting that proof I would know that I’m building something valuable instead of wasting my time on another dead project.

The way I validated the idea was by posting on Reddit and X, asking to exchange feedback with other founders (this worked for me because my target audience was founders).

Asking users what they want

Now that I actually had people using the product I could ask them what they wanted from the product.

This made developing new features and improving the product a lot easier.

I only built things that users told me they wanted. What’s the point of building something if nobody wants it?

Tracking metrics

Having clear data of the different conversions and other metrics for my product has been huge.

  • I know exactly how many people I convert to users that land on my website.
  • I know how many of those users become paying customers.
  • I know what actions users should take to increase the chance of them converting to paying customers (activation).

With all the data it becomes clear where my bottlenecks are and what I should focus on improving.

For example, in the beginning my landing page conversion was around 5%. I knew I could improve that.

So I took some time to focus on improving the landing page. Those changes led to a landing page conversion rate of 10%.

Doubling landing page conversion will also lead to about a double in new customers so that was a big win.

TL;DR

I had a lot to learn before I was able to build something that people actually wanted. The biggest key was validating my idea before building it, but I also learned important product building lessons along the way.

I hope some people found this helpful :)