I'm Alyssa X, I've built and shipped 10+ products. AMA.

@shyam_prasad_reddy 1. My working day for my side projects specifically only happens during the weekend (since I have a full-time job). I tend to wake up early to have a shower, get my thoughts in order and clear my head. I then go through any emails and messages, see what’s going on, and look through my project planning. In order to get in the “flow” I tend to listen to some music in the background, I recently invested in Youtube Premium so it autoplays and I don’t have to bother with ads or anything. Then I just hack away, doing any design or development work, and constantly testing that everything works well (which it usually doesn’t, I always have bugs and issues to fix haha). I kind of over-optimize a lot, so even when it comes to eating instead of spending time cooking and cleaning up I just have Huel, so I can get a lot more work done, or if it’s later on the day I order some food. Maybe not the best but I like to use up as much of my time as possible for building. On Sundays I also spend an hour or two writing for my newsletter at around midday, it tends to give motivation to keep going for the rest of the day. I tend to stay up until midnight or later, but I make sure to get decent sleep. As per staying focused and productive, well, I think I just have good incentives, so I don’t really question it. I know that if I build more projects I get way more opportunities and it helps me grow my audience, so it’s in my best interest to get this done as soon as possible. I’ve also been able to consistently raise my salary and rate with a larger portfolio and diversity of work, so it’s a good reason for me to stay productive. I don’t know if I have any “hacks”, for me music works very well (although in some cases depending on the song I end up randomly dancing and singing and messing about so kind of debatable 😅), I get in a bit of a rhythm so it’s easier to keep building non-stop. 2. I try to make products that take no longer than 3 months to build. I sort of have a backlog of ideas so I wouldn’t count the time it takes me to come up with it, but all the planning and design I do within those 3 months. If I’m lucky I can manage to build something in a week (which has happened before, but it’s rare), sometimes just a month or two. I kind of set a deadline in my head to force me to work harder, and avoid being too much of a perfectionist to make sure I ship as soon as possible. I’m currently in a good track, as it’s been 1 month since my last launch and I’m almost ready to ship 😊 3. I haven’t worked on any B2B products, so I wouldn’t really know. I feel like I have it easy to acquire customers because of my large Twitter following, and because most of my products are free and open source. Just sharing them on social media and Product Hunt is usually enough for me to get the first users.

@alyssaxuu Thank you so much for your detailed answers :)

@robertomorais I tend to work on my projects one by one, I don’t think I would be able to handle doing it in parallel, I’d end up prioritizing the product I enjoy working on more and forgetting about the rest. I also wouldn’t consider my projects businesses (they don’t really make money lol), so once I launch I don’t have a lot of work to maintain them, it’s much easier to handle in that sense. I think my tip in that regard is just to create things with low maintenance, I’ve refrained from working on projects with communities or where I’d need to proactively stay on top of it to make it work, it’s just too complicated.

@alyssaxuu Thanks for your answers. I think you nailed it with "Crate things with low maintenance", unconsciously this already was one of my priorities.

@yudax Appreciate it! I am not a full-time creator, I actually have a job as a product designer which I do throughout the week. It’s pretty hard to balance, mostly because I end up not having enough time to do things on my own. I essentially dedicate all of my weekends and all the free time I can find throughout the week to work on my own side projects, which is pretty tough. I’d like to say I have a good work/life balance, but the reality is that I don’t. I end up not being able to go out much, or do much at all, which sucks a bit. I just like to think it’s worth it for the opportunities it gets me, and maybe if I keep at it I could some day do this full-time, in a less crazy and demanding way.

@dimabraven It’s complicated, and I think lately I’ve been finding it harder and harder to come up with them. I usually try to look for problems I have, or even repetitive actions I could simplify to make more efficient. Sometimes I try to combine different products together (e.g. Figma + Google Maps = Mapus), or different mechanics. I think the easiest way to go about it is looking for an existing product, and thinking about how you can improve it - sometimes you don’t need to create something completely unique to build something great. For example with Screenity I saw some of the shortcomings of tools like Loom and Screencastify, and decided to address them with my own extension. There’s lots of ways to go about it for sure.

@mikestaub I’d like to say I have some sort of intrinsic motivation and that I just work on projects because I find it fun, but that would be a lie. Sure, I do enjoy coming up with ideas and being able to see them to light, but a big reason why I build is because of the range of opportunities it offers. I’ve essentially built a very big and impressive portfolio over the years, which has helped me get plenty of jobs and meet all sorts of interesting people. Plus with every new project I create, my audience grows, which in return helps me have a bigger reach. And of course the obvious one, the money. It’s nice to have a bit of a passive income stream, it keeps things diversified and I don’t have to stress so much about life in a way 😛

@socialtrade I develop features without the design pretty often, but only when I am sort of further along with the product. In some cases it’s a bit harder to do, especially if it’s a complex product with more of a unique UI, but generally skipping over the design can make things a lot faster. Of course though it’s still important for me to make sure that the features look good, so I wouldn’t ship something with a poor design, just for the sake of having extra functionality.

@saurabh_daswant Haha I know that feeling. I think a better way to phrase it would be to think of “opportunities” instead of problems. Think about processes in your own life that are repetitive, that could be made more efficient. Do you tend to look something up all the time? Maybe you can build an app to have this available at a glance. Or maybe you always take a while to think of food to order, you could create something to let you choose or even pick things for you at random. If you can’t think of anything you can always look around or ask people if there’s anything that they find frustrating that you could help solve. Lots of options!

@saifali97 Hmm, good question. I think right now I am working on some very tricky things, I’m currently developing a web-based motion graphics editor, essentially After Effects in the web, and it’s been tough making all the keyframing work with just HTML5 Canvas, as well as rendering it with video and audio support. I had to create the keyframe timeline UI from zero as I couldn’t find any good libraries for it, with the ability for multiselect, zoom, and switching keyframe easing, which was pretty hard to do. I’m also dealing with things like autosave or project history which is quite challenging, I admire developers who work on that on the daily with products like Figma, it really is tough to do.

@cosmickitten 1. I only work on one thing at a time, to ensure that I get everything done and don't leave things unfinished. I don't typically have to do a lot of prioritization since I don't tend to have a lot of potential ideas lying around, but when I do I mainly consider how challenging it would be to build, how long it would take, the potential upside in terms of money or opportunities, and whether it could go viral. I also think about what things I could learn by building the product (maybe a new language, like with my Later app), and if I would enjoy spending a month or two working solely on it (wouldn't be good to lose interest and get bored just a few days in). 2. It depends on the product. For example with Jumpskip I built the product for myself, it ended up not being widely used, but I am thankful I made it because I can watch horror movies without being spooked by jumpscares. Or Carden which I built as my friend @anne_laure_le_cunff wanted a fun gamified way to use flashcards for memorizing things online, as opposed to using Anki which looks and feels a bit boring. With other products where I'm not necessarily solving a problem for myself I do make sure to talk with people and figure out if it's something that they need or would use, recently I've gotten into the habit of sharing sneak peeks of what I'm making on Twitter just to collect early feedback, plus through my newsletter every week I get to see what people think about what I'm building.

@christiano4 Ha, yeah it's tough. Personally since I don't do this full-time I don't have the financial risk, I have a normal full-time job which I do throughout the week, and I only build over the weekend. It can be a bit frustrating at times, but I think it's super rewarding when I get to launch my products and see people's reactions, especially if I've made something that makes their lives easier. I do agree it can get lonely, since I have my job and I build over my free time I don't really have a lot of time on my own, so I don't really get to meet or hang out with people a whole lot unfortunately. I've been trying to balance it out better, but I think ultimately unless I find a way to do this full-time (or have my job be part-time) or I slow down on making products there's not much I can do.