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

@artem_smirnov1 Thanks! It depends - most of my projects are one-off, but I have a few projects that I keep maintaining, mostly my open source ones. So for example my flowcharting library Flowy, I look into issues and questions people have, make improvements from time to time, etc. Or my Screenity screen recorder. Ideally though I like to work on projects I don't have to maintain, since otherwise I don't have enough time to work on new stuff :P

@maen_haq I think I had fun building Mapus, I was able to learn a few different things (using LeafletJs for maps, Firebase for real-time collaboration...) plus I felt like it was a truly unique project, with some really amazing use cases. I was also able to build it all in just a couple of weeks, probably one of the fastest products I've ever built.

@bleepster Yeah, that's tricky. I make sure to answer to every query I get, but indeed it gets hard with 10+ products, especially as I keep shipping new ones constantly. I mostly just try to make sure the products I build are low maintenance, so I don't get overwhelmed with questions xP

@housebinet Thank you! I'm not sure if there's any other cases :P I think creativity makes me feel good, especially since I have an outlet for it, and I am able to execute on my ideas. I feel like if I didn't have the skills it would be incredibly frustrating for me, having ideas all the time and being unable to bring them to life.

@veerdosi Not sure what you mean by staying consistent ^^ Regarding building in public, that's actually something I've just recently been getting into! I think it's a great way to get feedback from users - before I only launched products straight away, which led to sometimes receiving great feedback post-launch, which was already too late. I think it's also a way to grow your audience, and to have a bigger potential userbase when you actually launch.

@panphora Hey David, appreciate it :) There's a lot of struggles when it comes to making products as an indie maker for sure. I think the main one is simply having enough time and resources to pursue it, it definitely holds a lot of people back from becoming an indie maker, and it's certainly made it difficult for me. Having to find the time on weekends and around my full-time job has been tricky, and it's meant having less time to do other things, but I personally think it's worth it. And in terms of resources, I've obviously been limited in what I could make and I've had to be careful, I've avoided building products that could lead to very high expenses (e.g. for servers), or products that would require a lot of maintenance, since I don't have other people that could handle support or marketing or other duties. I think I've managed to work around it and adapt, but I do wonder the kinds of projects I could build if I had the same resources as companies do, and the time to pursue it (without having to rely on a full-time job for income). I've been able to build 3-4 products per year, so who knows, maybe 10, or maybe fewer but way more ambitious. That would be cool :)

@shahdeepa Hmm it's hard to say, maybe Screenity? I think one big reason is that unlike all my other products, instead of creating a totally original and creative product, I decided to build something that had been done before. I simply had to look at the competition, break down all their features (which I did here), look at user reviews, and build something that people wanted. Plus it was a fun challenge to develop the screen recorder overall, how to implement all the drawing tools, push to talk, embedding the camera, etc. The most enjoyable part of it was probably the launch, I think it was one of the most successful ones I had, getting to #1 on Product Hunt with over 1,500 upvotes and a ton of engagement on Twitter, I don't think I ever slept that night with notifications going crazy non-stop. Seeing it grow to over 70K users has been absolutely amazing.

@sushant_borse There's many reasons why I build products :) I do it to challenge myself and learn a new skill, to solve a specific problem, to give back to the community by open sourcing my projects, as a portfolio piece to get more opportunities... I do think though by making everything free I am limiting myself, since I can't make the products grow or have high expenses in terms of servers, marketing, etc. So I do want to start charging for my products, maybe in a SaaS type of way with different plans, although ideally I'd still like to ensure there's a way for people to use my products for free, some way or another.

@msurguy Phil asked the same question, here's my answer :) https://www.producthunt.com/disc...

@xtabbas Well, I don't really approach them at all I would say xP I don't do sales as I don't really charge for any of my products, although I plan on starting to so I can manage to work on my projects full-time instead of relying on a job. Marketing for me is just launching on Product Hunt, HackerNews, and tweeting it out, I don't really market post launch. I don't have a co-founder, I do everything solo :P Although in the future I'd love to collaborate with someone who could handle more the marketing / sales part, to build better products.