My Indie Hackers side project journey

this product

👋 TL;DR

I acquired Jekyll Themes right here on Indie Hackers, increased monthly revenue from ~$60 to ~$1600, and now it’s launching on Product Hunt.

💡

Acquiring and re-designing the site

Back in March, I responded to this post from a fellow Indie Hacker who was selling his site. I quickly realised it would be a perfect fit for me and my skillset; we agreed on a fair price and did the deal!

I re-designed and built the site from the ground up to give it a much needed design update, worked on the content to make it more engaging, and cleaned out a lot of old/poor quality themes.

📈

Growing revenue

At the time, the site was making around $60 per month through ThemeForest affiliate links.

I started developing my own premium Jekyll themes to sell directly through the site. The first one launched in July, and I now have five premium themes for sale.

I’ve also started partnering with other Jekyll theme developers (offering a much fairer revenue share than ThemeForest) to sell their themes through the site, which is going great so far!

At the moment the site is making around $1600 per month through theme sales, and the affiliate payouts have increased too.

You can read a bit more about my journey over on my product page.

🚀

Launching on Product Hunt

I started using Ship whilst developing my own themes to gather some interest before I launched them. Now I’ve submitted the site for a full Product Hunt launch.

I’d be super grateful if you could check it out on Product Hunt and join the discussion if you’re interested!

Thanks for checking out my project, I’d love to hear any feedback from the community here too 🤘

Mike