What I've learned after making 15 website themes in 3 MONTHS 💪
It's been pretty crazy the past 3 months. 😱
- 👨💻 I started learning ReactJS
- 👋 I joined IndieHackers
- 🚩 And most of all, I started my side-project: BuildFaster.co
During those 3 months of creating and launching BuildFaster, I created 15 HTML themes/templates that are now available on BuildFaster.
In this post, I'll try to tell you as much as I can about what I learned through this process.
Let's get started! 😀
Have an organized workflow. 🧼
Yep. Without one, you're toast. Or at least it's going to be tough to move up the ladder with your idea.
Every week I create a new theme to sell on BuildFaster.co. It takes me about 2 hours to think of an idea and code a simple landing page + another hour on top of that to polish it and add it to my website + Gumroad.
With this important task every week, I must have an organized workflow to help me be consistent with my quality.
If I don't have a plan for what to do every week, then some of my themes will be nice... and others a total mess. 👎
That's why I always keep this list of steps in mind when coding a new theme:
- 👀 Look for inspiration.
- 💡 Come up with an idea!
- 👨💻 Code. Design. Code. Design.
- ✍ Work on thumbnails + descriptions for the theme.
- 🚀 Launch it on BuildFaster and Gumroad!
If I always have this plan in mind, I won't wander into other endless pits that waste my time and set me off track.
Hey, remember. It's quantity over quality 😉
Releasing one theme a week isn't a huge task for me. I usually spread it out over a few days so I don't tire myself out. However, this doesn't mean that I can squeeze two themes into every week. Then I won't have enough time to work on other features or side projects.
This will make me feel a lot more stressed and hurried in my work. 😬
I'm not so great at math...
...but according to my calculations 🤓 that will lower the quality of my themes.
Not really what I want. 😕
So make sure that you can set your limits and fit into your schedule what you can without overloading yourself.
I'm not the only needs to use it 🙄
Yeah, that's a huge selling point for me. My theme code is neat and readable.
Let's say you buy a theme with zero coding knowledge.
If you open the HTML file in your editor and don't know how to edit it, then that whole purchase was a waste of your money. 🤦♂️
That's why I embed useful comments in my code so the buyer can understand how to edit it.
And that about wraps it up!
I love sharing my stories with you and hearing all your great accomplishments too.
Let me know in the comments about what you've learned from starting your side-project. 🌱
Hope you enjoyed reading this! I plan to release this article on my next issue of The BuildFaster Update where I talk about all sorts of cool designer/dev tips and updates coming to BuildFaster!
Does that sound cool? Subscribe to get content in your inbox every Friday!
cool stuff. i noticed you have affiliate program. what's the backend for that? how are you going to reward affiliates and track their contributions?
I do all my sales and affiliates through Gumroad. They do it all for me :)
I just enter the email of a Gumroad creator and give a percentage of what they would get. I usually give around 20-25%.
Are you interested? You can signup here 👈
Thanks for the writeup Brayden!
I wonder, do you get a lot of support requests? Have you devised a strategy to keep up this pace when support grows?
Quick feedback on the hero of the landing page. The "Try for Free" button made it seem like buildfaster.co is a service (subscribe for access to all sorts of templates). I had to scroll down a bit to see the "get it for $40" purchase button on one of the highlighted themes. Maybe change it to something like "Try one of our Free themes" ?
Yeah no problem Rik!
Sorry but I don't understand what you mean by "support request". Could you clarify?
About the hero of the landing page, I totally understand what you mean. I think I'll have it say "Try a theme for free" or something like that.
Thanks again! 😀
The purchase description states that with each sale you get "Free Support! 📧".
If you start selling more themes you might have to start spending more time offering that free support. Which cuts into your time to build themes.
Okay thanks for the clarification. So far I’ve only gotten a few of them and they’ve been very basic. “What code editor should I use?” Or something like that.
Then again, they do not take very long to do. I’ll be able to fit them in.
I said:
I can’t fit two themes. Not a theme and several support requests. Those aren’t a huge burden and definitely not as long as a theme.
But if they do turn out to be taking lots of time, I’ll try my best to be flexible and implement them into my routine.
Nice! What made you go crazy enough to pull of a challenge like that haha?
Great read! Wish you well :)
Thanks, you too!