GitCom

I've started working on GitCom more than 6 months ago
And I've made project and all its source code publicly available about 2 weeks ago

Since then I've got a lot of valuable feedback and some things have changed.

But my long term goals staying are the same: (briefly)

1. Get developers into the platform - to solve lack of content issue
2. Find users who willing to support those projects
3. Start money flow goin'
4. Keep promoting the project and looking for new ways to expand
   It's incredibly hard to correctly predict how it will grow or have some sort of deadline but I have a long term plan

In any case, I think there is a long journey ahead and I'm really excited about what's coming next!

Website: gitcom.org

We've launched a bit more than 2 weeks ago and since then we have about ~350 unique visitors

So far best sources of traffic were:

1. Product Hunt during launch - about 150 unique visitors during the first 2 days
2. Indie hackers (I assume mostly from product milestones) - about 8-10 visitors per day
3. Reddit (r/SideProject, r/growmybusiness etc.)
4. First results from organic search started to appear (Bing, Google)
5. GitHub since project is open source

List of websites/thread where to promote your product:
https://sizle.io/how-to-maximise-traffic-to-a-bootstrapped-product-hunt-launch/
https://www.siteguru.co/startup-directory-list

It's really hard to finish your side projects

Since I've started working on it about 6 months have passed, it was a great journey and here's what I've learned - some of those things may seem obvious to you (same here) but you may find out that you didn't think about it before

We launched about 3 weeks ago and I don't have any cool milestones or numbers to share. yet.

1. Validate idea before starting to write code:
   I agree with that but that depends on your initial goal, for me building GitCom main purpose was learning new tech stack and learning how to build new projects from the ground up so if I've finished it - my primary goal is achieved already

2. Create a list of essential features and feel free to cut some of them off as you go

• This one saved me a lot of time, before starting working on a new feature ) ask yourself - is it really necessary? If not - you know what to do.

3. Product idea and implementation may change as you will work on it - be prepared for it

4. Try to think where you will get your first users
   While talking to people I've noticed that this essential part of the process is delayed and devs start to write code immediately - this approach could work but you're ricking to waste a lot of time

5. Try to predict how your userbase will grow
   In our times it's almost impossible to do but if you do it right that can give you really valuable insights

6. Get on the market ASAP - it's much easier to adjust your direction when you getting feedback from real users and looking at real data

That's it for now. I would be happy to answer any questions!

Project website: https://gitcom.org

Happy hacking!

I was working on different updates during the last few days including frontend and API updates.

Key features:

• lazy registration via email (users can type their email and sign in immediately and confirm it later)
• project updates (now each project can post updates) and by default project updates automatically created from latest GitHub releases
• index page redesign - I've switched focus from landing page as an entry point to the main web app and now landing page is optional in this process
• the improved help section on the website

Since I've opened a project to the public it had about 250 visitors and a few sign-ups.

Initially, I was thinking that a landing page could be a good solution - presentation like website with the necessary information and if a user is interested they can easily sign up from there in just a few clicks. But since the main app is SPA build with create react app it takes a bit to load for the first time. And if new users would like to sign up they would have to go to a different site and wait for it to load.

I've pushed a few frontend and API updates since then and I'm trying to improve how this flow works as a whole.

So, for now, I will try to stick with the main website as an entry point thus users will be able to jump into action immediately and if they need more details they can go to the landing page for more details.

Let me know if you have any questions or feedback, I would be happy to chat or share any details!

Check it out at https://gitcom.org/

From the beginning, we believe that the parts of the system that can be open source - should be :)

We're building a 100% transparent platform so that is really important step towards our goal

This project was in development for more than 6 months and we recently published 100% source code and it's available in our GitHub org:
https://github.com/gitcomteam

We're just launched on product hunt, yay!

It's been a long way developing this product but we're getting closer to launch every day!

Thanks for your support and feedback, we'll keep you posted.

Check out the product page here:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/gitcom

After I've opened the project to the public and made a few posts on IH and Reddit - I've got a lot of feedback on how to improve my existing website and landing page and I was mostly focused on that. And it seems to work well! Each update increases the percent of visitors that are actually interested and reading about how the project works etc.

More things coming soon!

Based on feedback, we've started updating our website and landing pages, and it seems to work much better than previous versions.

Also, we've published 100% of our source code, it's available here: https://github.com/gitcomteam/

What do you think?
Check it out at https://gitcom.org

See ya!

Initially, I was planning to learn new tech stack while building something that can help other people but end up finishing MVP and deciding to continue working on this project and releasing it to the public.
Now it's time to get some feedback to be sure that this platform can actually help people reach their goals!