QR Code API

Update on qr-api (the QR code generation API I built and shared here recently).

Launched on Product Hunt today. Current standing: #265, 2 points. Not exactly a breakout launch, but I wanted to share honestly rather than only posting when things look good.

A few things I'm taking away from today:

- Without an existing audience/following, PH ranking is really hard to move — early velocity in the first hour or two seems to matter more than I expected

- No Stripe activity yet either, which stings a little after all the work, but I know one quiet launch day isn't the final verdict on whether this is worth continuing

- I did pick up a few followers on the PH listing itself, so there's at least some passive discovery happening

What I'm doing next instead of chasing PH ranking further:

- Looking into API-specific directories (RapidAPI, etc.) for longer-term, higher-intent discovery

- Writing up the actual build story as a blog post/dev.to article, since I think "zero coding experience to live paid API" might resonate with people earlier in this journey than me

- Reaching out directly to a few people/communities who might actually need something like this, rather than relying on cold discovery

If anyone's been through a similarly quiet launch and found what actually worked afterward, I'd genuinely love to hear it. Feels like the building part, chaotic as it was, was almost the easier half.

A few days ago I'd never opened a terminal. Today I have qr-api live — a QR Code API that turns any text into a scannable PNG with one API call. $10/month, unlimited requests. Started this with zero coding experience — just wanted to prove to myself I could take an idea from nothing to a real, paying product. Two sessions later: live API, real Stripe payments, and a customer could sign up right now. The stack: Node.js + Express, deployed on Railway, GitHub for version control, Stripe for billing, Postgres for storing API keys. Honestly, most of the hard parts weren't the QR code logic — it was learning git, fixing a JSON syntax error that broke three deploys in a row, and figuring out environment variables. If you're earlier in this than me, it's genuinely doable starting from zero. Building in public to stay accountable and hopefully help the next person starting from nothing too. Would love feedback — especially on pricing/positioning, or anything that looks off from a technical standpoint.