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

@darjanhren I think in order to be a successful maker (I don’t know if I would call that myself, haha) you need to have a lot of perseverance. While there’s a lot of makers who are proficient in multiple areas like design, development, marketing, and more, many are perfectionists who can’t manage to ship a single project, or they give up too easily at the slightest sign of adversity. To date I’ve probably built close to a hundred different little apps and prototypes, many of them failing or not even seeing the light of day, and with a lot of obstacles in the way (I could go on and on with all the setbacks I’ve had in pretty much all my projects, especially for those out of my comfort zone and skill level) but it’s never stopped me from keeping at it.

@mikk_martin 1. It mostly comes down to good planning. If you intend to build something in a short amount of time, make sure what you want to create isn’t too ambitious and wouldn’t require too much time to develop. I tend to identify the things that would be critical for a MVP, and those that would be nice to have, and then write it down in a Notion doc. Then over the weekend (as this is sort of a side hustle for me) I just keep picking some tasks, and try to get at least 5 of them done each day. I kind of cheat sometimes by creating easy ones, but psychologically I feel it helps me to keep going. I also think it’s important to avoid being a perfectionist. Many times I’ve had certain features, designs, or implementations I wasn’t perfectly happy with, but I refrained from reworking them just because it wouldn’t be worth the time, these things don’t make or break a product (usually). 2. Good question. I feel like I see all my projects as part of a plan, some sort of journey, in a way they are means to an end. Over the years I’ve set different goals for myself, early on I was trying to find a job for example, so I created projects that would look good in my portfolio, and made case studies and explorations for companies that I’d like to work for. More recently my goals changed a bit, looking for revenue and growing my audience, so I take those factors into account as well and see which of my ideas is more likely to help me achieve those. And of course I also prioritize projects that I find fun, or where I would have the chance of learning something new, such as for my app Later where I learnt a bit about Swift programming. Still, easier said than done, sometimes I end up blocked with multiple project ideas and it can take weeks before I decide on something (since I don’t want to start working on anything that I can’t finish, it’s a bit of a rule I set for myself).

@hazim Thank you! I think in part it helps that it’s become a routine since I’ve been doing this non-stop for several years. I also have a bit of an obsession with being productive, I can’t stand sitting around doing nothing. There is just a lot of value to be had with making things, from getting all sorts of opportunities, to meeting awesome people. I’ve never worked on anything that I felt was a complete waste of my time, I always got something in return. So that’s sort of my motivation to keep going with it 🙂

@alyssaxuu Thank you for your motivating answer 😊

@hfrdmnk I appreciate it! I think I’m just a bit of a hacky maker. My intention is to build things, not necessarily to become super knowledgable in a specific technology. So when I create things that require me to learn a new programming language, for example with Later, I tend to take as many shortcuts as I can to ship ASAP. I look into similar projects, read through their code, use StackOverflow a ton (who doesn’t?), and I particularly find useful watching videos to get a sense for how developers code using the specific language/framework. Sometimes just seeing in which order they write the code helps me understand how it works. For Swift specifically I found this video by Paul Hudson which helped me get started and then make the necessary changes to make it work the way I wanted.

@kylerjphillips Hmm, I think I experienced the most growth from building Screenity. I had to learn how to use some new APIs and libraries, and overall it was pretty complicated, but I’ve been using a lot of the skills I learnt from it to build other products like Animockup, Mapus, Slashy, and more. I probably would do it all differently to be honest. I never expected it to get so big, and the way I coded it was pretty hacky so it has been difficult to add new features that users suggest or even fixing bugs in general. The main thing that bothers me about it is how I handled the completed recording screen, I remember I was super exhausted at that point and I pretty much put something together quickly without much thought, which ended up causing me a lot of problems afterwards trying to make it work properly and cleaning up the design to make it look acceptable. I think I will probably deal with this on a v2 which I’m hoping to work on soon though 😊

@sarah_wright7 Thank you! I’ve been building things from a very young age, I suppose it all depends on your definition of a product 😅 I had been toying with creating my own Windows applications with Visual Basic when I was around 7, and creating games with Flash around that time as well. I just thought it was super fun to be able to invent anything that came to mind. Websites specifically didn’t come about until much later on, I think I must have been 15 or so when I had the idea to create my own social network, which obviously failed (pretty typical to have ambitious ideas early on, I learnt my lesson pretty quick). The first successful one I had I think was at 17, when I created a task manager as a high school project, with some degree of complexity. From there I just kept exploring ideas and sharing them with others, which quickly helped me grow a following on Twitter. In terms of advice, well, I think the main one would be to start small, don’t make your first project an overly ambitious one because it can be highly discouraging when things don’t work or go your way. If you create something simple, even if it’s something that already exists (todo apps are a common place to start, for example), you will get the motivation to keep going and facing more challenges. Also, don’t be a perfectionist, at least in the beginning. It might be tempting to try to get all the details right to make a great impression, but it’s much better to ship fast if you want to learn and get better. Most likely your first project won’t get a lot of users right off the bat, so it’s not worth overthinking it, you can always add to it later on and go from there. As per my journey, I recently did a bit of a shift to work on different things. I started the year with the goal to create projects with many users and trying to maximize revenue, but I realized it was giving me a lot of anxiety, and even panic attacks. It’s a lot of responsibility, especially when people pay you money to use your product, you want to make sure it all works perfectly. So I’ve now moved to a more laid back approach, trying to work on smaller scale projects that I find interesting, exploring new technologies, and things like that. My current one which I’m hoping to launch very soon is a web-based motion graphics editor, a mix between After Effects and Canva. Pretty excited about it and it’s been really fun to build, so I’m hoping it has a good reception 😊

@ran_t1 Haha, it’s fine to ask. Unfortunately I am not making a living (not in any possible measure) from my products, so I have a full-time job. I think it’s mainly because I like to make my products free and open source, so I sort of miss out on a lot of the money. I recently started a GitHub Sponsors so people can support my work and allow me to be more creative so I don’t have to worry about the financial aspect 😅

@aaronoleary It might be a simple question, but it’s not necessarily easy to answer 😛 I feel like I enjoyed working on most of my projects (some were pretty tedious, for example Slashy, which I came close to giving up on), but the most fun one would probably be Jumpskip. Not only did I manage to solve a problem I was having, making it easier for me to watch horror movies (which I love), but I also really enjoyed how hacky it was to build. Sourcing the data and sorting it through for analyzing it was surprisingly fun to do, and it was really satisfying reverse engineering parts of the Netflix UI to make my own custom components. I think I might want to revisit this one in the future to add more functionality (different triggers), and make it available for other streaming platforms as well. Maybe I’ll do a write up at some point too, lots of things I’d like to talk about on this one!

@ignacio_velasquez_franco Thank you! There’s many different ways to learn these days. I think if you want to start from zero with coding it might be good to have a look at online courses like the ones in Codecademy, they have a variety of Javascript, HTML, CSS, and general web development courses which might be useful. Another good one that I know about is Design+Code (https://designcode.io/), which not only teaches you how to develop React and Swift apps, but also how to design them. In general I’d just start by watching some tutorials, trying to build simple things (like a todo app in React), and once you get a feel for it start working more on your own things. Don’t be afraid to look things up, StackOverflow is an amazing resource for instance when you get stuck. I personally use it all the time, despite coding for several years now. There’s also lots of libraries that can help make your life easier depending on what you want to build. And if coding seems daunting, there’s also options to create products without it, with platforms like Glide or Bubble.

@alyssaxuu thanks a lot! 🙏 I'm most definitely adding those courses to my 2023 roadmap. I appreciate a lot the answer and the time you spent on it. Good luck on your next launch. Keep creating amazing products! 💪

@shyam_prasad_reddy 1. My working day for my side projects specifically only happens during the weekend (since I have a full-time job). I tend to wake up early to have a shower, get my thoughts in order and clear my head. I then go through any emails and messages, see what’s going on, and look through my project planning. In order to get in the “flow” I tend to listen to some music in the background, I recently invested in Youtube Premium so it autoplays and I don’t have to bother with ads or anything. Then I just hack away, doing any design or development work, and constantly testing that everything works well (which it usually doesn’t, I always have bugs and issues to fix haha). I kind of over-optimize a lot, so even when it comes to eating instead of spending time cooking and cleaning up I just have Huel, so I can get a lot more work done, or if it’s later on the day I order some food. Maybe not the best but I like to use up as much of my time as possible for building. On Sundays I also spend an hour or two writing for my newsletter at around midday, it tends to give motivation to keep going for the rest of the day. I tend to stay up until midnight or later, but I make sure to get decent sleep. As per staying focused and productive, well, I think I just have good incentives, so I don’t really question it. I know that if I build more projects I get way more opportunities and it helps me grow my audience, so it’s in my best interest to get this done as soon as possible. I’ve also been able to consistently raise my salary and rate with a larger portfolio and diversity of work, so it’s a good reason for me to stay productive. I don’t know if I have any “hacks”, for me music works very well (although in some cases depending on the song I end up randomly dancing and singing and messing about so kind of debatable 😅), I get in a bit of a rhythm so it’s easier to keep building non-stop. 2. I try to make products that take no longer than 3 months to build. I sort of have a backlog of ideas so I wouldn’t count the time it takes me to come up with it, but all the planning and design I do within those 3 months. If I’m lucky I can manage to build something in a week (which has happened before, but it’s rare), sometimes just a month or two. I kind of set a deadline in my head to force me to work harder, and avoid being too much of a perfectionist to make sure I ship as soon as possible. I’m currently in a good track, as it’s been 1 month since my last launch and I’m almost ready to ship 😊 3. I haven’t worked on any B2B products, so I wouldn’t really know. I feel like I have it easy to acquire customers because of my large Twitter following, and because most of my products are free and open source. Just sharing them on social media and Product Hunt is usually enough for me to get the first users.

@alyssaxuu Thank you so much for your detailed answers :)