Hard-Earned Lessons: What Happens When a Solo Maker with Zero Experience Releases Software

My Background: Solo maker; Built via vibe coding; No professional background; No experience of releasing a software; No existing users.

I started building my product (Like a Book) because I needed it, and I assumed others had the same need. If I misjudged, at least I got a good tool for myself. :D

As I was preparing the final steps of releasing it, I ran into problems that were completely new to me. (Yes, I learned everything from AI step by step, and one of my programmer friends gave me some advice.)

I never knew that a domain could have subdomains, so you can have multiple products on the same domain — like product1.domain.com, product2.domain.com. My money flew away.

I wasn't very aware of finding alpha testers until AI reminded me. Well, it's too late now, so I've decided not to worry about it too much. (I'm still worried, but all I can do now is pretend I'm a new user and try to find as many bugs as possible.)

I didn't know releasing software requires code signing, like a certificate. My current plan was to put my software both on my website and on the Microsoft Store. It seems there's no cost for an indie developer to verify software there.

I lost my local data while testing the new version of my product — the archive of my precious completed work (which is also what my product aims for). I'll need to fix this issue.

Thanks to my friend's kind sponsorship, I got the chance to bring my product to life. I've already burned 600 million tokens.

It's been a good journey, and kind of funny, so I wanted to share it with you all. It reminds me of the lyrics: "A hundred bad days made a hundred good stories." XD