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Divjoy [0] is now profitable and my full-time thing. It did $50k in year one and my goal is to break $100k this year. It all started with a Show HN [1], so than

by makeee 6y ago

Divjoy [0] is now profitable and my full-time thing. It did $50k in year one and my goal is to break $100k this year. It all started with a Show HN [1], so thank you HN :) It was rough going at first, but I won the $15k YC Startup School grant [2], which let me jump into it full-time and give it my full focus. I managed to hit ramen profitable before having to go back to freelance. The conventional wisdom is that devs won't pay for software (especially code!), but I've found it to be the opposite. There are a lot of employed software engineers who have disposable income and who are happy to pay for a dev tool if it means they can actually build and launch an idea in a weekend. [0] https://divjoy.com https://divjoy.com [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688044 [2] https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-startup-school-2019-grant-recipients/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-startup-school-2...

codesternews 6y ago
Its amazing! thanks for sharing. Can you please tell from where you are getting the users? How you got your first users and what you are doing for marketing? Thanks a lot.
- makeee 6y ago
  My first batch of alpha testers came from a single Twitter reply [0] that got retweeted by a prominent person in the React community. It certainly helped that I had an okay Twitter following at the time (I think around 1k), but it doesn't need to be huge. You just need the right person to retweet you. That was enough to iterate on until I had an MVP. Then my Show HN [1] sent like 15k visitors in a day and that led to a ton of usage. I think something like 4k projects were created that day. I wasn't yet charging at the point, but probably for the best, since high usage meant a lot of feedback. A few months later I launched on Product Hunt and that went well [2]. Beyond that, just improving the product every day, sharing my progress on Twitter, and trying really hard to turn every new feature into an exciting launch event. I also started a React hooks blog [3] that sends me a handful of customers every month. I could probably do a better job of promoting Divjoy on there. Haven't delved into SEO (barely rank for anything), content marketing, paid advertising, etc, so it's still very much a learning process for me. [0] https://twitter.com/gabe_ragland/status/1108875975494795265 https://twitter.com/gabe_ragland/status/1108875975494795265 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688044 [2] https://www.producthunt.com/posts/divjoy-4 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/divjoy-4 [3] https://usehooks.com https://usehooks.com
  - daemon001 6y ago
    How do you get visitors to the React Hook blog when you're not investing in SEO. Really curious.
    - makeee 6y ago
      The blog ranks really well without any special effort, but for Divjoy I haven't put in the work of setting up extra landing pages to rank for different topics. For example, I'd like to have a page like divjoy.com/nextjs+stripe that emphasizes that stack combination.
oceanghost 6y ago
I've been looking for something like this for ages. I have a small project I need to do and I'm not really a web developer. Muddling through setting all this stuff up for the first time would be far more work than the actual website. How hard would it be for me to integrate with Authorize.net?
- makeee 6y ago
  I'd say that if you're interesting in learning to code then Divjoy may work for you. I try not to over sell it to non-devs, but I do have a fair amount of customers who are hacking at Divjoy projects while learning to code and are very happy with that. Since all the boilerplate works out of the box you can skip over a bunch of stuff (like understanding how auth works under the hood), but generally there's some custom logic you need to write and you'll want to pickup some JS/React to do that. Any integration with Authorize.net would be totally done by you. You could export a codebase with Stripe payments so that you can at least see how payments logic ties in with UI.. but you'd need to then strip that out and replace with your own custom Authorize integration.
  - oceanghost 6y ago
    Oh, I'm a SW engineer. I just mostly worked in process control and consumer electronics. I've done a few websites. Thank you for the reply. :-)
    - makeee 6y ago
      Gotcha! Then it shouldn't be too hard to integrate Authorize. UI is mostly decoupled from payment logic. Always happy to hop on a call if you need some help understanding anything in the codebase.
      - oceanghost 6y ago
        As an addendum... Purchased a copy of your thing, looking forward to exploring it. I'm reasonably clever and I don't expect I'd need any help, but I super appreciate the offer.
jonplackett 6y ago
Would be cool if you could add Plausible Analytics!
- makeee 6y ago
  I've been meaning to look into that. At the moment I'm using this library as the analytics abstraction: https://getanalytics.io https://getanalytics.io. I'll see if the Plausible team wants to create a plugin or do that myself when I have time.
  - jonplackett 6y ago
    I’ve been chatting to Marko via email and they seem very approachable!
    - makeee 6y ago
      Looks like they don't have time, but there's an open issue here: https://github.com/DavidWells/analytics/issues/96 https://github.com/DavidWells/analytics/issues/96. I probably won't have time for awhile.. but on the off-chance you're interested in tackling it, I'd happily hook you up with a free Divjoy account in return ;)
paledot 6y ago
I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the decision to have the first steps of the project customization process not require registration let alone payment. It makes for a better sales pitch than a hundred landing pages.
- makeee 6y ago
  Thanks, that's great to hear! I'm not a fan of having to signup/pay to see how an app works either. Figured a tech audience would appreciate that.
ryan-allen 6y ago
> There are a lot of employed software engineers who have disposable income and who are happy to pay for a dev tool if it means they can actually build and launch an idea in a weekend. This is absolutely true, but companies also, or even devs working in companies will buy out of their own pocket to improve their productivity without having to ask the Accounts department, I know I have!
- makeee 6y ago
  That's a really good point! I may have a good number of those customers and not be aware of it. I need to do a better job of asking people what they're using Divjoy for.
sawirricardo 6y ago
Hi, I wonder what payment stack did you use? Is it only PayPal or do you use other, too? I'm thinking of integrating with PayPal API, too, but really didn't know the steps needed (not really friendly compared with Stripe)
- makeee 6y ago
  For Divjoy I'm using Stripe and PayPal (one-time payments). In terms of the code I give customers, I'm just doing Stripe subscription billing via the hosted Stripe Checkout page.
hurflmurfl 6y ago
Hi, wanted to let you know that when I click on "see pricing" on the banner in the top of the page, nothing happens. There's no way to find pricing at all, since there's no link at the bottom of the page either. I'm using Firefox 68.11 for Android.
- makeee 6y ago
  Thanks for letting me know! If you scroll down below the "Choose your template" section do you see a pricing section with purple background? I'm wondering if the scroll to logic is broken or if that section is just not being displayed. If you wouldn't mind shooting an email to gabe.ragland@divjoy.com I'd love to follow-up about this.

by makeee 6y ago

codesternews 6y ago

Its amazing! thanks for sharing. Can you please tell from where you are getting the users? How you got your first users and what you are doing for marketing? Thanks a lot.

makeee 6y ago
My first batch of alpha testers came from a single Twitter reply [0] that got retweeted by a prominent person in the React community. It certainly helped that I had an okay Twitter following at the time (I think around 1k), but it doesn't need to be huge. You just need the right person to retweet you. That was enough to iterate on until I had an MVP. Then my Show HN [1] sent like 15k visitors in a day and that led to a ton of usage. I think something like 4k projects were created that day. I wasn't yet charging at the point, but probably for the best, since high usage meant a lot of feedback. A few months later I launched on Product Hunt and that went well [2]. Beyond that, just improving the product every day, sharing my progress on Twitter, and trying really hard to turn every new feature into an exciting launch event. I also started a React hooks blog [3] that sends me a handful of customers every month. I could probably do a better job of promoting Divjoy on there. Haven't delved into SEO (barely rank for anything), content marketing, paid advertising, etc, so it's still very much a learning process for me. [0] https://twitter.com/gabe_ragland/status/1108875975494795265 https://twitter.com/gabe_ragland/status/1108875975494795265 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688044 [2] https://www.producthunt.com/posts/divjoy-4 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/divjoy-4 [3] https://usehooks.com https://usehooks.com
- daemon001 6y ago
  How do you get visitors to the React Hook blog when you're not investing in SEO. Really curious.
  - makeee 6y ago
    The blog ranks really well without any special effort, but for Divjoy I haven't put in the work of setting up extra landing pages to rank for different topics. For example, I'd like to have a page like divjoy.com/nextjs+stripe that emphasizes that stack combination.

oceanghost 6y ago

I've been looking for something like this for ages. I have a small project I need to do and I'm not really a web developer. Muddling through setting all this stuff up for the first time would be far more work than the actual website. How hard would it be for me to integrate with Authorize.net?

makeee 6y ago
I'd say that if you're interesting in learning to code then Divjoy may work for you. I try not to over sell it to non-devs, but I do have a fair amount of customers who are hacking at Divjoy projects while learning to code and are very happy with that. Since all the boilerplate works out of the box you can skip over a bunch of stuff (like understanding how auth works under the hood), but generally there's some custom logic you need to write and you'll want to pickup some JS/React to do that. Any integration with Authorize.net would be totally done by you. You could export a codebase with Stripe payments so that you can at least see how payments logic ties in with UI.. but you'd need to then strip that out and replace with your own custom Authorize integration.
- oceanghost 6y ago
  Oh, I'm a SW engineer. I just mostly worked in process control and consumer electronics. I've done a few websites. Thank you for the reply. :-)
  - makeee 6y ago
    Gotcha! Then it shouldn't be too hard to integrate Authorize. UI is mostly decoupled from payment logic. Always happy to hop on a call if you need some help understanding anything in the codebase.
    - oceanghost 6y ago
      As an addendum... Purchased a copy of your thing, looking forward to exploring it. I'm reasonably clever and I don't expect I'd need any help, but I super appreciate the offer.

jonplackett 6y ago

Would be cool if you could add Plausible Analytics!

makeee 6y ago
I've been meaning to look into that. At the moment I'm using this library as the analytics abstraction: https://getanalytics.io https://getanalytics.io. I'll see if the Plausible team wants to create a plugin or do that myself when I have time.
- jonplackett 6y ago
  I’ve been chatting to Marko via email and they seem very approachable!
  - makeee 6y ago
    Looks like they don't have time, but there's an open issue here: https://github.com/DavidWells/analytics/issues/96 https://github.com/DavidWells/analytics/issues/96. I probably won't have time for awhile.. but on the off-chance you're interested in tackling it, I'd happily hook you up with a free Divjoy account in return ;)

paledot 6y ago

I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the decision to have the first steps of the project customization process not require registration let alone payment. It makes for a better sales pitch than a hundred landing pages.

makeee 6y ago
Thanks, that's great to hear! I'm not a fan of having to signup/pay to see how an app works either. Figured a tech audience would appreciate that.

ryan-allen 6y ago

> There are a lot of employed software engineers who have disposable income and who are happy to pay for a dev tool if it means they can actually build and launch an idea in a weekend. This is absolutely true, but companies also, or even devs working in companies will buy out of their own pocket to improve their productivity without having to ask the Accounts department, I know I have!

makeee 6y ago
That's a really good point! I may have a good number of those customers and not be aware of it. I need to do a better job of asking people what they're using Divjoy for.

sawirricardo 6y ago

Hi, I wonder what payment stack did you use? Is it only PayPal or do you use other, too? I'm thinking of integrating with PayPal API, too, but really didn't know the steps needed (not really friendly compared with Stripe)

makeee 6y ago
For Divjoy I'm using Stripe and PayPal (one-time payments). In terms of the code I give customers, I'm just doing Stripe subscription billing via the hosted Stripe Checkout page.

hurflmurfl 6y ago

Hi, wanted to let you know that when I click on "see pricing" on the banner in the top of the page, nothing happens. There's no way to find pricing at all, since there's no link at the bottom of the page either. I'm using Firefox 68.11 for Android.

makeee 6y ago
Thanks for letting me know! If you scroll down below the "Choose your template" section do you see a pricing section with purple background? I'm wondering if the scroll to logic is broken or if that section is just not being displayed. If you wouldn't mind shooting an email to gabe.ragland@divjoy.com I'd love to follow-up about this.