> From building to selling - EP.06

Published on May 6, 2022 . 3 min read

Welcome to day six of the Crossroad build journey! This series follows my journey of indie hacking a product from building to selling. If you missed day five, you could check it out here. I also uploaded today's Twitch stream to YouTube if you want to watch the replay.

Coded all the blocks, now it’s time for a refactor. 🔍

Done! All the blocks are marked-up and styled. 🚀

It went faster than expected, but I got into a flow yesterday and today. It also helps that with every component I coded, another component got easier to make since they share some styles.

Now that all the blocks are finished, it’s time for the big refactor. I chose to code all the components without thinking about the file structure too much. That means that I have to split out the big CSS file into smaller modules, but also that I;

Have to think about how to name the blocks properly

Update all the copy because now it’s just random links and titles from my content.

Include better, royalty-free, optimized assets.

Have a better look at the CSS variables.

Reduce the number of similar colors. We now have multiple light gray colors. Let's pick one for consistency.

Write a readme.

Of course, the template is already working. I could only work on naming the blocks better and shipping with one big CSS file. However, resolving the points above will make the product easier for the user, make it look/feel more professional, and reduce support requests.

Also, during this refactor, I also had another chance to touch up the designs a bit. I am pretty happy with what we got, but I still feel there is a 10/20% improvement opportunity. It would be great that, besides being a convenient template that solves a problem, that people also see it and be like, "I didn't know I wanted a link in bio page, but this looks awesome.”

Going beyond this template. 👨‍🚀

Thinking about what pieces of documentation to write, I slowly start exploring the idea of taking this project further than just selling this template that I am currently building. Most of the documentation, I think, will be perfectly applicable to other HTML templates.

Okay, cool, so?

If people stumble upon my blog/documentation via google, I would be a fool not to offer them cool HTML templates to look at and purchase. Maybe some simple, easily customizable landing page templates for small businesses? Or other UI packages? Suggestions?

If this project turns out to be a success in the long (long, long, long) term, I can build my own website builder based on the templates I created. But let’s not get ahead of myself and try to make this template a success.

See you next week!

Over the next couple of days, I will be working on the refactor alongside my other projects. Don't worry; whatever I do, I will include it in next week's update!

So what's the plan for next week? I am designing the landing page, preparing some marketing material, and doing my best to do the actual launch towards the end of next week.

Stay tuned!

Thanks again for reading this build log. Have a great day, and I’ll see you next week. 🚀

If you want to stay updated in the meantime, give me a follow on Twitter.

With love,

Twankrui