🤑 Making Money with Templates 🤑

# [ $davids.sh ] · message #258

• @ [ $davids.sh ] · # 1609

  ThemeForest, WordPress plugins, ready-made landing pages, and similar products have been around for a long time and no longer surprise anyone.

  But now a new format is emerging: Full-stack templates for accelerating SaaS development.

  https://shipfa.st https://staarter.dev https://usenextbase.com https://usegravity.app https://saasrock.com

  And this crap costs a pretty penny (around $200-500).

  On average, this includes:

  • Frontend (like Next.js + UI library)
  • Backend (Node.js HTTP / GQL API)
  • Database with extras (like Supabase / Hasura)
  • Multilingual support
  • Authentication
  • Billing + analytics (Stripe)
  • Email newsletters
  • Blog
  • Mini-admin panel (users, purchases)
  • SEO
  • CI/CD (Github Actions)
  • Deployment setup
  • Online support for various issues

  Of all this, perhaps the most hypothetically useful is the support, thanks to which you can ask any question about any crap you don't know how to do, and they will help you implement it.

  Even if some help is paid, it still fully pays off, both for the client and for the author, because the author knows what and how everything is structured in their system + can continue to develop their template based on this feedback.

  The rest is a bit questionable, but okay, I can understand why it might be useful for the average developer who wants to launch a project quickly.

  Overall, the market is as endless as the template market, and it will work on the same principle: whoever can market themselves best or create something targeted (most often it's about design or narrow functionality for a specific market) will succeed, and that's 5% of the entire market.

  If someone wants to become an indie hacker, this might be a good first step into the market:

  1. Build a template.
  2. Launch it on ProductHunt, Reddit, Y, Hacker News.
  3. Create shorts on YouTube/TikTok, or better yet, videos where you talk about the awesomeness of indie hacking and how MicroSaaS will give you freedom.
  4. Profit.

  Even if you don't make money, at least you'll gain experience and add a case study to your portfolio.

  Any ideas for a template you could build?

• @ [ $davids.sh ] · # 1610

  I'm wondering if the Go + Templ + Htmx stack could work.

  Meaning, with all the functionality from the post, admin panels, and similar, but entirely in Go.

  Go is clearly not the typical indie hacker's choice, and whether a modern SPA can be built with Htmx is also questionable.

  Such a stack could work because if you've moved to Go, going back to Node.js and a frontend (where SSR is also needed) might be a major hassle. At the same time, there are plenty of Go developers, so there could be indie hackers among them.

  It's also possible that such a stack would be bought purely to see how this kind of application can be built without JavaScript.

• @ [ $davids.sh ] · # 1611

  I also noticed that there are practically no / few B2B templates among them: that is, with multitenancy, organizations, per-seat billing, and so on.

• @ Artur G · # 1612

  Every time I see this guy's startups, I remember him saying in his videos that he doesn't test software. 😂

• @ Artur G · # 1613

  Sounds like a framework.

• @ [ $davids.sh ] · # 1614

  Yeah, this dude is hilarious: he markets himself as a successful indie hacker, while 90% of his profit comes from a template for indie hackers))

• @ [ $davids.sh ] · # 1615

  What I like about projects like these, as opposed to classic frameworks, is that they don't have a black box; all the code is right there in front of you.

  In general, if I were to turn a similar concept into a framework, it would only be with full code generation. I don't trust other frameworks.