What I learned while building a desktop app to document my journey in a timelapse video

September 3, 2019

by Ilias Haddad

After launching the beta version of Habitscript and getting great feedback about the idea and I’m still working on launching the v1 soon this month.

Finding The Idea

While building habitscript, I watched a video from Devon Crawford about automating his process of video editing using FFmpeg and I already watch a lot of speed coding videos ,also a video about the journey of Pieter Levels while building Hoodmaps and a video about the journey of Guilherme Rizzo while building CSS Scan and I got excited about documenting my journey in a timelapse video

Building The Product

Indie hackers members recommend using what I already when I built Habitscript and it’s will save a lot of time. You need to use tools and programming language you already knew and familiar it.

I already have some experience in Node js, so I decided to use an electron which I can build a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux desktop app with same code) desktop app.

After about 5 days I built makerlapse and its’ run correclty like I want to be

What I learned after building makerlapse

Build an electron app: I watched some tutorials videos on youtube and I read some medium articles about building an electron app
Build something simple and useful: Don’t spend a lot of times building a feature that isn’t necessary
Build a landing page before launching on ProductHunt. When I launched habitscript and makerlapse I didn’t spend time on building a landing page and I lose a lot of visitors (potential paying customers) from producthunt

After Launching Makerlapse on ProductHunt :

I got 127 upvotes on ProductHunt and it’s amazing

Makerlapse ProduHunt Page

I make two sales after launching and I’m very happy about it

Makerlapse Stats On Gumroad

Mistakes I make while lancing on ProductHunt

I don’t spend time on building a landing page and newsletter and I lose a lot of potential paying customers and redirect all visitors to gumroad product page
I don’t spend time on designing a featured image ( The first image on product hunt media gallery and image used when your share producthunt link on social media

Feedback About Makerlapse:

Thank you so much for anyone who upvotes makerlapse on ProductHunt and leaves his feedback about it :)

Feedback About Makerlapse

Feedback from the second paying user of makerlapse

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Be sure to send a message on Twitter with any questions you have, I’m always happy to help

JamStack

Ilias Haddad