The 15+ fastest products to build

When it's time to begin your indie hacking career, two things are really important. Oversimplification of the year, but bear with me. You have to:

1. Minimize risk
2. Start

And launching something quick and easy can take care of both things. It diversifies your revenue streams and allows you to knock out that easy one so that you can get into the habit of shipping. I talked to someone with a lot of experience shipping products — in fact, he's currently launching 25 products in 25 weeks.

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Yep, that's right. Ayush Chaturvedi (@ayushchat) is launching 25 products in 25 weeks. This guy knows how to make a quick product, and he's turning a profit too. How is he doing it? Well, he certainly isn't building a SaaS every week. No, he's creating other types of digital products. Quick ones. And yeah, I get it… SaaS is the end-all-be-all, right? We all prefer the idea of building a beautiful piece of software, so here's an unpopular opinion: Not every product needs to be a SaaS. There are other options, and they exist for a reason. Let's talk about the products Ayush was able to create in a week. And I'll outline some other options later.

Products that Ayush launched in a week

In the last few months, Ayush has built the following products within 7 days:

• Indie Masterminds (mastermind group)
• Blue Bird Essentials (Twitter course)
• Copy OS (Copywriting course + Notion system)
• Launch Like a Pro (swipefile)
• The User Interviews Playbook
• Maker Toolkit
• Creator Hot Tips
• Creator Profit Playbook
• The Landing Page Playbook

Ayush: Most of these are info/curation-based products because I have to keep the scope very narrow and actually ship the product in a week. A SaaS would take at least a month, even if I built it with NoCode.

So if you're counting, that's a mastermind group, a course, a system, a swipefile, a toolkit, a compilation of tips, and a toolkit. He's also got other courses, guides, ebooks, and a premium newsletter. And before he embarked on the 25x25, he also had a productized service and did some consulting work to keep the lights on. To date, he's made about $2K on Indie Masterminds and a total of $2K on everything else. Not F-U money by any means, but respectable considering that each of these was built in a week, with little promotion after that week. In case you're wondering how he pays the bills, he saved up two years of runway before quitting his job. More on how Ayush does it later. For now, here are some other options.

Other products with quick turnaround times

I did a little digging and found more options to add to the list. Of course, there are other options out there — and I'd love to hear your additions in the comments!

• Ebook/guides: Ayush made them, and you can too. They don't need to be overly long — I've read a few that are only 10 pages or so.
• Guides: Ayush calls them "Playbooks", but whatever you call them, give people a succinct, actionable guide on how to do something that you've done successfully, or that you know a lot about.
• Newsletter: I'm personally building one right now and I've really enjoyed it. So far I've built it to 1100+ subs in 7 months without a following, and I'm about to launch the paid tier (though I'd advise doing it earlier). And it has brought me other opportunities as well, like being a weekly guest on a Youtube channel with 200K+ subscribers and a possible co-founding opportunity for an existing product.
• Blog: If you go the blog route, you can monetize with ads, sponsors, or paywalling. Or you can just use it to build your brand and improve SEO.
• Podcasts: Podcasts can run the gambit and to start one, all you have to do is talk. Growing it might not be so easy, though. Monetize through ads, sponsors, premium content, promoting your other products, or selling episodes as bundles (if you're established).
• Services: Ok, this isn't a product, but you can pretty quickly find clients who will keep the lights on for you as you build your product(s)
• Productized services: Even better (IMO) than providing services, is selling productized services. A productized service is just a service that is packaged and sold like a product, with explicit 'features' and a price tag. Making this work is all about systematization and processes so that you don't have to work as much as you would to provide a normal service. Just look at @brettwill1025 and his productized services business, DesignJoy, which is making a crazy $1.5M per year. By himself. Mind-blowing.
• Swipe Files: This is essentially a collection of examples that can be used for inspiration. The collection could be marketing techniques, sales emails, good copy, you name it.
• Toolkits: This is just what it sounds like — a list of tools (and sometimes instructions) to be used in a certain situation. Try to niche down. Ayush did one.
• Design assets: This may take a little longer, but I've seen indie hackers doing it. Provide design assets like icons, fonts, avatars, etc. as products.
• Courses: If you've got some expertise (and I'll go out on a limb to say that everyone does), then you could condense your knowledge into a course and put it up on Udemy, Coursera, Gumroad, etc.
• Webinar: This tends to require a following, but a webinar is a quick way to make a few bucks. You don't even need to be the expert — you can give a cut to guests for sharing their experience. That'll have the added impact of bringing their audience to you. Side note: If you don't have an audience but you do have expertise, you can be the guest.
• Masterminds: As we saw above, Ayush did quite well on his mastermind, for which he charges $75. The beautiful thing about it is that since this is a group of peers, you'll get just as much out of it as the participants. All you need to do is get a group together, set the agenda, and moderate.
• Digital templates: This includes web banners, emails, documents, and so forth.
• Website themes: This is pretty similar to templates, but it's a good one for designers. Just design a beautiful landing page and sell on a website builder or CMS.
• Tutorials: People sell tutorials. With all the tutorials available on Youtube for free, I have a hard time believing that these are easy to monetize. But the fact remains that they are an option.
• Ecommerce: Physical products probably aren't what most of us are looking to offer, but it's still a possibility. You can launch a store on Shopify in a day and spread the word on your socials.
• MVP: And, of course, if you're ready to get right into a piece of software, you can (and probably should) really, really winnow down your features, and launch a very limited version of your product. An MVP is an excellent way to get validation and start getting users. And though it depends on the product, I've heard it said that an MVP should take no longer than 30 days to build.

What to do after building one

Ayush always pre-launches to his Twitter following (~4500) with nothing more than a landing page. This is how he validates and (hopefully) gets presales.

Ayush: When I launch, I give away the first seats for free by asking people to reply to my Tweet with an emoji to get the link to the product. Then I DM them the link. This brings in hundreds of replies which causes the algorithm to push the launch tweet to more and more people.

And don't get scared away by that ~4500 followers.

Ayush: I used to think that I needed a huge Twitter audience or a large email list before I could start selling my products. But waiting too long before promoting your products can train your audience to expect free stuff, and then they'll never actually buy from you in the end. So be open from the start about why you're building a Twitter/email audience. And if your goal is to eventually monetize it in some way then you should start testing products from the beginning.

How to grow your quick-to-market product

Want to turn a profit in a week? Here's how Ayush does it:

Ayush: I launch between Tuesday and Thursday because that's when Twitter has the most traffic. So my week starts on launch day. I plan the product, make a table of contents, decide on the bonuses that people will get, then set the product up on Gumroad with the pricing details and the copy. I schedule the launch tweet to go out later in the day. In it, I ask people to reply with an emoji to get it for free, as I mentioned earlier. And I set up my Twitter scheduler so when anyone replies with that emoji they will get a DM from me with a link to the product. As the product gets initial sales I increase the price of the product. This helps me to decide on pricing, which I decide on after 2-3 updates. The next day, I start working on the product. Assuming I have some validation, I start creating it. And by the weekend, I have a fair idea of what the product will look like in its final form. I use Monday and Tuesday to do the final edits, and add more sections/bonuses that I may have missed. I also promote the product in my newsletter, and talk about it on Twitter actively through the week — I try to build it in public as much as I can. This gives me more info on what's resonating and how can I improve the product. Finally, by Tuesday or Wednesday, I send a launch email to everyone who bought the product, thank them for their faith in me, and release the product officially on Gumroad. I also announce that is live via Twitter.

But there are, of course, a million ways to grow a product. Check out Growth Bites for some ideas, but generally speaking, the best thing you can do is go where your target customers are hanging out, and contribute meaningfully.

Thinking up ideas (and validating them)

Trouble coming up with ideas? I wrote about some ways to come up with ideas a while back. And of course, the venerable @csallen did too, with the most popular post in IH history. But here's what Ayush had to say:

Ayush: My ideas have mostly emerged from the conversations I've had with people I've met on Twitter and Indie Hackers. I've been having hundreds of conversations with people around the world thanks to this amazing community. After every conversation I get a sense of what kind of product can help them, and I add it to my list in my Notion. I think folks should have a solid plan and a list of ideas they want to test out. But be serious about every launch. Your customers aren't there to validate ideas for you. They want to get their problems solved. Of course, if nobody pays, or just a couple of people pay then you can always apologize to them and refund the money. But don't make a product launch sound like an experiment.

There will be duds, of course. No way around that. So don't be too hard on yourself.

Ayush: Your idea gets brutally murdered by the market. That's hard to swallow, but important for all entrepreneurs to do.

Wrapping up

Long story short, ship something. Do it quickly. Then keep shipping. Having more "buy" buttons on the internet is a great way to diversify and grow your brand.