Building a business from scratch - day 5

Welcome to day five of the useaffiliates.com build log! This series covers my journey of building a business from scratch in public. If you missed day four, you could check it out here. I also uploaded today's Twitch stream to YouTube if you want to watch the replay.

You are linking to the wrong domain, you silly goose! 🙄

I have to admit something, I got fired up (call it triggered) by a comment on Indie Hackers by someone who told me, "YOU KEEP POSTING THE WRONG LINK, ARE YOU SURE IT'S THE RIGHT ONE!?". Although I have done stupider things before, I won't post the same faulty link in 4 updates without notice. So I stretched my fingers and wrote back this in response:

That's because I am still designing the project! But this confirms that I need to set up a "coming soon" page. 🚀

I mean, the man was right; it's a little silly to mention a domain that links to a blank page. So I took a couple of hours to set up a coming soon page:

Convertkit to the rescue! 🦹‍♀️

After going through several email marketing tools (Revue, HubSpot, Drip), I decided to try out ConvertKit. They have a landing page feature, which I was looking for as a temporary solution.

The process was pretty straightforward. I tried out a couple of templates tweaked the fonts and colors until finally deciding on a template that I could style the most towards my liking and the branding of the project.

It's not up for long, but at least this gets rid of the white page. If you want to, you can check it out now! If you are an absolute legend and want to stay updated on when we launch, sign-up for the newsletter! https://useaffiliates.com

We finished migrating the database in front of 40 people. 👀

The first time I got raided (someone was sending over their viewers after stopping their stream) on Twitch, and there I was validating the data for BassPro. I have no clue why so many viewers kept watching while I was navigating my way through a fishing store trying to find their affiliate program. I guess they just really liked fishing (lol) 🐟.

However, we finished migrating the old database by the end of today! Sixty rows are now in the new database, which isn't enough in my eyes, so before we launch, I will do a scavenger hunt for more affiliate programs. My goal is to launch with at least 100 affiliate programs, so there is quite some work left to do in that department!

Let's get coding! ⚙

Now that we have the design, (part of) the content, and a coming soon page, it's time to get started with coding the actual platform! We will use NextJS, TailwindCSS, and the @notion/client package.

Thanks for reading this short build log, and I hope to see you tomorrow!

Have a great day!

With love,