Leveraging Product Hunt for evergreen side-hustle growth

Felix Wong works full-time leading growth at a FinTech startup while building side hustles — Zlides and Abstract — on his commute.

I caught up with him to learn how he juggles everything — and how one of his projects became Product Hunt's Product of the Year in the "side project" category.

Here's what he had to say. 👇

Getting a job and building side hustles

I started my corporate career in analytics consulting, but I got bored within 2 years and quit, starting a business with people I met at a hackathon.

That was eight years ago. It's been a rollercoaster since then.

I went back to full-time employment, working in everything from venture capital to unicorns. But I always spend most of my free time indie hacking.

It’s fun. And it sparks my creativity! Plus, I love being surrounded by fellow founders. It’s super motivating.

Ideation process

But I also really enjoy feeling dissatisfied. It's what keeps me discovering new ideas and starting new projects!

My ideas come from pain points I see in my day job or from things I see frequently on social media. I also surf Product Hunt every day to learn from other products and ideas.

I see so many shiny objects when it comes to side project ideas, it's tough to know what to work on.

To prioritize them, I use RFM analysis: Recency, frequency, and monetary. Scoring each idea helps me to figure out where to focus.

As for how I juggle testing ideas, building side projects, and working my full-time job leading the marketing department at a FinTech startup, it's simple. I wake up around early to build before work. And I work on my projects during my commute.

Make use of any downtime you have!

Two side hustles

I'm currently working on two projects.

Zlides is a boutique pitch deck design studio that I created to help founders, startups, and creators organize their content, design, and storytelling. It's currently bringing in $500/mo.

Abstract is an illustration design studio. We sell templates and custom modules for personal and commercial use. It's bringing in about $250/mo.

I mainly sell D2C with one-time payments via Gumroad for things like templates and bundles. I also offer productized services.

Building side-project MVPs in no code

I built both of my projects with my favorite tech stack: Carrd, Zapier, Airtable, ImprovMX, MailerLite, Gumroad, and Figma. Simple and affordable.

In general, I always work super lean in terms of tools and resources. And that means my burn rate is very low — around $20/mo per project.

And I'm big on no code.

I come from a data science background and learned front-end dev in my early twenties, but I never had practical or job experience in technical development. So I'm grateful to be doing this in the no-code era.

No code is like Legos. You mix and match to minimize technical involvement. It has come a long way. I'd say it can handle pretty much anything these days, as long as you have a clear idea what you need to build.

If you'd like to learn how to do it, IH is one of my go-to resources. I also watch people building in public on Twitter and I joined a few no-code communities, like 100 Days of No Code.

Validating side hustles

I wish I had known about the beauty of doing validation early back when I got started. Indie hackers need to cherish the validation process. It's the key to entrepreneurial success.

Because you can't just build a flawless product. You have to validate and iterate. You have to prove your hypothesis.

I validated both my projects by leveraging my social presence and friend circle. They're always good for sharing candid feedback.

Winning Product Hunt

After validation comes launch. Abstract was a Product Hunt Product of the Year in 2022. That was a big moment for me.

The nomination itself was such a surprise. And then going to the event... I was completely blown away by all the amazing people in attendance. It was such a unique experience.

And more importantly, Product Hunt has a strong longevity effect — at least if you place as a product of the year. Even though my launch was 2 years ago, I’m still getting sustainable referral traffic from PH every day — roughly 30% of my new users come from there.

Here's the process that I used for the PH launch of Abstract. It's in the PST timezone, but I'm in GMT+8:

• 12:01 am: Product Hunt launch

• 12:01 am: 1st Twitter personal tweet

• 1:00 am: Makerpad short post

• 2:00 am: Newsletter to waitlisters

• 3:30 am: 1st Slack group message

• 4:00 am: Facebook personal post

• 4:00 am: Indie Hackers post

• 4:30 am: 2nd Slack group message

• 4:45 am: Reddit r/sideproject

• 5:00 am: Facebook YC Startup School group

• 5:15 am: 3rd Slack group message

• 5:45 am: Facebook Notion group

• 6:15 am: Hacker News

• 6:45 am: 1st Makerlog update

• 7:15 am: Instagram personal story

• 7:30 am: 4th Slack group message

• 7:45 am: Instagram Dollo post & story

• 8:00 am: Reddit r/figmadesign

• 8:00 am: Twitter Dollo tweet

• 9:00 am: Owwly submission

• 9:30 am: Facebook Design (UI/UX) group

• 10:00 am: Sleep

• 5:30 pm: Wake up + coffee

• 6:30 pm: 2nd Indie Hackers post

• 6:45 pm: Reddit r/Notion

• 6:45 pm: Facebook UX/UI Design Projects group

• 7:00 pm: Pinterest Dollo pin

• 7:00 pm: 2nd Makerlog update

• 7:00 pm: Reddit r/startups

• 7:15 pm: Behance Dollo post

• 7:15 pm: 5th Slack group message

• 7:30 pm: 2nd Twitter personal tweet

• 7:45 pm: Facebook Figma designers group

• 8:00 pm: So tired and my 4th place is pretty safe. Let's call it a day :)

Over the following two weeks, I did some post-launch efforts for long-tail effects. It took me 14 days to reach out to influencers, design communities, and media. As a result, I have received a lot of good feedback from well-known designers, been featured in top design newsletters, and I was even supported by Sketch.

Growing via Product Hunt and Twitter

These days, I keep my marketing channels very lean. I only focus on the channels where my customers spend most of their time. That limits my efforts to Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack communities, and IH.

I'd say the customer acquisition split is roughly 40% Twitter, 30% LinkedIn, and 30% Product Hunt, with some others here and there.

So I leverage social media and organic content heavily — I used to post every day, but I've slipped a bit recently.

When I post, I don't try to sell my products or services. That's important. Instead, I focus on sharing my process. And I actively ask for feedback from my audience. This approach has helped me build credibility — and a following. And the benefits have compounded over the years.

Four hot marketing tips

As a marketer, here are my top four marketing tips:

1. Develop an experimental mindset. Always test and learn.

2. Analyze every possible growth and de-churn opportunity.

3. Break your marketing efforts down as much as possible to make them more manageable and testable.

4. Diversify your marketing. Never rely on one channel. Same goes for your products and revenue streams.

And remember, to grow sustainably, you need to occasionally stop focusing on current and future growth. You also need to perform retrospectives from time to time to understand what's working and what isn't.

Your side-hustle ideas should fail sometimes

As you go about your indie hacking journey, stay humble. Never stop learning.

And don’t give up after you've dialed in one idea. Get more failures under your belt!

It takes a lot of failure to find the project.

You can follow my failures — and successes — on X and LinkedIn. And check out my side hustles, Zlides and Abstract.