The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of ShareTXT

The idea to build ShareTXT came to me about 3 years ago, on the 21st of January 2021 during the covid 19 era. When the news of the virus just began to go mainstream and there was news emerging from everywhere.

During that period, I had just graduated from University, had completed my one year of compulsory military service, and was working for a small local business in my area as a Web developer.

It was during this same period that I began to conceive the idea of building some sort of project. It is weird to say that even though I had all this knowledge of web development, I had not used that knowledge to build a proper project to give back to the community that had given me so much free knowledge in return.

I built small projects like calculators, websites, and stuff like that. At this point, I was on Makerlog, and Indiehackers and was listening to podcasts from indiehackers, Justin Jackson megamaker podcast, etc. I read books such as the lean startup, zero to one, zero to sold, marketing for developers by Justin Jackson and stuff like that.

All those things gave me the confidence to take a leap of faith and put myself out there.

I have had an idea of what I wanted to build for a while, but needed guidance on how to build it successfully. Being an advocate of the scientific approach, those resources really clarified the approach that I needed to take. I created a checklist, and I had a timeframe of what I wanted to do and when I should do something. It was kinda like the launch sequence before a rocket is launched into space. Only that this time I was going to use the same scientific approach to launch this project that I had created and have been using locally on my system for months to the online community.

It took me exactly 7 days to build the first online version of ShareTXT, I then spent the next 7 days testing the app, making sure that there were no bugs. At the same time I was dropping hints on Twitter and other platforms, reaching out to the online community to collect surveys, and feedback, and building anticipation about what I was about to launch.

Version 1.0 wasn't that great visually. It did not have a world-class UI design, but the backend systems packed a considerable punch. The app had lightning speed because of the few UI elements to paint on the screen and the response rate was instant.

I started the countdown to launch on day 5 and every day leading up to the launch, I created a graphic and added a short note that highlighted one good benefit of the app. Something like "What if you never had the stress about sharing content across your devices?".

I then reached out to a couple of influential people that I follow on Twitter, I sent them DMs and told them what I was up to. Some of them were nice enough and tweeted about the product to their massive followers.

On launch day, I had something of an army of people waiting for the product to be released on product hunt. Looking back in hindsight, I did not expect that what I had been doing had so much impact.

I announced the product launch by 2 pm local time on Twitter, Indiehackers, discord, WhatsApp, etc, and was expecting a couple of close friends and family members to drop a like and if possible a comment. But instead, I was blown away. The number of people that came through the door was astounding.

Because this was my first product launch, I did not know what to expect. There were a lot of supportive people and some trolls.

The launch was a very big success with thousands of people visiting the site in a very short period of time. The product eventually got featured on Product Hunt.

About a week after the launch, the traffic slowly died down like a logarithmic curve. The people remaining were the real users of the application. In the coming months, the number of real users started to increase as the popularity of the app spread by word of mouth.

In the following months, I added some more apps and upgraded the UX and UI making it more user-friendly while ensuring that the performance remained optimal.

The site also got indexed by Google and traffic reached a level that I had to upgrade the backend systems. I now implemented a system that will allow the application to scale itself automatically.

The journey for ShareTXT has been a fun one as you continue to leave great feedback on the app. The best thing I did was to just do it and launch the MVP even though it seemed it was too early because it enabled me to upgrade the product based on user feedback. I enjoy working on the website to improve it and make it better for you.

As we round up this year, I want to wish ShareTXT a happy 3-year anniversary in advance and wish you happy holidays 💖.