Welcome to the First Edition of My Newsletter!

Hello,

Welcome to the very first edition of the Dev Artisans Newsletter! This is my newsletter, and I'm excited to share my very first post with you. I'm thrilled to have you join me on this journey of coding, creating, and crafting SaaS solutions.

A Little About Me

For those who don't know me, I'm Venelin, a solopreneur and web developer passionate about building innovative SaaS products. I’ve been coding since 2007 and balancing a 9-5 job while navigating to full-time entrepreneurship. My goal is to share my experiences, insights, and tips with you as I work towards achieving entrepreneurial freedom.

What to Expect

In this newsletter, you can expect a blend of the following:

• Journey Updates: I'll share my personal experiences, challenges, and milestones as I balance my day job with indie hacking.

• Coding Tips & Tricks: Practical advice to help you improve your coding skills and productivity.

• SaaS Development Insights: Lessons learned from building and launching SaaS products.

• Community Stories: Inspiring stories from other solopreneurs and developers on similar journeys.

This Month’s Highlight: Starting From Scratch

This month, I'm excited to share updates on my latest project, Pingify, a website monitoring tool that helps users track their websites' uptime and performance. All the insights I'll share are directly related to my experience developing and launching this tool.

Key Steps in Developing Pingify:

1. Research & Validation: Before writing a single line of code, I drew on my experience from my 9-5 job, where I know firsthand that website monitoring is mandatory and how serious the problems can be when it fails. I had used other tools, but they were often expensive or too complex. This led me to spend time researching the market and validating the idea of Pingify. I also spoke with potential users to understand their pain points regarding website downtime and performance monitoring.

2. Building an MVP: With a validated idea, I focused on creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for Pingify. This involved developing core features like uptime monitoring, alert notifications, and performance reports to solve the primary user problems.

3. Iterating Based on Feedback: Once the MVP was live, I gathered feedback from early users and made continuous improvements. This iterative process has been crucial in refining Pingify to meet user needs better.

Resources to Get You Started

Here are some resources that have been invaluable in my journey with Pingify:

• Tool: Trello for project management

• Community: Indie Hackers/ Build In Public for support and networking

Let's Connect!

I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to reply with your thoughts and questions or to introduce yourself. You can also follow me on Twitter/X for more frequent updates and tips: @venelinkochev.

Thank you. Stay tuned for more insights and stories in the next edition of the Dev Artisans Newsletter!

Best regards,

Venelin K.