Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 14/01/2026I swear I work on projects that I scale and monetize too, but while I was working my TIDE LOG app I decided to remaster and re-release my retro surfing mobile game too. Flappy-surfing fun for the whole family! #buildinpublic #indiehacker 021
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 12/01/2026Just launched a quick app project to pass the time while I wait for some data from a paid campaign to roll in. #buildinpublic 050
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 07/01/2026When you're starting a new project, you don't know what you don't know. You're probably gaming out second and third order problems you may never even encounter. Pick something. Learn it. Move on. 110
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 06/01/2026After my first big failure, my options were: - Try a new idea - Get a normal job again I looked back at everything I'd learned in 6 months of "failing" and option 1 sounded way more appealing and possible. #buildinpublic 040
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 05/01/2026A lot of my past success came from B2C affiliate offers via organic & more recently paid. A lot of that was pretty darn scrappy and done by myself. This week - scoping out a new B2C project, initial test campaign, and hiring some freelancers to test creatives. 100
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 04/01/2026Setting up new accounts/assets on Meta/Tiktok business & ad managers is such a f***ing pain. I think that may be intentional. 110
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 03/01/2026All of my programming knowledge is self-taught. All of my experience is from projects of my own. I started out as a journalist! You don't need credentials to build things. You just need to start building things. You'll learn what you need when you need it. #buildinpublic #indiehacker 131
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 02/01/2026The types of money printers I've built over 10 years: - Physical, digital, and print-on-demand products - MicroSaaS subscriptions - Lead capture and lead sales - Affiliate marketing projects 100
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 01/01/2026What's your big idea for 2026? Claim your free url, start building and validating at www.slapplaunch.com #buildinpublic #indiehackerslapplaunch.comSLAPPlaunchValidate ideas. Find customers. Collect feedback. Launch with confidence. 151
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 31/12/2025One more to close out 2025: SLAPPlaunch. A platform designed to validate and share ideas (at any stage), find your first users, and collect feedback via simple surveys - all while building SEO to your owned properties with dofollow links & editable landing pages. Start for free - happy new year! 110
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 30/12/2025I didn't really get Tailwind CSS at first. Why am I using bastardized style rules as class names? But once I got the hang of it, styling on the fly while building became way faster. Just another flow to make building and shipping faster for me. 110
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 29/12/2025Skip the finer polish on V1: I'm working on a validation/distribution tool - I was about to jump into building some custom skeleton loaders for my dynamic pages. Stopped myself real quick and opted for a simple loading.tsx for the routes (nextjs). Keep it simple, stupid. #buildinpublic 271
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 29/12/2025SEOs describing Google Search Console or basic site search operators to see how your site is indexed like they're some mystical secret weapon got to stop. SEO is not that complicated. 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 28/12/2025To launch a basic service business online, you need: A website Lead capture A CRM Email Scheduling Invoicing and payments That can be up to 6 different tools before you've made a dollar if you're not careful. I built serviceCRM to solve that. 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 28/12/2025Happy to say I've stuck to my goal of publishing consecutive weekly issues & videos of THE SLAPPY WEEKLY: slappshell.com/resou… & youtube.com/@Slap…SLAPPSHELL is my new project condensing my experience in running online businesses over the past 10 years into products, tools, and services.slappshell.com 100
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 27/12/2025(re)Building a money printer: Start with the parts of the blueprint you know are working. Try something new for the parts that failed. Repeat. More money printing blueprints from SLAPPSHELL coming in 2026 & beyond. 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 26/12/2025Google, Meta, etc. will happily take all the ad spend you give them. If you're running paid campaigns without good conversion tracking (or poor conversions in general), pause them and fix that first. You'll be happy you did. 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 26/12/2025serviceCRM is essentially a turn-key business platform (whether you're a service business or website developer). But, any successful launch requires 2 things: validation + distribution. SLAPPSHELL has a solution for that coming soon. 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 25/12/2025Here’s a gift: that idea you’ve got? The v1 can be started for free with nothing more than a laptop. Oh, you still need to make a logo, favicon, different sizes? Merry XMas, just do the damn thing www.slappshell.com/logo-file-ma... #buildinpublic #indiehackerslappshell.comLogo File MakerUpload or design custom logo files for your applications with our easy-to-use Logo File Maker tool. Get all the sizes you'll need for your application, favicons, and social profiles. 131
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 24/12/2025All my talk about launching quickly and I still sat on the SLAPPSHELL idea for a year. Life happens, and you do what you can with the time you have. The important thing is eventually doing what you want. #buildinpublic #indiehacker #smallbusiness 241
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 24/12/2025I built a test version of an old WP project with NextJS, Supabase, and Stripe. (new mini-subscriptions still come through) It wasn't designed to pay the bills, but it did prove I could now build my "money printers" faster and more efficiently than before. #buildinpublic #indiehacker 261
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 23/12/2025Easy meta tags template I use for all of my pages, just fill in a few variables and I'm good to go in seconds. Could even componentize it if I really wanted to. #buildinpublic 060
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 23/12/2025The urge to add “just one more feature” is a path to the dark side. #buildinpublic #indiehacker 140
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 23/12/2025My first idea sucked as a business. After 6 months working on it, that was pretty clear. But almost any idea will do as long as it gets you moving. #buildinpublic 060
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 22/12/2025My broader project is all about combining my curiosities/learnings from the past 10 years and distilling that into products/services to help launch ideas faster, run leaner, and make more money. I've got a running list of products to build under the SLAPPSHELL umbrella to that end. 100
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 22/12/2025As a former SEO, don’t stress too much about your SEO. There are no magic keywords or magic backlinks. Get a solid technical foundation in place, templates with your core on-page elements, and then focus on building something useful and talking about it how your customers do. #buildinpublic 1121
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 22/12/2025Stop doing manually what can be achieved programmatically big fan of data arrays of objects for building out batches of similar types of landing pages quickly (products, use cases, comparison). Unique content & SEO + codebase remains clean without CMS. If anyone’s interested, I’ll share my method 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 22/12/2025The potential set of options available AFTER failing on a bad idea are always much greater than if I'd never started. I redesigned the entire logic for an app, only to realize I'd just wasted a month On the plus side, I expanded my Javascript experience which rolled forward into something new. 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 22/12/2025When I started my first project, it was nothing more than a creative outlet to escape the monotony of my day job and nighttime MBA program. A decade later, it's my primary source of income (and has been for a good portion of that time) You never know where something will lead you. #buildinpublic 050
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 21/12/2025In my time spent conducting user interviews for a variety of projects, one thing became universally clear: your users are easily confused. Make your navigation, flows, and actions as simple and intuitive as possible. Don’t make people think too hard, and don’t expect they will. #buildinpublic 041
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 20/12/2025Sometimes a little step away from the work is what it takes to uncover that idea or solution you’ve been trying to force. #buildinpublic #indiehackers 041
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 19/12/2025After building projects privately for the last decade, building in public itself feels like a "fail" at the start. Easy to think I'm writing for no one, unsure of myself, unsure of the point. 110
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 19/12/2025Abandon your desire for instant gratification, everything you attempt will be better for it. Need a cure? Hop on a skateboard and figure out how to do a kickflip. (wear a helmet) 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 19/12/2025Every once in while I think I fool myself into thinking I'm building solutions for big teams and everybody else. Not the case. I build stuff mostly for people like me: people who like to run lean, stay scrappy, and clean up. #buildinpublic #indiehackers 131
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 19/12/2025Not everything you build lasts forever Technology evolves, competitors come along, customers change, the rules/rates on rented land change, etc. Keep that in mind and be prepared for the change. Build a list of customers that can move to a new project, exit while things are still good, etc. 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 18/12/2025You don’t have to build unicorns, you know. A good cow or two, some goats, llamas, or even a handful of chickens might get you what you want. Heck, start with an ant farm if you have to. #buildinpublic #indiehackers 031
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 18/12/20252 secret ways to getting what you want: 1) Make it happen. or 2) Find a wealthy old person you can cozy up to for their remaining years. Good luck! 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 18/12/2025If you're a solo maker or small team, think in reusable systems. Once you're familiar with something, each time you use it, it gets easier. That compounds pretty fast, and eliminates some of the psuedo-productivity that can creep into any project. #buildinpublic #indiehackers 051
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 17/12/2025I've lost track of how many failures I've had since I started. But stacking some months that exceed my old W-2's annual salary make the leaner times much easier to weather. And I've had some decent runs of lean times! Ultimately, still enjoying it, and all certainly worth it. #buildinpublic 011
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 17/12/2025People obsess about tech stacks. I'm a dad, I've got a toddler. I personally don't want to be spending any time messing around in AWS. Sometimes paying a little extra for simplicity and abstraction is the right call - especially at the beginning. #buildinpublic #indiehackers 151
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 17/12/2025You don't have to reinvent the wheel. When I first started building sites on WP, I'd find something that worked, copy the setup, tools, and strategy to a new instance and create a variation of the winner. Same blueprint with a new spin. That approach can re-apply to almost anything. 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 16/12/2025SLAPPSHELL's main use-cases & licensing options: - Small businesses: Get a single tier self-hosted or managed service. - Developers/Freelancers: Pro tier self-hosted to ship white-label serviceCRM for your own clients. - Reseller license to sell the boilerplate yourself. youtu.be/pzgwg3LNCKsyoutu.beExploring the Use-Cases & Licensing Options for SLAPPSHELL ProductsYouTube video by Ethan Orenstein // SlappShell 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 16/12/2025When I started, I quit my job, cashed out my 401K, and jumped into an idea with basically no market research or validation. Probably not the smartest approach, and that idea totally sucked. But there's something valuable in just jumping in and starting the damn thing. #buildinpublic 051
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 16/12/2025Staying curious has been the most valuable thing for me so far. Open your mind and welcome new experiences. Ask someone who knows. Hire someone. Partner with someone. Use what you need to. You don't have to figure it out all at once or have the answers in order to start. #buildinpublic 150
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 15/12/2025Holidays are a busy time for one business I run that involves selling artwork on Etsy. In the descriptions I include when to order by to receive before Xmas. And every year, I get the same messages: #buildinpublic #indiehackers 130
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 15/12/2025I almost quit at the beginning of 2025. At that point, my losing streak was almost legal drinking age. Then, I had one more idea I wanted to try (the initial test idea for SLAPPSHELL) and had my best single month in a very long time. 100
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 15/12/2025The "iterate and adjust" stage is where you'll experience your setbacks and failures. That's not a bad thing though. That's where most of the valuable learning happens. 000
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 14/12/2025Your customers don't care about your tech stack. Should you? Here's what I actually use to launch & run projects super fast for ~$80/month (and you can start for free): 100
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 12/12/2025I just launched a whole bunch of use case landing pages for serviceCRM. If you're building solo, landing page templatization and SEO automation is a major asset. Way back when I would spend hours to days doing that manually - page by page - with excel & Wordpress. #buildinpublic 041
Ethan Orenstein @slappshell.bsky.social · 12/12/2025I was using the first iteration of serviceCRM myself to capture and manage my own leads before I started shaping it up for other businesses to use. To celebrate the launch week, I'm looking for some folks who'd like to get up and running with the platform for free! Reach out for details! 000
