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u/No_Cake8366

r/hermesagent r/GetStartups r/micro_saas r/bigseo r/SaaS r/SaaSneeded r/IndieDev r/AppBusiness r/buildinpublic r/appsumo r/NoCodeSaaS r/launchigniter r/linkbuilding r/NickLaunches r/saasbuild r/SideProject r/founder
▲ 2 r/appsumo

I built Prompt Builder because I was losing 20 minutes every AI session just wrestling with the prompt

The problem:

I was using AI every day for marketing, research, and product work. And every day I was burning 15-20 minutes before I could even start — just trying to figure out how to phrase the prompt.

The AI worked fine. My inputs were the problem. I'd write something vague, get a mediocre output, rewrite it, get something slightly better, rewrite again. By the time I had something useful, I'd lost half an hour.

I tried the advice: "be specific, set a persona, give examples." Good guidance in theory. Not a tool. Not something you can use when you're staring at a blank box with a deadline.

What I built:

Prompt Builder generates model-specific AI prompts in seconds — you answer a few guided questions and get a prompt tuned for whichever model you're actually using (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Grok, etc.).

[Insert screen recording here — 30-60 seconds showing: open the tool, select a use case, pick a model, generate and refine a prompt, copy to your AI tool of choice]

How it works:

→ Pick your use case (marketing, coding, research, SQL, social, and more) → Select your target AI model → Answer guided questions about your specific task → Get an optimized, model-aware prompt in seconds

Where it's at right now:

Built this over 17 months, launched last week on AppSumo as a lifetime deal. Early days — no reviews yet. Using it myself every single day, which is how I know it actually works, but I'm genuinely curious what gaps people find.

What I'd love feedback on:

We built templates for 8 use cases: Marketing, SEO, Coding, Data/SQL, Product, Support, Social, Research. Are there obvious ones missing? And does the model-specific angle matter to you, or is "better prompts generally" value prop enough?

Happy to answer questions about the tech stack, the journey, or the AppSumo decision.

reddit.com
u/No_Cake8366 — 11 days ago
▲ 30 r/NoCodeSaaS+6 crossposts

Reality of X. My twitter journey took 6 month to see numbers like this...

Hey everyone,

Wanted to share where I landed after 6 months grinding on X. It been wild and honestly hard to keep any momentum going.

For a while I couldn't find my angle. Kept switching formats hoping something clicked.

First I leaned into content for Prompt Builder, another project of mine. Then I tried building an audience around Insta Posts. Barely moved.

X feels dead for organic traffic right now. Most of the dev space is just people trying to make money off each other.

So I made a call. Stop spreading thin, commit fully to one problem, one solution. I launched a launchpad.

The difference was immediate. The moment I had a direct client and one clear thing to solve, everything got easier. Posting got easier. Knowing what to say got easier.

The lesson I keep coming back to: clarity beats hustle. I was working just as hard before. With no focus it went nowhere.

Would love to connect with other devs on the founder journey. Happy to answer anything about the pivot, what I tried, what flopped.

u/No_Cake8366 — 1 month ago
▲ 3 r/launchigniter+1 crossposts

Day 15: $425, 213 products, 12K views. Here's what worked and what didn't

15 days ago I shipped a launch platform for SaaS and indie founders who are tired of one-day spikes on crowded leaderboards.

Day 15 numbers:

- $425 revenue
- 213 products live
- 450 signups
- 12K page views (up 2,138%)
- 1,800 X followers (from 120)
- DR 44 (from 0)
- 350 newsletter subs

Pre-MRR. Revenue is one-time fees for featured slots and a hand-done submission service while I work out the right recurring plan.

What worked, ranked by signups:

  1. Replying to other founders on X. If someone tweeted "just launched" or "looking for users", I replied with something useful and a soft mention. Biggest source by a wide margin.
  2. X ads. Small daily budget, indie/SaaS targeting. Cheap, steady trickle.
  3. My own X audience. 120 to 1,800 followers in 15 days. Daily posts with a number or a screenshot. Day 1 posts got 4 likes. Day 14 posts get 600+.
  4. Reddit. r/SideProject, r/buildinpublic, r/IndieDev, r/juststart, r/linkbuilding. 30K combined views. Numbers + lessons format only.
  5. Free dofollow backlink on every approved submission. Builders forwarded it to each other.

Happy to answer anything in comments.

Disclosure: I'm the founder. Will share the link if asked.

reddit.com
u/No_Cake8366 — 2 months ago
▲ 7 r/IndieDev+1 crossposts

My indie product directory keeps growing every single day. Wild to watch.

I launched a directory for indie products on May 4. Today is day 11 and the growth hasn't slowed down once.

Last 24 hours alone:

  • 25 new products submitted overnight
  • 50 new signups
  • Shipped a directory submission tracker so builders can see where else to submit (100+ directories coming next)
  • More inbound traffic is starting to flow back to the listed apps

What's driving it isn't magic. I'm doing a ton of cold outreach on X every day, replying to builders, DMing people who just shipped something, and I'm running paid ads on top of that to push visibility to the products listed in the directory. The combo of manual outreach + paid traffic is what's keeping the daily floor moving up instead of tapering off after launch week.

A few things I think are working beyond the outreach:

  1. Permanent backlinks for everyone who submits, not just paid tiers. Builders care about SEO value way more than a launch day vanity moment.
  2. Free guides and resources around the directory itself, so people stick around after submitting.
  3. Replying personally to almost every builder. Slow, but it compounds.

Curious if anyone here has run a directory or listing site before. How long did it take before submissions became self-sustaining vs you having to pull them in?

u/No_Cake8366 — 2 months ago
▲ 2 r/NickLaunches+1 crossposts

Made a free tool that generates the "site:reddit.com" and helps to find users

I saw this post https://www.reddit.com/r/indiehackers/comments/1t6672a/made_a_free_tool_that_generates_the_siteredditcom couldn't find link to this free tool anywhere and decided to add it on my directory / blog.

Free AI audience report with Reddit communities and search queries on Nick Launches (limits applies).

> Target User Segments
> Pain Points
> Reddit Communities
> Search Queries

Give it a shot and would love to see your feedback 🔥

u/No_Cake8366 — 2 months ago
▲ 2 r/SideProject

Update on the launch directory I posted here last week. 65 products, 100 signups, 30 free spots left.

Quick update for anyone who saw the first post and wondered if it actually went anywhere.

It's been about a week and a half since I posted about Nick Launches here. The directory itself has been live for 6 days. 65 people have submitted products, around 100 users signed up, traffic is sitting at about 4.5k views with most coming in the last couple of days.

A few things changed because of feedback in the original thread.

The submit form was too long. Someone in the comments pointed out that asking for a polished description on submission is dumb because nobody knows what their card will look like yet. So I split it. First step is just title, URL, one-liner, tags, logo. Edit the rest later. Submission completion went up almost immediately.

Another commenter pushed back hard on trust signals, saying a backlink from an unindexed page is just a vanity URL. Fair point. I added a "launched X days ago" badge and a live click counter on each listing so people can see the page is actually working. Still want to add a public indexation-status indicator at some point.

Last thing: I added internal links from category and time-bucket pages to every listing. Indexation time on new pages dropped from "still waiting after a week" to closer to 3-5 days for most.

The 100 free backlink commitment from the original post is still open. About 30 spots left. Same deal as before, free tier covers the listing, I review within 24h.

Submit 🔥

Question for round 2: what would actually make you submit a product to a directory that's under a month old, vs waiting six months for it to build authority first? The "wait until DR is up" objection is the one I keep hearing and I'm not sure how to answer it honestly.

Thanks to everyone who roasted the first post. Most of the changes above are yours.

reddit.com
u/No_Cake8366 — 2 months ago
▲ 2 r/linkbuilding

Would you rather get a backlink from a 6-month-old curated directory in your niche, or a 5-year-old generic directory with higher DR?

Genuine question for the link builders here. Trying to figure out the right tradeoff for a small site I'm doing SEO for.

The setup: I've got two directory submission options on the table.

A: A young niche directory, ~6 months old, low DR (under 15), every submission manually reviewed, listing pages have under 30 outbound links each, internal links from category and time-bucket pages so listings aren't orphaned. Topically relevant to my product.

B: An established generic directory, 5+ years old, DR around 40, but submissions are open (no moderation), listing pages link out to 100+ products, and most of the inbound topical relevance is diluted by listings being all over the map.

Conventional wisdom says higher DR wins. But everything I've read about link spam updates from 2022 onward suggests Google increasingly weights topical relevance and editorial curation over raw DR. Especially for newer domains in narrow niches.

  1. In your actual experience, has a curated low-DR niche link outperformed a generic high-DR link for ranking? Or is that mostly theoretical?
  2. How long do you usually wait before assessing whether a directory link contributed to ranking changes? 30 days? 90?
  3. Is there a DR floor where you just don't bother regardless of curation quality? (Below DR 10? DR 5?)
reddit.com
u/No_Cake8366 — 2 months ago
▲ 2 r/bigseo

How much does outbound link count on a directory listing page actually dilute the equity passed to your site?

Theoretically, the equity passed by a backlink scales inversely with the number of outbound dofollow links on the page. So a directory page linking to 5 other products passes way more than one linking to 200. That's the textbook answer.

What I want to know from people who've actually tracked this:

  1. Does the dilution math still meaningfully apply post-2022 link spam updates, or has Google flattened the difference enough that outbound link count barely matters compared to topical relevance and page indexation?
  2. When you audit a directory before submitting, do you check outbound dofollow count per listing page? What's your cutoff if you do?
  3. Has anyone seen measurable ranking lift from a directory link where the listing page had 50+ outbound links, or is that already in "noise" territory?

Context: I'm doing my own SEO for a small project and the directory landscape is split between "20 outbound, niche, manually curated" and "200+ outbound, open-submission, mass-listing." Trying to figure out if the first category is worth the extra effort or if I should just submit everywhere and let the math sort itself out.

reddit.com
u/No_Cake8366 — 2 months ago
▲ 2 r/buildinpublic

Day 6 of launching a directory: 65 products, 100 signups, 4.45K views. Last 30 free backlink slots.

Building in public, real numbers, free thing for this sub at the bottom.

What I'm building: Nick Launches, a launch directory where every approved product gets a permanent dofollow backlink.

The premise I was testing: indie makers will use a directory if (a) the backlink is dofollow and indexed, (b) listings stay visible past 24h, and (c) submissions are manually reviewed so the link is actually worth something.

Day 6 numbers (screenshot in comments):

  • 65 products submitted
  • 100+ users signed up
  • 4.45K views, 957 total users, 955 active
  • Trend on total users: +2411% vs prior period
  • 0 rejections so far. Submissions have been quality.
  • Total monthly infra cost: under $30

What worked:

  • Posting on X drove the biggest traffic spikes. Outbound outreach myself, not waiting for it.
  • "100 free backlinks at launch" was a concrete CTA. Way better than "go check out my directory."
  • Manual review is a feature, not a tax. People keep mentioning it as a reason they trust the listing.

What didn't:

  • r/SaaS post got removed by mods. Their self-promo rules are stricter than I'd read.
  • A "submit your product" tweet without context flopped. Same offer, framed as a reply to a SEO thread, drove submissions in an afternoon.

The offer: I committed to 100 free permanent backlink slots at launch. About 30 are still open. First-come, no paywall, no upsell. Submit your project, I review within 24h.

Free submission: Submit 🔥

Question for the sub: if you're building a directory, marketplace, or any two-sided product, what's the public metric that tells you supply quality is holding up? Mine is "rejection rate stays meaningful." Curious what others use.

u/No_Cake8366 — 2 months ago
▲ 16 r/NickLaunches+2 crossposts

Wanted to share what finally worked for me after a couple of false starts.

I started out trying to self-host Hermes Agent on a Jetson Orin Nano. Cute little box, but the practical reality is it tops out around 7B-class models locally. For an agent that is supposed to learn from you, build skills, search past sessions, and call tools across messaging apps, 7B was just not enough. The reasoning fell apart on anything multi-step and the skill-creation loop produced more noise than signal.

So I moved Hermes off the Jetson and onto a small Hetzner VPS instead. Inference goes out to a hosted provider (OpenRouter in my case, so one key gets me Claude, DeepSeek, Gemini, and the rest), and the VPS just runs the agent process, the memory store, and the gateway. Total cost: about €5 to €10 a month for the box plus $5 to $20 for API calls depending on how much you talk to it.

A few things that made the Hetzner setup actually pleasant:

  • CX22 / CPX21 is enough. 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, no GPU. The agent itself is light.
  • Telegram + allow-list. With TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS set to my numeric ID, the bot is locked to me. Always-on agent in your pocket without exposing it to randos.
  • systemd via the built-in gateway. hermes gateway install then systemctl --user enable --now hermes-gateway and it survives reboots cleanly.
  • Approval mode ask. Keeps the destructive stuff manual until you trust a given workflow.
  • Backups in cron. hermes backup once a day.

Honestly the biggest unlock was just getting it onto a server that does not sleep. The learning loop only really pays off when the agent is actually running long enough to accumulate skills, and that does not happen on a laptop.

Wrote up the full setup as a step-by-step (provisioning, hardening, install, model provider, Telegram, systemd, backups, troubleshooting):

Self-Host Hermes Agent on a Hetzner VPS, Practical Guide

Curious if anyone else tried the Jetson route and got further with it, or what providers people are settling on for the inference side. I am running Sonnet for general work and dropping to a cheaper model for routine cron jobs.

u/No_Cake8366 — 2 months ago
▲ 6 r/NickLaunches+3 crossposts

Most launch boards give you 24 hours of attention and then bury you in an archive nobody browses. If you don't crack the top 5 on launch day, the SEO value is basically zero.

I got tired of that, so I built Nick Launches, a launch directory for indie makers, AI tools, and SaaS where:

  • Every approved product gets a permanent indexed page with a dofollow backlink to your site
  • Products surface across "this week," "last week," and "last month" buckets, so launches don't fall off a cliff after 24h
  • Every submission goes through manual review (no spam, no AI-generated junk listings)
  • Free tier exists, so you don't have to pay to get listed

Stack: Next.js 15 (App Router), MongoDB, Stripe, NextAuth, hosted on Vercel. Built solo over a few weekends.

What I'd love feedback on:

  1. The submit flow (/submit). Does it feel fast enough?
  2. The product page layout. What's missing?
  3. Pricing for the premium tier (mostly considering a small fee for featured placement)

Link: https://nicklaunches.com/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=launch&utm_content=sideproject

Happy to answer anything in the comments. Roasts welcome.

u/No_Cake8366 — 26 days ago
▲ 232 r/SaaSneeded+1 crossposts

It's so crazy just a little while ago I was celebrating my first few hundred signups, and now I've hit the unreal number of 10,000 users with over 50,000 prompts generated on the platform! I can't thank everyone enough. So many people offered feedback, ideas, and support along the way. I really mean it.

Of course I'm not stopping here. I'm already working on the next big update that will benefit the whole community. More is coming soon.

I've built Prompt Builder, a platform where anyone working with AI can generate, test, optimize, and organize prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other models — all in one place. I grew it mostly by sharing what I was learning and posting here on Reddit. It didn't explode overnight, but I managed to get slow and steady growth.

For those of you who never heard about Prompt Builder, here's how it works:

  • Prompt Generator → describe your idea, pick a model, get a professionally-crafted prompt in seconds
  • Prompt Assistant → test and iterate on prompts without jumping between tools
  • Prompt Optimizer → paste an existing prompt and get it improved for clarity, constraints, format, and examples
  • Prompt Library → save, organize, and reuse your prompts + browse community prompts
  • SMM Bot → generate social content tailored to X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit

The whole point is to stop wasting tokens on failed attempts and stop rewriting the same prompt for every model. Chrome extensions on a way!

Currently: 10,000+ users, 50,000+ prompts generated, and growing every day.

You can try it here (free tier available): Link

Follow me on X: https://x.com/nicklaunches

I'm glad for any feedback/suggestions/roasts in the comments.

u/No_Cake8366 — 2 months ago