u/No_Cake8366

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?

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 🔥

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.

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.

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.

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.