OnlineOrNot Diaries 25: you can just build things
You *can* just build things.
Max Rozen
Learn React with Max Rozen
Latest posts
Four years of running a SaaS in a competitive market
Looking back on the last four years, what worked, what didn't.
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Looking over last year, and a first incident for 2025.
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Working with big systems all day can slow you down.
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Feels like I've already said everything I had to say
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I was young, and needed to ship...
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Dipping my toe in enterprise sales
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Refactoring the business entity, thoughts on marketing and building
Lessons from my third year running a SaaS
I've run this business for three years now, and I'm only just now starting to *get it*.
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Starting the year by cleaning up even more
2023: Focusing on a single product pays off
The first year where I managed to keep my focus entirely on a single project.
Starting a Cloudflare Worker from scratch
We don't need no fancy tooling!
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On learning screencasting, cleaning up tech debt, and focus
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On content marketing, starting a YouTube channel, and improving status pages
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Heading back into the arena. We are so back.
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Back to regular programming.
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I tried building a monolith.
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On failing customers, failing to ship a new feature, learning sales, and giving up on ads.
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On building table-stakes features, and breaking through a plateau.
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On re-rearchitecting.
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On cleaning up the shop.
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Building a new feature in a couple of weeks.
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In which I pay for people to check out OnlineOrNot to test my landing pages.
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A new monitoring service for OnlineOrNot, and new learnings for my pricing page.
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In which I doubled my conversion rate without trying too hard.
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On ripping out product analytics, updating the pricing page, and adding multi-region monitoring
Getting your own good enough laptop for under $500
I recently bought a cheap, used Thinkpad T480, replaced a bunch of parts. Some folks were asking how they could do the same thing, so I figured I'd write about it
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Marketing week? More like reliability week
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In which I ship a CLI (for real this time), and improve a few things
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On marketing, and shipping a CLI
On replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a Thinkpad T480
In which you probably wonder, but ...why?
2022: I just kept shipping
Another year in review, in which I just keep shipping, with some stumbles along the way
Managing your Node.js installation
If you're finding yourself manually installing different versions of Node, you need to know there's a *much* better way.
How I became a React developer
On how I left a 'prestigious' consulting job to start from scratch as a React developer
Learn Integration Testing with React Hook Form
Testing is super important, and yet it's hard to find practical examples to show you what to do. This article intends to fix that, by teaching integration testing with React Hook Form.
Strangers from the internet paid for my MacBook Air: on my 4th year of indiehacking
In which I finally make money from strangers off the internet.
@forge/api: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘fetch’)
How to fix a cannot read properties of undefined error in Forge
Keeping up with React Libraries
React libraries are hard to keep track of. This article attempts to put the ones worth talking about on one page.
Demystifying useEffect's clean-up function
useEffect's clean-up function can be pretty confusing, especially if you're still trying to think in lifecycle methods. Let's clarify the clean-up function in this article.
A Walkthrough of migrating MaxRozen.com from Gatsby to Next.js
I recently migrated MaxRozen.com from Gatsby to Next.js, in this article I'll detail the steps it took.
Protecting your React routes
React apps send their code directly to users, so you might be a little confused about how React 'guards' routes from unauthorised viewing. This article explains how.
Deploying Node and React Shopify apps on Vercel
Shopify's tutorial is awesome for getting started, but doesn't let you deploy onto Vercel. In this article, I'll show you how.
Using Tailwind CSS with React and CSS-in-JS
If you're already using a CSS-in-JS library, trying out Tailwind CSS with your existing app might be much easier than you think.
Indiehacking: a review of my 3rd year
A review of my third year of trying to start an internet business.
Guidelines for developing Custom Hooks in React
You've just gotten over the fact we call them 'Hooks', but how do you stop repeating the same code everywhere? Let's learn about Custom Hooks.
Guidelines for Deploying React
These days there are a heck of a lot of options for deploying React. It can be a bit overwhelming. This article simplifies your choices.
Fixing Race Conditions in React with useEffect
If you're using useEffect to fetch data, chances are you've either run into a race condition, or have one without realising it. Let's learn how to fix them in this article.
Fetching Data in React with useEffect
If you're confused about side-effects and pure functions, it can be hard to understand useEffect. Let's learn them both, to fetch data with useEffect.
Guidelines for choosing React Libraries
There are a *lot* of React libraries out there. So how do you pick which one to use in your app? This article provides guidelines for choosing.
Understanding when to use useMemo
If you've just learned what useCallback is, you might be wondering why on earth useMemo exists, and why we don't use it everywhere.