The 4-Hour Startup (followup) - Building It

Hey Loren - excellent article. I often fall into the trap of over-engineering something or getting stuck in the details and not getting it done. The simplicity of what you put together is very inspiring and almost a talent in itself. Awesome. And...you just keep banging out this content too! Do you sleep? :-)

I wish I had the design chops you have. I've come to realize it just isn't going to happen for me. It's not my thing. The fact that you've got the design skills, the street smarts and the coding skills necessary to throw stuff together like this quickly makes you a very lethal weapon.

I have very much enjoyed watching your posts over the last few weeks. You've hit it hard man and I expect you're going to be the next patio11! You're on a roll -- keep it up!

Quick Question: The photoshop shirt template you linked to - where did you get that?

Anyway, you're inspiring me, and I suspect a LOT of other people too.

Yes, I know it's not really a "startup". It's a fun nickname for a little project that took off and became profitable relatively quickly.

Anyway, this is a followup to my previous posts, from which I received many requests for details of how I built, designed, and marketed the project. In this post, I went into details explaining exactly what tools I used to design and build the site, and shared plenty of valuable resources. I hope this is helpful, and I'd be glad to answer any more questions about the process.

Most excellent writeup! The whole set of posts (when they are ready of course) should be the manifesto of momentum surfers. For me, the moneyshot was:

"One-click checkout. This was as easy as painless for the customer as it could be. There were no dropdowns for size selections, no “Buy This” buttons, and no shopping carts. Just click on the desired size, enter Paypal info, done."

A lot of people get this critical part of the sales process so wrong.