2
points
rwieruch
Joined 1,739 karma
Full-Stack Software Engineer, Freelancer
Website: https://www.robinwieruch.de
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rwieruch
GitHub: https://github.com/rwieruch
- Hey Jason, just saw your email and wanted to reply here.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the postcards really worked. We sent them to various regions across Germany, but my guess is they ended up in a pile at the campground reception and never reached the actual owners.
That said, we manually scraped around 500 campgrounds near us, designed postcards that highlighted CloudCamping’s key selling points, and sent them out using a different mailing service. Since we didn’t hear back from anyone specifically mentioning the postcards, I assume they didn’t convince anyone in the end.
Still, it was a fun experiment, and who knows, it might work better in a different context!
- Thanks for your feedback and for validating the pricing model! We see it the same way.
Most property management systems charge campground owners several thousand dollars upfront, before they can even try the software. That’s where our approach stands out: we offer a low barrier to entry paired with a modern user experience. Many competitors started over 15 years ago, and you can tell by how outdated their products feel.
Taking just a 1% cut can pay off if it helps capture more market share, this was my thinking too. We’re not quite there yet, as not all of the 250 campgrounds on our platform have adopted online payments. Still, it’s both exciting and a bit terrifying to see some of them already processing over $250,000 in annual bookings through our system.
I’ve had a few sleepless nights, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend building a marketplace product to everyone. Once real money flows through your platform at that scale, things get intense fast.
- I’d say it was mostly the general 2014 vibe. But yes, I listened to Klangkarussell and many other German producers. I was probably most influenced by Alle Farben, who was known for his mixtapes before he started producing his own tracks (which I wasn’t really a fan of). But I also showcased a darker side in some of my mixtapes (like "Der schwerste Gang einer Ente" where I used artists like Burial).
I saw myself more as a consumer than a producer. I mainly created mixtapes because I was constantly discovering and consuming new music. When I had the chance to play at a club or an open-air event (I tried it once), I quickly realized I wasn’t too comfortable performing in front of an audience :)
Around that time, I had just started learning to code and built my first little automations to help me discover even more music on SoundCloud. So I noticed this was another (more lucrative with the similar level of passion) career path where I didn't had to be in front of an audience.
- If anyone wants to check out these things:
- CloudCamping (still only German market for now) https://www.cloud-camping.com/
- The Road to Next (fully launched last month) https://www.road-to-next.com/
- Music https://soundcloud.com/schlenkermitturnbeutel
Feel free to AMA.
- Not ignorant at all.
I'm not sure if they’ve added any monetization features over the years. Back then, it was arguably the best platform for getting discovered as a producer or DJ. When I stopped making music, I was getting a lot of requests to play at clubs across Germany and Europe.
At the time, I preferred to stay anonymous, so I never made the leap into the professional or public scene. Still, I was in touch with some producers early in their careers on SoundCloud when they had 1000 followers, like Robin Schulz and Felix Jaehn, if those names ring a bell.
So yes, I’d say it was (is?) definitely a launchpad for artists. But as far as I know, there was never a real way to monetize on the platform.
Unfortunately, when I stopped paying for the Pro version, they removed almost all of my music. Only 5 mixes are still up :')
- Not sure if my "products" compare to yours, but I’ve seen some success with a few of them over the years, maybe there are some takeaways (or pitfalls to avoid) for you:
CloudCamping (PMS): 250+ Businesses, 2023
- Positioned as more modern, more accessible, and more affordable than the competition
- Limited competition due to the complexity of the product
- Personally visited campgrounds to demo the product
- Sent physical postcards (old school!) to campgrounds with product updates and announcements
- Due to limited competition, it is now ranking very high in the German marked on SEO
The Road to React & The Road to Next: 1000+ Users, 2024
- Gave away The Road to React for free in exchange for an email, grew the mailing list this way
- Benefited from early timing (luck!), it was the first book on the topic
- Initial version wasn’t polished, but I kept iterating and improving it each year
- In 2025, released the paid course The Road to Next to my audience, now over 1,000 students enrolled
SoundCloud (DJ/Producing as “Schlenker mit Turnbeutel”)
- Active from 2010–2015 as a hobby, grew to 10,000+ followers (a lot for the time)
- SoundCloud allowed 1,000 direct messages per track
- Carefully selected 1,000 high-engagement listeners in my music niche and personally messaged them to check out new tracks
So yeah, a mix of timing/luck, outreach that does not scale, being better than the competition I'd say.
- I have been out of touch with the GraphQL ecosystem for a while. What are the status quo solutions to the problems stated above?
N+1 I just remember the dataloader https://github.com/graphql/dataloader Is it still used?
What about the other things? I remember that Stitching and E2E type safety, for example, were pretty brittle in 2018.
- I have used RSCs only in Next.js, but to answer your questions:
1./2.: You can update it optimistically. [0]
3.: Depends on the framework's implementation. In Next.js, you'd invalidate the cache. [1][2]
4.: In the case of the like button, it would be a "form button" [3] which would have different ways [4] to show a pending state. It can be done with useFormStatus, useTransition or useActionState depending on your other needs in this component.
5.: You block the double request with useTransition [5] to disable the button.
6.: In Next, you would invalidate the cache and would see your like and the like of the other user.
[0] https://react.dev/reference/react/useOptimistic
[1] https://nextjs.org/docs/app/api-reference/functions/revalida...
[2] https://nextjs.org/docs/app/api-reference/directives/use-cac...
[3] https://www.robinwieruch.de/react-form-button/
[4] https://www.robinwieruch.de/react-form-loading-pending-actio...
- It's not really the scope of the article, but what about adding a client directive [0] and dropping in your event handler? Just like that, you're back in a familiar CSR React world, like in the "old" days.
- Didn't see Coolify [0] combined with Hetzner mentioned in the article!
- I've been working on The Road to Next [0] for almost a year. In the end, it's more than just a course on Next.js. It's a deep dive into full-stack development, covering key third-party integrations that empower you to build your own products.
- 1 point
- Hi HN! I know not many of you are hyped about paid courses, but here I am, almost 8 years after launching my (free) book The Road to React on HN :) [0]
Yesterday, I launched the Early Access for The Road to Next! This self-paced video course already has hours of in-depth content, and registration will be available for one week. After that, I’ll dedicate my time to supporting the cohort’s learning journey, finalizing the remaining content, and refining the course to make it even better.
In the course, students will build a complete full-stack application, covering everything from the UI to the database — and everything in between — with a strong focus on DX and UX.
There are two Journeys in the course which build up on top of each other:
The Developer Journey lays a solid foundation, equipping students with core concepts and practical skills. Along the way, they'll work with various database models, including Session (custom authentication), User, Ticket, and Comment. Developers will also face real-world challenges, e.g. understanding the quirks of floating-point arithmetic and rounding behavior.
As they progress to the Engineer Journey, they’ll dive into advanced topics like message queues and email systems, everything while implementing features such as user organizations, memberships, and invitations. For this journey the code will be available, but the recordings are still in the making.
Since I've been active here for years, I wanted to share this with you too. If you have any questions, ask me anything!
- 3 points
- 2 points
- I am working on my next course "The Road to Next" which teaches full-stack React with React 19 and Next 15. I started this full-time adventure 6 months ago and I am knee deep into recording the lessons. The project with all the code and the step by step instructions are already there and I am super eager to hear what people think about it.
However, since this is my first recorded course (I did only written content before), it really takes time and effort to make the videos high quality. That's the biggest struggle for me here, but every day I push through it! For every lesson that I need to record, I have a post-it on a cupboard and every evening I tear one or two of them off with my son :)
- Working on The Road to Next [0] as a video course to teach developers about full-stack development. It's in great shape, but I am still waiting for the official release of React 19 and Next 15. Not an easy task though, because some APIs are still changing (e.g. Next APIs becoming async in Next 15).
But in any way, I think it will be a great resource for developers to level up :)
Since our monorepos were used exclusively for frontend applications, we could rely entirely on the JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystem, which kept things manageable.
What I learned is that a good monorepo often behaves like a “polyrepo in disguise.” Each project within it can be developed, hosted, and even deployed independently, yet they all coexist in the same codebase. The key benefit: all projects can share code (like UI components) to ensure a consistent look and feel across the entire product suite.
If you're looking for a more practical guide, check out [0].
[0] https://www.robinwieruch.de/javascript-monorepos/