How A Week-Long Project Took Me To #2 On Product Hunt and The Front Page of Hacker News

The Process

app.py

from flask import Flask

# webapp
app = Flask(__name__, template_folder='./')

@app.route('/')
def main():
    return render_template('index.html')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(debug=True)

1. Find an open-source dataset that had a list of all the most commonly used words in the English language.
2. Parse through those words and separate them into different categories: adjectives, nouns, verbs.
3. Find a free (preferably) API that would allow me to perform bulk WHOIS checks for a list of domains to determine their availability.
4. Write a script that would pair them up with the respective TLDs and run the bulk WHOIS checks.
5. Get the list of available domains and visualize them using HTML, CSS, and vanilla JS.
6. Launch the MVP on Product Hunt to get feedback.

Finding the Dataset

Finding A (Free) WHOIS API

import requests
import time
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

# Namecheap API
url = "https://api.namecheap.com/xml.response?ApiUser=[NAMECHEAP-USERNAME]ApiKey=[API-KEY]&UserName=[NAMECHEAP-USERNAME]&ClientIp=[YOUR-IP-ADDRESS]&RequestIP=[YOUR-IP-ADDRESS]&Command=namecheap.domains.check"

# 40 names per chunk is the 10 below the limit of 50
chunk_size = 40

def check_available_domains(domain_list):

    # Split the original array into subarrays
    domain_chunks = []
    for i in range(0, len(all_domains), chunk_size):
        domain_chunks.append(all_domains[i:i + chunk_size])

    # Create empty list to store available domains
    available_domains = []

    for domains in domain_chunks:
        # Get availability and premium info by calling Namecheap API
        response = requests.post(url, data={'DomainList': domains})
        responseXml = ET.fromstring(response.content)
        for domain in responseXml.iter('{http://api.namecheap.com/xml.response}DomainCheckResult'):
            print("Domain: " + domain.attrib['Domain'], "Available: " + domain.attrib['Available'], "Premium: " + domain.attrib['IsPremiumName'])
        print("-----------------------------------------------")
        # API call frequency should be ~ 20 calls per minute 
        time.sleep(5)

Building The Site

onclick()

@app.route

**locals()

Naming The Project

Product Hunt Launch

A successful Product Hunt launch can really boost your site's SEO.

Hacker News Feature

Takeaways

“You can always feel when product/market fit is not happening. The customers aren't quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn't spreading, usage isn't growing that fast, press reviews are kind of ‘blah,’ the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close. ~ Marc Andreessen

1. You don't "find" product-market fit. You build something that provides value to your users and let them come to you.
2. The best way to find product-market fit is by building a product that you yourself want to use and sharing it with everyone else.
3. If you want to launch on Product Hunt, try to be in a favorable timezone - being in Malaysia, which was GMT +8, I had to stay up till 5 AM, take a 2-hour "nap", and then continue, which on hindsight, probably wasn't too good for my health.

Moving Forward

1. Featured Listings: Domain investors can now list their domains on One Word Domains for a nominal one-time fee.
2. Paywalls: I've recently added support for 18 more TLDs to the site including .me, .org, .net, .tech, .so, etc. and people can pay a one-time fee to get early access to those lists.
   

Update (08/08/2020)

• Added various new categories to the site - positive terms, places, tech-related terms, spanish, etc.
• Added a few more TLDs to the site, including some heavily requested ones like .vc, .fyi, .co.uk, and even a domain hacks category
• Refined the filters feature on One Word Domains - users can now filter based on premium status, word length, category, and letter
• Added a feature where people can save the domains they like and copy all of them to their clipboard for further research
• Partnered with a few registries like Register.TO and Uniregistry to whitelist their TLDs on One Word Domains
• Wrote a post on Reddit about One Word Domains that sort of blew up.
• Improved One Word Domain's Alexa ranking from >800K to below 200K (it's now at 174K), and even wrote a Twitter thread about it
• Recently received a grant from 1517 Fund (shoutout to Nick, Danielle, Michael, and Zak!) to accelerate development and scale up operations.

Press