Please welcome Mubashar “Mubs” Iqbal, one of the most prolific makers in the world.
Davis Baer: For those that don’t know you, how would you describe yourself?
Mubs: I’ve been writing code since I was about 8 years old, and love making things. Turning ides into working applications, as far as addictions goes it’s not a bad one to have :) I’m an early Product Hunt user, voted Maker of the year in 2016, and have been a runner up in 2015 and 2017.
You’ve shipped over 50 products on Product Hunt. What is your favorite thing you’ve ever built?
That’s gonna be tough one! Most of the projects are very different, either in what they are trying to do, the technology they use or the people I worked with. One of my earliest product hunt launches was a rebuild of a site I’d built much earlier, but remains a personal favorite.
Cymbolism attempts to resolve the question about the association between words and colors. Over 1M votes help to provide insight into what colors to uses when designing, to try and invoke a particular emotion.
Of everything you’ve built, which sees the most traffic?
Will Robots Take My Job remains the most popular traffic-wise. We’ve served over 13M page views since launch just over 1 year ago, with traffic coming in from all over the world. We’re received coverage on radio and tv stations as well.
I’ve noticed that most of your sites are free for users, and ad-free. Have you monetized any of them?
I typically wait until a website gains some significant traction before thinking about monetization. There are a handful that are generating significant revenue.
Other than launching on Product Hunt, how do you market your sites?
This really depends on the site, but I’ve found Reddit, via the appropriate sub-reddits, is a great way to share projects with interested people. You have to be careful when posting to the sub-reddits, as they all have different rules, but get this right and you can drive significant high quality traffic to your sites.
Can we expect any cool things from you in the future?
I’ve enjoyed documenting my maker process via my Medium publication Make Side Project. I am working on doing a deeper dive into the technical aspects of building a site, and hope it will be helpful for people to see behind the curtain a little more.