I was tired of rewriting the same UI over and over, so I began collecting React components in one place. No big plan. No roadmap. Just building after work and pushing commits when things felt “good enough.”

That project became ui-layouts.com.

It’s an open-source React component library with 100+ free, ready-to-use components. I shared it in a few places, half-expecting nothing to happen. A few people tried it. Then a few more. Some of them posted about it. Suddenly I started seeing GitHub stars, messages, screenshots of people using it in their own projects.

Six months later, I decided to launch a Pro version.

My thinking was simple: if people don’t find value, payment doesn’t matter anyway.
People kept signing up. Feedback started coming in. Some users asked for more categories. Others wanted templates.

I slowly added blocks, features & templates. Over time, it grew into:

• 140+ Pro blocks
• Categories like hero, about, pricing, testimonials, newsletter, experience
• 2 templates
• A React/Next.js template builder built on top of the blocks

Slowly, a few people bought the lifetime Pro plan.

Not a flood. Just… real humans deciding it was worth paying for.

Six months later, I checked the numbers:

• 400+ registered users
• $1.5k in total revenue
• 6 lifetime subscribers who genuinely support the product
• Some User bought only the template

It’s not a big SaaS story. I’m not quitting anything. There’s no overnight success here.

But this is the first thing I’ve ever built that didn’t die quietly after launch.

If you’re building something small and wondering if slow progress means failure, it doesn’t. Sometimes it just means you’re early.