the email said the charge went through. $29. real money from a real stranger. i sat there for maybe ten seconds feeling like a genius. then it hit me. i'd spent four months on the landing page, the checkout, the stripe integration, the little success animation with the confetti. i had never built the actual thing they were paying for. the dashboard they were supposed to land on after checkout was a placeholder i made in an afternoon. so my first ever customer paid me and got redirected to ...