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Do you specifically want to make a webapp, or is independence the most important thing for you? If the latter, I'd encourage you to look around at ALL the pote

Do you specifically want to make a webapp, or is independence the most important thing for you? If the latter, I'd encourage you to look around at ALL the potential means of making money with your skills, not just creating a webapp. That could include consulting, infoproducts, some kind of SEO / affiliate play, training, etc. Of all the available means of making a boss-independent living on the Internet, webapps appear to be one of the slightly harder ones. By no means impossible, mind - it's nothing like trying to make a living from the arts, for example. There are plenty of people on and off HN who have done it. However, depending on your skillset, there may be more straightforward ways.

nicholas73 11y ago
At minimum, I would like something growing in my asset column, since saving enough to buy stocks or real estate seems unrealistic at this point[1]. So I have to create my own assets. If I have to be extremely active in it, like consulting or training, then I'd just be creating another job for myself. I'd be less interested in that, as the goal is for asset growth. Why is making a webapp slightly harder? The technical aspect, or are opportunities saturated, or the many hats you have to wear? [1] I'm in the Bay Area with family. Alternatively, I can try to switch to software engineering for better pay, which is also one of the potential payoffs of building web apps.
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- thenomad 11y ago
  My best guess on webapps vs, say, infoproducts is that there's more avenues for failure in a webapp. With an infoproduct, you've basically got: 1) Screwed up your market research, no market. 2) Screwed up your marketing, no-one hears about you. 3) Screwed up the content, problem obvious. With a webapp, you've got all sorts of design and usability issues. Features are non-obvious even once you've got the core value proposition down. Viral loop is trickier to engineer. Onboarding is a thing. And so on. But that's just my guess.

nicholas73 11y ago

At minimum, I would like something growing in my asset column, since saving enough to buy stocks or real estate seems unrealistic at this point[1]. So I have to create my own assets. If I have to be extremely active in it, like consulting or training, then I'd just be creating another job for myself. I'd be less interested in that, as the goal is for asset growth. Why is making a webapp slightly harder? The technical aspect, or are opportunities saturated, or the many hats you have to wear? [1] I'm in the Bay Area with family. Alternatively, I can try to switch to software engineering for better pay, which is also one of the potential payoffs of building web apps.

deleted 11y ago
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thenomad 11y ago
My best guess on webapps vs, say, infoproducts is that there's more avenues for failure in a webapp. With an infoproduct, you've basically got: 1) Screwed up your market research, no market. 2) Screwed up your marketing, no-one hears about you. 3) Screwed up the content, problem obvious. With a webapp, you've got all sorts of design and usability issues. Features are non-obvious even once you've got the core value proposition down. Viral loop is trickier to engineer. Onboarding is a thing. And so on. But that's just my guess.