I've been working on Typesense (https://github.com/typesense/typesense https://github.com/typesense/typesense) a developer-friendly typo-tolerant search engine

I've been working on Typesense (https://github.com/typesense/typesense https://github.com/typesense/typesense) a developer-friendly typo-tolerant search engine that has found some love recently. While my work is currently done outside my core working hours, I've been exploring if it is possible to make it self-sustainable and have been reading about a few other people who have been successful at this. I think the trick is to make it possible for people to pay you in one or more ways: a) Don't ask for donations, but offer a support contract. It's easier for devs to get that approved. b) Offer a hosted version at a reasonable price. Sell the convenience -- of course, this might not be feasible if your open source tool is not easy to offer as a hosted service. c) Offer some premium features as a paid product. Companies are again happy to purchase a premium version if the pricing is not ridiculous (e.g. $500/year will be a no-brainer) and you can also throw in additional support. d) Get a company to sponsor a feature if it is something that they badly want. e) Charge for adding a company's logo in the Github repository as a less intrusive form of advertising. f) Use your open source code and popularity to get a better paying job with work-life balance. Indirect monetization but hey, that's pretty legit. g) Find a company that allows you to work on an open source project full time. Not too many companies do it but if your interests/strengths overlap with a project (e.g. Kubernetes) that you contribute to, this could be an option.