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Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hour
by holoduke 6y ago
Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going.
I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job.
People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a day. Still worked on it for many many hours.
App is still running today and generating 2k per day. It gave me freedom to quit my day job and the opportunity to start a business as around it a few years ago. And just recently I started an entire new (more serious) fintech business.
Although I know it's not easy to start something like I did. But on the other hand. Most people are not even trying it. I always tell people to really start making something you feel passionate about. (I am talking from a developers perspective) Don't look at others and don't do something other want you to do. If money is the motive, then you will fail for sure.
- jacquesm 6y agoI love these stories a lot more than that I love the venture capitalist backed start-up that makes 3x for their investors.
- gigamick 6y agoThanks for sharing this. There are echoes of my own journey here. I truly believe that "slow and steady wins the race".
- coderunner 6y agoWould you mind sharing what your app is? I'm curious what level of technical sophistication is needed for an app that makes $2k/day. Was it more engineering or marketing or equally both that helped you gain users and traction?
- mromanuk 6y agoTech sophistication can be as little as a single PHP webpage or maybe less (There is a blogpost somewhere, from the creator Levelsio) There was a "million dolar page". Marketing is hard, except if you get lucky.
- dave_4_bagels 6y agoI'd generally still argue that marketing is the hardest part of any side-hustle / startup in general. What is lost on many here is that $100/mo. spend on solid marketing could speed up the growth curve (without that much more engineering effort) so that it would take maybe a year instead of three to reach the point you could quit your day job.
- allenu 6y agoI released my own app a month ago after working on it on the side for a year... and I am finding that marketing is important indeed. Just having something in the app store doesn't guarantee eyeballs. You have to find ways of getting your message out. No matter how good your product is, if your users can't find it, you won't sell anything. This is probably why it's important to make sure you're not doing it for the "easy money" and also why it can take months or years to make a nice little passive income; the word takes a while to get out.
- dave_4_bagels 6y agoTotally agree, I have a number of non-tech related side hustles and quite frankly I prefer these to tech ones because they took maybe 50hrs each to setup and 2 hours max per week to operate. I know for a fact it'd take much more time tech wise to get something of equivalent revenue up and running. I have to question these "I spent years making $40 a month working 8 hours after hours to built <project> but now <project> makes $60k a month" stories, since at some point you really have to ask yourself how much your time is worth. Thousands of hours for $1M pre-tax, not to mention how much life you gave up for that is kind of idiotic IMO. My metric generally is, "if someone on etsy selling magic rocks is making more than my tech project after three months, time to move on". I'm not being shitty, this is just a standard I hold myself to when it comes to valuing my personal time. Also, don't worry, I'm not one of these people who thinks my time isn't worth cooking or cleaning (like many YT gurus and even Financial Samurai now claim).
- jxm262 6y agoCongrats! Posts like this give me massive inspiration. Like many here, I have tons of side project/toy apps stored in private repo's; that will probably never see use by anyone other than myself. However, some of this code _does_ make me profit (trading bots). Been contemplating taking portions of my trading app and generalizing into a product, but always seem to lose motivation. Glad I saw this post + thread today, y'all just gave me another boost of energy.
- gigamick 6y agoThanks for the feedback. I'm glad I inspired you a little :-)
- blackrock 6y agoWhat kind of algorithm do you use for your trading bot? Say: Strategy 1: If the market is trending higher. Then, buy on the dips. Hold. Sell for 20% gains. Then rinse and repeat. Strategy 2: Or, if the market ($SPY) has risen for x percent for the day, say 3%, then you short the stock. Wait for it to correct, and sell for 20% gains. But if it continues rising higher than 10%, then buy back the stock to close out your position.
- djeiasbsbo 6y agoI love these stories also but I am genuinely curious how you were able to work 8 hours a day on it and also work your regular job. I assume you don't work a full time job, otherwise it seems unhealthy. I put a lot of time into my side projects but that is mostly the whole saturday and sunday, but even then I obviously don't feel so well rested on monday.
- frankbyte 6y agoThere's 24 hours in a day. Read Bezos or Musk's or anybody stories and they'll tell you they worked 20-23 hours a day. It's fucking crazy with some people, but that's what it takes to get ahead of the competition. Edit: Please note that I'm not advocating that anybody should do this, but just be aware that a lot of people are setting that level for themselves and in some cases for their subordinates.
- tinco 6y agoPulling an all nighter every once in a while, or even a couple consecutive days during crunch time is not the same as working 20 hours per day. So unless you've got a specific quote from either of them I call bullshit. That said, Bill Gates definitely said he and some of his crew were working 16 hour days delivering their first DOS release. Point is, you might work some intense stretches, and doing that shows your passion and might land give you an edge when you need it. But you don't need to go insane. If you work 8 hours day job, don't spend hours in commute, you can be perfectly healthy spending 2 hours of your night time each day working a side gig.
- frankbyte 6y ago“There were times when, some weeks ... I haven’t counted exactly, but I would just sort of sleep for a few hours, work, sleep for a few hours, work, seven days a week. Some of those days must have been 120 hours or something nutty.” Now, Musk said he is “down to 80 or 90” hours of work per week and “it’s pretty manageable.” https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/05/elon-musk-on-working-120-hours-a-week-youll-go-bonkers.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/05/elon-musk-on-working-120-hou... That's the quickest I could find. But yeah, I suppose 20-23h constantly long-term would not be doable. Point is though that many people can and do work even long-term the equavalent of 2 "full-time jobs".
- skrtskrt 6y agoWhat's the project? or what problem does it solve? So curious
- rubicon33 6y agoI absolutely love these stories. Sticking with something when you're bored of it, and it's not providing much return, aint easy.
- neogodless 6y ago1 dollar a month is the dream for me. I could finally pay for several of those domain names I keep holding on to!
- guillem_lefait 6y agoYou're not alone !
- chiscript 6y agoOne word: Persistence! I have realised that too many people quit early and yet it is clear that their ideas are good. I hope many are inspired by this story, I know I was... inspired to keep on fighting. As I said here > https://twitter.com/getflookup/status/1332767868002455554 https://twitter.com/getflookup/status/1332767868002455554 "If you quit, you did it early" BTW, what app is this, if you don't mind sharing?
- gigamick 6y agoAre you asking me? (the OP)? It's https://songbox.rocks https://songbox.rocks.
- chiscript 6y agoSorry, my question was to @holoduke ... he hadn't told us the app name by the time I asked that question. Otherwise, I have been causally following yours ever since you announced it on Indie Hackers ... it looks like it is going places but I'm sure COVID hasn't helped things one bit. Let's keep pushing into the new year and hope for better times!
- hamza_nouali 6y agoWow! nice story man! Can you please tell us how did you get the product idea, and what you did to promote your product (content marketing, paid marketing...)? Thank you so much for sharing this <3
- nevster 6y agoOne other suggestion - it needs to be something you want yourself. It's hard to be passionate about something you personally don't want.
- joshmanders 6y agoThis so much. I bounced around project after project for trying to get something going and just never had a passion for it. Once I started a project I have a passion for it's soooo much better.
- zamalek 6y ago> It made like 1 dollar a month. Linus of Linus Tech Tips talks about this. His old employer wasn't interested in his YouTube channel because it was raking in somewhere in the neighborhood of $1, but it was 1000% growth over the previous year or something like that. Growth is growth. And congrats, your success story is awesome to read. I've got a similar long road ahead of me.
- kerupian 6y agoThis is a nice success story. A few questions - 1. What your side project is about? (if you are comfortable disclosing or domain) 2. How did you learn sales and how to you continue to scale sales process?
- chiscript 6y agoDoes this "small app" have a name?