13 ms·

Becoming a Full-Time Creator as a Software Engineer

311 points by nassimsoftware 4y ago

itsmemattchung 4y ago
I'm on a similar journey as the author — quit my job at FAANG and started a solo software consulting business — and as others have mentioned in this post, this path of contention creation is non-linear and no "formula" exists — and will never exist. A friend of mind, guitar instructor, went from being teaching synchronously in-person for 15+ years to building out his audience. Only after 2 years did he start becoming profitable. It's a grind.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
I've been running a technical podcast focused on interview prep/insights for the last two years that has OKAY traction but is still a long way from making me any money. It's hard! It cost me money. About $500 a month right now, not counting my time. I enjoy doing it but I've certainly had tough months when I wanted to stop. Doing freelance work has been the easiest way to bring in some extra cash as an engineer but damn do taxes really hurt that extra income.
- itsmemattchung 4y ago
  Not sure how you have your business setup but have you 1. Formed an LLC 2. Filed for S-Corp status Not a tax lawyer so take with a grain of salt but you might be able to save significantly on taxes. Lots of tax breaks as a small business owner.
- willhinsa 4y ago
  What does the $500/mo cost consist of?
  - AlwaysRock 4y ago
    Editing costs is the bulk. I dont edit the episodes myself. The rest is mostly tooling cost (zoom, youtube, podcast hosting services).
- tchock23 4y ago
  Check out episode 246 of the Indie Hackers podcast. They talk about how podcasts work nicely as a supplement to a newsletter. Might be worth creating a newsletter to complement/grow your existing podcast.
O__________O 4y ago
Author forgot one of the most profitable income streams for solo creaters, paid speaking events.
wenbin 4y ago
This is gold! I've been following Gergely's journey for quite a while. Personally I learn a ton from Gergely's writings / tweets. As a fellow one-person business [1], the only thing I'd like to add here (after running my business for ~5 years so far) is that you are allowed to be flexible. Businesses are different. Everyone's background / finance / skills are different. It's okay that you are doing something different from what you've read from the Internet. For example, it's totally okay to do (or not do) micro-services for your little SaaS on the get go. It's also okay to try venture-backed route for a while then switch to do "lifestyle business". It's also okay to hire (or not hire) employees early. There's not one single formula that works for every one-person business. Persistence really pays off long term. Good things might not happen until year 5. [1] https://www.listennotes.com/blog/the-boring-technology-behind-a-one-person-23/ https://www.listennotes.com/blog/the-boring-technology-behin...
fxtentacle 4y ago
I think the most actionable advice is: Bringing a sizable audience to a new social platform makes it easier to reach #1 in the rankings. Once you do, other things become exponentially easier.
alin23 4y ago
> What are things people and businesses pay for? I think this is missing the "to fix annoyances, remove frustrations, save time" bullet point. That's basically all my own one-person business does (https://lunar.fyi/ https://lunar.fyi/), it allows people to add adaptive brightness on external monitors, turn off individual monitors from the keyboard etc. Things that are simply frustrating to do daily without software help, either because the monitor buttons are hard to press, options hidden under a lot of menus, or a multi-step process is needed. And people are paying for it, even though it doesn't help them make money, it doesn't educate or entertain them, and it definitely doesn't help them sell anything.
chii 4y ago
> 4. Invest your savings and live off of gains. this option is not really like the other 3 listed, since it's a separate category of passive income and is non-exclusionary unlike the rest. One should always be investing any excess income anyway, regardless of what path one chooses to follow. Unfortunately, the risk of having _only_ investment income to sustain you is that you cannot make risky investments, and so must have large amount of capital to produce less risky but more guaranteed returns. FIRE comes to mind when one goes down this course of action.
- upseide 4y ago
  The joke (or maybe better 'punchline') is that the new moniker 'creator', which I read as a more palpable synonym for 'influencer', is really just one of, and as such /any/ of, many other things just by another name. In the case of: 4. Invest your savings and live off of gains. I think the joke is some of these creators may just be those people, filling the time by creating. It's an answer to the question, "I wanna start creating but where does (fill in favorite creator) get the money for the equipment or the time for all this? Why am /i/ struggling? Ala, peggy hills bookstore in king of the hill. Peggy struggling: how did you ever sell enough books to pay the rent? Former owner: o I inherited money whose interest covered the rent.
- dgivney 4y ago
  He's not advocating for a passive investment income. > You could use these savings to invest in stock markets, day trade with them, and - hopefully - make a profit. I wouldn't recommend his advice..
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lampshades 4y ago
    Why not? It’s a valid way to make money for some of us.
    - bagacrap 4y ago
sakopov 4y ago
I've been wrecking my brain how to make $10 on anything online for a good part of the past 10 years with a couple of failed startups and even more side projects that went nowhere. I envy anyone who can do this and I think it is truly an immeasurable amount of effort to make any kind of side income let alone something that replaces your salary. But I think articles like this one advertise it like it's something you can do in your sleep and that's just not how it works.
- ZainRiz 4y ago
  I spent years also thinking I had nothing I could teach that people would pay money for. Heck, I had a couple blog posts that made HN front page and still I didn't think that people would actually pay me money for that content. Then a couple months ago I realized I could take one of those posts about interview advice to software engineers and turn it into a more in depth video lecture. I was amazed to see people actually buying it (sold $7k worth of that course!) In case it provides inspiration, I wrote about what it was like making the course here: https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1525211786710077449 https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1525211786710077449
- josephg 4y ago
  It’s also a lot of luck. A friend of a friend made some trashy weekend website in php years ago which calculates profits from options trades. He somehow makes 6 figures from advertising on the site. Apparently he tried doing a big rewrite a couple years ago to fix the UX and whatnot, but his income dropped to 1/3rd of what it was after the change. Probably people spent less time on the site. So he put it back how it was.
  - doppp 4y ago
    Did he advertise the site or optimize SEO or just put it up and then it just got traffic?
    - josephg 4y ago
      Sorry; too distant an acquaintance. I don't know the website's URL or any more detail than what I posted above.
krmboya 4y ago
Nice, I like this. Till now I considered running a B2B business as only being a SAAS catering to businesses, and therefore requiring dedicated resources on standby e.g. customer service, an on-call rotation, compliance to various things that other businesses care about etc which seem like quite a drag for a one or two person venture. Looks like there are other ways to run a B2B without too much friction
wrnr 4y ago
Funny he don't mention recruiting engineers hate it but is what the OG's did.
jordanmorgan10 4y ago
It doesn’t seem possible until you do it. I couldn’t imagine my book over iOS would net what it has, but a bit of luck and trust built up over the years made it a success for me. The challenge, as I see it now, is how to prove you’re not out for a quick buck. Because everyone is selling something at this point - for better or worse.
darod 4y ago
interesting that he recommends starting a one-person business but the last section of the article are listings for "featured pragmatic engineering jobs"! do you believe in your own advice?
- __mharrison__ 4y ago
  Part of his one person job is brokering jobs... Recruiting seems so broken that I've been tempted to do it myself.
__mharrison__ 4y ago
Gergely parents many of the pros of being a full-time creator but there are drawbacks as well. - (US) government doesn't necessarily incentivize self employment - Buying a house is a pain. I make more than I ever made working for the man but few want to give me a loan. - Unless you have a saas, income can be variable. - You get to do the fun stuff... But also the other stuff (payroll, marketing, ...) That said, it would be very hard for me to go back to working for the man. The flexibility, creativity, and community are wonderful.
- mattferderer 4y ago
  > (US) government doesn't necessarily incentivize self employment Can you explain here? I've found the US govt to be very incentivizing to "small businesses", which includes self employment. I'm thinking of tax breaks, cheap/free loans, and other financial items. I will say the amount of red tape & paper work is ridiculous, especially if you plan to move or do business in more than one state. > Buying a house is a pain. I make more than I ever made working for the man but few want to give me a loan. Once you run a business for 2 years, this goes away. It is an incredible eye roll though when you first run into it if you're running a successful business. > You get to do the fun stuff... But also the other stuff (payroll, marketing, ...) You may be well aware of this, but for anyone else, hire this out as much as possible. That's one of the most important things I would tell anyone. Know what you enjoy & are good at. Hire everything else out. That can even be management/ceo/etc.. You don't need to run the business if you don't want to. "The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It" is a great book on this topic. > Unless you have a saas, income can be variable. This one is tough. It can be easy to increase business volume but then you need to hire more help often which brings it's own challenges & may require more business volume. Finding a good balance here is tricky for sure.
throwaway202288 4y ago
Just a word of caution from someone who paid a ton of money to a lot of the people mentioned in the article in the last 2 years and was part of more than a few of these communities. Note these are my observations and opinions. - Read any testimonials these people out with a dollop of salt. Success rates seem to be around 1-2%(if you are lucky) with most of the others leaving or barely getting by. Easier to make way more money as a software dev in an established company than in the "creator economy". - Copy what they do to sell their courses rather than buying their courses. Their courses are out of date, but they are still milking it. - Assume any financial number you see from these people or people in similar spaces as suspect. It is either massaged or an outright lie to make it look much better than it is most of the time. - Assume you are being marketed to with any content they put out - There is a TON of luck. A million people put in the same hard work but do not make it. But most of these people spin it as hard work. - Most of these people cannot teach. Great at marketing themselves, but not much else.
- klodolph 4y ago
  > - There is a TON of luck. A million people put in the same hard work but do not make it. But most of these people spin it as hard work. The “Excel Girl” also spins it as manifesting. You can see more of that at r/lawofattraction, or you might be familiar with The Secret (2006).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- ldoughty 4y ago
  > - Assume you are being marketed to with any content they put out "Man, I really want to make some side money" "Good news! Look at my book|podcast|article|youtube|etc on how to do that!" It's like writing a "how to get rich book" explaining you should write a "how to get rich book" to get rich... an informal/unstructured pyramid scheme.
- fxtentacle 4y ago
  Fully agree. I know a completely non-famous #1 bestselling author for courses on how to develop iOS apps. 99% of the revenue is coming from the books and courses. 1% of the revenue is cheap app re-skins + good marketing. In the early days, they actually used course revenue to subsidize their app operation to keep it afloat. So yes, they teach you how to build iOS apps. But those apps have a negative ROI.
snoopy1 4y ago
bmazed 4y ago
who tryna build a new social app
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
> My newsletter is the #1 paid technology newsletter on Substack. good for you but is this another survivorship bias thing... reminds me of the 4-hour workweek, getting rich by giving advice others how to get rich added: if you try to be in the creator economy, you will always be at the whim of some gatekeeper like youtube or instagram who can erase 90% of your income in an instant
- jamestimmins 4y ago
  How is this survivorship bias?
  - 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
    the article begins with the qualification of being the "number 1 newsletter on substack" so there is a logical error of assuming that the advice given is more valuable or actionable - which imo it isn't, after reading the article.
  - nokya 4y ago
    Because the successful trajectory (the survivor trajectory) is being analyzed on the assumption that if its attributes/variables can be reverse engineered, then the sequence can be reproduced by others (i.e., others will survive, too). Some additional info if the topics interests you: Survivor bias can be described as both a cognitive and motivational bias. First, it relies on the widespread conception amongst human beings that reproducing someone else's trajectory/decisions eventually leads to an equivalent outcome (cognitive error). Second, we all share a profound need to feel that we understand the world that surrounds us (motivational). Think about the alternative: without this bias, we would be consciously aware that our success (or survival) cannot be singularly attributed to our effort or our ability to reproduce trusted strategies. This would likely push us towards feeling increasingly powerless in our ability to achieve our goals (or survive), and eventually drive us into a depressive state (the "whatever" mindset). At this precise moment I should bring religion to the discussion, but I will not because it will take me too much time. Self-help literature almost exclusively operates by exploiting the survivor at two levels: authors often are themselves convinced that anyone who reproduces their recommendations will be similarly successful, and at the reader level, because without people telling us that we can succeed, there would be simply no hope. Hope I answered your question :)
msadowski 4y ago
I think this post is a treasure trove of good advice. I’ll have to do some deeper reading of this as the advice seem solid. Since I’ve quit my last job in 2018 I feel like I’ve tried it all when it comes to revenue sources: * consulting - still my main source of income * writing a newsletter - brings about $400-$600 a month but there are some dry days on the horizon * selling newsletter merch - I’m in red every month with only one t-shirt design * evaluating EU project proposals - nice side gig 1-2 times a year * writing a course with a publisher - after 3 months I’m nowhere near getting a good return of investment on the time spent but it was fun and I’d do it again * writing an influencer posts on LinkedIn - was a one-off thing but paid really well I feel like doing too many things at one could be a problem for me and focusing on a subset of things could bring better results. If you are in a position to work for yourself then I would highly recommend it.
- suslik 4y ago
  How do you find consulting gigs? I have no idea even where to start.
  - msadowski 4y ago
    Initially I had a lot of luck on UpWork and managed to find some clients that I worked with for over a year. Initially, I was getting 90% of job requests from Upwork and 10% from my blog and LinkedIn, but about year ago the proportions flipped the other way round.
  - stepbeek 4y ago
    My experience has been that word of mouth is by far the best way to win new clients. It's a warm introduction, everyone involved has some social incentives to behave appropriately, and the lead normally has a rough idea of pricing from the person that referred them. That being said, this isn't advice. It's an admission that being lucky enough to have a few seed clients land in your lap (and taking that opportunity) is the optimal way to start consulting (imo).
dmitriid 4y ago
> When I left my job as an engineering manager at Uber in late 2020, I had nothing lined up on purpose, and decided to spend the coming 6 months writing a book, and then found a startup related to platform engineering All these feel-good stories should start with "this is how I managed to save enough money to not worry about anything for at least 6 months"
- bagacrap 4y ago
  I'm guessing "the rest of my life" is more accurate given the stock chart
- gregdoesit 4y ago
  Author of the article here and just came across this comment. Here's how I did it. By working at Uber in Amsterdam for 4 years where I made more than twice as much as a senior engineer as I did before when I was at Skyscanner, in London where I was a principal engineer. Saved the difference and I had about 3-4 years of savings. Decided to "risk" 6 months of it and dip into it. https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1552615944446525442 https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1552615944446525442
t_mann 4y ago
Followed the link to the Miss Excel story, it's pretty wild overall, but this just stood out to me: > whenever I run a sale, it’s usually $297 typically, but when you cut it in half, it looks nice at $149 When asked why her courses were priced at a 'weird' number like 297. That's just wild coming from someone who self-reportedly makes up to 6 figures a day teaching people how to use software for basic arithmetic. Free Excel tip: use =ISEVEN() to check whether a number will halve to a whole number.
- auggierose 4y ago
  round(297/2) = 149
prohobo 4y ago
I've always found the "hey Twitter friends, I wrote a guide, buy it for $90 now!" stuff super unethical anyways. First of all, the information they sell that way is 100% available for free somewhere else or is useless. They're usually mediocre in their fields, but have chops for social media marketing. Essentially that economy is all about being perceived as an expert and manipulating naive/unsuspecting people with marketing tactics without ever actually providing any value. The entire focus of that community seems to be on MRR rather than products or solutions. They make posts on HN, Indiehackers, Reddit, etc. trying to sell themselves as sympathetic by using the guise of "sharing their story" but they're actually just finding more customers. Btw, I don't mean that sharing your project on HN is sleazy, of course not. But it's quite obvious when you're lying with a blog post for example, and actually using the mirage of a real discussion to point eyes at your money makers. That said, I think there's a subset of those people who do provide real value and don't play the MRR game. Instead they treat it more like a hobby (or craft) and just build shit while being practical about income. IMO, that's something to try to emulate. Stop worrying about "how do I make $1000 per month in passive income?", and instead build something useful or fun without pressuring yourself (or others, for that matter). Be practical, not hopeful and needy. Some examples I can think of right now, though some of them are actually not making any money AFAIK: - A cool library of playlists for programming sessions, run by Datassette: https://musicforprogramming.net https://musicforprogramming.net - Fabien Sanglard's awesome books explaining classic game engines: https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/ https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/ - Custom Thinkpads that look retro but are beefy bois, by XY Tech: https://www.xyte.ch/mods/x210-x2100/ https://www.xyte.ch/mods/x210-x2100/ - Cheap, no non-sense email service, made by a solo dev: https://purelymail.com/ https://purelymail.com/ - Nice repository of tips and info for software engineering teams, made by a burnt out team leader: https://principles.dev/ https://principles.dev/ - The original AdBlock, which I believe was made by 1 or 2 devs and just had a donation box when it first started: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-%E2%80%94-best-ad-blocker/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-%E2%80%94-... - Had to add this classic from the Diablo 2 days, BoBaFeTT's trainer: https://www.geocities.ws/free_bobafett/main.htm https://www.geocities.ws/free_bobafett/main.htm All of these projects have one interesting thing in common: there's no pretense. They had an idea for some tool or service and decided that they could provide it. I'm sure that most of these projects grew out of stuff they were tinkering with anyway and probably weren't things where they spent too much time obsessing over market fit. IMO worrying about social media audiences, email lists, profit, market fit, exposure, pricing, etc. is a sign that you should be looking for VC funding rather than building a product. Those things can work as well, but you have to be someone who's trying to build an empire of sorts rather than provide immediate value.
vanilla-almond 4y ago
Has anyone who posted a 'Show HN' had success with a paid product and no prior audience or following when their product launched? Building an audience remains a difficult business task. It would be inspiring to hear success stories of products which launched with no following or prior audience.
- yboris 4y ago
  I created Video Hub App and sell about 100 copies at $5 each (originally for $3.50 four years ago at launch). Had no audience, just shared it on Reddit a bit, on some forums, AlternativeTo, and a few random places (never paid). Sold over 4,000 copies in the last 4 years - probably with help of luck (some people wrote reviews of the app) and also probably because people search for "porn hub" as "video hub". https://videohubapp.com/ https://videohubapp.com/ - and it's open source - https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
- archagon 4y ago
  Not sure if this counts, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074488 Admittedly, I had a really hard time getting any traction for this project. Cold e-mailing media folks had some limited success but no sales impact. Same for HN and Product Hunt. But eventually Apple noticed and gave me a banner ad in the iPad App Store, which netted me about $10k overall. Not exactly a success in absolute terms, but it made money with no prior audience.
thenerdhead 4y ago
I tried this for two years and even wrote a book to help people get into tech. I realized I didn’t want to be another person who gives generic advice and I decided to make content and write books for me instead. I think the main thing the author leaves out in the article is that building the audience is the more important thing when starting. Once you have enough “webs” out there via articles, videos, interviews, freebies, newsletter, meetups, etc then you can consider building products for your audience. Arguably you can start as soon as your audience shows interest, but you need an audience first to know that. I’m a nobody in the social media world and I was able to sell a $200 course to many people. I ended up refunding everyone because I realized I didn’t want to be a tech influencer/guru/coach/etc.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  Wow, that's quite a reversal. What did folks say when you refunded them?
  - thenerdhead 4y ago
    Many were disappointed, but they understood. It was my first product I ever charged for after two years. I had a few grand in pre-sales to incentivize me to do it too. But on reflection, I felt like I was almost "stealing" from these people who needed it more than I did. They were just getting started on their learning journeys to get into tech. I already have a Big Tech salary, I should probably be the last person who needs someone's money. While one of my goals is to work for myself as a one-person product / business, this was not it.
    - tchock23 4y ago
      Kudos. I wish your level of honesty and transparency was more common online.
elt 4y ago
Any advice I can offer are things that seemed to work for me. I got "lucky" and struck gold on my first idea/project (consistently making high six figures over seven years running). I have tried other projects but none were nearly as successful. 1) Find your competitive advantage. I happened to work in a niche industry and learned it inside and out. I became somewhat of a "domain expert". I used that to my advantage and built my product to serve that niche. What can you do better than most people? What do you know inside and out? 2) Serve businesses, not people. People will do anything to not pay. They tend to have more charge backs and most of the "system abuse" I deal with are small time freelancers trying to squeeze my product's free offering. Don't offer too much for free. Don't be a charity. Serve businesses, they pay money. 3) Don't be afraid of competitors. My largest customers are in fact competitors that leverage my service to better their own service. 4) Don't charge too little. When I first started, my offering was incredibly cheap ($9 per-month). It certainly helped bring attention to my offering and I got a lot of customers for it, but they were cheap customers (see point #2 above). Today my lowest offering is $39 per-month and I seem to have weeded out most of the bad apples (though some still get through). 5) Reach out to customers directly. Don't rely on ads, social media posts or other fluff. I haven't done a single ad or social media post (I don't even have social media profiles). What I did do was directly email/message potential customers.
- b0afc375b5 4y ago
  If I may ask, for point #5, do you mean cold emailing here? If so, how do you differentiate your email with that of other generic cold emails? Or do you just email people you already know?
  - elt 4y ago
    It really depends on your customer. In my case, I did cold emailing. I was able to narrow down my customer by their job title/role and knew exactly who to email. I don't really buy into gimmicks or tricks to differentiate my emails. You can read a lot of "tricks" out there, but they come across as inauthentic to me and that isn't how I wanted to establish a business relationship. The thing I did was send very targeted emails (to people I honestly believed would benefit from my service) and every email was personalized (and I don't mean using a template and swapping out variables). I sent each and every email from scratch, one at a time. I did read a few books on sales outreach and prospecting ("Predictable Revenue" and "Predictable Prospecting"). They were helpful and I did pick up a few ideas from them, but I mainly took the knowledge and paved my own prospecting/outreach strategy from it. With that being said, I haven't done any outreach in over three years. All of my customers come to me, mainly referred to my service by existing customers. Or customers that leave a company and advocate for my service at their new company.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pythonbase 4y ago
Such motivational posts incline me to write a book on how to write a book to make money online ;)

I'm on a similar journey as the author — quit my job at FAANG and started a solo software consulting business — and as others have mentioned in this post, this path of contention creation is non-linear and no "formula" exists — and will never exist. A friend of mind, guitar instructor, went from being teaching synchronously in-person for 15+ years to building out his audience. Only after 2 years did he start becoming profitable. It's a grind.

AlwaysRock 4y ago

I've been running a technical podcast focused on interview prep/insights for the last two years that has OKAY traction but is still a long way from making me any money. It's hard! It cost me money. About $500 a month right now, not counting my time. I enjoy doing it but I've certainly had tough months when I wanted to stop. Doing freelance work has been the easiest way to bring in some extra cash as an engineer but damn do taxes really hurt that extra income.

itsmemattchung 4y ago
Not sure how you have your business setup but have you 1. Formed an LLC 2. Filed for S-Corp status Not a tax lawyer so take with a grain of salt but you might be able to save significantly on taxes. Lots of tax breaks as a small business owner.
willhinsa 4y ago
What does the $500/mo cost consist of?
- AlwaysRock 4y ago
  Editing costs is the bulk. I dont edit the episodes myself. The rest is mostly tooling cost (zoom, youtube, podcast hosting services).
tchock23 4y ago
Check out episode 246 of the Indie Hackers podcast. They talk about how podcasts work nicely as a supplement to a newsletter. Might be worth creating a newsletter to complement/grow your existing podcast.

O__________O 4y ago

Author forgot one of the most profitable income streams for solo creaters, paid speaking events.

wenbin 4y ago

This is gold! I've been following Gergely's journey for quite a while. Personally I learn a ton from Gergely's writings / tweets. As a fellow one-person business [1], the only thing I'd like to add here (after running my business for ~5 years so far) is that you are allowed to be flexible. Businesses are different. Everyone's background / finance / skills are different. It's okay that you are doing something different from what you've read from the Internet. For example, it's totally okay to do (or not do) micro-services for your little SaaS on the get go. It's also okay to try venture-backed route for a while then switch to do "lifestyle business". It's also okay to hire (or not hire) employees early. There's not one single formula that works for every one-person business. Persistence really pays off long term. Good things might not happen until year 5. [1] https://www.listennotes.com/blog/the-boring-technology-behind-a-one-person-23/ https://www.listennotes.com/blog/the-boring-technology-behin...

fxtentacle 4y ago

I think the most actionable advice is: Bringing a sizable audience to a new social platform makes it easier to reach #1 in the rankings. Once you do, other things become exponentially easier.

alin23 4y ago

> What are things people and businesses pay for? I think this is missing the "to fix annoyances, remove frustrations, save time" bullet point. That's basically all my own one-person business does (https://lunar.fyi/ https://lunar.fyi/), it allows people to add adaptive brightness on external monitors, turn off individual monitors from the keyboard etc. Things that are simply frustrating to do daily without software help, either because the monitor buttons are hard to press, options hidden under a lot of menus, or a multi-step process is needed. And people are paying for it, even though it doesn't help them make money, it doesn't educate or entertain them, and it definitely doesn't help them sell anything.

chii 4y ago

> 4. Invest your savings and live off of gains. this option is not really like the other 3 listed, since it's a separate category of passive income and is non-exclusionary unlike the rest. One should always be investing any excess income anyway, regardless of what path one chooses to follow. Unfortunately, the risk of having _only_ investment income to sustain you is that you cannot make risky investments, and so must have large amount of capital to produce less risky but more guaranteed returns. FIRE comes to mind when one goes down this course of action.

upseide 4y ago
The joke (or maybe better 'punchline') is that the new moniker 'creator', which I read as a more palpable synonym for 'influencer', is really just one of, and as such /any/ of, many other things just by another name. In the case of: 4. Invest your savings and live off of gains. I think the joke is some of these creators may just be those people, filling the time by creating. It's an answer to the question, "I wanna start creating but where does (fill in favorite creator) get the money for the equipment or the time for all this? Why am /i/ struggling? Ala, peggy hills bookstore in king of the hill. Peggy struggling: how did you ever sell enough books to pay the rent? Former owner: o I inherited money whose interest covered the rent.
dgivney 4y ago
He's not advocating for a passive investment income. > You could use these savings to invest in stock markets, day trade with them, and - hopefully - make a profit. I wouldn't recommend his advice..
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lampshades 4y ago
  Why not? It’s a valid way to make money for some of us.
  - bagacrap 4y ago

sakopov 4y ago

I've been wrecking my brain how to make $10 on anything online for a good part of the past 10 years with a couple of failed startups and even more side projects that went nowhere. I envy anyone who can do this and I think it is truly an immeasurable amount of effort to make any kind of side income let alone something that replaces your salary. But I think articles like this one advertise it like it's something you can do in your sleep and that's just not how it works.

ZainRiz 4y ago
I spent years also thinking I had nothing I could teach that people would pay money for. Heck, I had a couple blog posts that made HN front page and still I didn't think that people would actually pay me money for that content. Then a couple months ago I realized I could take one of those posts about interview advice to software engineers and turn it into a more in depth video lecture. I was amazed to see people actually buying it (sold $7k worth of that course!) In case it provides inspiration, I wrote about what it was like making the course here: https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1525211786710077449 https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1525211786710077449
josephg 4y ago
It’s also a lot of luck. A friend of a friend made some trashy weekend website in php years ago which calculates profits from options trades. He somehow makes 6 figures from advertising on the site. Apparently he tried doing a big rewrite a couple years ago to fix the UX and whatnot, but his income dropped to 1/3rd of what it was after the change. Probably people spent less time on the site. So he put it back how it was.
- doppp 4y ago
  Did he advertise the site or optimize SEO or just put it up and then it just got traffic?
  - josephg 4y ago
    Sorry; too distant an acquaintance. I don't know the website's URL or any more detail than what I posted above.

krmboya 4y ago

Nice, I like this. Till now I considered running a B2B business as only being a SAAS catering to businesses, and therefore requiring dedicated resources on standby e.g. customer service, an on-call rotation, compliance to various things that other businesses care about etc which seem like quite a drag for a one or two person venture. Looks like there are other ways to run a B2B without too much friction

wrnr 4y ago

Funny he don't mention recruiting engineers hate it but is what the OG's did.

jordanmorgan10 4y ago

It doesn’t seem possible until you do it. I couldn’t imagine my book over iOS would net what it has, but a bit of luck and trust built up over the years made it a success for me. The challenge, as I see it now, is how to prove you’re not out for a quick buck. Because everyone is selling something at this point - for better or worse.

darod 4y ago

interesting that he recommends starting a one-person business but the last section of the article are listings for "featured pragmatic engineering jobs"! do you believe in your own advice?

__mharrison__ 4y ago
Part of his one person job is brokering jobs... Recruiting seems so broken that I've been tempted to do it myself.

__mharrison__ 4y ago

Gergely parents many of the pros of being a full-time creator but there are drawbacks as well. - (US) government doesn't necessarily incentivize self employment - Buying a house is a pain. I make more than I ever made working for the man but few want to give me a loan. - Unless you have a saas, income can be variable. - You get to do the fun stuff... But also the other stuff (payroll, marketing, ...) That said, it would be very hard for me to go back to working for the man. The flexibility, creativity, and community are wonderful.

mattferderer 4y ago
> (US) government doesn't necessarily incentivize self employment Can you explain here? I've found the US govt to be very incentivizing to "small businesses", which includes self employment. I'm thinking of tax breaks, cheap/free loans, and other financial items. I will say the amount of red tape & paper work is ridiculous, especially if you plan to move or do business in more than one state. > Buying a house is a pain. I make more than I ever made working for the man but few want to give me a loan. Once you run a business for 2 years, this goes away. It is an incredible eye roll though when you first run into it if you're running a successful business. > You get to do the fun stuff... But also the other stuff (payroll, marketing, ...) You may be well aware of this, but for anyone else, hire this out as much as possible. That's one of the most important things I would tell anyone. Know what you enjoy & are good at. Hire everything else out. That can even be management/ceo/etc.. You don't need to run the business if you don't want to. "The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It" is a great book on this topic. > Unless you have a saas, income can be variable. This one is tough. It can be easy to increase business volume but then you need to hire more help often which brings it's own challenges & may require more business volume. Finding a good balance here is tricky for sure.

throwaway202288 4y ago

Just a word of caution from someone who paid a ton of money to a lot of the people mentioned in the article in the last 2 years and was part of more than a few of these communities. Note these are my observations and opinions. - Read any testimonials these people out with a dollop of salt. Success rates seem to be around 1-2%(if you are lucky) with most of the others leaving or barely getting by. Easier to make way more money as a software dev in an established company than in the "creator economy". - Copy what they do to sell their courses rather than buying their courses. Their courses are out of date, but they are still milking it. - Assume any financial number you see from these people or people in similar spaces as suspect. It is either massaged or an outright lie to make it look much better than it is most of the time. - Assume you are being marketed to with any content they put out - There is a TON of luck. A million people put in the same hard work but do not make it. But most of these people spin it as hard work. - Most of these people cannot teach. Great at marketing themselves, but not much else.

klodolph 4y ago
> - There is a TON of luck. A million people put in the same hard work but do not make it. But most of these people spin it as hard work. The “Excel Girl” also spins it as manifesting. You can see more of that at r/lawofattraction, or you might be familiar with The Secret (2006).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ldoughty 4y ago
> - Assume you are being marketed to with any content they put out "Man, I really want to make some side money" "Good news! Look at my book|podcast|article|youtube|etc on how to do that!" It's like writing a "how to get rich book" explaining you should write a "how to get rich book" to get rich... an informal/unstructured pyramid scheme.
fxtentacle 4y ago
Fully agree. I know a completely non-famous #1 bestselling author for courses on how to develop iOS apps. 99% of the revenue is coming from the books and courses. 1% of the revenue is cheap app re-skins + good marketing. In the early days, they actually used course revenue to subsidize their app operation to keep it afloat. So yes, they teach you how to build iOS apps. But those apps have a negative ROI.

snoopy1 4y ago

bmazed 4y ago

who tryna build a new social app

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

> My newsletter is the #1 paid technology newsletter on Substack. good for you but is this another survivorship bias thing... reminds me of the 4-hour workweek, getting rich by giving advice others how to get rich added: if you try to be in the creator economy, you will always be at the whim of some gatekeeper like youtube or instagram who can erase 90% of your income in an instant

jamestimmins 4y ago
How is this survivorship bias?
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  the article begins with the qualification of being the "number 1 newsletter on substack" so there is a logical error of assuming that the advice given is more valuable or actionable - which imo it isn't, after reading the article.
- nokya 4y ago
  Because the successful trajectory (the survivor trajectory) is being analyzed on the assumption that if its attributes/variables can be reverse engineered, then the sequence can be reproduced by others (i.e., others will survive, too). Some additional info if the topics interests you: Survivor bias can be described as both a cognitive and motivational bias. First, it relies on the widespread conception amongst human beings that reproducing someone else's trajectory/decisions eventually leads to an equivalent outcome (cognitive error). Second, we all share a profound need to feel that we understand the world that surrounds us (motivational). Think about the alternative: without this bias, we would be consciously aware that our success (or survival) cannot be singularly attributed to our effort or our ability to reproduce trusted strategies. This would likely push us towards feeling increasingly powerless in our ability to achieve our goals (or survive), and eventually drive us into a depressive state (the "whatever" mindset). At this precise moment I should bring religion to the discussion, but I will not because it will take me too much time. Self-help literature almost exclusively operates by exploiting the survivor at two levels: authors often are themselves convinced that anyone who reproduces their recommendations will be similarly successful, and at the reader level, because without people telling us that we can succeed, there would be simply no hope. Hope I answered your question :)

msadowski 4y ago

I think this post is a treasure trove of good advice. I’ll have to do some deeper reading of this as the advice seem solid. Since I’ve quit my last job in 2018 I feel like I’ve tried it all when it comes to revenue sources: * consulting - still my main source of income * writing a newsletter - brings about $400-$600 a month but there are some dry days on the horizon * selling newsletter merch - I’m in red every month with only one t-shirt design * evaluating EU project proposals - nice side gig 1-2 times a year * writing a course with a publisher - after 3 months I’m nowhere near getting a good return of investment on the time spent but it was fun and I’d do it again * writing an influencer posts on LinkedIn - was a one-off thing but paid really well I feel like doing too many things at one could be a problem for me and focusing on a subset of things could bring better results. If you are in a position to work for yourself then I would highly recommend it.

suslik 4y ago
How do you find consulting gigs? I have no idea even where to start.
- msadowski 4y ago
  Initially I had a lot of luck on UpWork and managed to find some clients that I worked with for over a year. Initially, I was getting 90% of job requests from Upwork and 10% from my blog and LinkedIn, but about year ago the proportions flipped the other way round.
- stepbeek 4y ago
  My experience has been that word of mouth is by far the best way to win new clients. It's a warm introduction, everyone involved has some social incentives to behave appropriately, and the lead normally has a rough idea of pricing from the person that referred them. That being said, this isn't advice. It's an admission that being lucky enough to have a few seed clients land in your lap (and taking that opportunity) is the optimal way to start consulting (imo).

dmitriid 4y ago

> When I left my job as an engineering manager at Uber in late 2020, I had nothing lined up on purpose, and decided to spend the coming 6 months writing a book, and then found a startup related to platform engineering All these feel-good stories should start with "this is how I managed to save enough money to not worry about anything for at least 6 months"

bagacrap 4y ago
I'm guessing "the rest of my life" is more accurate given the stock chart
gregdoesit 4y ago
Author of the article here and just came across this comment. Here's how I did it. By working at Uber in Amsterdam for 4 years where I made more than twice as much as a senior engineer as I did before when I was at Skyscanner, in London where I was a principal engineer. Saved the difference and I had about 3-4 years of savings. Decided to "risk" 6 months of it and dip into it. https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1552615944446525442 https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1552615944446525442

t_mann 4y ago

Followed the link to the Miss Excel story, it's pretty wild overall, but this just stood out to me: > whenever I run a sale, it’s usually $297 typically, but when you cut it in half, it looks nice at $149 When asked why her courses were priced at a 'weird' number like 297. That's just wild coming from someone who self-reportedly makes up to 6 figures a day teaching people how to use software for basic arithmetic. Free Excel tip: use =ISEVEN() to check whether a number will halve to a whole number.

auggierose 4y ago
round(297/2) = 149

prohobo 4y ago

I've always found the "hey Twitter friends, I wrote a guide, buy it for $90 now!" stuff super unethical anyways. First of all, the information they sell that way is 100% available for free somewhere else or is useless. They're usually mediocre in their fields, but have chops for social media marketing. Essentially that economy is all about being perceived as an expert and manipulating naive/unsuspecting people with marketing tactics without ever actually providing any value. The entire focus of that community seems to be on MRR rather than products or solutions. They make posts on HN, Indiehackers, Reddit, etc. trying to sell themselves as sympathetic by using the guise of "sharing their story" but they're actually just finding more customers. Btw, I don't mean that sharing your project on HN is sleazy, of course not. But it's quite obvious when you're lying with a blog post for example, and actually using the mirage of a real discussion to point eyes at your money makers. That said, I think there's a subset of those people who do provide real value and don't play the MRR game. Instead they treat it more like a hobby (or craft) and just build shit while being practical about income. IMO, that's something to try to emulate. Stop worrying about "how do I make $1000 per month in passive income?", and instead build something useful or fun without pressuring yourself (or others, for that matter). Be practical, not hopeful and needy. Some examples I can think of right now, though some of them are actually not making any money AFAIK: - A cool library of playlists for programming sessions, run by Datassette: https://musicforprogramming.net https://musicforprogramming.net - Fabien Sanglard's awesome books explaining classic game engines: https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/ https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/ - Custom Thinkpads that look retro but are beefy bois, by XY Tech: https://www.xyte.ch/mods/x210-x2100/ https://www.xyte.ch/mods/x210-x2100/ - Cheap, no non-sense email service, made by a solo dev: https://purelymail.com/ https://purelymail.com/ - Nice repository of tips and info for software engineering teams, made by a burnt out team leader: https://principles.dev/ https://principles.dev/ - The original AdBlock, which I believe was made by 1 or 2 devs and just had a donation box when it first started: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-%E2%80%94-best-ad-blocker/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-%E2%80%94-... - Had to add this classic from the Diablo 2 days, BoBaFeTT's trainer: https://www.geocities.ws/free_bobafett/main.htm https://www.geocities.ws/free_bobafett/main.htm All of these projects have one interesting thing in common: there's no pretense. They had an idea for some tool or service and decided that they could provide it. I'm sure that most of these projects grew out of stuff they were tinkering with anyway and probably weren't things where they spent too much time obsessing over market fit. IMO worrying about social media audiences, email lists, profit, market fit, exposure, pricing, etc. is a sign that you should be looking for VC funding rather than building a product. Those things can work as well, but you have to be someone who's trying to build an empire of sorts rather than provide immediate value.

vanilla-almond 4y ago

Has anyone who posted a 'Show HN' had success with a paid product and no prior audience or following when their product launched? Building an audience remains a difficult business task. It would be inspiring to hear success stories of products which launched with no following or prior audience.

yboris 4y ago
I created Video Hub App and sell about 100 copies at $5 each (originally for $3.50 four years ago at launch). Had no audience, just shared it on Reddit a bit, on some forums, AlternativeTo, and a few random places (never paid). Sold over 4,000 copies in the last 4 years - probably with help of luck (some people wrote reviews of the app) and also probably because people search for "porn hub" as "video hub". https://videohubapp.com/ https://videohubapp.com/ - and it's open source - https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
archagon 4y ago
Not sure if this counts, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074488 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11074488 Admittedly, I had a really hard time getting any traction for this project. Cold e-mailing media folks had some limited success but no sales impact. Same for HN and Product Hunt. But eventually Apple noticed and gave me a banner ad in the iPad App Store, which netted me about $10k overall. Not exactly a success in absolute terms, but it made money with no prior audience.

thenerdhead 4y ago

I tried this for two years and even wrote a book to help people get into tech. I realized I didn’t want to be another person who gives generic advice and I decided to make content and write books for me instead. I think the main thing the author leaves out in the article is that building the audience is the more important thing when starting. Once you have enough “webs” out there via articles, videos, interviews, freebies, newsletter, meetups, etc then you can consider building products for your audience. Arguably you can start as soon as your audience shows interest, but you need an audience first to know that. I’m a nobody in the social media world and I was able to sell a $200 course to many people. I ended up refunding everyone because I realized I didn’t want to be a tech influencer/guru/coach/etc.

zach_garwood 4y ago
Wow, that's quite a reversal. What did folks say when you refunded them?
- thenerdhead 4y ago
  Many were disappointed, but they understood. It was my first product I ever charged for after two years. I had a few grand in pre-sales to incentivize me to do it too. But on reflection, I felt like I was almost "stealing" from these people who needed it more than I did. They were just getting started on their learning journeys to get into tech. I already have a Big Tech salary, I should probably be the last person who needs someone's money. While one of my goals is to work for myself as a one-person product / business, this was not it.
  - tchock23 4y ago
    Kudos. I wish your level of honesty and transparency was more common online.

elt 4y ago

Any advice I can offer are things that seemed to work for me. I got "lucky" and struck gold on my first idea/project (consistently making high six figures over seven years running). I have tried other projects but none were nearly as successful. 1) Find your competitive advantage. I happened to work in a niche industry and learned it inside and out. I became somewhat of a "domain expert". I used that to my advantage and built my product to serve that niche. What can you do better than most people? What do you know inside and out? 2) Serve businesses, not people. People will do anything to not pay. They tend to have more charge backs and most of the "system abuse" I deal with are small time freelancers trying to squeeze my product's free offering. Don't offer too much for free. Don't be a charity. Serve businesses, they pay money. 3) Don't be afraid of competitors. My largest customers are in fact competitors that leverage my service to better their own service. 4) Don't charge too little. When I first started, my offering was incredibly cheap ($9 per-month). It certainly helped bring attention to my offering and I got a lot of customers for it, but they were cheap customers (see point #2 above). Today my lowest offering is $39 per-month and I seem to have weeded out most of the bad apples (though some still get through). 5) Reach out to customers directly. Don't rely on ads, social media posts or other fluff. I haven't done a single ad or social media post (I don't even have social media profiles). What I did do was directly email/message potential customers.

b0afc375b5 4y ago
If I may ask, for point #5, do you mean cold emailing here? If so, how do you differentiate your email with that of other generic cold emails? Or do you just email people you already know?
- elt 4y ago
  It really depends on your customer. In my case, I did cold emailing. I was able to narrow down my customer by their job title/role and knew exactly who to email. I don't really buy into gimmicks or tricks to differentiate my emails. You can read a lot of "tricks" out there, but they come across as inauthentic to me and that isn't how I wanted to establish a business relationship. The thing I did was send very targeted emails (to people I honestly believed would benefit from my service) and every email was personalized (and I don't mean using a template and swapping out variables). I sent each and every email from scratch, one at a time. I did read a few books on sales outreach and prospecting ("Predictable Revenue" and "Predictable Prospecting"). They were helpful and I did pick up a few ideas from them, but I mainly took the knowledge and paved my own prospecting/outreach strategy from it. With that being said, I haven't done any outreach in over three years. All of my customers come to me, mainly referred to my service by existing customers. Or customers that leave a company and advocate for my service at their new company.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pythonbase 4y ago

Such motivational posts incline me to write a book on how to write a book to make money online ;)