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Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

indiehackers.com

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Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#101

Post by bbcbasic »

limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

I doubt I could make 17k/m consulting while doing something I enjoy. I could probably make that by getting into the business side of things and away from tech.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#102

Post by gargarplex »

merpnderp wrote: post #38
limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

If you can make more than $17k/month from straight consulting, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter please.

I make $30k+ in months when I am asked to work longer hours (50h of billable time). I wrote a book about how to break into consulting as a programmer; link in profile. The key is prospecting. I offer a fee chapter, devoted to 15 channels for finding clients.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#103

Post by mathattack »

limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

I respect your position. When you are trying to pay the bills, every dollar is the same shade of green.

When you are trying to establish enterprise value, it's different. The value of a company is roughly (m/(i-c+g) - f) where m = margin dollars, i = the interest rate of your funders, c = churn, g = revenue growth and f = fixed costs. If you have a repeatable (and growable) cash flow, then it's worth a lot more than consulting work that you have to win every year. The math is highly oversimplified, but this is why a company like LinkedIn (Or Ariba in Web 1.0) can sell for 8 or 10 times revenue.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#104

Post by pieterhg »

jackgolding wrote: post #85
callmeed wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the common perception is that a software product has a marginal cost of near zero and can scale, whereas consulting limits you to your billable hours and requires constantly chasing down new clients. You may debate the merits of that argument and it doesn't take into account product maintenance and support–but I think there is some validity to it. Also, some SaaS/product success stories take the path of CONSU…

> Also, some SaaS/product success stories take the path of CONSULTING/AGENCY -> PRODUCT -> SUCCESS (e.g. Basecamp, SEOmoz, FreshBooks) but you rarely hear of the reverse. There are a lot of people (i.e. @levelsio) who launch a career as a speaker out of products, I imagine part of that is consulting

Wait what? I (@levelsio) am not doing that. I've made €2000 out of speaking total and only spoke 3 times. I don't consult.

My revenue doesn't come from speaking, it comes from product. I don't like those people who do that at all because how can you trust people that only speak but not make product?

I speak if I want to spread a message (although blogging is way more efficient).

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#105

Post by robotresearcher »

lemming wrote: post #89
cheez wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Money isn't everything" - guy who obviously made more than 2 million USD working at Google for 4 years... I don't want to say you're wrong, but money isn't everything is easy to say when you have it.

Perhaps it wasn't clear in my comment - I quit right out of the gate instead of staying at Google. I essentially turned the job down.

For reference: 'Quitting' a job means you accepted the job offer and did the job, even very briefly. 'Turning down' a job means you did not accept the offer.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#106

Post by lemming »

robotresearcher wrote: post #105
lemming wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it wasn't clear in my comment - I quit right out of the gate instead of staying at Google. I essentially turned the job down.

For reference: 'Quitting' a job means you accepted the job offer and did the job, even very briefly. 'Turning down' a job means you did not accept the offer.

I quit the job after ~2 months, which I'd consider more or less turning it down. Since it was as part of an acquisition, it wasn't a standard job offer which I could accept or decline independent of the acquisition itself.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#107

Post by madeofpalk »

limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

> How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

They're side projects. Unless consulting is your side project, I don't really see the ultimatum here. Either you enjoy working on side projects or you don't.

The 'passive' income you get from them is a really nice benefit, but still the reason why you do a side project (as opposed to making it a full-time project) should be because you enjoy making things.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#108

Post by hiddencost »

merpnderp wrote: post #38
limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

If you can make more than $17k/month from straight consulting, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter please.

I've billed $40k in one month. Typical months are closer to $30k. I have fairly specialized machine learning skills.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#109

Post by yeukhon »

limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

Consider you make 6k a month, plus 17k a month is a huge jump for a side project. Not that many people can make more than 17K a month...

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#110

Post by rick_perez »

morgante wrote: post #91
lemming wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because money isn't everything. What I'm working on isn't a side project, it's my main gig, but it's paying the bills nicely. But I started this after quitting from a post-acquisition job at Google paying $400k plus 4 years of retention bonus totalling a lot of money. I would absolutely have been financially much, much better off at Google. But I would have had to live in the US which I didn't want to do, and I would…

I think you're been unnecessary defensive. I'm not questioning the value of doing side projects. Money might not be everything , but it certainly is something . This is especially true when comparing consulting (something I genuinely quite like doing, it's almost totally bullshit free) with running my own SaaS startup (which also seems attractive, but would involve doing more of the things I dislike than now). Still,…

I was a full time employee, then consultant, and now I run my own company.

Working and consulting limits your money making abilities to yourself. I have the potential to make much more running my own company (and I do).

"It's just hard to keep the motivation up when there's a steady flow of interesting projects from clients which have immediate, guaranteed revenue attached to them."

There is, for now. But this will change. It always does. I don't look forward to the roller coaster ride of finding that next consulting client or dealing with ridiculously difficult ones.

This also changes as you get older and have a family (many consulting gigs require traveling to work onsite or for important meetings). Consultants are also usually cut first at any big company, if you have long-term gigs.

The other difference is the type of work you want to do. I enjoy the challenge of starting a business from scratch and wearing many hats (including many non-technical roles).

I don't think I could ever go back to consulting.

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