With all these "success" stories flying about I'd absolutely love to know how many losers there are for each "Creative Tim". 10x, 100x, 1000x ?
Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business
131–140 of 149 posts
Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business
#132I devour indiehacker's interviews and I love the transparency - thanks to both sides of the table. According to the numbers here, 42% of the 17,000 monthly revenues are spent on 6 people. That's $1190 per person per month if everyone is paid equally. Is everyone in Romania, and is that a living wage there? If not, how are your employees making ends meet? Edit: that last sentence sounds accusatory - I don't mean it to…
Romanian here, living in the UK though.
Romania is a lot cheaper than any much any other place in the Western world. Granted, $1.2k a month wouldn't be enough to go on shopping sprees every weekend, but it's enough for quite a good life.
You can also take a look here to get an idea: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
I think a good senior software engineer makes around $2.5k per month, but I think that's sort of on the higher end unless you're really a hot shot, and for Romania, that's an awesome salary, way above the average.
Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business
#133here's a link to the other HN thread with no comments or anything: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272696
The indiehacker guy is known for aggressively beating his own drum and posting and reposting his blog links.
Appears effective.
Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
In his defense, he's really comparing ~$200k to ~$400k, not poverty to $400k. Beyond a certain point, the more money you have, the less extra money matters.
This mentality is what drives people to mediocrity. Not reaching your full potential just hurts yourself, your family and your community in the long run. If you have the capability to learn more, earn more and create great businesses don't sit on the sidelines the world needs more action takers.
> This mentality is what drives people to mediocrity.
As if excellence were measured in money.
Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business
#135I 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?
Well, thing is that not everyone can charge that kind of money for consulting. It depends very much on the kind of work that you do and your location, and also on ones business skills. So if you can, then by any mean you should concentrate you efforts on the consulting. If I understood correctly this guy was from Romania, so from the beginning his options were probably much more limiting; for Eastern Europe $17K/month is a huge money.
Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business
#136here's a link to the other HN thread with no comments or anything: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272696
The indiehacker guy is known for aggressively beating his own drum and posting and reposting his blog links. Appears effective.
Speaking from personal experience - nothing magically happens even if you create something valuable and put your heart and soul into it. You have to beat that drum, even if you hate every note that comes out of it. Which is why there are roles called Sales and Marketing. Being a salesman is an under-appreciated, arduous but honorable job. They create mutually beneficial relationships between parties that might otherwise never find each other.
Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business
#137I devour indiehacker's interviews and I love the transparency - thanks to both sides of the table. According to the numbers here, 42% of the 17,000 monthly revenues are spent on 6 people. That's $1190 per person per month if everyone is paid equally. Is everyone in Romania, and is that a living wage there? If not, how are your employees making ends meet? Edit: that last sentence sounds accusatory - I don't mean it to…
Romanian here, living in the UK though. Romania is a lot cheaper than any much any other place in the Western world. Granted, $1.2k a month wouldn't be enough to go on shopping sprees every weekend, but it's enough for quite a good life. You can also take a look here to get an idea: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... I think a good senior software engineer makes around $2.5k per month, bu…
It's probably worth noting to the US audience that salaries in Europe are almost always quoted as net, with (usually) no further taxes due.
So if someone's getting $2.5K per month it's not the same as an American getting 12x that in annual salary, because it's (presumably) the after-tax number in Romania while it'd be the pre-tax number in the US.
Still, I get that tech talent is a great value in Romania. I wonder if there's a problem finding good people because so many would go to the West to make more money. But it seems the OP solves that problem by hiring beginners, which is probably what I'd do.
Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Romanian here, living in the UK though. Romania is a lot cheaper than any much any other place in the Western world. Granted, $1.2k a month wouldn't be enough to go on shopping sprees every weekend, but it's enough for quite a good life. You can also take a look here to get an idea: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... I think a good senior software engineer makes around $2.5k per month, bu…
It's probably worth noting to the US audience that salaries in Europe are almost always quoted as net, with (usually) no further taxes due. So if someone's getting $2.5K per month it's not the same as an American getting 12x that in annual salary, because it's (presumably) the after-tax number in Romania while it'd be the pre-tax number in the US. Still, I get that tech talent is a great value in Romania. I wonder if…
Yeah, generally salaries in Romania (any maybe other Eastern European countries) are quoted as net, per month. In the USA/UK it's almost always yearly-based, with hourly rates for contractors. In Romania people mainly talk about how much they take home from their salary every month.
With regards to the tech talent, I definitely think there is some truth to that. I'm no expert, but I'd say it might have something to do with the education system, or maybe even culture, which is quite heavily focused on maths and physics. With that said, we always rank quite low on most international education indices and the like. I think it might be some sort of educational inequality where children in the cities get quite good education and are pushed by their parents to study, while the ones in rural areas get the short end of the stick.
Also, something that really pisses me off is how many Romanians overstate our IT prowess. "Romanian is the second language spoken at Microsoft" is now part of folk wisdom, despite being proved to be false and just a media hoax in the '00s. We have many big companies with offices in Bucharest (and other cities), but they aren't really flocking to get all of this "enormous talent" just laying around. Don't get me wrong, we do have many reputable engineers and university professors, but nothing that would warrant this common perception about how incredibly skilled Romanians are in IT.
Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Do you need an advanced degree to do this? How did you land on your niche?
Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business
#140I 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?
For one, you get to work on what YOU like, and do it the way YOU want it done.
Second, in lots of places in the world, that's equal or way more than you can make in consulting. And not everybody has the connections to go into consulting or desires to move to another country like the US to make more money.
Third, these money can be passive income, in which case, you do minimal or even no work, and still get them. That's a huge win, even if you make less you have 8+ more hours per day free for yourself.