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Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers

toomas.net

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Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers

#71

Post by briandear »

zapperdapper wrote: post #20

All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance don't start a business! So what's the alternative? Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K from that - I know many developers making double my rate. Th…

So you essentially work for the rest of your life? Building a business should not be confused with creating a job for yourself.

Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers

#72

Post by zapperdapper »

dejv wrote: post #68
zapperdapper wrote: post #20

All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance don't start a business! So what's the alternative? Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K from that - I know many developers making double my rate. Th…

Second that. My way was to find maintenance contract where I do programming few hours a week that pays my bills and mortgage + occasionally taking some contract work (about once a year, month - three months long). Contracts could be very stressful (as I am usually picking on some VC type of startup as they use to pay more), but I know it is going to be over soon so it is easy to just go through it. I am doing that fo…

For me the time off in between contracts was the best bit! :)

Yes, contracts can be stressful, but like you say you know the exact day when the pain will end. In most jobs the pain is never ending!

Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers

#73

Post by open_bear »

cmahler7 wrote: post #64
ThomPete wrote: post #57

In other words. Reading about success to become successful is like reading the autobiography of lotterywinners. There are no secrets to success other than luck, timing and actually shipping your product (or play the lottery). Contrary to the lottery though much fewer people ship and there are much more winning lottery coupons. There is nothing to learn about how to build a successful product. If you want to read anyt…

How is a business anything like the lottery? Thousands of decisions over years vs 1 random event. Domain knowledge obviously plays a role as well, if you can't code you're going to have a hard time making software. There's a lot of money to be made in AI right, the timing is good but it doesn't matter if you don't know anything about it. By your logic some random guy off the street would have the same chances of buil…

Survivorship bias: because for every Steve Jobs and Bill Gates there are millions of folks, whose business ended without any success (something like 80% of businesses close during the first year).

Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers

#74

Post by jansho »

ThomPete wrote: post #57

In other words. Reading about success to become successful is like reading the autobiography of lotterywinners. There are no secrets to success other than luck, timing and actually shipping your product (or play the lottery). Contrary to the lottery though much fewer people ship and there are much more winning lottery coupons. There is nothing to learn about how to build a successful product. If you want to read anyt…

Reading about success might create a feedback loop to yourself so that you feel more motivated and possibly more guided to get to success. Kinda like hanging out with games enthusiasts, and you gradually become one yourself?

Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers

#75

Post by mgkimsal »

zapperdapper wrote: post #67
jonmb wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this - the idea has a Mr. Money Mustache vibe to it. His blog is great, if you haven't seen it already. My question for you is how do you manage healthcare costs?

haha - I'm more like Mr. Shoestring Mustache. MMM has several hundred thousand a year coming in from his blog alone. He also had I think a million bucks in the bank before he retired. He also has a couple of rental properties I believe. I don't have anything like that. I live in UK so healthcare is free here. Many years ago I had some mental health problems and the NHS here literally saved my life. I am so grateful f…

> I also have a private medical plan that covers myself and my partner but it only costs about £1k a year

I know you pay for it in other taxes and what not, but... for comparison, we're paying more than half that per month, and it doesn't cover any expenses until we spend $10k in a year. We are in a really crazy situation here.

Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers

#76

Post by Dayshine »

briandear wrote: post #71
zapperdapper wrote: post #20

All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance don't start a business! So what's the alternative? Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K from that - I know many developers making double my rate. Th…

So you essentially work for the rest of your life? Building a business should not be confused with creating a job for yourself.

I'm not sure a business is a better "pension" than a pension. No pension + business is a risky retirement.

Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers

#77

Post by eswat »

zapperdapper wrote: post #48
matthewking wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do with the other 9 months of the year? side projects? travel? Id be interested to hear how your lifestyle is with all the free time. I've considered this approach myself too but more 6 months on, 6 months off. Scala in particular seems to pay extremely well (£600-£650 /day) so easy to make the money to live a comfortable lifestyle in 3 or 6 months per year. I think other dev contracts are usually around…

Hi Matthew, my rate is £400 a day, I'm a tech writer. Most contract developers I know are on a lot more than that. Double mostly. They do Java/Scala/Perl. That is probably just the niche I have been in though. My very first contract wasn't particularly high £260 a day, but you get known and you can charge more once you've got people who will vouch for you. With regards the 9 months. I write code (Python), read (a lot…

Wow, great to hear this from you.

I’ve been doing remote consulting for the past three years - product design & development - but over the last several months I decided to bump up my work rate from the usual 2-3 days per week I had. Realizing now that I prefered the more leisurely schedule I had before.

I’ve been to the Philippines a few times and strongly considering working from there next year to avoid Canadian Winter for at least a few months of my life. Just good to hear more references about expat life there. :)

Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers

#78

Post by Silhouette »

A lot of this seems to reflect the consensus among experienced HN posters as well: you have to actually ship something and charge for it, it has to be something people actually want instead of just what you enjoy making, and so on. Arguably much of this is just common sense, but maybe that's just hindsight talking.

The only one I strongly disagree with is "raise your prices". While this is common advice on HN as well, I think it should come with a caveat that it mostly applies to B2B businesses. If you're running a B2C business, your customers are spending their own money, and possibly on something that isn't a necessity and isn't immediately going to make or save them a greater amount of money in return. Customers in this situation may well be extremely price-sensitive, and even small adjustments in pricing can have dramatic effects on conversion rates. As a counter-example showing that a big price cut can be effective, look at the way that games suppliers like Steam and GoG run their sales.

Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers

#80

Post by Silhouette »

Oras wrote: post #2

Nice article, I would add: 1. "Be patient" as success does not appear overnight. 2. "Don't be afraid to fail". It's hard to get it right from first time. I guess second point is covered in ship,ship,SHIP :)

Indeed. A remarkable number of overnight successes take ten years to reach that night.

(Apologies for the absence of credit; this isn't original, but I can't remember where I first saw it.)

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