61–70 of 128 posts
Game engines is a really tough market to compete in given Unity and Unreal are now basically free. When I built the game that I launched on Steam I made my own game engine with the idea that I would open source it. The engine is now open source but when people ask about it I recommend they just use Unity instead.
Iirc, the developer of Ogre is now just using unity
My experience is that anything that spending significant amounts of your time on anything that assists others with building their thing is a total waste of time. Tech or otherwise. Those people are mainly doing it with the goal of making money for no one but themselves. The fact that they don't have money already proves that they likely are not good at making money. One of those primary early ways to make money is th…
My experience has shown me that tools that help others build faster can be quite profitable. Currently make my living from one such tool and most of my customers are indie hackers ( https://divjoy.com ).
My experience is that anything that spending significant amounts of your time on anything that assists others with building their thing is a total waste of time. Tech or otherwise. Those people are mainly doing it with the goal of making money for no one but themselves. The fact that they don't have money already proves that they likely are not good at making money. One of those primary early ways to make money is th…
My experience has shown me that tools that help others build faster can be quite profitable. Currently make my living from one such tool and most of my customers are indie hackers ( https://divjoy.com ).
Always be wary of any market where someone's willingness to try your product is in itself a negative indicator of ability to pay. Hit-driven markets that attract large numbers of non-serious dabblers are extremely difficult to sell tools profitably to, but it's easy enough to get minor attention that makes you think you might have something worthwhile (music production is another one that scatters corpses all over the place despite seeming large at first glance).
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The thing is... the alluring thing about side projects _is_ not having that clear objective. Most of our jobs are directed by clear objectives, side projects are great for experimentation without clear potential for personal gain (fun, fame or fortune), often you will at least gain a unique experience and learn, which is a good trade for a little time. Perhaps what happened here is a side project grew into something…
For small personal projects, I think a fair rule of thumb is: is anyone else using it? Once that answer turns to yes, you need to get your exit plan in place. And +1 for failing fast. It is failing slow that’s the disaster.
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My experience has shown me that tools that help others build faster can be quite profitable. Currently make my living from one such tool and most of my customers are indie hackers ( https://divjoy.com ).
Very nice work! I've written a small API ( https://m8.fyi/chord ) to generate beautiful diagrams easily and quickly from Python. It's definitely not making a living from the income, but it is enough for a coffee every now and then.
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I had a game reach about $600 per day in revenue for a few months way back in 2010. Overall I think it made around $100K, and another game made about $30K. So, even though I was making money, I still wanted out. The reasons came down to those listed below: 1) Taxes. I wonder if it's easier now, but back then, I had to manually pay individual counties in my state, I had to pay individual states, and and then there wer…
Thanks for sharing! That’s the downside of mediocre success. Too little money to outsource tasks, too much to abandon and allocate your time resources elsewhere. Glad you made the right call and I hope you find another passion project soon!
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Thanks for sharing! That’s the downside of mediocre success. Too little money to outsource tasks, too much to abandon and allocate your time resources elsewhere. Glad you made the right call and I hope you find another passion project soon!
Maybe I live in a totally different universe, but it's really hard for me to consider a software product that grossed $100k to be a "mediocre success."
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Backyard gardening is riddled with inefficiencies in every imaginable way, and is not for everyone. The only tangible benefits I see are for people who receive positive benefits from the actual experience of doing the hard work and somehow use it to benefit others (directly or indirectly). If you're not sure that applies to you, stay away. Same goes for a lot of other things. Sometimes you have no choice but to do st…
Maybe the stuff doesn't universally suck, but would be soul-crushingly boring for one person yet completely engrossing for another. It might not change the fact that doesn't help anyone, but I would say there's no need to say it's always the goal to be productive in working towards something or have it be helpful to others in the end. Sometimes I just enjoy building things in itself.
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My experience has shown me that tools that help others build faster can be quite profitable. Currently make my living from one such tool and most of my customers are indie hackers ( https://divjoy.com ).
Game engines are different. It's a tiny market relative to web, and really the only people in the market for an engine other than Unity or Unreal are indies, who have near zero revenue and even less willingness to spend it. Those two are so far ahead in terms of features, support, and battle-hardening that you'd pretty much have to be insane to pick anything else if you had paying users. Always be wary of any market…
> Hit-driven markets that attract large numbers of non-serious dabblers are extremely difficult to sell tools profitably.
If I'm understanding correctly, do you mean it's easy to overestimate the size of the market? That makes sense to me. And there's certainly an upper-limit to how much dabblers are willing to pay. Still, for a solo founder that can sometimes be more than enough. I can think of a few tools like mine doing over $10k/month.
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For small personal projects, I think a fair rule of thumb is: is anyone else using it? Once that answer turns to yes, you need to get your exit plan in place. And +1 for failing fast. It is failing slow that’s the disaster.
What's an "exit plan" in the context of small personal non-corporate projects?