41–50 of 56 posts
> One day I’m spending 10 hours at my desk writing blog posts for my daily blog schedule. Going for quantity over quality I see.
Anyone who’s been down this path have any lessons learned or general resources you found helpful to share? It’s been smooth sailing so far, but the place that I’m running into a lot of unknown unknowns is legal compliance: what do I do besides form an LLC, write a privacy policy, etc.?
I've been a freelance / solowhatever developer for a long time but instead of being an employee you still have a boss. You usually have multiple bosses. Instead of working 40 hours a week as a W2 employee you work as many hours as you want as a 1099 contractor. That could be 20 hours a week or 80 hours a week, it's your call. But if you want to have semi-dependable income typically you'll be working pretty long term…
I've been a freelance / solowhatever developer for a long time but instead of being an employee you still have a boss. You usually have multiple bosses. Instead of working 40 hours a week as a W2 employee you work as many hours as you want as a 1099 contractor. That could be 20 hours a week or 80 hours a week, it's your call. But if you want to have semi-dependable income typically you'll be working pretty long term…
Freelance developer != solopreneur
That's also saying you're not a solopreneur if you do contract / freelance work but the OP mentioned he has done and potentially continues to do long-term contract work.
Personally I write blog posts, make videos on YouTube, manage a newsletter, create and sell courses along with running a podcast and doing contract work.
I see myself as having tens of thousands of bosses. Sure I can mostly work when I want but I couldn't go off the grid for 2 months without warning. The moment you stop outputting content people will find someone else to get it from and platforms like Google and YouTube heavily favor constant posting to rank well in search results. Also, if you're selling courses that comes with doing continuous support and updates.
You have freedom in the sense you can control what you work on, but you're still in a position of having non-optional obligations to pay the bills.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One interesting bit of advice I've heard for solo founders is, pick an industry to serve that interests you, or at least one where you like the people who work in it. Yes, the customer will always be your "boss" of sorts, but at least it'll be a boss whom you identify with and genuinely want to please.
Yep, I spent a lot of time working on business ideas and building out entire SaaS apps only to realize I absolutely hate the people and the industry and would be embarrassed to be associated with them, even though it can make money.
I started https://ipinfo.io as a side project, and eventually transitioned to working on it fulltime by myself for a while. I really enjoyed that time, but as things progressed it was a huge relief to bring in other people to help. Offloading support to people that were better suited to dealing with customer issues, and enjoyed doing that more than me. Then offloading design work to someone who can actually do a good…
Any tips on hiring as a solopreneur? Where do you start and what do you tell them?
I started https://ipinfo.io as a side project, and eventually transitioned to working on it fulltime by myself for a while. I really enjoyed that time, but as things progressed it was a huge relief to bring in other people to help. Offloading support to people that were better suited to dealing with customer issues, and enjoyed doing that more than me. Then offloading design work to someone who can actually do a good…
Have you blogged or documented your journey somewhere? I love reading solopreneur success stories like this!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you blogged or documented your journey somewhere? I love reading solopreneur success stories like this!
Yeah I've talked about it on a few podcasts. Here are a couple that focus a lot on the journey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r79AuXgTy-4 https://saasclub.io/podcast/ipinfo-ben-dowling/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I rarely rely on luck (although I do count myself to be very lucky up to this point). I tend to rely on myself very often, and my one principle rule is that I have every expectation that I will have to do everything by myself. Any help that I got would just be a bonus, but it is still very much just myself. This has been what it has been like all my life and I don’t intend to change.
With that attitude, I’d happily invest in whatever it is you’re creating. Looking forward to hearing about your success on HN at some point.