71–80 of 123 posts
I've been wrecking my brain how to make $10 on anything online for a good part of the past 10 years with a couple of failed startups and even more side projects that went nowhere. I envy anyone who can do this and I think it is truly an immeasurable amount of effort to make any kind of side income let alone something that replaces your salary. But I think articles like this one advertise it like it's something you ca…
I think this post is a treasure trove of good advice. I’ll have to do some deeper reading of this as the advice seem solid. Since I’ve quit my last job in 2018 I feel like I’ve tried it all when it comes to revenue sources: * consulting - still my main source of income * writing a newsletter - brings about $400-$600 a month but there are some dry days on the horizon * selling newsletter merch - I’m in red every month…
How do you find consulting gigs? I have no idea even where to start.
That being said, this isn't advice. It's an admission that being lucky enough to have a few seed clients land in your lap (and taking that opportunity) is the optimal way to start consulting (imo).
I tried this for two years and even wrote a book to help people get into tech. I realized I didn’t want to be another person who gives generic advice and I decided to make content and write books for me instead. I think the main thing the author leaves out in the article is that building the audience is the more important thing when starting. Once you have enough “webs” out there via articles, videos, interviews, fre…
Wow, that's quite a reversal. What did folks say when you refunded them?
It was my first product I ever charged for after two years. I had a few grand in pre-sales to incentivize me to do it too. But on reflection, I felt like I was almost "stealing" from these people who needed it more than I did. They were just getting started on their learning journeys to get into tech. I already have a Big Tech salary, I should probably be the last person who needs someone's money. While one of my goals is to work for myself as a one-person product / business, this was not it.
Gergely parents many of the pros of being a full-time creator but there are drawbacks as well. - (US) government doesn't necessarily incentivize self employment - Buying a house is a pain. I make more than I ever made working for the man but few want to give me a loan. - Unless you have a saas, income can be variable. - You get to do the fun stuff... But also the other stuff (payroll, marketing, ...) That said, it wo…
Can you explain here? I've found the US govt to be very incentivizing to "small businesses", which includes self employment. I'm thinking of tax breaks, cheap/free loans, and other financial items. I will say the amount of red tape & paper work is ridiculous, especially if you plan to move or do business in more than one state.
> Buying a house is a pain. I make more than I ever made working for the man but few want to give me a loan.
Once you run a business for 2 years, this goes away. It is an incredible eye roll though when you first run into it if you're running a successful business.
> You get to do the fun stuff... But also the other stuff (payroll, marketing, ...)
You may be well aware of this, but for anyone else, hire this out as much as possible. That's one of the most important things I would tell anyone. Know what you enjoy & are good at. Hire everything else out. That can even be management/ceo/etc.. You don't need to run the business if you don't want to. "The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It" is a great book on this topic.
> Unless you have a saas, income can be variable.
This one is tough. It can be easy to increase business volume but then you need to hire more help often which brings it's own challenges & may require more business volume. Finding a good balance here is tricky for sure.
I've always found the "hey Twitter friends, I wrote a guide, buy it for $90 now!" stuff super unethical anyways. First of all, the information they sell that way is 100% available for free somewhere else or is useless. They're usually mediocre in their fields, but have chops for social media marketing. Essentially that economy is all about being perceived as an expert and manipulating naive/unsuspecting people with m…
Just want to make a small point that people often pay not for the information but for how it's packaged. Ideally I buy things that take free information & package them in a condensed way that I can learn easier & quicker.
I've been wrecking my brain how to make $10 on anything online for a good part of the past 10 years with a couple of failed startups and even more side projects that went nowhere. I envy anyone who can do this and I think it is truly an immeasurable amount of effort to make any kind of side income let alone something that replaces your salary. But I think articles like this one advertise it like it's something you ca…
- Find a problem people have, ideally something they are paying to solve now (this includes hiring people to solve it).
- Write down/screenshot the places online/offline where you have seen people indicating that they have this problem and are paying to solve it.
- Make a solution that is different in some way that is important to some subset of people (e.g. "X, but it works with Linode" or "Y, but it's in Portuguese"). Sometimes, the people posting/asking about solutions to the problem will ask specific questions that tell you how to differentiate.
- Post your solution in the same places you saw people talking about the problem
This has worked for me in the past, hopefully this approach will help you. The key point here is obviously that you know where and who to sell to before you make anything, so you are more likely to be able to sell your offering once you make it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been doing that for the last 12 months and tbh, it does not work unless you already had an audience before. Highly likely I am the worst social marketer on the planet. But in terms of RoI your advice doesn't work for 99% of the population.
Use Reddit. You don't need an existing audience for that. Make sure to follow the rules of the subreddit. Write a few tips/tutorial posts, help other learners, etc. Then you can try self promoting within the rules. And parallelly, you can build an audience on sites on Twitter. Read about marketing. Follow other creators. And so on. (Edit: You can self promote without existing audience with Show HN too, provided it fi…
I've been wrecking my brain how to make $10 on anything online for a good part of the past 10 years with a couple of failed startups and even more side projects that went nowhere. I envy anyone who can do this and I think it is truly an immeasurable amount of effort to make any kind of side income let alone something that replaces your salary. But I think articles like this one advertise it like it's something you ca…
I'm getting 10 USD once in one or two days from my project https://gifmemes.io . It meant spending a few hundreds of hours of programming without any validation whatsoever and then hoping for the best.
a few hundreds of hours of programming without any validation whatsoever
A friend of mind, guitar instructor, went from being teaching synchronously in-person for 15+ years to building out his audience. Only after 2 years did he start becoming profitable.
It's a grind.