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Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

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Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#171

Post by alin23 »

solardev wrote: post #165
alin23 wrote: post #25

Building and selling macOS apps is a pretty good niche to be in right now. I escaped my stressful corporate job 1 year ago and I’ve been living comfortably since then from app revenue only. I’m making between $3.5k and $9k per month with https://lunar.fyi/ and the smaller apps I create at https://lowtechguys.com/ It’s not much for some parts of the world. But I’m well enough from this that I even took the time to bui…

Paid user here. Thanks for making old-school but super-helpful desktop software!

> old-school but super-helpful

Love this, thank you for the kind message!

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#172

Post by thedangler »

Find a coding partner to share everything 50/50. Keep one another accountable to get MVPs out. Gage feedback, if you don't think it will work sell it on a saas reseller service and move on to the next idea.

Having a solid partner is key, I've struggled find solid coding partners because they lose interest. They like their 9 - 5 programming job and don't care about coding after work.

Easy way to get started is to look at products and find complaints, major issues, or ideas they haven't implemented and build it. All you have to do is market to the users of the other app directly on the forums or help chats.

Please contact me as I have lots of SaaS products built for my company and fun ideas.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#173

Post by alin23 »

swah wrote: post #157
alin23 wrote: post #25

Building and selling macOS apps is a pretty good niche to be in right now. I escaped my stressful corporate job 1 year ago and I’ve been living comfortably since then from app revenue only. I’m making between $3.5k and $9k per month with https://lunar.fyi/ and the smaller apps I create at https://lowtechguys.com/ It’s not much for some parts of the world. But I’m well enough from this that I even took the time to bui…

Supporting your brother like that is very cool! For me, the calendar app is not available in Brazil though..

Thank you! The app is still awaiting approval from App Store, it will be available in every country soon.

You can use the trial build until then :)

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#174

Post by 0atman »

727564797069706 wrote: post #138
0atman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More recently (March of this year) I also started to teach what I can about coding on my YouTube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/c/NoBoilerplate ) Which has seen enormous positive feedback - and youtube ads are very fair (50/50 split between you and Google), and you don't have to chase the money, it's all handled for you! Another 10% of my monthly income comes from YT, I'd guess. The key with a youtube channel is t…

Your channel is awesome! I enjoy your style very much. Thanks for inspiring and sharing your thoughts!

Thank you so much! I'll keep going I think, I have a lot of thoughts about exciting technical topics, so expect more!

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#175

Post by larsonnn »

alin23 wrote: post #150
larsonnn wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to read some blog with more details about your experience. As a long time backend and full stack developer my brain is stucked in web services. Which works Well as employee but when it comes to have your own product you are playing against Google,AWS,meta and so on. Maybe I try developing desktop applications too.

I have a few writings here: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/ And here: https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/ The most desktop app technical + marketing related article would be: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/apps-outside-app-store/ I worked as a web dev for 5 years first, and those skills transferred well into the marketing and API part of the apps. For example my Lunar app even has a CLI that is implemented as client-server…

Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#176

Post by alin23 »

coffeeaddict1 wrote: post #151
alin23 wrote: post #25

Building and selling macOS apps is a pretty good niche to be in right now. I escaped my stressful corporate job 1 year ago and I’ve been living comfortably since then from app revenue only. I’m making between $3.5k and $9k per month with https://lunar.fyi/ and the smaller apps I create at https://lowtechguys.com/ It’s not much for some parts of the world. But I’m well enough from this that I even took the time to bui…

How do you manage the licensing? Do you use some library to enforce the trial period in your apps?

For non-AppStore apps like Lunar, I use the macOS SDK from Paddle.com. It provides trials, license activation UI, payments and checkout UI, both in-app and on web. Here's how I use it: https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/Lowtech/blob/main/Sources/Lowt...

For App Store apps I have my own custom solution which uses https://github.com/IdeasOnCanvas/AppReceiptValidator to see if the app has been bought, and if it isn't, I have a time and usage based expiry logic. When the timer expires, I block key functionalities of the app and show this screen: https://shots.panaitiu.com/o6qnP8

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#177

Post by bilsbie »

layer8 wrote: post #142
danielheath wrote: post #93

> The thought of returning to corporate working kind of disgusts me. daily meetings, middle management bs, politics, bureaucracy... im sure your familiar with the typical complaints. Have you considered working in a company that isn't like that? Things to look for: * Ownership: The owner should be the person running the business. * Size: Fewer than 20 employees. Ideally two or three; consider being the first. * Reven…

There are nice companies like that even at 100-something employee size. The company being owner-run is paramount, as is the character of the owners (caring more about the product and the craft than about maximizing profit).

> (caring more about the product and the craft than about maximizing profit).

Actually caring about profit is good too. Problems start when the people in charge care about advancement, prestige, status, resume building, or CYA.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#178

Post by bilsbie »

jerrygoyal wrote: post #44

i use Toptal to find projects i want to work upon with my preferred tech stack, timezone, working hrs (I prefer 20 hrs) and hourly rate. There's so much freedom for me that I could never get from a corporate . Toptal clients are nice too!

How brutal are the interviews?

Isn’t the pay really low? Can you negotiate?

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#179

Post by deeblering4 »

alin23 wrote: post #25

Building and selling macOS apps is a pretty good niche to be in right now. I escaped my stressful corporate job 1 year ago and I’ve been living comfortably since then from app revenue only. I’m making between $3.5k and $9k per month with https://lunar.fyi/ and the smaller apps I create at https://lowtechguys.com/ It’s not much for some parts of the world. But I’m well enough from this that I even took the time to bui…

Thank you for lunar. I use it every day. The ability to rotate the inbuilt apple display has been a killer feature for me.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#180

Post by bilsbie »

From other threads like this I’ve heard “sales engineer” might be a good option.

Less BS because sales comes down to the money you bring in. You still get to code and your peers will be impressed with anything you do. And you could earn a lot with commissions.

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