361–370 of 448 posts
I make around 200-300 USD per month through https://gifmemes.io . Basically zero maintenance, but I'll add user generated templates one of these days. Will be nice to "automated" content generation in addition to "automated" income generation.
Have you gotten bothered with any copyright issues (founded or unfounded) yet?
Not my highest paying role but I write material related to Computer Science. I've written chapters of books, online revision material, online CPD courses etc. So far it is all related to Computer Science education - the books are school textbooks, some CPD is aimed at trainee (or pre-trainee) teachers, whilst other bits are aimed at existing teachers to help upskill them. Most of the work is for well known publishers…
How did you get started in this kind of role? Did you first create your own content and then publishers reached out because of it?
I'm always on the lookout for freelance work. Should anyone need a writer with technical knowledge then my email is in my profile!
https://www.newaudiotechnology.com/ A shared friend introduced me to someone who claimed to be a struggling Hollywood genius. We were all drinking at some university party. He told us about all the cool shit he would do if only technology wasn't so bad. So I built a tool to solve his issues. To my surprise, he used it on the Expendables 3 blurays. Later, the audio crew for George Lukas' Red Tails praised the tool in…
Oh my gosh! I was a happy user of Hajo Headphone Enhancer for years until he dropped off the Internet and his software wasn't updated for newer macOS versions. Now I see that you have licensed it and are reselling it under Spatial Sound Card - L. It was a tremendous pain to get installed, and the documentation on your site is insufficient (I had to open the driver installer app inside the main app bundle manually, in…
Then, like a year later, it became clear that I would need a full rewrite to make things work again because there was no way Apple would allow me to keep using the old APIs. I took a critical look at the sales numbers (like $6k over 3 years for the Hajo's Headphone Enhancer product) and decided that writing an Apple-only kernel driver from scratch would not be financially viable.
Since I was also the person that built the original Windows-only Spatial Sound Card app, I offered the burning Mac app ruins to them ;) But actually merging both products was done by my successors.
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I'm sorry but I still don't get it. I've never had a job where being very good at it left a lot of free time during which to be very good at another job. It just left free time to move more things along more quickly or improving things. Like, I think mechanically I understand what you're saying; I think you're saying that each week or couple weeks or month or whatever, you commit to projects sized to fill about 50% o…
Pretend he’s an offsite consultant. Now does it make sense? His employers are aware he’s making them substantial money and it’s likely they’re aware he left his last, much more demanding job, for being too stressful. So they know if they put more pressure on him than he feels like dealing with he’ll leave. Whether he’s deceiving the two proper jobs he has as an employee or not is a separate matter but they have no le…
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I'm sorry but I still don't get it. I've never had a job where being very good at it left a lot of free time during which to be very good at another job. It just left free time to move more things along more quickly or improving things. Like, I think mechanically I understand what you're saying; I think you're saying that each week or couple weeks or month or whatever, you commit to projects sized to fill about 50% o…
Without getting too specific - company A pays me to fulfill contracts we bid on within government entities. There's a ridiculously ludicrous amount of red-tape that translates into down-time for someone like me. I do one of three things: software dev, data engineering, or ML modelling. Only one of those three domains because the way this company works, everything is compartmentalized so there are specific folks for s…
I agree that work being accomplished is what matters, not hours. But you are clearly not working full time, you could clearly accomplish more for each of the companies within the boundaries of a single full time workload, hours aside, because you do indeed accomplish more than what you're accomplishing at each company individually.
But from your description here, based on the expectation situations with the companies, what you're describing here is just two part-time jobs that are well-paid, and I certainly don't begrudge you that!
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I'm sorry but I still don't get it. I've never had a job where being very good at it left a lot of free time during which to be very good at another job. It just left free time to move more things along more quickly or improving things. Like, I think mechanically I understand what you're saying; I think you're saying that each week or couple weeks or month or whatever, you commit to projects sized to fill about 50% o…
How so hard to understand? There’s an acceptable level of work at a company and this guy is meeting it without having to use 40 hours a week.
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I kinda get where they’re coming from. Those kinds of companies are really rare. Generally management wants to squeeze as much out of labor as humanly possible, to the point where they demand exclusive access to one’s entire labor availability. The fact that xxEightyxx has found not one, but two companies willing to pay six figures for a functionally part-time employee is pretty mind-boggling.
> The fact that xxEightyxx has found not one, but two companies willing to pay six figures for a functionally part-time employee is pretty mind-boggling. There’s an entire internet subculture of people devoted to doing this. Check out r/overemployed. And there are far, far more people who do similar things entirely above board as consultants and contractors.
I spent last month trying as many things as possible to see what was most desirable. Best paying ended up being trading time for money. In order of most money made: • workshops • custom illustration packs • microcoaching • online courses • ebooks • merch on Etsy • Upwork gig I’ll be working on converting residue from time-for-money projects into products. For example, I’m turning my workshops into online courses, my…
https://bennuaine.com/ I was inspired by "do things that don't scale". My business creates European hand-blown titanium crystal stemware for whisky and spirits. This started as my quarantine project and has grown fairly rapidly relative to my expectations. The product is very expensive to produce because each glass is made entirely by hand in Europe but the results are pretty beautiful. It's not a golden ticket finan…
I love the video. I'm not into whisky, but you would have got me if I was. That's fantastic!
Just like North America (and largely Europe too) outsourced its manufacturing know-how to cheaper markets, labor, resources, and regulations, we're outsourcing all our business logic, day-to-day functions, and IP to cheaper and cheaper SaaS products. Sure, you can get setup quickly, but it will get torn down just as quickly with deprecations, no support, rising prices, mergers, discontinuations, buyouts, shutdowns etc.
What's happened is that any small/medium business is required to be a mini-tech company to keep the doors open, but paying ever-increasing monthly rent to 15-30 SaaS companies. The tradeoff is that now they don't own or operate their own data, have little control over how it's queried, displayed, or accessed, all while basically getting zero support (i.e. Google, Shopify, SendGrid, Stripe, the list goes on).
I spent 5 years developing an in-house system to run a coffee roaster. All the internal tools, reporting, organic certification, roast logs, traceability, customer service, shipping, wholesale, international, taxes, etc. You name it, any tool we needed, it was built. Prior to this, after 13 years of being in business, they were still wildly unprofitable and doing 600 orders a month. A few years after systematizing the company, now they're very profitable and doing >6,000 orders a month.
Then I spent 5 years taking that knowledge and toolset and built a V2 for an organic farm to logistics and delivery of fresh produce. Again, after 15 years in business and doing 2500 deliveries a month, it was mildly profitable but struggling under the weight, rigidity, and complexity of an outsourced system. I replaced it with my own system and grew it to 2500 deliveries per week (4x).
I then stepped down and started my own company to license out the system I built to run any small or medium organization. They get to own all their data, customize what they want, and I pick up the phone when they need help (crazy idea, I know). Most companies don't need bigger, better, flashier, cheaper software. They're actually happy to pay for systems that will be flexible when they need, and someone to call if required.
All organizations are basically a set of people who need access to customers, addresses, payment methods, products, and orders, with functions to track communication via phone/email, make payment transactions, create/send PDFs, and report on what was/is/will be ordered.
Running a company on outsourced SaaS is financially-cheap, but it's time-expensive, and brittle.
My system now runs many multi-million dollars companies, small and medium scale, across many verticals. Whether it's shipping thousands of packages, delivering thousands of boxes, or running a local subscription bagel delivery service, or shed manufacturer, or running a Home Owner's Association, or running my own tech company, or a fertilizer company, or a youth sports team, or a malting company, or private chef/meal-planning service. They all have the same basic needs.
For some companies, it's my active income, some it's maintenance income, some it's passive. They're all in different seasons, and it fluctuates throughout the year. A couple get busy in the summers, some need special stuff built in the fall for the holidays, some are quiet all year and chug along. But there's always someone to help, something to polish, or some JS dependency to remove :)