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Five years of indie hacking

allisonseboldt.com

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Re: Five years of indie hacking

#11

Post by asebold »

steve1977 wrote: post #10
asebold wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here - Thanks for reading. The $1k/mo is just my "salary" from revenue generated by my indie projects. I had a substantial amount of savings that I lived off of for my first year. Since then, I've supported myself with contract work. I'm also very lucky that my partner is very supportive and has a good job, so at times (such as last year when I was launching my latest SaaS), he picked up our shared expenses.

> Since then, I‘ve supported myself with contract work So „jumping into indie hacking full time“ is actually a bit misleading, no?

My first year I lived entirely off of my savings and dedicated myself full time to my first project. So, it is indeed the anniversary of when I attempted to go full time, which was the sentiment of that sentence. Sorry if that wasn't more clear.

All the contract work I've done was part-time at most, so I also haven't had the comfort and safety of a full-time gig during this time period. My projects have been the priority, and I've only done the bare minimum to get by. Which, imo, is still full time "indie hacking", though maybe you disagree.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#12

Post by armanm »

I'm about to launch a bootstrapped project on my own (my third idea). Your post really resonated with me because I have been thinking about the same feelings and outcomes as you shared in your blog. My conclusion is that the only guaranteed outcome from ventures like this for people like us (who are trying to build wealth from nothing) is and should be the learning. I have accepted that today I don't know how to create wealth by building a SaaS product and I want to immerse myself in that problem enough to learn more. Building my product is my teaching instrument. When you have a full time job, a family and other responsibilities this a hard thing to justify because you sink so much time into it; time which you are taking away from yourself and your family but this is what it takes to succeed IMO.

I am sure that I will fail but there is no other choice except to assess what doesn't work, adjust, rinse and repeat until I figure it out. Some of us get lucky and struck success early but others will have to try again and many will never succeed and that's just life and nothing is free in life (unless you come from money but then again I've never been in that position either).

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#13

Post by asebold »

armanm wrote: post #12

I'm about to launch a bootstrapped project on my own (my third idea). Your post really resonated with me because I have been thinking about the same feelings and outcomes as you shared in your blog. My conclusion is that the only guaranteed outcome from ventures like this for people like us (who are trying to build wealth from nothing) is and should be the learning. I have accepted that today I don't know how to crea…

Author here - Thanks for reading. I'm glad to hear this post resonated with you. As long as you're learning new things with each experience, you're getting value from it. I know the goal is always to build value through wealth, and as we both know, that doesn't always work out. But for me personally, the things I've learned on this journey have tons of application to my career. It's just made me so much more well rounded. And I think if this doesn't work out and I went back to a full time job, I'd end up building more wealth in my career because I have these new skills. So, don't be too hard on yourself, there's still lots of value in the journey. Best of luck with your new project!

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#14

Post by patrickscoleman »

asebold wrote: post #13
armanm wrote: post #12

I'm about to launch a bootstrapped project on my own (my third idea). Your post really resonated with me because I have been thinking about the same feelings and outcomes as you shared in your blog. My conclusion is that the only guaranteed outcome from ventures like this for people like us (who are trying to build wealth from nothing) is and should be the learning. I have accepted that today I don't know how to crea…

Author here - Thanks for reading. I'm glad to hear this post resonated with you. As long as you're learning new things with each experience, you're getting value from it. I know the goal is always to build value through wealth, and as we both know, that doesn't always work out. But for me personally, the things I've learned on this journey have tons of application to my career. It's just made me so much more well rou…

Also just starting out on this journey. Thank you for the post! Subscribed and eager to follow along. If you ever do a writeup of who’s who and what’s what in the bootstrap community, I’d love to read.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#15

Post by moltar »

asebold wrote: post #6
bosch_mind wrote: post #3

Thanks for sharing. Curious, how do you sustain on just $1k/mo? The idea is inspiring but also out of reach for most people with expenses exceeding that

Author here - Thanks for reading. The $1k/mo is just my "salary" from revenue generated by my indie projects. I had a substantial amount of savings that I lived off of for my first year. Since then, I've supported myself with contract work. I'm also very lucky that my partner is very supportive and has a good job, so at times (such as last year when I was launching my latest SaaS), he picked up our shared expenses.

Hi Allison, thank you for sharing your story. It’s inspiring in during a tough time. Just wondering if you were able to find contracts regularly with ease? If so, how did you do that? Thank you.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#17

Post by ronnykylin »

I resonate with your idea about passion a lot. Passion is what gets you to do the job, but once you're on the job, you have to put that aside and think with a cold mind. You turn passion into a small flame inside of you. It helps you go through the darkest moments.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#18

Post by loveparade »

> With the launch of my second business last July (a programmatic SEO tool called PageFactory

Great read, but it's a bit disappointing to see that the author was only able to make money with yet another SEO spam tool to generate low-quality content. The idea of the original Fantasy Congress was much more interesting, too bad that didn't work out.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#19

Post by sharmi »

magic_hamster wrote: post #16

It was very disappointing reading how the author found credible podcasts, books and people to follow, only to recommend nothing and leave the reader wondering about this mysterious information.

If you are trying to bootstrap, try microconf talks on youtube.[1] Good signal/noise ratio. I still find good informative talks.

If you find a speaker on microconf interesting, follow their talks on other channels.

Newsletters I find useful:

https://marketingexamples.com/ - copywriting examples https://tips.ariyh.com/ - 3 mins tips extracted from research papers

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@MicroConf

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