Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

calebporzio.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 510 posts

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#211

Post by virgilp »

Ndymium wrote: post #188
webmobdev wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though people have been interested in donating, I can't do that legally. What you can do is to "sell" something in lieu of donations: E.g. - To support me please buy this wallpaper image file of my project logo. Or one-day email support etc. You can always add a note that Finland laws prevent you from accepting donation, and this is the only way you can accept money from patrons, and even provide a link to the…

Sure and this is kind of what I do. I have a sole proprietorship and sell stickers and in the future some minor features on the site. Of course it has the overhead of setting up the business and all the accounting/tax stuff (unless you use a service for that which takes ~5 % of your revenue).

But can't you sell your digital artwork without setting up business? Seems better than stickers (also, no shipping!).

[*] Digital artwork = project logo in png format, free to use however they please. You can license the publicly-available logo with any minimally-restrictive license (e.g. CC-BY); this should still count that "you gave them additional rights, in exchange for payment".

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#212

Post by elygre »

qazpot wrote: post #180
rocgf wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really incredible how much the hatred for 'socialism' goes in certain circles.

I am not hating on socialism. It has it's merits like providing healthcare if properly implemented but having excessive permits and licence is one of the facets of socialism. Socialism is not the perfect system.

The original comment read as if you blamed socialism.

If you did, you got rightly called out. If you didn’t, then I don’t understand what you meant.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#213

Post by mullen »

aj7 wrote: post #138
jermaustin1 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you set the entity up correctly and work with a decent accountant, your $112k turns into more like $40k taxable, and if you are married, that $40k drops to $20k @ 10% + $20k @ 12% or ~ $4500 in taxes.

Aha. And now you understand why we don’t have universal healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, and so much cash in the hands of the wealthy that interest rates are near zero.

I would like to point out that Universal Healthcare would be funded by a separate tax and probably would not come out of Income Taxes.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#214

Post by MKinley »

Ndymium wrote: post #188
webmobdev wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even though people have been interested in donating, I can't do that legally. What you can do is to "sell" something in lieu of donations: E.g. - To support me please buy this wallpaper image file of my project logo. Or one-day email support etc. You can always add a note that Finland laws prevent you from accepting donation, and this is the only way you can accept money from patrons, and even provide a link to the…

Sure and this is kind of what I do. I have a sole proprietorship and sell stickers and in the future some minor features on the site. Of course it has the overhead of setting up the business and all the accounting/tax stuff (unless you use a service for that which takes ~5 % of your revenue).

Could you share a link to your project? I'm curious what it is.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#215

Post by distances »

bklyn11201 wrote: post #141
komali2 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is news to me so I'm just saying, if you wrote about this in more detail, I'd read the shit out of it.

I think what he's generally saying: aggressively deduct expenses used to support your business. This would include rent, home office, computers, phones to conduct business, business meetings, travel, health insurance, retirement, etc. Then the member and spouse would draw low salaries putting you in low income bracket and thus low taxation. The 2017 TCJA further reduced taxation for business owners via the Qualified…

In lots of countries you definitely can't deduct rent, non-business travel, health insurance, or retirement. And home office only if you have a dedicated room for it.

I'm freelancing currently myself, and available deductions are honestly miniscule and well-defined.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#216

Post by brabel »

komali2 wrote: post #147
hoorayimhelping wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $100k is still not even close to how much you can make in SV as an engineer Oh, well then fuck this idiot, right? What a dumbass loser - doesn't even realize they can be a s i l i c o n v a l l e y e n g i n e e r and make a lot of money. Jesus it's so exhausting reading the knee-jerk "SV engineers make more money" reaction to everything. You know what this person has that 99.999% of all SV engineers will never hav…

> The option not to have live in San Francisco, a dismal place that very few people want to actually be in anymore. Dismal? Lol I love it here. People are moving out of cities all over the country because of coronavirus, sure, but only because most of the perks of city living are non-existent right now. I know a couple people moving and they're not going far, because of the nearby available amenities, that being exce…

It's a great city in a beautiful location... but if you come from another developed country or a part of the US where homelessness is very uncommon, it's extremely shocking to see people camping on the streets pretty much all over the city, it feels like you're in a shanty town and it feels unsafe.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#217

Post by xigency »

Ndymium wrote: post #132

Reading these makes me sad about the law in my country, Finland. The lowest tier of OP ($7 for no reward) would be illegal here. We have a law called "Money Collection act", which states that to gather donations (i.e. payments with nothing in return), you have to get a permit. This permit costs money, is not given to individuals, and is given only for non-profit activities. So this means that if you see a donation/sp…

What if donors are actually purchasing a spot on the contributions page? It would be like purchasing a classified ad in the paper or a normal internet ad. Their name or specific message would be displayed on the 'donations' page for a set duration. You might have to put some clarifying language on the page as well.

Re: I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors

#218

Post by r3trohack3r »

msoad wrote: post #8

$100k is still not even close to how much you can make in SV as an engineer. Specially an engineer at this caliber. But working on OSS full time is probably 100x more fulfilling than building CRUD for a boring ad company.

I made significantly more than this working in SV. IMO it's totally fair to say $100k is "not even close" for certain roles in certain companies.

But then I moved. I'm here to tell you, the Bay Area has a quality of life problem that far exceeds the cost of living difference.

After moving, my monthly _mortgage_ payment is almost $1k less than the rent I was paying for a not-so-nice house in San Jose. When I run the numbers on my current house (considering only the property and not the HOA), trying to find something comparable around San Jose, I come up with around $10 million at a minimum. When you consider the HOA I live in - we have 20 miles of maintained trails and an HOA park almost every mile - the quality of the schools, the quality and cost of restaurants... the list goes on... this quality of life literally can't be purchased in the Bay Area for a software engineers salary, no matter what they do. And here is the thing: after moving I could take an 80% pay cut over my Bay Area salary and maintain this quality of living changing _nothing_ about my spending habits.

But money aside, I'm actually happy after moving. In the Bay Area I binged, ate, drank, and smoked every night. I put on weight, my mental and physical health was deteriorating. I was depressed. I felt like every time I left the house someone was trying to trick me out of my money. I saw societal decay at every corner, homelessness, unmaintained property, crumbling infrastructure. I felt it was the least progressive place I've ever lived and it made me feel guilty that I could afford to stay slightly above the decay. The Bay Area is a place that required significant effort for me to be happy and that wasn't possible when investing significant effort into maintaining my high salary job.

My advice to folks living in the Bay Area: take stock of why you are there. If the answer is a paycheck, I find it very hard to believe it's worth it after my experience.

Post reply on HN