I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by yason » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

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…

Interestingly, while you can't be donated money in Finland people can certainly and rather freely give gifts to another person. It's even tax-free as long as gifts from one person remain under 4000€ for any consecutive three years.

Surely gettings lots of monetary gifts from foreign friends would probably not hold during a tax audit (they'd accuse you of trying to evade taxes unless you could provide a plausible reason why all these people would be sending you gifts) but it's an interesting counter-example nevertheless.

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

#242

Post by bufferoverflow » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

viklove wrote: post #45

bluedino wrote: post #27

Comparing $90k as a W2 employee doesn't really compare to making $112k as a LLC or contractor. Taxes, health insurance, retirement... On the other hand, his amounts are going up, so I'm interested to see how high they will go, and what it will consistently level out at.

Comparing working as a W2 employee doesn't really compare to working as a contractor. Getting to choose your own hours, the direction of your project, who you get to work with, etc. is far more valuable to me than a bit more money.

I worked as a contractor in 1099 for years. It was exactly the same as W2, except I had to pay estimated taxes 4 times a year. I didn't get to choose hours, direction, who to work with.

I think you're confusing it with personal projects.

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

#243

Post by jakebellacera » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

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.

Given that he lives somewhere around Buffalo, NY, the cost of living is about twice as much[1] to maintain his standard of living in SV, so I would say he's doing pretty well, and he gets to do what he loves!

1: https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare...

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

#244

Post by zanny » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

omot wrote: post #209

I honestly think that platforms like Github and Patreon is the future of universal basic income. I think as labor becomes deprecated due to globalization and automation, more and more people are going to quit their jobs and pursue more creative and meaningful endeavors. Obviously in the beginning, power law will take into effect where a few people will have enough income to thrive in these platforms. I do think that…

Proprietary rent seekers injecting themselves into paying for services so they can creme 5-20% off the top of all the money movement.

Its basically the same thing credit cards do, but are more egregious because they also try to platform the creators. So you integrate them into one proprietary space you wholly control and can thus dominate industries by managing the purse.

Its what almost every successful business nowadays does. Capture an audience and then shake down whatever they are coming to your platform for while holding the market ransom. Facebook and Google do this with advertisers, app / game stores with their 30% cuts, etc.

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

#245

Post by aidenn0 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

karambir wrote: post #175

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…

The exact same thing is for India. Individuals can't get non-profit status. So you have to sell something. A software dev friend tried donate button with cta "Get exclusive support" for few months. But international audience didn't quite get it. I have seen some gamers in India asking for donations and giving direct account details(UPI[1] details), but I am very cautious against this. I am just waiting(selfishly) for…

I wonder; if you had a list of donors, then you could be selling the privilege of getting your name on the list.

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

#246

Post by zepearl » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

tomerico wrote: post #239

If Github sponsors proves to be a viable and scalable solution for OSS developers, this could spike a huge boost in quantity and quality of OSS. We've seen a similar effect with YouTube - by providing a monetization path for creators, it attracts talent, and allows them to finance a lifestyle around it. And it's a self-accelerating cycle - the growth in quality and quantity increases demand for the content which incr…

I absolutely never heard anything about "Github sponsors" until now, which is actually what I always wished that somebody would create... .

I thought as well (and still keep thinking) that if I'll ever manage to create something successful which generates $, then I'll share a part of the revenue with the (open-source) parts that my uses/needs.

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

#247

Post by cure » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

stevekemp wrote: post #78

recursivedoubts wrote: post #3

Wow, that's a huge inspiration. I've been sitting on GitHub sponsorship setup for htmx, but this motivates me to get that done. It would be amazing to work on a passion project and get paid for it.

I have a bunch of projects which seem to be popular, and a lot of followers. Income received via sponsorship? €0. I think a lot depends on luck, and the kind of repositories you manage/create. Some projects are obviously more commercially useful than others, and those are the easier ones to receive income from. https://github.com/skx/

Thank you for xen-tools and xen-shell :)

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

#248

Post by koheripbal » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #196

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…

Sell licenses. People can buy a licensed version of your project. It's exactly the same as the free version, but it comes with a different licence.txt (which allows the purchaser to say that they supported you). If you're not allowed to sell copyright licenses in Finland, then your whole software business is screwed.

I don't even see the point. If there's no enforcement of this law, why even bother with the illusion of legality? Just accept donations - and likely no one will ever bother coming after you.

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

#249

Post by sytelus » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

I hate sponsorware concept OP is proposing. It seems to work for him but it’s opposite to the spirit of open source. His idea is that keep code secret until you find N sponsors. Further, he will hide important tutorials if you are not sponsor. I would hate to use this kind of open source project.

Here is more viable freelancing:

- create framework/library that everyone needs

- for feature requests/bug fixes, prioritize sponsors

- do office hours for sponsors

- invite sponsors/allow them to vote for future road map

- offer consulting credit to sponsors

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

#250

Post by MaxBarraclough » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

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).

Is it illegal if you sell an item/service/upgrade for a clearly absurd price?

The obvious workaround here is to paywall some tiny feature with choose-your-own-price, or perhaps offer something akin to Reddit Gold. I presume the law already thought of that?