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Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

indiehackers.com

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Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#81

Post by withdavidli »

tedmiston wrote: post #26
axelut wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad that you like it! In Romania, the minimum monthly wage is 250$, then programmers start with 400$/month. Depending on experience and what they do inside a company they can grow to 2-3k/month in a couple of years. We are growing the salaries according to the experience and the position inside the company too. 100% of our employees started with 0 experience because it was their first job. Everything was learned ins…

Totally was not expecting the answer to be "yes".

Some countries in Europe is very low wage. There is an article about Italy millennia generation the 1000 Euro generation because that's how much many of them make per month. That isn't to say it's a living wage, but it's what a lot get. Tech isn't paid much compared to Bay Area either, look at London or Spain, dramatic wage differences (London especially since cost of living isn't different from Bay Area).

$1k Euro/month is decent living in Eastern Europe, Romania, Hungary, almost any place closer to Russia.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#82

Post by lilbobbytables »

senko wrote: post #47
limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

They're (at least somewhat) passive income, while your consulting work is not. Once up and running, these projects typically require far less time and effort to maintain, and majority of time is spent in improvements so the revenue grows in the future. Or the owner can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the Four Hour Work Week [tm]. As a contrast, consulting gig is good money while you're working. When you stop (vacatio…

That's true. However, you can't underestimate just how not passive this kind of income typically really is.

It takes quite a bit of level to get it to the point where you can afford to be lazy (passive), which just means spending less time on it, not no time.

That's why income from side project services/products is great in conjunction with consulting (or whatever) income. You can make an extra few thousand a month on a project that you wanted to start in the first place, with some part time number of hours per week.

Even the example in the post is $17k rev with a 6 person team. Although, this guy and his partner are from Romania - it's awesome there and your USD go VERY far.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#83

Post by theparanoid »

yazanl wrote: post #67
limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

While it may be more lucrative to be a consultant, it may be harder for people to get into that career. I am not a consultant, so my experience is limited, but it seems that its all about having contacts and being good. If it's your first programming job, you may have neither the skills nor the contacts to be a successful consultant.

Contacts is just knowing other programmers.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#85

Post by jackgolding »

callmeed wrote: post #42
limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

Because the common perception is that a software product has a marginal cost of near zero and can scale, whereas consulting limits you to your billable hours and requires constantly chasing down new clients. You may debate the merits of that argument and it doesn't take into account product maintenance and support–but I think there is some validity to it. Also, some SaaS/product success stories take the path of CONSU…

> Also, some SaaS/product success stories take the path of CONSULTING/AGENCY -> PRODUCT -> SUCCESS (e.g. Basecamp, SEOmoz, FreshBooks) but you rarely hear of the reverse.

There are a lot of people (i.e. @levelsio) who launch a career as a speaker out of products, I imagine part of that is consulting

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#86

Post by lemming »

limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

Because money isn't everything.

What I'm working on isn't a side project, it's my main gig, but it's paying the bills nicely. But I started this after quitting from a post-acquisition job at Google paying $400k plus 4 years of retention bonus totalling a lot of money. I would absolutely have been financially much, much better off at Google. But I would have had to live in the US which I didn't want to do, and I would have spent my life in meetings, and I would have been working at least 50 hours a week on things that didn't interest me.

Currently I live in a small town that I love with no tech scene or jobs, I make a good living, and I spend lots of time with my wife and daughter. Importantly, I spend time with them whenever I feel like it, or when they need me to, and not when it's good for some company. I have great users and I enjoy improving their lives through my product, which is mostly a lot of fun to work on.

A few people have mentioned that working on your own thing requires a bunch of things that you'd rather not do - marketing etc, as well as things that are taken care of for you at larger companies such as setting up payment systems, worrying about tax, and so on. That is all true, but it's massively offset in my case by not having employees or bosses, and not having meetings. The sum total of doing things I'd rather not do is much, much higher working at a company doing those things than what I do now, where I spend most of my days writing interesting code and a relatively small fraction of my time on boring stuff.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#87

Post by overcast »

limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

The idea here is to get enough of these autonomous side projects, that the revenue adds up. Maybe one out of ten will hit big enough to move on.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#88

Post by cheez »

lemming wrote: post #86
limelight wrote: post #36

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

Because money isn't everything. What I'm working on isn't a side project, it's my main gig, but it's paying the bills nicely. But I started this after quitting from a post-acquisition job at Google paying $400k plus 4 years of retention bonus totalling a lot of money. I would absolutely have been financially much, much better off at Google. But I would have had to live in the US which I didn't want to do, and I would…

"Money isn't everything" - guy who obviously made more than 2 million USD working at Google for 4 years...

I don't want to say you're wrong, but money isn't everything is easy to say when you have it.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#89

Post by lemming »

cheez wrote: post #88
lemming wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because money isn't everything. What I'm working on isn't a side project, it's my main gig, but it's paying the bills nicely. But I started this after quitting from a post-acquisition job at Google paying $400k plus 4 years of retention bonus totalling a lot of money. I would absolutely have been financially much, much better off at Google. But I would have had to live in the US which I didn't want to do, and I would…

"Money isn't everything" - guy who obviously made more than 2 million USD working at Google for 4 years... I don't want to say you're wrong, but money isn't everything is easy to say when you have it.

Perhaps it wasn't clear in my comment - I quit right out of the gate instead of staying at Google. I essentially turned the job down.

Re: Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

#90

Post by csallen »

cheez wrote: post #88
lemming wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because money isn't everything. What I'm working on isn't a side project, it's my main gig, but it's paying the bills nicely. But I started this after quitting from a post-acquisition job at Google paying $400k plus 4 years of retention bonus totalling a lot of money. I would absolutely have been financially much, much better off at Google. But I would have had to live in the US which I didn't want to do, and I would…

"Money isn't everything" - guy who obviously made more than 2 million USD working at Google for 4 years... I don't want to say you're wrong, but money isn't everything is easy to say when you have it.

In his defense, he's really comparing ~$200k to ~$400k, not poverty to $400k. Beyond a certain point, the more money you have, the less extra money matters.
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