My second year as an independent developer
Illustration “Waiting” by Nataly ZhukTwo years ago, the author of this article, Michael Lynch, quit his job as a software engineer at Google to start his own business (see the article “Why I left Google and started working for myself” , 443 comments on Habré, +216). Instead of “Google”, you can put the title of any large company - a software factory where every programmer is considered a screw in a big machine, be it Microsoft, EPAM, etc ...We decided to translate the second part of the article - let's see what happened as an independent the developer. In the first part, he mentioned the Indie Hackers project: This is an online community for the founders of small software development companies. The keyword is "little ones." These are not future zuckerbergs, not the founders of startups, but those who want to build a modest, profitable business that provides livelihoods.I wonder what happened to his projects. About this below in the original text of the author.A year after the dismissal, I summed up my finances, the level of happiness and spoke about the lessons learned. Now the second year has ended, so it's time for another update.How I earned and spent money
The second year was much more successful than the first. Profit increased by $ 18.5 thousand!In general, I'm still in the red, but I try not to get too fixated on this. Revenues tripled to $ 7,254, while expenses fell by almost half.How can you afford to lose money?
My long-term loss-making often baffles people. They suggest that I finance my unprofitable enterprises with the help of freelance, but the truth is that 100% of the working time is spent on this unprofitable business. This is possible due to three main factors:- Low expenses : I do not have children, and I live in an inexpensive area where expenses do not exceed about $ 2000 per month.
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Zestful SaaS for parsing ingredients in recipes was launched in mid-2018 and was my first attempt in the software as a service (SaaS) business. This is an auxiliary service that allows culinary applications to recognize the structure of ingredients in recipes. Seeing an ingredient like “2.5 tablespoons finely chopped parsley”, Zestful determines that2,5- this is the quantity, - the unit of measure, - the cooking stage.Having earned a big fat zero in the first year, Zestful finally got a significant income in the second. The contract with one client in December brought 79% of its annual revenue. This contract also amounted to 53% of the total revenue of all my projects.The screenshot below shows my attempts to advance in Google search results.
Zestful is in a weird position because companies that analyze food ingredients never want to switch to Zestful . The cost of migrating to the new API outweighs the potential improvements in price and performance. Therefore, all Zestful customers are only new companies creating a completely new product.How to work with companies that do not even exist? My strategy was to invest in search engine optimization so that Zestful would be high on requests like [ingredient parsing].
Is It Keto: A reference site for followers of the ketogenic diet - a low-carb, high-fat, moderate-proteinIs Is Keto diet provides direct and clear answers about which particular foods are compatible with the ketodiet . The site makes money on Google AdSense ads and receives a commission for every purchase on Amazon.With revenue of about $ 2,300, the Is It Keto website became my second project in terms of revenue in 2019. I abandoned the site in April , but returned to it for four months when I saw that it grows on its own without me.Monthly traffic88% of Is It Keto visitorscome from search engines, but with no changes on the site I could never achieve an increase in search traffic. I added a lot of content, optimized page titles , earned significant backlinks , but the traffic did not change. But then I ignored the site for several months, and Google traffic grew all this time.This site is also the main source of expenses, because I outsourced the bulk of the work on writing content. It cost me more than it should, because I knew nothing about hiring and managing copywriters. But experience taught me a lot, so in the end I even wrote a guide to working with authors .The number of page views has dropped significantly, which is not surprising. A post about leaving Google in 2018 received 500 thousand views. It was hard to count on another such hit.However, last year I was not able to attract many readers. Over the past two years, many of my articles have become popular by themselves, without much progress. I just write an article and then look for a grateful community with whom I can share it.In 2019, I moved away from writing technical articles, and focused more on my projects. I noticed that readers are less interested in business lessons, unless it is about large sums of money. It seems that people are interested in stories about both earnings and losses. The main thing is that the amount is large.Revenue also fell, and that's fine, because I'm not trying my best to make money on this blog. Development costs fell sharply because my freelancer left. Instead of hiring another, I took up the development myself, as my web programming skills have improved over the past couple of years.What got dot
What Got Done is a task logging application.What Got Done is a tool for recording and publishing weekly achievements. I mastered this technique while working at Google and use it for weekly recording my progress over the past ten months.I never thought this app was a brilliant idea, but months of failure with the Is It Keto project really depressed. What Got Done seemed like a fun project to cheer up, and an opportunity to learn Vue.js , a popular web framework.And it worked! I fell in love with Vue. I finally found a tool that allows you to quickly create websites without having to wade through a maze of holey abstractions.During the development of What Got Done, I decided to study how viable this business idea is. The managers of several companies spoke in the sense that the same results can be achieved using the dedicated Slack channel, so I went further.All the rest
Conferences were so expensive due to travel and accommodation costs. Those conferences that accepted my proposals to make a presentation are mainly regional events with a minimal budget for transportation costs.Switching from Travis to Circle for continuous integration reduced costs by $ 68 per month: it turned out to be a good choice because I liked Circle. These guys improve their product faster and integrate better with Docker. Unfortunately, Coveralls automatically renewed the subscription for a year without my explicit consent. I already realized that the indicators of code coverage with tests do not have much significance for products at an early stage, so I canceled my subscription for the next year.I also switched from Bench managed bookkeeping to stand-alone bookkeeping with Xero. I enjoyed the Bench service and do not like Xero, but it’s hard to justify the extra cost of $ 1,500 a year for a live assistant accountant when my finances are so simple and monotonous.The lessons
Raise prices even if no one is buying
One of the best tips this year was given by Corey Zew . He suggested that the price of $ 0.003 per Zestful API request is too low. At that time, Zestful had almost no paid users. How can prices be too low if no one is buying a product?Although Zestful had few real customers, there were many potential customers . Every few weeks a new company contacted me and showed interest in the service, but there wasn’t any tiny function that they absolutely needed. Desperate to find a major customer, I frantically refined the functionality they wanted. In a week, I am proud to present a new feature ...“And yes,” they answer shyly. - We decided not to develop this project ...These companies did not cost anything to ask for new features, although it takes me a lot of time and energy - to meet with them, and then implement their wish list. I understood what was happening, but I could not figure out how to stop it. You can ignore the request, but what if they are really willing to pay thousands of dollars a month?When I followed Corey’s advice and raised the prices, the tone of the conversation changed in an unexpected direction. At $ 0.003 per request, no one tried to bargain. When I raised bids 6.7 times to $ 0.02 per request, everyone started asking about volume discounts. Then they stated that they would conclude a contract only after Zestful had their favorite function. In response, I sent the following phrase:Fine! You can pre-pay three months of service, and your billing cycle will not begin until this feature is available.
Since then, I have never burned myself at the request of new features.My prices are quite high, and most customers have to spend several hundred dollars a month on Zestful, so customers don’t bother me with stories about the “most important” functions that I have to implement in order to get five dollars from them. Interestingly, the largest customers did not even have such wishes, and these transactions were closed for several days.Striving for the right idea means abandoning the wrong
In my first year of indie development, I was like a puppy that chases after every ball that accidentally swept past. If one of the projects does not succeed, then I will work on any idea that comes to mind next. Creating a “quick” prototype at the beginning of the project seemed cheap and simple, but it always took weeks of coding, and then months of work to find customers.My friend David Thoth taught me how to filter ideas.. He noted that any idea that I am trying to implement determines most of my life for at least several months. Therefore, it is worth choosing carefully. Instead of grabbing at the first good idea, David generates ideas until he has a list of at least ten pieces. Then carefully evaluates this list, choosing the idea with the greatest chance of success.The books “Start Small, Stay Small” ( my notes ) and “Test from Mom” ( notes) also influenced my approach to new projects. Both books encourage you to start with market research, and start creating the product later. As a result, I became conservative about any development and allow myself to abandon it based on the results of the study.More ambitious goals
When I set a goal to make $ 500 a month last year, people called for setting a higher standard. New projects are more likely to fail, so I can just as well set a million goals.Looking back, it still seems to me that $ 500 a month was a reasonable amount. The Is It Keto project has become a good “business for beginners,” because its mechanics are so simple. Advertising and affiliate programs generate an average of about $ 0.01 per visitor. More visitors - more money, so I started experimenting with different growth strategies without worrying about things like pricing, sales funnels or customer support. It was nice to see how income began with a miserable dollar per month., and then grew by 50-150% every month, reaching $ 400 in December.The flip side of the coin is the limitations of a marginal business. When you get only one cent from the client, many options for expanding your business disappear. It makes no sense to pay $ 0.50-1.50 for banner clicks if the visitor brings only $ 0.01 of revenue. I would like to attract an employee to write content, but even the cheapest freelancer for $ 200 per month will pay off only if the traffic doubles.Now that I am starting my third year as an indie developer, I am ready for higher rates. The growth of the Is It Keto project gives confidence. This means that I will take on more ambitious projects that, if successful, will allow me to hire a couple of contractors on a part-time basis.I still like it
Since I’ve suffered financial losses for the past two years, many people think that I regret leaving Google in a warm place. Developers often experience burnout after a year or two, but I didn’t have it. I attribute this to a healthy sense of uncertainty at the beginning of this adventure - I was ready for failure before success came. And it’s easy to avoid financial stress if you have a good airbag.Every day I go down to the first floor of my house and enjoy a leisurely breakfast with my girlfriend. We live at the end of the street, and when she leaves for work, the house plunges into absolute silence. After working 60-90 minutes, I plan the rest of the day. I do not work after lunch or on weekends. If I feel sleepy at three in the afternoon, I take a nap, and I don’t need to worry about what my manager thinks.Before leaving, I most of all dreamed of complete independence. It really turned out to be as pleasant as I expected. I like full autonomy during the day and the freedom to completely change the direction of my business or start all over again when it seems right.I will do this forever.Goal Achievement
A year ago, I set four goals. Here is the result on a five-point scale:Reach $ 500 per month from all projects
Score : 4+I achieved this goal in the sense that for the year the average monthly revenue was $ 604, and for the last quarter $ 1657 per month, but this is like cheating, because it takes into account a huge deal in December . Without this transaction, December revenue equals $ 441, which is closer to the expected figures at the beginning of 2020. It's not exactly $ 500, but pretty close.Speak at three software conferences
Rating : 5Three conferences accepted my suggestions to speak, and I am proud of all three reports:I like conferences, I get useful information there, but to be honest, they interfere a little with professional and personal life. Between trips, preparing reports and attending events themselves, I worked on presentations for six to eight weeks.I will continue to apply and attend conferences in 2020, but now more selectively than last year.Publish 12 Blog Posts
Score : 4Depending on how you count, last year I published 9 or 13 posts. There are nine separate posts, but one of them is presented in five parts (a guide to hiring authors ). In general, I am pleased with the work for the year, although I would like to publish something more popular.Master JavaScript framework
Rating : 5I am not an expert on Vue, but I mastered it fluently. At least I can quickly develop sites without getting stuck on the framework itself.For many years I banged my head against a wall with Angular , and now I finally found a framework that is suitable for individual developers, which I am very happy about.What's next?
Over the next year, I hope to focus mainly on the WanderJest project . I created this site a few weeks ago.
WanderJest is a resource for finding comedy shows.It’s hard to find stands, shows and performances in specific areas because ads are scattered across Facebook groups, club sites, and ticket sellers such as TicketMaster and Eventbrite. I hope that the WanderJest aggregator will combine these disparate sources and make finding events easier. Basically, this is the idea of Bandsintown , just for humor.The pilot version works in West Massachusetts, where I live, but soon I will expand the project to other areas.Goals for the third year
Here's what I hope to achieve in the third year of my indie developer career:- Get $ 20,000 in revenue from all projects.
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- DORA 2019 : DevOps
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Mail.ru Cloud Solutions.
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