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Comment by stanmancan | Hacker News Reader

I couldn't disagree more. I started two side projects while working a full time job. I also have a family and coach my kids sports team. I enjoyed working on them in the spare time I could find, enjoyed seeing the progress I made (no matter how slow). Because I couldn't dedicate a ton of time working on them, I had plenty of time to -think- about it. Driving, grocery shopping, in the shower... when I did sit down I knew exactly what I needed to do and was very productive.

After a couple of years they both had grown to a point where I was able to comfortably quit my job to pursue them.

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Becoming a parent had made me more resourceful too. If I get half an hour to code I'll smash it out like a rabid animal.

That said been doing renovations recently and there is definitely pent up energy for physical work after a day of coding.

Any tips on pulling that off? You make it sound very easy(couple of years seems pretty damn fast to me), so maybe you, like the author, could share what you think led to your success?

I second this and also, what is your creative project?

One project was pretty lucky; my wife’s employer had a manual process that was very time consuming and inefficient. My wife mentioned it and I told her I could help solve it. It was a huge risk because we had no way to get infront or anyone that could sign off, and being a huge company it would have been a horrible process. I decided to develope a solution first and pitch it. Luckily it worked out for me because they easily could have turned me down and I would have spent months developing it for nothing. However; I enjoyed making it and looked at it as a learning experience so I wasn’t too concerned either way.

Now they pay monthly and it’s been a good recurring source of income for me.

Another project was something I built for myself a few years ago (macvendors.com) and made available. After about 4-5 years traffic picked up and it started to grow. Now I receive about 350 million API request per month and growing. We recently introduced paid plans but the income from them is pretty much irrelevant, under $100/m. The site makes a little bit of ad revenue though which helps.

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