https://mtlynch.io/keep-growing-never-profit/
https://mtlynch.io/solo-developer-year-1/
But, he doesn't seem discouraged. I'm guessing whatever equity he had means he has a fair amount of time to figure it out.
But some of the things he did make my head explode. He spent more than his total revenue ever on...testing software? He paid hundreds of dollars for every project on logos? He paid a developer thousands of dollars to develop a blog? Half his projects are free wordpress/(insert popular website builder) templates. He managed to burn 6k a month on rent/food while doing this? Even in New York that is kinda ridiculous, I did 2k a month in Brooklyn with my startup.
That said, the amount of traffic his blog gets is amazing. I think his biggest achievement was that. Hopefully he can direct that traffic towards future projects.
A lot of the feedback I got after my one-year update was that I was overspending. I mostly disagree, though with acknowledgement that my businesses don't earn much money, so I don't have much of a leg to stand on in defying conventional wisdom.
The key disconnect is that people seem to be arguing that I should strive for profitability at all times, whereas my goal was to minimize the time to find high revenue. Once I find something that gains traction, I don't expect it to be that difficult to reduce costs. If take on more work myself in the name of lower costs, I might make a small profit sooner, but it would probably be longer until I find something that earns large profits.
There's obviously a limit. I can't afford to hire a whole team of developers just to speed up my projects. But $1-2k here and there to save me a week or two of work annually still feels reasonable to me.
>He paid a developer thousands of dollars to develop a blog? Half his projects are free wordpress/(insert popular website builder) templates.
There's a bit more to the site than it might seem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19057745
Ah, I see what you're saying. I respectfully disagree.
For me, testing earns back time invested very quickly, often before I even commit a changelist. I would write more tests if I were working for a large company or I was maintaining a mature product, but I don't buy the idea that zero is universally the correct number of tests for any early-stage product.
My E2E tests and CI routinely prevent me from breaking major functionality in my websites and APIs. It seems like a no-brainer to spend an extra 20% of my up-front development time writing automated tests to catch those instead of discovering the breaks after the fact, patching it, then testing all the functionality manually.
If you plan to give up a corporate job, you should go all-in on software projects, since your main advantage is that you can devote 100% for focused development.
1) The hardest tech possible. I want to test my intellectual limits, which was not possible in the corp world.
2) The most hyped areas, today those are AI/Kubernetes.
If you have a unique solution, then it should not be a problem to get early adopters.
Moreover, after leaving my corporate job, I began:
1) Working 17 hours days, 7 days a week.
2) 100% software dev.
To sum up, if you leave the corp, you must increase your focus.
Many of these are more likely to occur when working at a big Corp, so working by yourself can help you avoid this.
However, you must start dev before the area is hyped and hit the market at the right time.
Also, you must target areas where the big players cannot and will not compete (for example, multi cloud, edge , privacy).
When you are working for yourself, there is a "no man land" period, where you are trying to switch the economics from selling your time, to selling the product. So you want to work as hard as possible.
The other option is to raise money, but then you switch from a developer to manager.
Can I ask what you’re building? It is very hard to be productive that long, hence the question
“People have asked me if I’m still happy with my decision to quit and start my own company. The answer is definitely yes.
As someone who has always valued independence, I love being a solo developer. It makes a world of difference to wake up whenever I want and make my own choices about how to spend my entire day. This is how I want to live the rest of my life.”
From a life-satisfaction perspective, it sounds like it’s going extremely well! (And that’s WAY more important, at least to me.)
Developing a product takes a lot of time and effort, especially for a small/solo team - and yes, by pure financial metrics it may seem like success is a long distance away.
In much of the world it also takes a degree of good individual (or family) fortune and savings to be able to embark on a journey like this, and I think it's important to be aware of that privilege.
That's not a criticism, but something worth keeping in mind especially when discussing and explaining these projects. Not everyone in society can make this kind of leap (despite what those who tend to profit from inspiring and leading bright young developers might tell us) due to the anxiety involved in paying recurring bills. This is even more true in the U.S. with the additional bundled decision complexity (HMO vs PPO, etc.) and financial cost of selecting and paying for healthcare, versus taking the gamble that you'll be one of the lucky members of society not to require medical care. Well-educated and well-compensated folks such as the audience of HN are likely among the people most able to take the risks required.
Anyway, despite the argument that this might not be an economically rewarding project at the moment: value creation is a different, harder to measure metric, and I'd argue the author is creating value for themselves and for their community they're building tools for.
(Upvoted both parents of this reply, since I think this is a really important and interesting trend and topic, regardless of any argument positions taken)
> From a life-satisfaction perspective, it sounds like it’s going extremely well! (And that’s WAY more important, at least to me.)
Yes, definitely. I haven't found a profitable project yet, but I definitely feel a greater sense of satisfaction with my life overall. I really treasure the feeling of waking up every morning and working on exactly what I want to work on.
I think the whole premise of relying solely on Amazon Affiliate links might be the weakest link of the chain
> I received applications from over 30 writers, did paid trials with about 10 of them, and never managed to bring costs below $46 per article. There certainly are writers who work for $15 per article, but they churned out barely-intelligible garbage
Yup
I know people who went this route but they waited till they had a good thing going. They also freelance to make up for any additional income necessary.
The most important thing in that comment is - for the first two years, the site made no money. Then one of their quizzes went viral.
Maybe this person gave up too soon? The keto site looks good and is useful, maybe if it sticks with it, it might make decent profit?
Each article is costing him $50 or so.
So that article has to convert 200 times before it breaks even. Assuming 1% conversion, which is very optimistic, you would need 20,000 visitors to that page.
Ignoring the costs, 200k visits a month would turn $500. 2M would turn 5k.
It's pretty easy to see this isn't going to pay the bills. He didn't seem to do the math.
Yeah, I'm not discouraged by progress so far. My expectations were that there would be several duds before I found a business that earns money. I've done a great job with part one of the plan (failed businesses), so the profitability part should happen any day now. : )
That's harsh.