Ask HN: Mental barrier preventing earning more $$ | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Mental barrier preventing earning more $$$

25 pointsnatzar17 comments

Hi!

Does anyone have experienced this:

I could make about 3k - 5k per month with personal projects, but after more than 20 years developing digital products, I've never got to 10k/month for example. It's like a mental barrier. From the outside it seems I just got bored after a project is built and its running.

But internally I know there is something more. Like don't believe I really could make 10k or 20k / month.

Why do you think I cannot break this barrier? What would you recommend?

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Hate to sound like Zig Ziglar or Garyvee. Yet, you need to understand as a fact that you deserve that quantity of money. That even after 10k, 25k, 50k per month you are still underpaid.

Recently I read this quote by Jobs. "Everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people who were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again."

I hope it helps to break that mental barrier.

I also agree with Steve Jobs, and with you when you say that you have to "understand as a fact that".

For me it's enough to see someone that is doing it. If he can do it, I also can.

But I think there is also something related with imagination, knowledge, learnings. I cannot imagine the infrastructure a 100M business requires. I guess that is why so many ex-googlers or ex-amazon, after quitting, build great things. They have seen it before.

"I guess that is why so many ex-googlers or ex-amazon, after quitting, build great things". Yeah, that is true. You are your surroundings.

Yet, I believe you don't need to be brilliant to mix different services/skills to produce something high profitable.

I know success != quantity of money, but the person who I know has more of it is a guy that owns a zipper factory. Monthly, he sells millions of clothing zippers.

Or you might realize that you have no influence or value - like me.

"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito."

- The Dalai Lama

Yep, I'm not even that impactful.

There are two types of people I believe. One is best in creating new stuff. The other is best at managing, running something. I see the same thing with me an my girlfriend. She always remembers to perform certain activities, but she will not easily think out of the box and do something else. I hate repeating activities, but I like to fix stuff or help here and there. She does not like new activities. This way we both can do the things we like and make the best of our qualities.

You need a co-founder or a business partner / manager.

No need for someone fancy or connected. Sometimes a ham sandwich will do.

Separate yourself from the business. Build it, have someone else run it.

A business is not you, about you, or an extension of you.

I'm trying to separate it. I also think that is one of the problems.

What would be a typical compensation model if you build something and have someone else run it ?

2 cents: there's a cap to earning if you are a 1 man shop and survive off low hanging fruit. the reason you can land those sales is you are charging little. you are charging little because that is what your skills demand - the skills you are marketing.

Change your skills AND clients. Its hard going from charging $1700 for a web widget that takes 1 day to do, to charging $17k for involved work. And the sales cycle for the latter is longer (1-2 months) vs a few days.

you can do it, you just need a new business model.

Good one! THANKS

Money is useful. To me, it is also one of the least interesting things to spend my time making. It requires thinking about the world in a rather dull way and doing rather dull things. YMMV, but that's how I think about my relationship to an analogous barrier.

I agree, but I think its interesting how everyone earns what HE has defined for himself to deserve. It's like Matrix. Your imagination build your world.

So, I'm not interested in making tons of money, I'm just interested on WHY I make 4k instead of $100 or 40k.

I'm not interested in making tons of money

I was trying to say that is why.

check mate

If you have a SaaS application watch this video by Jason Cohen. It's about reaching 10k/month. In short, he says to charge more, focus on businesses and not consumers, and to find 150 customers willing to pay $70/month. It's a realistic number where you can grind your way to finding 150 people by knocking on doors, sending emails, making calls, etc.

https://vimeo.com/74338272

If you're referring to freelancing...

I remember watching Shark Tank (TV series where small businesses pitch to investors), and a lot of people would come on the show asking for 100-300k. When asked what they wanted to do with the money, it wasn't uncommon to hear they wanted to setup/update their website and online presence.

To me, that sounded absurd at the time. I'd be thinking in my head, they could setup a WordPress site in a couple of days, or grab some off-the-shelf shopping cart software and have it done for 1k. If they wanted something more customized, they could probably find a developer to do everything for less than 5k.

Then I realized they're a very small business, they're doing a million a year in sales, and their new site would be one of the most important aspects of their business that would directly impact their sales and how their business is perceived. 100k to set that up suddenly seemed very fair and reasonable. The outcome of that site could make or break their business. Why on earth would they only invest a few thousand into such a thing?

Or think about any small business with a dozen employees. They're spending a million a year on payroll. Is redeveloping their entire online identity and user experience worth a one time 100k expense? I think so.

Also, if you charge enough you can start bringing in outside help. For example, you're a programmer, but they also need a logo refresh on the project. If you're charging 100k, you can easily budget to bring in a designer that focuses on brand identity. You'll end up with higher quality work for your client, a better portfolio for your business, and in the future that'll allow you to quote higher rates. You can step back a bit into management and take on more work since you're not personally doing everything.

In short, recognize the value you're bringing to a business. Working closely with them over 6 months and building out a solution that helps them grow, reduces their headaches, streamlines their existing processes, and increase their revenue is very much worth 100k. If you're trapped in a bubble charging businesses 1k for a site you're never going to grow or produce the caliber of work you're capable of developing because you need to bang out one or two a week.

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