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Comment by drpancake | Hacker News Reader

I'm making roughly $300/month from three iPhone apps. They're all quite simple and I'd estimate that I've put in less than a month's actual work building them; although as a disclaimer, this is my day job so I can put these together relatively quickly.

My fourth app was a larger time investment and gets quite a lot more downloads. It makes no income now, but I'll add In-App Purchases soon.

I'm freelancing for ~45 hours a month to fund this while backpacking all over the world. I should blog about it.

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Edit: I put up a LaunchRock page, if you would be interested in a blog about this stuff, leave me your details: http://theoreticalblog.launchrock.com

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Please do blog about it. Freelancing while traveling is a concept that a lot of us are really drawn to, but most of the current blogs focus on the travel and only briefly mention the freelancing aspect. Maybe if you focused a bit more on the business side of things you could find a niche within the blogosphere.

Having just traveled around the world over 7 months but NOT freelancing, I would have to say that:

  * net connections are very very spotty,
    prepare to work offline

  * supplies are rare (usb devices, upgrades, etc), 
    expect to pay more for less

  * desk conditions are poor, rarely did we 
    find a place where I could get into the flow. 
    Checking email and noodling on the net was 
    fine, but getting real quality work done 
    requires spending time to find the right location.

I think it could be possible, I have written some of the best code of my life in a corporate budget hotel holed up for a week with only a 1Mbps internet connection.

You can simulate work/travel by playing with IPFW settings on your mac and only working out of a macdonalds.

Pretty accurate. But you can mitigate this by 1) sticking to the kinds of locations where you know you'll find a decent connection, e.g. Thailand, and 2) pausing when you find a good setup and working for extended periods to make up for poor conditions later on.

Totally agree. The locations that are most conducive to "the flow" also have internet that is worse than non-existent. I have learned to just shut it off completely rather than sink time trying to get blood from the turnip. Local copies of documentation and projects that take little outside research also help.

When going on another extended adventure, we will definitely stay in one well scouted location for awhile (6 weeks to 6 months). Nothing ever gets dialed in if you're moving all the time.

1Mbps internet connection is what I'm used to mostly :/

Thanks for your encouragement, I put up an email form if you're interested in reading more about this: http://theoreticalblog.launchrock.com

Would you mind sharing some more info about your apps (i.e. an overview of the concepts)?

As someone who has tried (and struggled) to monetize personal projects, I'm always interested in hearing stories about independent apps that are financially successful.

Telling people that you should blog makes it actually less likely that you will actually do it. Read that on some psychology website once. ;)

Anyone recognize this phenomenon by name or have a link?

most people are familiar with this notion due to this post: http://sivers.org/zipit

tl;dr “Symbolic Self-Completion"

I've long noticed this in myself. Very neat to see it isn't just me.

http://sivers.org/zipit

Also a TED Talk by the same guy: http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_you...

In this case I have to disagree, as these positive replies are removing any concerns I had about nobody reading this hypothetical blog :)

I would read it. As you are seemingly living my dream I would love to do a bit of vicarious living through your blog. :)

Causation vs correlation

I read in Influence [0] by Cialdini that telling people you're going to do something actually makes it more likely you will because you feel consistency pressure

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini

I kinda look at it like a lean startup practice. If nobody signs up for his blog why start? if some people sign up there will be pressure to put something out.

It sounds like you are living my dream. Care to share any details about how you got into that? I work (and enjoy working) at a big company right now but I feel like down the road I will want to do something like this.

Take a look at my edit above - I'd be happy to share more about this stuff.

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