Ive realized I don't seem to have any money generating skills, the only thing I seem actually be good at is making money for other people.
So im wondering if anyone has been able to use their coding skill to make a living that isn't working in a business.
Things ive tried and thought about(please correct anything that seems wrong!):
monetizing hobbies - I see why people don't recommend this, im not good enough anyway. to old to go pro at sports, not good enough or have credentials to teach.
coding tutoring and teaching - i tried this on codementor.io, there's more mentors then people needing help, its competitive and doesn't pay much when you consider how much extra work goes into it. I also don't have a CS degree so it doesn't seem like I can teach at a school. Maybe there are better ways to teach?
bug bounty chasing - I thought this would be easier then it really is. i guess its like a whole different skill set, interesting as a hobby but its going to take to long to get good. and its competitive
make a company or sell a thing software thing - I can code up my dream ideas with ease, what i don't know how to do is market anything or get users. seems to be another skill that will take months and maybe not even turn out to do anything
freelance - compared to just working rates seem low and its hard to find work from what ive seen
If you have cool ideas or something worked out for you, id be interested in hearing them! Otherwise I need to get working on a resume, id rather not!
I escaped my stressful corporate job 1 year ago and I’ve been living comfortably since then from app revenue only.
I’m making between $3.5k and $9k per month with https://lunar.fyi/ and the smaller apps I create at https://lowtechguys.com/
It’s not much for some parts of the world. But I’m well enough from this that I even took the time to build a small calendar app (https://lowtechguys.com/grila) from which all the funds will go to my brother’s college costs so he can stop working 12h/day jobs.
Before this I tried creating paid web services but none took off. I realized I actually don’t use any indie web product after 8 years of professional coding. I’m only using web products from big companies like Google, fly.io, Amazon etc.
Desktop apps on the other hand, most that I use and love are made by single developers.
With the ascent of Apple Silicon, and the ease of SwiftUI, this has the potential of bringing a modest revenue while also being more fulfilling than a corporate job.
In case you’re curious how the code looks for something like that, here’s a small open-source app that I built in a single (long) day, which has proven to be useful enough that people want to pay for it: https://github.com/alin23/Clop
This is cool. I hope you make a bunch of extra sales from your (correctly) upvoted comment here :-)
As a long time backend and full stack developer my brain is stucked in web services. Which works Well as employee but when it comes to have your own product you are playing against Google,AWS,meta and so on.
Maybe I try developing desktop applications too.
And here: https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/
The most desktop app technical + marketing related article would be: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/apps-outside-app-store/
I worked as a web dev for 5 years first, and those skills transferred well into the marketing and API part of the apps.
For example my Lunar app even has a CLI that is implemented as client-server and the app also provides an API for controlling displays remotely or through a Raspberry Pi server. That would have been very hard had I not known how to write an API.
The good thing is that usually you just keep growing from this. Now it’s making $1k per month, mostly because of sharing it with the world and implementing recurrent annoyances shared by users.
It’s important to have a way for users to contact you. I love Formspark.io for that, just slap a contact form on the app website and emails will start coming.
What kind of paid web services did you try, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m thinking about going this route myself, but I hear you - I’ve also pretty much bought exclusively from the big guys.
Any other learnings from the web service route you could share? Like what tech stack / platform did you use? How did you try to market your service? Can you see other reason (than not being big / trustworthy enough) why it didn’t work?
It’s a next.js + React slow and memory hungry mess [1] which could have been static HTML with some JS for the dynamic bits.
Experience taught me to keep it simple nowadays, but I had to go through the Noiseblend mistakes first.
The stack is Python with Sanic for the backend, Postgres for db and Redis for cache.
That’s what remained after removing all the unnecessary services I implemented because I thought they were paramount: high availability, data locality, time series databases, performance monitoring, alerts etc. Forget about those until you start making money on the product.
The biggest disadvantage a web service has over a desktop app is that you have to keep it up. No matter what, you have a server to manage and make sure it keeps responding. That worry doesn’t exist on offline desktop apps.
The other is finding the market for it. Noiseblend didn’t have a market, and it being dependent on Spotify didn’t allow me to ask for money unless I did something more. That’s another problem, avoid creating functionality that depends heavily on big companies.
I thought about “pivoting” and turning it into a playlist building tool for DJs. I added filtering songs by key and mode (e.g. A minor) and asked a few people if they would use such a thing. Turns out that they use a semi-offline desktop app [2] that already does that and is much faster and powerful.
Oh well, at least now I have a way to find songs to improvise on with my Kaval and guitar.
From my observations, people are reluctant on paying for websites. I guess they don’t feel as “owned” as a desktop app.
[1] https://github.com/Noiseblend/ui/blob/master/pages/artists.c...
[2] https://mixedinkey.com/camelot-wheel/
For whatever reason, the hero video at https://lunar.fyi/ makes Safari use 100% of all cores, Webkit.GPU goes nuts, WindowServer unresponsive… works fine on Chrome however. Monterey 12.5.1, iMac 5K, 27"
I think that might be because Safari uses the HEVC version of the video. I'm also seeing 25% usage on an M1 Max MacBook, which is more than I expected.
Firefox and Chrome don't have noticeable CPU usage. They only support the H264 encoded video.
I might have to reencode the video and optimize for hardware decoding. Default ffmpeg options were not enough apparently.
EDIT: it's actually because of the HDR section from https://lunar.fyi/#xdrSafari is the only browser that can activate the HDR subsystem on these Display P3 screens, and by doing that it taxes the GPU more when playing back video.
How did you find paying users( or just users? i see you have free trials and free tiers) Does the app store offer that much discoverability?
Since the app was free, I didn't seek out users too much. I just shared it on the usual channels of the time and forgot about it: ProductHunt, HN, Lobsters, Reddit
It became popular by itself because it solves a real need that people have and after picking up a bit of steam, it gets recommended a lot.
After launching rcmd, my first App Store app, it felt like it entered a black hole, no discoverability whatsoever. Until an App Store editor placed it in front: https://twitter.com/alinp32/status/1479462684315865099
That generated a large peak in downloads, and people started recommending it again. Blog posts on technical challenges I solved while developing the apps also help a lot but they're high effort and I need 2-3 months to accumulate enough research and knowledge for them.
Before Mac, I was both a Windows and Linux power user. I never saw someone buy a thing on Linux, not that it doesn't happen, but it's a rare occurence so I don't think there's much business there.
On Windows however, people buy software all the time.
Find the Windows inconvenience that annoys you the most, build something to fix it and share it with the world for free. If a handful of people find it useful, chances are there might be tens of thousands more like that who would even pay for you to work and fix more related annoyances that they have.
I have no idea in what state Windows UI programming is nowadays though, it wasn't pleasant last time I tried it 5 years ago. But even system tray utilities with minimal UI can be very useful.
Love this, thank you for the kind message!
For App Store apps I have my own custom solution which uses https://github.com/IdeasOnCanvas/AppReceiptValidator to see if the app has been bought, and if it isn't, I have a time and usage based expiry logic. When the timer expires, I block key functionalities of the app and show this screen: https://shots.panaitiu.com/o6qnP8
Also, I love the secret, extra brightness levels it allows on the main screen, especially when I am outside. Do you know if there is any risk of damage to the brightness by using it at the higher settings?
I once had software that me increase the volume of my macbook speakers and one day I was working and vibing to the song and pushed the volume all the way up... and blew a speaker out...
About XDR, I have an FAQ about its safety here: https://lunar.fyi/faq#xdr-safe
If conventional wisdom is to be believed, it seems like the difference between building an okay app and a great app doesn't matter that much, because success depends on investing the vast majority of the effort into marketing. That's a big deterrent for me — I'm much more interested in building awesome things than hawking them.
About 3 times a year I do promos on Twitter to get more followers and spread the word a bit more through retweets.
And then I have the blog posts I write, which do take a lot of time, but they are mostly for sharing knowledge, not for advertising. Although they do help get some eyes on the apps as well.
I'd say the difference matters a lot. Since being in these circles, I notice how low quality apps (or just apps where the author didn't give them much thought after launch) don't get recommended as much if at all, and bad rep is spread on them which deters people from even trying them.I'm more inclined towards the "a good product sells itself" line. It definitely doesn't sell itself if people don't know about it, but you have a much higher chance to get picked up by vocal people and groups and recommended around if your app is high quality and makes a good impression. Even more so if you hear what people have to say after trying your app and try to improve the app for a few months after the launch.
I’d say I had a year of full time work (on and off in 3 years of time) until I had Lunar 3 which was the most stable until Apple Silicon arrived: https://github.com/alin23/lunar/tree/lunar3
I had accumulated about $5k in donations over those years which allowed me to quit my job, do 6 months of full time work in 3 months of time, and launch Lunar 4 with support for Apple Silicon: https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/journey-to-ddc-on-m1-macs/
After that, the hard work started because now I had paying users asking for a stable app that was very Hardware dependent on a completely new macOS architecture. 9 more months of full time work followed.
Right now it’s finally quiet. I do about a bug fix and small feature release per month and I have plenty of time to work on my other apps.
Because Lunar uses lots of private and reverse engineered APIs, it isn’t allowed on the App Store, so I had to replicate a lot of the distribution myself:
I mostly opt for the App Store nowadays because it saves me the hassle for all of the above, but it comes with a number of pains and disadvantages: For the trial thing I have my own solution where I publish a trial-only build on my website and a link to buying on the App Store when the trial ends.The sandbox, well I found workarounds for most of my needs [1] but I still skip building some ideas because I know they would never be approved.
The reviews are as annoying as ever [2], I even got my name in a Wired article [3] because of that. They can be very discouraging.
[1] https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog/window-switcher-app-store/
[2] https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/App%20Store%20review%20timeli...
[3] https://www.wired.com/story/apples-app-store-review-fix-fail...
Because if yes I'm gonna get it ;-)
The only indie web product I use (and have used for many years now) is workflowy. So simple, so beautiful. Wish I invented it.
I’m notified when keywords related to “human wants thing, my app can do thing” appear on HN, Reddit and Lobsters.
If I can then contribute with information to that discussion, I’ll also leave a link to my app.
Don’t just self plug, people (myself included) appreciate more detailed information on how they can solve their own personal problem, instead of being thrown into “here’s an app, figure it out”
But I've heard good things about this university video course: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9VJ9OpT-IPSM6dFSwQCI...
On a first glance it seems to cover a lot of stuff I use regularly in SwiftUI, but also some videos are quite long. It depends if you like learning by watching, or by doing.
[1] https://goose.red
What I'm building and noticing on other macOS developers are system utilities, that have no web equivalent. Things like window managers, app switchers, clipboard history, hardware controllers etc.
It's a smaller niche, but closer to the users. It makes a dev feel like less of a cog in a big system, and more of a craftsman giving people a way to solve their frustrations.
By the way, do you think noiseblend.com would fit into Red Goose? I tried both Ionic and Cordova but there were two big disadvantages to them:
I'm curious if you're using a newer (or simply stabler) packing technology.You can use the trial build until then :)
I have it constantly running with the menubar icon hidden, so even I forgot it existed. It just does its job when I go into a Zoom meeting.
You can still use the trial build from the website until then.
Nearly every job can benefits from automation, and if it can't, then the logical thinking that coding requires will improve it in some way.
I paired coding with fiction writing and made a scifi podcast, which now represents 10% of my monthly income after two years!
I wrote up my experience and advice here, if you're interested in the details https://www.0atman.com/articles/21/make-fiction-podcast
Which has seen enormous positive feedback - and youtube ads are very fair (50/50 split between you and Google), and you don't have to chase the money, it's all handled for you! Another 10% of my monthly income comes from YT, I'd guess.
The key with a youtube channel is to differentiate yourself from the rest in some way. I'm trying to do that with careful script writing and high-quality audio. Don't just dive in and waffle for 30 minutes while screenrecording, practice!
Up until that point, I was having a really hard time and thinking about dropping out of my software engineering degree because I just thought there has to be a better way to work on low level stuff.
And then I found your videos about Rust and I feel so much better about the future! I feel like I know way more now about what I want to look for in a company before I apply.
Thank you! (Literally made my first HN account to post this)
Please keep making amazing content for as long as you enjoy it!
After watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJ94rbdteE I have this irrational urge to go out and write some Rust.
Indeed your scripts (the spoken ones) are great.
Being a (part-time) youtuber myself, can I ask what you are using for audio?
It is indeed great!
Have you considered working in a company that isn't like that?
Things to look for:
* Ownership: The owner should be the person running the business.
* Size: Fewer than 20 employees. Ideally two or three; consider being the first.
* Revenue: A reasonably stable revenue stream lets you take on mid-long term projects. Ad revenue from a niche content business is quite good here.
So I'd walk in there occasionally to look at some of the demo work they had on the walls, and one day I opened my mouth and said "I need some exercise" and the owner said "we'll make you 'shop boy'!"; bear in mind I was in my 40s at the time. So one or two days a week I'd come in and sweep and clean for a few hours, and then that led to dump runs and eventually they found out I could fix electrical things (like their tools).
The owner was a fundie who homeschooled his kids, I wouldn't tag him as someone I'd seek out for a friend, but we had great conversations about religion and philosophy. The guy who did estimates was tired of it, so he gave me a week's training and off I went; he was my "boss" and he was 19 years old, awesome to work for. It was usually 4-6 hours, 5 days a week. Only paid minimum wage, but after a month they gave me health insurance and I didn't even ask for it.
It was a hoot, I had a "floor hunter" schtick. I got to look at some wild things: a safe that had fallen through a floor, somebody what wanted to put a wine cellar in the underground tunnel (needed a cypress floor natch) which the PO had used as a gun lane, a studs out remodel of an amazing mansion (I saved the subfloor in the ballroom!). Got to see the other side of some IT peeps I knew by reputation, a couple of whom I'd briefly met; a several of them looked like they were experiencing deja vu, but none of them found me out. I bid jobs from $1000 to $100,000 USD.
Did it for about a year.
<10 employees here. This is exactly my experience. The grass is always greener.
Actually caring about profit is good too. Problems start when the people in charge care about advancement, prestige, status, resume building, or CYA.
These days I'm a webmaster. I don't get paid to write software, but writing software helps me get paid.
I help people with German bureaucracy, and occasionally, being able to create software helps me do my job better. I can build little calculators and widgets that support my content, for example.
If I didn't do that, I'd probably pair with other people to solve small problems that big tech doesn't cover. It's fun, it's effective, and it's often lucrative.
This is the key phrase here. I might tweak it to say "subject matter expert", but that is just semantics.
I help my friend customize and automate his trading research and strategies with my python and automation skills.
We are experimenting with openBB, and I'm learning about trading, finance, and other industries. He gets to do things that a Bloomberg cant or wont do. This is a win-win.
Some people like the idea of doing something meaningful, I've been in the sector too long to care about that. What I do find is that the sort of problems you're facing are far more interesting. For example, I spend all day trying to figure out how best to track how [ISSUE] is presented in the media.
Worth having a poke around non-profit job boards for interesting-looking problems. The good gigs are often solving very specific, weird and interesting challenges.
My take-way: I'd take the corporate world over the non-profits any day of the week. The office politics level was so high that you'd quickly see it and its effects even when you only had like five in-person meetings and a few phone calls. It seeped into everything and it was just annoying. They were very laid back and the pace was a joke in comparison, but they all seemed to attract a type of personality that I don't want to work with (or maybe those are who remain and they run off all the nice people). Plus endless committees.
Granted, non of them were technical non-profits, they were just non-profits that also needed tech stuff done, and as mentioned, they were not small, so things might be very different in a small organization that doesn't yet have local, regional, state and federal levels.
I guess my thought here in my original reply was that one thing they can offer over corporates are cool problems to work on. I've got a lot of friends who do OSINT stuff, for example.
A good non-profit gig is a thing of beauty, I'm very happy with what I'm up to now, but that's me. Bad ones, sure, you'd probably be better off at a shitty corporate. Same with any work, homework on your prospective employer is essential.
Since there is no profit-driven forcing function, ALL operations devolve into pure politics and bureaucracy.
If you are interested you can start playing with these tech and make things useful for people.
I'm just getting started on this and released the MVP version of Picasa AI[1] and I'm excited about it.
I wanted to build something for a long time and I always postponed it for better time. With the AI trends I feel now is the correct time to jump in.
[1] - https://PicasaAI.com
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Also don’t try to think of an idea, just start talking to business owners about problems that cost them money or constrain growth (opportunity cost) and fix those problems.
Not getting anywhere with cold emails
Chamber of commerce events
Go door to door
LinkedIn messages and/or get introduced through shared connections
Facebook communities and/or other online forums where you can answer questions and build relationships
Phone calls
Better cold emails!
Friends and family
Also whenever you speak to someone and have a good conversation with them, ask that person for the contact details of someone else who might be interested in speaking
I find two issues with this (disclaimer, My "hobby" is coding, so I guess I've been monetizing it, all my adult life):
1) Once someone starts paying you, they get to exert their influence on your work, and it becomes a lot less "hobbyish."
One of the biggest joys in my life, these days, is not having managers destroying my work.
2) Delivering ship software requires a lot of "not fun" stuff.
In some cases, the majority of the project could be wrapped up in "unfun," like needing to use particular coding practices, languages, dependencies, techniques, etc. Also, there's all the "polishing the fenders" kind of thing, like documentation, UX finish, maintenance, fixing all those bugs that you don't think are "actually bugs," establishing CI/D, configuration management, presentations to the Board, etc.
These days, I write software for myself. I eat my own dog food. Every one of my projects is a complete ship product, with all the aforementioned stuff (without the CI/D, as I don't really need it, for my one-man shop).
Definitely. I've been working on a free open-source project for 6 months. Last week, a user came with a feature request, and stated that they were willing to pay me. That could sound nice, but I immediately thought "nope". I told them that donations were appreciated, but I wasn't going to do commissioned work.
I don't want that kind of responsibility for my hobby projects.