Newbie looking to learn!
Hey there IH family!
My name's Evan and I just learned to code. I want to become an indie hacker with the goal of earning $10k/mo. As the title suggests, I'm new to this--any tips or resources I should check out?
Thanks everyone, I hope I can return the favor soon and help the community out :)
Start out with a smaller goal so that you don't get discouraged and build up to the larger goal. Start with $100 then $200 then $500
I like that, I read something about this recently and your approach is pretty much what the article recommended.
Thanks Alex!
No problem!! Welcome to Indie hackers!!
I recommend that you take a look at how things get done in real life... check out this stream https://www.twitch.tv/thecoppinger
Never thought about watching it via a stream or something, pretty clever.
Thank you :)
Yeah, @hawkthorne it's a clever dude!
Thanks so much for the kind words and link @MarkSmith, you're the man! Let me know if you stop by @ImEvan, I'd love to have a chat :)
Sorry for the super delayed response, but I appreciate everyone for providing great advice that anyone can benefit from!
Not sure what you're using to learn, but Teamtreehouse.com was great for learning basic JavaScript for me
@ImEvan Are you looking at starting some side project?
I was thinking about possibly starting with replicating a website that I frequent, to see where I'm at with web design.
How does that sound?
I've got two short blog posts that I think will help you get going, not from a programming point of view, but more from the perspective of avoiding analysis paralysis and moving forward with a project.
How to quickly pick a name for your project: http://chrisdermody.com/how-to-pick-a-name-for-your-side-project-or-business-in-10-minutes-and-is-available-as-com/
How to pick a colour for your project. http://chrisdermody.com/colour_scheme_minimum_viable_product/
I hope they're helpful. 👍👍
Just read both of your posts.
They are gold brah!
Thanks man! These posts were actually the easier ones to do oddly enough, but probably are my best posts to date. The tutorials take forever.
Cheers for the reply :)
Wow, I took another look at your website and I’m speechless...
I have forever procrastinated to start my own blog for whatever reason, my personal website is a mess (hence that’s why I don’t even link to it), but yours, so polished... I can tell is real work, several hours into it...
What fires you up that much that you put out that caliber of content?
Dude I literally just changed the theme, that's probably why you think it's so polished.
Content wise, I've just been doing it for nearly 2 years now, and you get good at banging them out. The last one about the domain names is basically just a slightly edited comment that I made on this forum in reply to someone the other day, but made it a post cos I thought it was decent quality with good info.
Just start man. Set up a ghost blog and start writing. You gotta just start and then you can refine from there, it's never gonna be perfect, especially not right off the bat.
Thanks for the kind words though I really appreciate it! 👍👍
Changing the theme might look small from you, but from the outside you look like a pro! (you are)
Best piece of advice ever: “just start” :-)
Thanks!
P.S. let’s get a bit technical. Why Ghost over Jekyll?
I just decided to check Ghost out because I was fed up with WordPress. I never used Jekyll before, but depending on my mood at the time I could have gone with that too.
I could have even started on Medium. The platform doesn't matter (although I do like having control of layout, email signups etc), but as I said, just start. Know and accept that it's not gonna be great initially, but rest easy in the knowledge that you'll get better with each post.
I'm not a pro, but I'm confident I'm getting there, and the tidbits I've picked up along the way about naming, colours etc, are useful to others and I enjoy sharing that. I'm hoping that as I continue to tinker with products, ideas, and knowledge sharing, that I'll build up an audience that don't mind reading me and maybe buy into a product or two that I launch. That's the dream :)
Well, your audience just got bigger +1 :-)
Cheers mate!
Cheers! 😊👍
Thanks Chip! I definitely have suffered from analysis paralysis time and time again so I'm sure these will help
Why do you have the goal of $10k/mo? To me it feels too high for an initial goal (which should probably be $1) and too low for your end goal (it would pay for your salary and not much else)?
Do you want to be a solo-founder? do you want to never hire people? Do you want to contract? to build a SaaS product?
What languages did you learn?
Http/css/ruby/javascript
Ideally I like the idea of what you just said, work solo and not needing to hire others
On point with adjusting the (short term) goal.
@imevan Listen to the Indie hackers podcast #8. The guest is Nathan Barry. Before starting Convertkit, on day one, his goal was to make $5k/mo in six months.
( For context, before that he was making $100,000+ on book sales, a professional author and marketer.)
Long story short, six months passed and he didn’t not reach his goal. He “only” did $2k/mo.
The podcast goes onto describing how he ended up reaching his goal, and much much much much more... one of my favorite podcast, ever.
Thanks satoshi! I'll give it a listen
My pleasure!
Three days ago Nathan published (in writing) this story on his blog: http://nathanbarry.com/5k/
I heavily high quality resources. Pluralsight is my favorite resource for learning new technologies. They just have insanely high quality courses and all they do is everything in the tech niche. It has been well worth the investment for me.
https://www.startupschool.org/ - YCombinator's 10wk class on how to start a startup.
Yup, amazing learnings if you want to build a massive, scalable company.
Oh wow, I'll check that out. Thank you!
You are never done learning code, it's a lifetime process :)
Anyway, start spending time on learning how to sell, marketing, emails, SMM, SEO, leads, conversions - all this stuff is crucial for you if you plan to make money, not just play and learn with your projects.
Touche ;)
And yeah I guess I'll have to hit the books and study up on what needs to be done.
Thanks !