2021 Income Report - $36,942.02

I thought folks might find it interesting to read an end-of-the-year summary income report where I break down the entire year and show totals for each income stream.

breakdown

Here is a breakdown of the various income streams, the totals for each and what each mean.

dip.chat - $1,200

This was my first attempt at a SaaS and indiehacking outside course creation. It was accountability groups for developers. All run on Telegram. It costed $10-$25 to join a group that ran for 30 days. You had to post 1 message in the group per day (like a progress update) or you were charged a $5 penalty fee.

I spent 3-4 months working on this before putting it on pause to focus on other things. It's cool and was lots of fun, but I'd rather solve a bigger business need that could charge at least $99/month.

Or, I'd rather focus on courses and content since those can turn into passive income.

egghead - $2,099.65

@egghead-io is a platform that teaches programming and web development, primarily through videos. They pay royalties based on minutes watched of your videos. I love the team behind this.

I didn't make a single new video in 2021. This is true passive income. For reference, I have two courses and a bunch of one-off videos. See all of them here.

This year, I plan to collaborate with them on a TypeScript course. The revenue on that will be based on a different model.

job board - $2,998.30

This is new. I launched the job board in August so it ran for 5 months. A standard job post costs $100 for 30 days and a featured post costs $200 (includes shout-out on Twitter).

Hoping I can keep that average of $600/month for a total of $7,200 in 2022.

miscellaneous - $4,375

There will always be those random opportunities that pop up such as participating in a research study, speaking at a conference or group, etc. That's what sums up this section. Most of these came over email or Twitter via DMs. "Hey can you speak at X conference? It pays Y." For example, one group paid $1,000 per workshop for a 45-min workshop I gave x3. They even gave a $700 speaker gift after.

Very unpredictable and lots of luck involved, but a nice little "added bonus" when they do happen.

vim for vscode - $9,569.07

At the beginning of the year, I increased the cost from $10 -> $20. There are similar courses out there charging almost double so I should probably increase the price at some point. The biggest thing for this was partnering with Fireship (a popular YouTube channel) and doing a joint video. This drove over $3,000 in sales in early 2021.

I'd like to do a second iteration of this course and eventually have multiple tiers (i.e. beginner, intermediate, advanced).

This is also mostly passive. I spend maybe 1hr/month on it? Usually talking to someone on Twitter or over email. But other than that, it's kinda selling itself. I think it's mostly due to organic search and then it's also mentioned on my Twitter and LinkedIn profiles.

jsjoeio - $16,700

Another new initiative this year. I started offering various services to companies who reached out wanting to collaborate. This varied from sponsored content (Twitter/YouTube/Twitch) to job referrals.

I learned how lucrative job referrals are! I'd love to explore this area more because it leans into one of my strengths (relationship-building) and I enjoy helping people find jobs.

One idea is to keep a list of folks looking and then see if I can place them at companies willing to pay referral fees. https://www.talentdrop.com/ is a great website if you'd like to get into this space.

These services were all time-intensive and required a lot of work, but they brought in the most revenue.

Summary

I hope sharing this inspires someone else to start their own indiehacking journey. The only reason I started myself was feeling inspired by the IH community. I appreciate the open startup movement and others sharing the insights behind their revenue so I'm just paying it forward!

Happy to answer questions or elaborate on any of these points below as well!