How do indie hackers pay the bills?

Agree with @mattkander that this is a really good topic.

It's important to keep in mind that every body comes from different backgrounds and circumstances. Some of us are older and had other careers beforehand. I remember reading about an interview from the Backblaze founders and they basically all had pretty good tech jobs before starting their now-rather-large business.

For myself, I worked in a full time job for a number of years. Before I quit, I made a few micro SAAS. This was back in 2014-2016. Within 2 years, I was able to quit my job and do this full time.

Around 2014 when I committed to doing this, it was really tough. I essentially built 1 app per week for about 2-3 months. They were all Shopify apps (btw, I highly recommend anyone who's starting out to build Shopify apps, because they're easy to build and you don't need to worry about marketing as much). Effectively, I created a small portfolio of apps. Some of them took off and some didn't.

Since 2018-2019, I moved away from Shopify apps and did some freelancing. I still do a little bit of freelancing for close clients/friends, but mostly I am concentrating on my SAAS these days.

One thing I learned while doing all this is to not reinvest all the money you make back into the business. Although it's tempting to do this (and some folks swear by it), the reality is that online businesses come and go. I have my rationale about this and it's too long to type out in a thread like this without getting sidetracked. But the short of it is that you should invest the money in something else that makes passive income so you don't "lose it all" should things go poorly.

And that's it. It's all just a bit of stair stepping, as Rob Walling from Startups for the Rest of Us podcast would say.

To run a calm company the best thing to do is ensure you're paid sufficient to live on first. I appreciate that's difficult, and sometimes that means spending less time than ideal on your project. Sometimes it means spending less on marketing/advertising/growth in order to satisfy your own personal needs and wants.

With EmailOctopus it started out as a side-project, so did evenings and weekends alongside a full-time job. Once we hit $4k MRR, we changed slightly – I did 2 days a week consulting and 3 days a week on EmailOctopus. Jonathan did 1 day a week on EmailOctopus, 4 days in his full-time job.

Once we then got to $10k MRR we both went full-time, as then it covered our own salaries + key business costs. Our salaries then rose as MRR did until we were on the same as our previous roles.

We made a concerted effort to never really drop below a salary of £28k a year each. That was our baseline to live on here in the UK (not just survive).

Really good question and would appreciate more transparency around that from fellow creators.

I think it depends on the person and what stage your business is at.

For me personally - I'm keeping a full time, 9-5 job until my side hustle income reaches a point where I can manage my bills.

I attempted to go freelance earlier on this year, which failed in a long, drawn out fashion. I found it far too difficult to both start a freelance / consulting business while also working on my side hustle (YouTube, blog, affiliate marketing). All the effort I spent on the side hustle (which was nowhere near at a point of being profitable), I felt guilty as I wasn't working on finding paid gigs to pay my food bills. I just ended up burning through my runway going 50/50 on both things.

My plan moving forward - keep a full time job. Work on side hustle over weekends and evenings where I can and reduce the expectations to match. Focus on smaller milestones and tangible, low effort, high impact wins.

I guess I was lucky, because I started my online business in 2005 at the age of 15. So I was doing that next to school, and I was easily able to live off of it, when I went full-time in late 2010. I agree with @geetfun - I had this gut feeling about my business, that it is not made for the longterm, so I saved a lot of the money I made. While I sold the business in 2018 shortly before it would have died, I don't have to worry so much about money now, because of all the money I saved along the way. This gives you all kinds of options, which is why I can only recommend this approach to everyone.

I've been running a consulting business for the past 6+ years.

If you're focused on IndieHacking I would recommend some sort of stable employment. Consulting / freelancing can be a roller-coaster, especially if you are distracted by side projects. It's really easy to make some mistakes that will sink you a few months down the road.

That said, I love the freedom of running my own business, even if it's not scalable.

If you're interested in consulting & freelancing follow me at https://twitter.com/connorbode.

I'm spending a lot of time on leveraging data (time tracking, project management, invoicing, sales) to help you stay on track as a freelancer, while also dedicating time to your side projects. Tweeting about this journey.

Great topic, I defiantly don't think we talk about it enough.

For me, before I went full-time on my business I worked a full time job and worked nights and weekends. I have a family so I was very structured about what I was doing. I'd work my day job, come home and spend time with the family. I'd then work 2-3 hours each night. I'd also find time to work on the weekend also.

I'm risk averse so when I decided to take the leap I started consulting 10-20 hours a week. I've been full-time for a year and still do some consulting to build up my personal runway. As long as the consulting gigs don't interfere with the business I'll work on them. Right now, I'm doing 10-20 hours a month max which helps me build up my savings.

I get majority of my income from technical consultation. I do software design and development for electronic and hardware companies.

Doing indie on top of regular job looks like a safe option, but think about your health and opportunity costs. Also, do you enjoy living like that?

If I am a server and code at night, it could work. But since I code at work, I cannot just continue coding.

So I don't.

I rather combine working full-time and indie full-time and if the contract permits it, then maybe combining part-time gig and part-time indie. Anyway, full focus is still the best in the end.

Freelancing has been my source of income. I live in a place with relatively less cost of living so I can afford to work 4 hrs/day and earn more than enough.

I have been doing this since I was in college and never worked on a real job (except a short internship). I used to work 8-12 hrs/day before but decided to cut that time and focus on building products.

I personally thought most people here work. I doubt many will quit their jobs unless their projects are returning a revenue. Very people can do this. I did a long time ago and it's been anything but easy.

I agree that this topic doesn't get talked about enough. For me I actually had a wedding DJ business to pay the bills while I first started my SaaS. I find offline businesses are a lot easier to start. After that I got into consulting. Both of these options are a ton easier than starting a SaaS or other tech venture.

Code 9-5 at my day job, code 5-9+ side project. Mix in dinner, workouts, and hanging with the wife, and that’s basically my whole life. It’s fortunate that I could literally sit down and code like 20 hours a day if I was left to my own devices so I don’t really burn out but it’s a lot of balancing.

i day trade with my IRA and take profits when I get a big gain.