How do you fund your projects?

For me full time jobs.

During 9-5 I will steal time to do marketing and talk to customer using my mobile phone and after work hours it all about building and strategizing or learning something.

Weekends all about building and interviewing other founder to get their insight on how to do stuff.

And all my product revolve around making marketing and promoting easier and faster because you need to be able to do it using mobile and dont spend so much time on it.

If you guys are doing blogging as part of marketing, I would recommend you guys to checkout my tool creativeblogotopic.com . Basically the tool will automate seo research for you so you can just insert the niche and target customer and the tool will grab all necessary data and do analysis and suggests you the best blog to write.

I am upgrading and building more of these tool that can help people like us to do marketing using mobile while having conversation with our colleagues

I have a full-time job.

While I have to work on my product "after hours," it provides a safety net for experiments.

I try to use my (potential) customers as the funding source. If you are actually solving a problem worth their money it's a clear indicator you're on the right track.

Other kind of funding, like investment/savings I'd go to when I have a clear scalability/growth issue.

What do you need the funds for?

3Fs

Our situation is rather special. We have some Web3.0 projects, so we can apply for Grants from relevant foundations. For example, Aptos Foundation, Ethereum Foundation, etc. Additionally, as a DAO, our members will also donate to projects within our DAO.
Personally, part of my funding comes from the various Freelancer earnings as well.

-- feel free to contact me by email: leeduckgo@gmail.com

I do freelance projects just to fund mine, but I want to finish it with the successful launch of my product

I take on 3-6 month contracts, which is kind of a nice middle ground between full-time employment and freelancing. I can still chip away while on contract out of hours, and then make leaps on progress between contracts (I might take 1-3 months off).

I've funded my projects through a mix of freelancing, smart job choices, DIY tech solutions, and gumroad.

In my college days as a Computer Science student, I was all about finding creative ways to fund my side projects. I freelanced, participated in hackathons, and even joined debates—basically anything that came with a cash prize. On top of that, I worked hard academically to secure scholarships. The goal was simple: cover my basic living expenses and have some leftover to invest in my projects.

Fast forward to my first job, and the strategy evolved. Instead of chasing the highest salary, I looked for roles that offered a balance between decent pay and a good work-life balance. The reason was twofold: I needed both time and money to keep my side projects alive.

Tech-wise, I'm comfortable doing things myself to save costs. For instance, I chose to host my website on free tech stacks like Hugo and Cloudflare Pages, instead of pricier options like Squarespace. I even picked up some design skills to create my own social media posts, instead of hiring someone on Fiverr.

Recently, I invested in ChatGPT Plus, and it's been a great help for my research efforts. Just yesterday, I used it to draft all the copy for my landing and about pages. It's also been handy for making small code tweaks in WordPress, which saves me from having to hire developers.

Being a computer engineer, I'm okay with diving into the technical details myself. It's a trade-off I'm willing to make: when funds are limited, I invest more of my time.

I've also dabbled in crowdfunding. I create valuable content on Gumroad, and sometimes people pay for it. Even if they don't, I collect their emails for future project updates. On the side, I also pick up freelancing gigs in areas where I'm learning new skills.

So that's my approach to funding my projects. It's a blend of time investment, smart financial choices, and a willingness to learn and do things myself.

I always plan to make the product that takes less duration and make sure I have a stable flow of income via consulting and freelancing and mostly leverage other people's time to build things that are beyond my expertise.

I had a full-time job until now. But I recently resigned to give 100% of my attention to the project I'm building.

I do have a decent financial cushion but the fear of not generating sufficient revenue in the coming months does scare me.

I deliberately choose to do projects that require very little upfront cost. No hardware, no manufacturing, no shipping or logistics. Only pay-for-what-you-use kind of services like AWS and GCP - which typically is free-tier unless it really takes off - and then it should be possible to monetize too.

I also stay clear of typically hard business models - like two-sided marketplace-models that require a critical mass and hence a lot of marketing.

So it is basically only my own time that I invest.

I can build the projects myself at essentially no cost, which is why being a full-stack developer and designer is like having superpowers.

I sold a startup and do some consulting on the side to allow me to build freely.

Similar here. Full-time job.

I use my savings.

Unless you are hyping on AI or paying thousands to Twitter, you need at most $25 a month (around $3 for domain, another $5 for hosting, and about $15 to any third party service).