46
73 Comments

How do you make money?

Oooh, ahh.

Should we talk about it?

How do you make money?

  1. 38

    • Day job


    Left some empty bullets to hopefully fill them in the future :)

    1. 1

      Same here! Right down to the bullet points :)

    2. 1

      This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  2. 20

    Here's my transparency:

    • my day job (here at IH)
    • I still get money from Ministry of Testing and coach 2 people on the team from a community/marketing perspective.
    • my paid newsletter
    • a property rental
    • mentoring (I mentor a couple of people)
    1. 1

      What platform do you use to mentor other people @rosiesherry?

          1. 1

            Just applied to be a mentor, great job on the site!

        1. 1

          Awesome! I was just wondering last night if a site like this existed...

          One less business idea, but still something I'm interested in!

  3. 9

    Selling HTML themes on BuildFaster.co

    I’ve made $190 in my first 2 months and my only expense is the “.co” domain 😄

    1. 2

      This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

  4. 8

    ✨ diversifying

    1. 2

      Thanks for the transparency! Really cool stuff

    2. 1

      This is really cool.

      Congrats.

    3. 1

      This comment was deleted a year ago.

  5. 5

    Sell myself, not sexually, just as a consultant haha.

    https://consultily.com

    1. 1

      Underrated comment.

    2. 1

      This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  6. 4

    Had a day job that made me a lot of money for 8 years. Now I try to spend less than the investments gain (I'm about even over 6 years) - the next recession is going to suck for me :-P

    I'm between Coast FIRE and FIRE, meaning I should have additional income to supplement my investments, but indie hacking is hard and hasn't paid off yet.

    1. 2

      I used to do side projects too until I have gotten retrenched recently. Still trying to crack the code. Keep at it man, perhaps keep trying different way until it works. Like Albert Einstein's saying...

      1. 1

        Yeah, I guess I'm a slow learner since it's been 6 years haha. But it's usually a fun and enjoyable process, so I keep at it :)

  7. 3

    In order of profitability

    1. 3

      How can you manage all of these things? :D

    2. 1

      Do you grow anything in a greenhouse? I was working on a greenhouse monitoring app + hardware but have put it on hold because I could not get traction.

      1. 1

        Not yet. I’m building my greenhouse, but it will be a small backyard one. No automation, a wireless thermometer/hygrometer is all I will probably use.
        Where you targeting home growers or commercial operations?

        1. 1

          Commercial. I was using cheap cheap IP cameras to derive plant health. It worked ok for basic things like tracking growth but was not accurate enough to forecast harvests or hi res enough to identify pests.
          The idea needed a sales person and a mechanical engineer. I am neither.

  8. 3
    1. Day Job
    2. Google AdSense/AdMob on https://www.indiehackers.com/product/quizme
    3. Subscriptions to https://www.quiz.me/business
    4. Stock Dividends (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Nike, Saab, Autoliv, Paradox Interactive)
  9. 3
    • 1-man Freelance IT company since last year. Basically I only exctract from the company what I need. At the current rate of income and needs that is about 50%. So for one month of work I could take a 1 month holiday. Idea is to either work a few years now and then free myself in the future by taking less, more interesting work.

    • Bought some eth early which turned into a 80k euro profit, all went into my home renovation. "aaaaand it's gone!"

    • Reinvested some leftover ETH money into 100k Cardano, hoping this will skyrocket in the next two to five years, which I would use to pay off the remaining 200k eur house loan or invest in other properties.

    So basically day job and dumb luck with crypto.

    1. 1

      Amazing job with crypto. I just don't understand it enough to be brave enough to do anything with it.

  10. 2
    1. Profit share of SaaS app I built for a client, which basically covers my personal needs.
    2. Take freelance gigs occasionally to cover up any additional expenses incurred.

    😉😉

  11. 2

    Working on a farm at the moment. Then a beet later in the year.

  12. 2
    1. Day job
    2. Revenue from my flagship digital product, The Developer's Guide to Content Creation
  13. 2

    Bootstrapped SAAS business. I take a Salary and sometimes distributions at the end of the year (if I can).

  14. 2
    1. 4

      How do you get software gigs?

  15. 2

    Day job like many others.

    My project Packetriot is the side-business I'm working to grow and hopefully replace my enough of my income to provide runway to focus entirely on it and take on more projects or businesses.

  16. 2
    • Freelancing as a developer, mostly I work on other people SaaS.
    • adcart.com.br // Around 1200 USD/Month
    • smartforms.dev // 180 USD/Month
    • coredacao.com // Launched last month with my GF(she's running the operation), only 3 sales so far

    I'm working too much with the Brazilian market, thinking about expanding since our currency/economy is not doing that great.

  17. 2

    In the last 3 months I've been shifting my day job into my startup job to make money. This is how I'm doing it:

    • 0% Building a saas craftstech product company targeting independent clothing makers (tailoru.com)
    • 90% Provide freelance services in design and development for these makers and startup in the same space and homegrown them to develop the saas tools above
    • 10% Selling craft and vintage stuff on Etsy
    • Minus 5% stock market 😆
    1. 1

      Just keep the shares, it will go up! :D

  18. 2

    In the more philosophical sense, it's about solving problems for people and getting paid for it. This helps me understand the kinds of problems I want to be working on and the kinds of people I want to be helping.

    More literally: I consult as a growth marketer for a couple of clients, have my main project and a couple of side projects.

  19. 2
    • Day job.
    • Game sales.
    • Affiliate websites.
    • Selling things I don't use.
  20. 1
  21. 1

    Day job and trying to get https://bullish.email to ramen profitability. Currently ~$60MRR

  22. 1

    90% Full Time Job as Civil Engineer
    10% Real Estate wholesaling business
    0% newsletter I decided to start today with plans to turn into paid subscription

  23. 1

    I do moeny with day job. I'm workinng on chooseyourplant.com which I hope to monnetize in the future, and I want to get into dropshipping.

  24. 1
    • Contracting as a web developer
    • Selling services on Fiverr
    • My eBook
    • Writing on my website and posting to Medium and Coil
    • Investments through Plum

    Hopefully, I'll be able to gain enough subscribers on SubStack and sell some written content through that as well.

  25. 1
    • Day job
    • Patreon (a little pocket money)
  26. 1
    1. Day job
    2. Stock dividends

    Although I am trying to add to this list, a day job has a lot of advantages. There is nothing better than getting paid to do something you want to do anyways.

  27. 1

    Day job. Hoping the change that very soon tho.

  28. 1

    Quite a few for now:

    • My startup Zlappo of course
    • Crypto trading on Binance (lol)
    • Acting (been getting quite a few gigs recently)
    • Affiliate commissions
  29. 1
    1. 1

      Stoiclyy looks cool. I re-read Seneca and Marcus Aurelius pretty regularly. Epictetus is good too, but I always preferred Seneca for his entertaining writing style.

      What got you into the idea of doing an app? Do you think there's a sufficient market to make it profitable?

      1. 1

        Yeah definitely a market to make money. The subreddit is just shy of 700k subs. There's also an app called "Stoic." That seems to be doing well. Also another indie dev here made a product called Stoa which will be similar to my app.

  30. 1

    I do freelancing 🙃

    1. 1

      @mxmzb I'm considering getting into freelancing. On the react native side of things. What freelancing do you do? What platforms are you on?

      1. 1

        React Native clearly makes the biggest chunk of my freelancing projects. If it's not RN, I'll usually work on React.js web apps.

        There are definitely a few good platforms to check out. I can recommend G2i, Codementor, Toptal (didn't try this one, but have heard good things from people). But I'd say it definitely helps to do more than just being on a specific platform.

        1. 1

          Nice! Thanks for sharing.

          Any tips for getting started in the freelancing works?

          1. 1

            I guess the biggest thing you can do when you start out freelancing, is in fact (sigh, wish I could say something else) a mindset thing.

            What helped me most, is the realization, that usually trying to build something that will make clients contact you is bullshit. Not, that it doesn't work, but it just takes too long to keep playing the game with no paid work. Which then results in despair, disbelieve, and ultimately failure.

            So the most important thing is to get proactive. Reach out to potential clients, and understand, that rejections are not only part of the game, they are in fact part of the strategy.

            Other than that, if you're already doing something specific (e.g. how or where to approach clients best, etc.) and are not sure how to make it work, ask specifically, cause I can't guess your specific current hurdle.

            Hope that helps :)

            1. 2

              I haven't started yet but looking to get into freelancing. So all of your advice is gold so far.

              But what you said about mindset it's absolutely correct. For me, I've procrastinated on freelancing due to doubt and bad mindset about it.

              Thinking things like, there's already too many freelancers, or I'll always get underbid by cheaper freelancers etc.

              So what you said about mindset is half the battle. It's psychological warfare

  31. 1

    Pure sales and blockchain+IoT implementation work

    (not sure what happen exactly but covid-19 flipped a switch and with almost zero marketing customers are appearing out of nowhere. Not enough hours in a day.)

  32. 1

    Music journalism makes quite some money, looking for new ways to monetize my media outlet though.

    1. 1

      This comment was deleted a year ago.

  33. 1
    1. 2

      I'm not your target audience, but you should really show some samples of what you'll be sending.

      1. 1

        Awesome feedback, you are absolutely correct... I've got some lead content I'm going to publish in places like dev.to that link back, and some blurbs to put on the lp as well.

  34. 1

    95 % day job.
    5 % affiliate blogs. One for entrepreneurs, one for watch straps. Both are a lot of fun :)

  35. 1

    Affiliate marketing, some freelancing & hopefully soon from my SaaS.

    Eventually I'd also like to sell a digital product - like an ebook or a course.

  36. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

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    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  38. 2

    This comment was deleted 7 months ago.

  39. 2

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 2

      Interesting, what kind of approach do you take with stock dividends?

      I'm also curious to hear how you got into angel investing.

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

  40. 1

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

  41. 2

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

  42. 3

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

    1. 2

      how about changing to a better job before your next venture

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