How I made $0 in 2022 (in 5 steps)
Starting with 2022, I just finished Sahil Lavingia’s “The Minimalist Entrepreneur” and started Arvid Kahl’s "Zero to Sold", I decided that I want to step foot into the indie hacking world myself. My goal was to start with the new year and then code my way to a beautiful, profitable little SaaS side business within 12 months. I have now reached $0/mo (profit, revenue, income, haven’t decided on the goal setting here yet) and wanted to share with you the five steps it took me to get there.
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The first step I took was to not work on anything for the first three months (trust me, this works wonders to keep your MRR under control). My plan was to build a YouTube channel in parallel to the SaaS so that I can build in public on it. Problem was: I barely knew which side of the camera I’m supposed to speak into. So the first three months of the one year period were invested into learning how to not feel like a total dumbass when talking to a camera alone in my living room.
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Following that, the second step was to spend another month or so on making plans for organizing my plan-creation engine. I tested out different project management tools (as if I didn’t know how they worked), ended up making fancy task lists in Notion, all while reporting about this on my YouTube channel, collecting somewhere between 17 and 29 views per video (which, in all honesty, I didn’t find bad, I mean every view was a real person watching me sit there in my living room talking to myself).
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Then, as the third step, I could finally start building. In one of my videos I talked at the end for like 15 seconds about why I don’t have to do idea validation. So, I was ready to get my hands dirty. I fired up VSCode, duplicated an old project from work, deleted everything in /src except for App.vue, and spend the following five days on getting
npm installto appreciate my carefully curated package.json-piece of unresolvable dependencies. -
Once I managed to get the barebone project to run, I dove neck deep into programming a drag and drop interface for my timeboxing app, which included the Vuetify calendar, task lists, and other custom-made half working UI components. We are now around half way into the 12 months, it has become summer (summer is very beautiful when you’re outside by the way), and my Gitlab “remember me” login session would regularly forget about me (it does so after 2 weeks). This fourth step on my journey to $0/mo was about spending another 2-3 months on the calendar drag and drop and on the implementation of the Google API authorization flow (which was quite a fun puzzle to solve actually).
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With my timeboxing app slowly taking shape, my fifth step in November was to get a new idea and to put the original project on pause. I swear, the new idea has a much clearer value proposition, a simpler and more straightforward MVP, and a much more defined target audience. Plus, quite some of what I’ve worked on for the timeboxing app I could still use, like the Google auth implementations, and also, most importantly, most of what I’ve learned so far from setting an entire SaaS up all by myself (not that sticking to the first project would have made any difference to the MRR after 12 months anyway). The remaining months I then worked on this new app, which is currently undergoing the YouTube API compliance audit (fingers crossed).
The next and last large step remaining is to integrate Stripe (by the way not being able to receive payments is another trick to drive your MRR down). But this has the potential to cause a deviation from my current profit curve so I didn't want to include it anymore (plus who knows when that step is gonna happen anyway).
And what I learned from taking these steps was:
- Things take so much more time than expected when starting off and it’s not always easy to get comfortable with parts of the project (=procrastination). But also that discomfort is the dragon that guards the gold (stole that from another forum).
- There is a freakin’ lot to figure out when starting from zero experience. But with a stubborn sense of “I’ll manage at some point” you actually get to open one intimidating black box after another (getting the hosting set up, creating a user account system, reaching out to prospects). Keeping in mind here that “everything is figureoutable” (stole that as well).
- How much fun it is to be building stuff. The ideas, the coding, the learning, the creating your own little world (=business), the making of something other people might be keen on using… Might all just take a bit longer than you've planned.
Take care and all the best to all your indie hacking endeavors!
Next challenge would be getting into 50k$ debt in only 1 month
Exactly, that's the next goal.. researching the best system for that atm
i have few "years" of experience in this. Here are few tips from my side
Company incorporation
Landing Page
I admit i did not write my own framework but you can be brave and decide to do this by yourself.
list is endless so i will stop here :-)
Wish I could add something thoughtful, inspiring or at least helpful, but the story just literally made me laugh, but not because I’m looking down, infact because I can totally relate to many of the aspects to building something.
To make this helpful nevertheless, here’s two pieces of advice that helped me, not with the startup, but with my newsletter and a meetup group I created:
setting up an account with Meetup.com or ConvertKit is not making progress. Making progress is sending out the first newsletter to family and friends, promoting it on LinkedIn / Twitter and talking to people about it. The same way: hosting the first meetup and handpicking who should be invited.
Keep it going and learn from feedback: the basic growth loop still applies and validation is a continuous process. Just because an idea was validated once and works doesn’t mean it will always work. Hence, keep validating, listening to users, subscribers, attendees.
Also - don’t forget to have fun. It’s why we do this in the first place.
Yes yes, the challenges of the beginners... With a winking eye ;)
But I agree, progress is made in that moment you're dealing with the "uncomfortable" things. Which mostly involves getting out of ones cozy basement
I like “eating the frog” first thing in the morning. That way the most important but oftentimes daunting or challenging tasks are already out of the way.
Then also using the Eisenhower Matrix to define what is actually important etc.
Oh yes that eat the frog approach works great!! I even made the "frog task" a dedicated event type in the timeboxing app (R.I.P.) which could be added only once per day and had a little diamond as its icon
That’s brilliant. I usually have it as a reminder/event in either Todoist or Google Calendar
thanks for sharing!
I love this 🤣
This tongue-in-cheek post is so relatable for the new indie-hackers (yours truly included). Thanks for sharing it.
I know what to watch out for now.
Also, wishing you all the best with that YouTube API idea. Let the Stripe notifications roll faster this year. :-)
Thaanks, wishing you the same :)
Starting a business is often very much like quitting smoking
You may not do it the first time, maybe not the the second time, but by the 3rd or 4th, you'll get in nailed
Good luck on the next one, you can do it
PS. I've been building cashflow positive businesses in 90 days or less since 1989, I was a lucky one who figured out how to quit cold turkey on day one. Weird analogy that just got weirder
Haha but I can relate.. Once the switch in the mind was flipped it became easy to quit. Good news when it's similar for creating businesses!
You're an absolute king!!! 👑 🙂👍
The comments are gold, lol.
Tbh these lessons are quite valuable for many beginners. Thanks!
Never lose the humour.
I actually loled multiple times while reading this post.
Good humor, well written.
Keep on building!
It definitely is fun to build new stuff. I totally get what you mean when you say "quite a fun puzzle to solve actually".
One day I think I'll be able to go above $0/month of MRR and thus be able to spend time on fun puzzles :)
Yes, then it becomes like making money by playing sudoku
xD I'm looking forward to that, Ludwig
It sounds like you're having fun though which is the most important part. The project isn't a failure until you decide to kill it so as long as your enjoying the process and not ruining yourself financially it is great!
Trying my best not to.. But exactly, as long as the fun is still there it can't be too bad ;)
Thank you for the share!
I can completely relate to the time aspect.
If you think it will take 1 week.
Double that and you will get correct estimate. :)
I like your optimism
Almost positive. :D
Thanks for this topic, The title is very funny. I'm like what $0 in 2022
This is awesome. Thanks for the laugh!
#canrelate
I can confirm from personal experience that all of these steps are 100% true. I have a tendency to fall into these ways as well. I applaud you for recognizing this and admitting it publicly. That’s more than I can say. Good luck on your future indie hacking!
Thaanks, same for you!
If you want to earn $0 in a year, you just need to do nothing - I'm infected!
Yep and apparently this system also works for the long term
I think this is satire in which case it's brilliant!
It's fully true experiences but put in a bit of a self-mocking light ;)
Thanks for sharing.. seems you learned a lot from it.
Oh yes definitely. And a "fail" can at least make for a little story sometimes ;)
A few things I could think of that might have helped.
Show the tools you work with in tangent to what you were building as well to attract attention to your product (affiliate income as well to start generating $$$ if what you are using has an affiliate program). People are always looking tutorials for everything and im sure there are tons of lessons to be taught in what youre building.
Launch a presale/coming soon on product hunt and gotten an email list going on to get people interested. If people weren't interested or it was gaining no traction, you could scrap it and go back to the drawing board. If it did get attention build out a quick mvp of your products and added more features later on through customer feedback on what they like/dont like and build from there.
Just a few things that I thought off the top of my head. This post was very enlightening. Thank you for sharing. Im working on doing something similar this year.
I like your points, especially to get feedback and people interested.. In the beginning it's easy to neglect getting in touch with others and remain in your own space.
Glad to hear, also important to point out it's not always going according to plan ;)
Very nice but you should take more time picking the tech stack! 🤣
Try being a software developer for 7 years now, and deciding the best use of my time was to revamp the very first project I created when I was just learning to code. And still take 6 months to publish, and still not be happy/done with it.
Now that is how you get to $0 in 2015-2022.
So silver linings? All you have to do is publish what you are making in the next 6 years and you got me beat (:
That's impressive, you've perfected this system I just started working with..
Lol you've got a lot to learn my friend, just make sure it isn't from me.
I would also recommend you to build your own expensive API, that will send your debt up, with no gain per month instead of relying on traditional APIs.
Exactly, also timewise it's important to build as many things yourself
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