How I made my first $1 online, after years of trying and failing

Three weeks ago, I made my first dollar online. After years of trying and failing, it finally happened. And it’s the best feeling in the world.

I’m a Product Designer from New York, passionate about my work. I’ve spent the last 10 years designing SaaS products.

I’ve always been an employee, jumping from one startup to another. My paycheck increased over time, growing to $140k.

But despite earning a considerable amount of money, I somehow found myself feeling trapped in the rat race while reading “Rich Dad Poor Dad” a few years ago (if you haven’t read it yet, do it now).

I realized that I had almost zero control over my financial situation and was at the mercy of my employer.

That’s when I decided to find a way to break free and try my hand at making money online.

1. The Crossing of the Desert

As I dug deeper into the world of making money online, I came across the indie hackers' community building in public, which I'm now thrilled to be part of!

I was amazed by their stories. I started following their journeys on Twitter, determined to do the same. It just seemed so easy.

So I did what probably most first-time builders do: I came up with a SaaS product idea and went straight to building, spending months designing and coding the product.

Finally, when I launched: $0

Not a dime. Every single time. The same thing happened for 3 different products. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to make it work. I had tried everything from building an audience to building in public, but nothing seemed to stick.

This lasted for 3 years. I was starting to feel like making money online was just a pipe dream.

Beginning of the year, I decided to try one last time. From scratch.

2. The Ultimate Attempt

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, they say. So I decided to do things differently this time.

Instead of launching yet another SaaS meant to fail, I asked myself these 3 questions:

1. What am I really good at?
2. What do I really enjoy doing?
3. What are people ready to pay for, that I know for fact?

And the answer to these 3 questions was: Designing SaaS Products. I’m really good at it, I really enjoy doing it, and I’m already being paid $140k for doing it.

I looked around, got inspired by Brett from Designjoy, and started working on Jim Designs: a subscription-based one-person design studio, for SaaS and Web Apps only.

I’m really good at designing SaaS products. I would spend hours making things pixel-perfect, tweaking colors and shadows until things are perfect. But no one knew about that online.

To build up credibility, I decided to create a high-quality, minimalist Design System specific to SaaS products. I put it on sale on Gumroad for $4.99 (with a 50% off coupon code).

The goal was to learn and get traction, not to get rich.

On the launch day on ProductHunt, I held my breath as none of my previous launches got featured before.

Then it happened. I got featured, got 71 upvotes, and ranked #16 on that day. And above all, I made my first sale, within minutes after the launch. I was literally jumping around in my room.

I had finally made my first dollar online, and it felt incredible. This $2.49 meant more to me than all the money I made in my entire employee career.

More sales followed. More importantly, it helped me to get my first customer for Jim Designs, which was the initial plan.

3. What’s next?

A month passed by. In the meantime, I onboarded 4 customers (3 on the $245/mo plan and 1 on the $645/mo plan) and I now make $1380 while having my full-time job. It’s not a significant amount whatsoever, but it’s side income, and I still cannot believe it.

Jim Designs is still a side project for now, but I’m planning to go all in at some point, sooner or later, more than ever determined to escape the rat race.

Thanks for reading so far. You can follow me on Twitter (https://twitter.com/JimDesignsCo) as I continue to document my journey.