I hit $10k ARR AUD in July
July was my best month ever for indie hacks. Revenue from my various paid side projects went over $835 AUD in one month for the first time, which means I broke through a personal goal of $10k ARR (about $6,500 USD).
$10k ARR is a funny number. It's small enough to be scoffed at, especially since I've been at this for at least 3 years now, but it's also large enough to be meaningful. $800 per month is large enough to pay for server costs, Netflix, and some groceries each month. It's passive income. I don't get paid by the hour for the work I'm doing on these projects. Instead I'm investing hours now for a larger payoff later.
The truth is that even ten dollars MRR is meaningful. You just have to think about it in the right way. The first way to think about it is ten dollars is a stop on the way to one hundred dollars MRR, and that's a stop on the way to one thousand dollars MRR, etc. If you look at the chart above, imagine how much of a douche I felt sinking all this time into "businesses" in July 2020 before I was at $50 MRR.
The second way to think about it is as a literal investment of time for money. How much money would you need to have in a bank account at 4% interest in order to earn $10k per year? The answer is you'd need $250k saved in a bank to make $10k per year in interest at 4%. So a perfectly reasonable way to look at the chart above is I've spent 3 years generating the equivalent of $250k worth of value invested at 4%. When you factor in everything I've learned on top of that, and the fact I was working only part time, and the fact it's largely passive income, it feels like 3 years well spent.
Of course, this is just the math I use to keep myself motivated. It's easy to take the other perspective and see this as a waste of time and effort for little yield. One thing that is definitely true is if you give up on something you rule out any chance of reaching your goal. So if one of your goals is to build a passive income business then it makes sense to take the perspective that is most likely to keep you in the game, all else being equal.
You probably want to know what actually generated this revenue. Here's the list of my "small bets" in rough order of profitability.
- https://hostedgitea.com - Git hosting for people who want off big corporate Git hosts.
- Music apps for Android and for Apple iOS (the games don't make anything significant).
- https://tweetfeast.com - Download Twitter follower lists.
- https://pro.sfxr.me - 8-bit sound effects generator and organizer.
- https://dopeloop.ai/melody-generator - procedural Melody Generator.
- https://chr15m.itch.io/roguelike-browser-boilerplate - Roguelike browser boilerplate.
I also receive a small amount from the games I have made and in donations for stuff like Rogule and DoodleCSS and Doodle Rogue Tileset.
As you can see I have Shiny Object Syndrome hardcore. Instead of trying to fight it I've channeled it into building lots of small things. I try to build things that do one thing well and cut away all other features. I have abandoned probably 10 times as many projects as I have shipped, but I've also consistently shipped things that work and that people pay for. I've come to realize that motivation is the most important resource. My self-hack to get to the "hundreds in monthly revenue" tier has been to simply let myself work on whatever I feel like. Operating this way lets me keep the motivation high. I'm having a lot of fun. :)
Thanks for reading and See you at my next goal: $1k USD MRR! 👋
PS I know somebody out there needs to hear this: just keep going.
Congratulations! I feel like money aside it'd be rewarding to create something that other people are using and they like it enough to pay for it
It is! It's important to remind yourself these are real people not just numbers on your dashboard.
Chris, this is incredible! 👏 Hitting $10k ARR is such a huge milestone and proof that persistence pays off.
Your mindset of celebrating small wins along the way is so motivational. Every little bit counts when you're building something new. I love how you compared it to earning interest - such a smart way to stay encouraged.
And I really admire how you channeled your curiosity into building a portfolio of small projects. That versatility will serve you well. Too often we get stuck on one idea when we'd be better off trying many.
I think your story will give hope to a lot of people still searching for their first $10 in revenue. Just focusing on creating value, staying consistent, and retaining motivation matters so much more than overnight success.
You're definitely not alone in having projects that never quite take off. But you've shown what's possible when you keep shipping and stay resilient through failures. Truly inspiring!
What's been most important for you in maintaining motivation when progress seems slow? How do you decide which project ideas are worth pursuing vs abandoning?
And do you have any plans with your passive income as it scales up? Reinvesting, hiring help, or enjoying more life flexibility?
Would love to hear your thoughts! Stories like yours are so valuable for this community of makers and creators. Keep up the great work - excited to see you hit $100k MRR soon!
I have a SAAS project in my bio that i am looking to make sales on It would be awesome to perhaps collaborate let me know
I enjoy building. If I don't enjoy building something I stop. Revenue is also very motivating. Every sign up is a motivation boost.
After shipping a lot of things I have a gut feeling for what won't work and I avoid building those things. If something seems fun to build and it could work, I build it. After that it's just a matter of are people actually using it?
I just love building things so I'll keep doing that.
Good luck with your SaaS!
Congrats Chris! You will certainly get to US$1K MRR. It's only a matter of time and I bet it's gonna be sooner rather than later.
Your story is reflective of many of us here grinding it out. And I'm sure you will be inspiring plenty of people, including me.
Will be rooting for your success!
Congrats! The chart is certainly trending in the right direction 📈
Is there an 80/20-type distribution of income generated per project, or is it more or less uniform across all of them?
Not 80/20 but roughly power-law distributed. It's also the case that the older products are making more revenue than the newer products.
Congrats Chris! I love your story and the way you tell it. It's far more relatable than many of the hyper success stories we are bombarded with daily.
Thanks Dylan. I flip flopped about posting it but decided to post to counter the hyper success stories for that exact reason. Good to see you on here again. Hope you're doing well!
A little humility goes a long way as they say.
I'm doing great! I was a little distracted last year with IRL stuff but I'm back and I'm excited to be working on my next project.
Hey Chris. Congratulations on the milestone! Your story inspires fledgling indie hackers like me. 😅 Based on your projects it looks like you had a lot of fun working on them, so even if you were at $0 ARR I think you would've found it worthwhile.
If your goal is to maximize your MRR, maybe you should try targeting businesses more, where paying a few hundred dollars a month isn't unheard of. If I didn't miss anything, your highest charging project is at $29 a month. Charging more for something like a game might be tough (since entertainment has gotten so cheap) but if you found a good B2B project to work on, I think you'll have a really good chance at getting to your 1k MRR goal.
Thanks for the post, and good luck on $1k MRR!
Yes a consistent theme from founders is B2B is easier than B2C. You are absolutely right. Some of the Hosted Gitea customers are businesses. The only reason I don't do this more is I haven't found the right project yet. It has to be something I'm motivated to work on and I know how to implement and businesses need it.
Congrats and thanks for sharing the info!
Wow I like this site https://pro.sfxr.me/
Bro you are great, wihs you a good luck in achieving your goals!
Congrats Chris!
Congrats man! Super inspiring to read about, and definitely something you should be proud of mate 🥳
Agree on your points, and congrats great approach with the smaller projects.
Congrats! That's big milestone in my opinion, keep going!
Congrats on building cash-flow-first projects and start generating ARR. You're so on point about even a $10 MRR is a good indicator that others are wlling to pay for your products. Money+grow is the best indicate for product-market-fit for small fish founders.
Hi, this is a really nice post, this supports the credibility of the website here.
Congratulations! I really wanna know this like Do you have any tips for a beginner like me?
Thank you so much for the tips. Im still bad at SEO mainly getting backlinks, And going to work on improving myself.
Thanks for sharing, very encouraging and exactly what I needed to hear 💪
Superb milestone @chr15m !
I would love to feature you on Indie Hustle -> my site where I interview indie founders like yourself and how you've bootstrapped your business / side hustles.
Would you be interested?
Sounds good, please send me an email. You can find it on my profile.
Just dropped you an email ! Thank you for the opportunity !
Thanks for sharing, Chris! Awesome to see how you done it. After doing some "bigger things" I'm again at a blank canvas and I've really told myself this time to allow myself some time to NOT chase the "next big thing", but rather do like you seem to do - build up a portfolio of passion projects.
Good luck! It helps to treat it like gardening. Some plants die but the garden is nice.
That’s nice, I really wanted to hear this that I can shipped multiple things in different area 👍
Congrats Chris!
You can but you must accept it takes more time and effort. I am an tech stack minimalist. My codebases are under 2k LOC. Otherwise you get stuck doing busy work.
Amazing Journey ahead of you! Keep it up and don't give up.
You inspire me!
Hey Chris! This is awesome!! Do you have any trouble keeping track of the financials associated with each project? As in what you've spent on it vs. what it has made?
Not really because my costs are extremely low. This is what makes it possible. Some projects have an effective running cost of zero because of shared server resources etc.
Love the mindset, Chris! Keep going.
Great work Chris 😀 I'm adopting that mentality of likening my work to investing large amounts of money!
Congratulations, Chris!
You doing something different by channelling your syndrome is brilliant 👏🏽