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I've made $1k from music apps and games this year

Last year I made $693 from my side projects. We're six months into 2021 and I just hit $1k USD ($1347 AUD) from side projects. Hooray!

I know this number is small. I've found a motivating way to frame this trickle of income. For each side project I think of a monthly expense it covers.

Here are the side projects. Each one has the dollars-per-month value and an expense it can cover.

Of course way more hours go into the development than is covered by the income. That's ok. I'm having fun and I'm learning a lot.

I've learned that I can build things that people will buy. I wasn't sure about that a year or two ago. I used to only do non-commercial open source projects.

I'm going to keep building things. I'm going to keep working on ways for people to find those things. I'm going to keep exploring the space of things I can build that people want and need.

Right now I am working on:

I just love building stuff.

  1. 2

    This is very inspiring. Time to work.

    What is your tech stack for each project?

    Unity? Typescript?

    1. 1

      🙏 Thanks for asking about tech stacks. Everybody loves to talk about their tech stack!

      New projects tech stacks.

      To deploy TweetFeast and other servers I use Piku on a $10/m VPS. It's a zero-devops experience. I have more than 20 apps running on one box. 😂

      I've really found a groove with ClojureScript running on both client and server. It's a joy to deploy!

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        Man Thanks for the detail.

        How are you balancing your time with these projects?

        Do you code/build them in parallel? or one after the other?

        1. 1

          Here's how I've been breaking down my time:

          Monday: music tech apps.
          Tuesday: client work.
          Wednesday: SaaS dev.
          Thursday: open source dev.
          Friday: gamedev.

          Sometimes I do marketing activities on the relevant day instead, or in addition to coding.

          Quite often I do client work on other days too. For some reason the ability to build software fast is in demand these days.

  2. 1

    Congratulations on generating income from multiple projects!. Definitely my inspiration. How do you market your products?

    1. 2

      Hello Mister Banana. Here is what I have been doing:

      • post updates while building (twitter, YouTube, relevant forums & chat rooms).
      • launch in multiple places (PH, IH, HN etc.)
      • building free content + apps with links back to the apps (SEO).
      1. 1

        Thanks for the reply. Yea, I definitely need to post updates more often and launching in multiple places rather than just one.

  3. 1

    Wow, so encouraging. It feels great to hear how others are progressing with mulitple projects.

    1. 2

      Glad to hear it's useful. There is a lot of advice out there saying you should focus on one thing. I think that's probably good advice but it has never worked for me. Instead I'm embracing Shiny Object Syndrome but also trying to make sure I actually ship things.

  4. 1

    you've accomplished a great feat, keep going and keep sharing with us!

    1. 1

      I will, thank you.

  5. 1

    beast mode, that number is not small. You are doing great.

  6. 1

    I would suggest to run ads on Play Store and get atleast 5k or 10k downloads. Because organic installs are quite better after 5-10k.

    1. 1

      That's a good tip, thanks! I have never been able to make ads work for any product personally.

      The marketing I have done so far is SEO, YouTube progress update videos, and connecting with fans directly in online forums. I just made a deal with somebody to review a music app on their popular channel. Will see how it goes.

      1. 1

        Play store ads are quite simple.
        I had some apps on Play store. The growth from 10k to 50k was quite fast compared to my initial growth. I realised that and started running Ads for other apps of mine and most of them had same graph.
        After 50k I started receiving offers to sell it, I sold them because I was still in college and needed money.

        1. 1

          Interesting thanks. When you say "Play store ads" what do you mean? Is there a way to advertise directly on Google Play?

          1. 1

            I mean this type of ad - https://pasteboard.co/KabBLEa.png

            No Google doesn't allow separately to run ads only on Play store. But if you select "App Installs" in Google Adwords/Ads then they optimize your Ads to display your Ad campaign more in Play store.

            1. 1

              Very interesting, will investigate. Thank you. 🙏

  7. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      True. Possibly the most important thing is that you enjoy working on the project. I tried a lot of different ideas I wasn't really into and those never go anywhere.

      By the way IndiePosts is a great resource. Thanks for making that. You should add a descriptive title tag and h1 tag to make it easier the find. Took me an hour yesterday!

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

        1. 2

          Enjoyable first, then profitable. This is the way.

          Here is what my bookmark for IndiePosts says now. These are the keywords I tried when searching:

          IndiePosts indie hacker post ranking metrics analytics views clicks

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