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41 Comments

Nearly reached $20,000 MRR finally grown beyond my income as a consultant ๐ŸŽ‰

  1. 4

    I'm amazed about your persistence and patience. 5 years is just.. a lot! Congrats ๐ŸŽ‰

    I wonder - what kept you going?

    1. 4

      The first two years I was kinda hopeful and honestly I didn't run the numbers, I think if I had I would've switched back to consulting.

      I kinda assumed it was going to take a while. And I loved what I was doing and the feedback that I received. It just took me a long time to figure out that I should be charging more for my products and license them differently.

      From October 2018 and on I saw a slow increase in subscriptions and things started to get better. By mid 2019 I was convinced this was gonna work out.

      1. 1

        What do you mean by licensing your products differently? What was it like before and why did you change it?

        1. 1

          Initial licensing was single purchase lifetime updates (envato model). This doesnโ€™t work as new clients pay for support and updates on existing clients.

          Now itโ€™s a perpetual license and yearly subscription. If subscription expires customers can still use the product but donโ€™t get updates/support.

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            I can imagine it makes a huge difference. Thanks for the answer :)

      2. 1

        To get to where you are as a one man show with a product that will have no churn, 5 years is a massive accomplishment. Congrats!

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      This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

      1. 1

        Yeah I think 5 years is long enough to create something worthwhile, and short enough to see if your efforts are pulling off. Congrats!

      2. 1

        I hadnโ€™t thought about it that way. I guess this is a good post to show that if it isnโ€™t an overnight success time and effort can still make it work.

  2. 3

    Big fan of your work RIk. Filepond is fantastic. I'm using it in my product https://www.slip.so for authors to upload cover art.

    Probably going to purchase doka within the next few months :)

    1. 2

      Nice! Love to hear about how FilePond is used. Sounds like Doka could be a great addition. :D

      This is why I set up the products in this way. If you're already using FilePond for image uploads and you get value from it, Doka Image Editor is kind of a no-brainer if you want to offer image editing.

  3. 2

    Congratz! Did you make that 240K a year in The Netherlands as a consultant?

    1. 2

      Thanks. Working fulltime i couldโ€™ve come close, I worked 32 hours back then (still do). My consulting income back then was around 15K EUR a month. Kinda though to say goodbye to that. But felt it wouldnโ€™t scale, only with hours, so hoped product development would be a temporary setback :)

      1. 1

        Great job man! I assume that was your own biz and not as an employee?

        Do you have an income goal in mind? Or is it more about the fun of growing.

        1. 2

          Exactly, freelance consulting business. The later, just focussing on building a great product :)

  4. 2

    Congrats Rik, that's an amazing achievement! I hope this a step towards more freedom :)

    1. 3

      Thanks! It's so strange how even now, with income detached from hours spend, I still feel like I have to work from 9 to 5 to generate revenue.

      1. 1

        It sounds to me like you're enjoying your current work situation so why change it....

        1. 1

          I very much do, but it would be healthy to not have the 9-5 spirit constantly whispering in my ear that 8 hours a day should be the minimum to yield results.

      2. 1

        Haha, I guess that will be a difficult feeling to shake off!

  5. 2

    Congratulations Rik! You say "products". Is this revenue from multiple products? If yes then how many? Do you find it tough to run multiple products at the same time?

    1. 1

      Thanks Cous! To save space I mistyped, I'm horrible at Twitter :D

      It's one product Doka Image Editor ๐Ÿ‘‰ pqina.nl/doka/

      I have some additional income from older products on CodeCanyon around USD 500 a month and falling.

      I've tried to launch other products (and it's very tempting for example to launch Doka Image Editor as a plugin on Shopify) but I find it very difficult to manage multiple products at once and have decided to form partnerships with developers in respective markets (WordPress / Shopify) instead. That allows me to focus on the core product and allows others to launch successful projects as well.

      1. 2

        Cool! Smart move to partner up with others :).

        Really good looking product and I'm going to remember this if I need it for my vue-apps sometimes. Congrats again.

  6. 2

    Fantastic achievement Rik, I hope to achieve the same! Do you have any key learnings from the last ~6 months as you appear to have grown a lot over that period.

    1. 1

      Thanks! That's mostly recurring revenue on top of recurring revenue, but also in December I raised prices in anticipation of new version 7 release of the editor.

      I've added some additional tweets with tips : )

  7. 1

    Hats off to your tenacity!

  8. 1

    Huge congrats! Love the persistence.

    The fact that you're still doing this through Gumroad is also amazing.

    1. 1

      Thank you :) I really hope Gumroad will pick up some dev steam with those new investments.

  9. 1

    This is awesome! Big congratulations!

    1. 1

      Thanks! ๐Ÿ™

  10. 1

    Huge contracts, Rik. That's inspiring.

    (I notice that we kinda have similar last names. You ever run into any Nunninks in the Netherlands?)

    1. 2

      Thank you! โ˜บ๏ธ I donโ€™t know any Nunninks I believe we Schenninks are originally from the Gelderland province. This starts to feel very hobbitty.

      1. 1

        Haha. Very hobbitty indeed.

  11. 1

    Nice product.
    Congratulations.

    1. 1

      Thank you : )

  12. 1

    This comment was deleted 7 months ago.

    1. 1

      Thanks! Hope it worked out :)

  13. 1

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

    1. 1

      Thanks!

      Everything is free and open source except Doka Image Editor which finances the whole enterprise :)

      1. 1

        Are you going to continue with this pricing structure? Have you thought about testing other structures?

        1. 1

          Probably will.

          It feels good to give back to the open source community and my products that are free are very much in the โ€œnice to haveโ€ category and difficult to monetize (in my experience)

  14. 1

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

    1. 2

      My MIT licensed doors are open ;)

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