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Reflecting on 4 months of full-time indie hacking

December 23, 2021, was my last day as SEO growth lead at a US-based fintech company. After working for 1.5 years, I took the plunge to become a full-time indie hacker.

Before jumping all in, let me give a brief introduction. My name is Tejas and I’m based out of Mumbai, India. I’ve written 2 books in my lifetime on Quora Marketing & SaaS SEO.

I am also the co-founder & CMO at CampusTrail (Study Abroad Consulting firm) we started 1.5 years back.

I’m currently building Affiliate Corner, a Done-for-you Research product for affiliate marketers (RaaS Model - Research as a Service). Feel free to ask me about RaaS in the comments.

Now coming back to quitting my job. I didn't email my manager but I wanted to share my decision directly and face-to-face. When my manager asked me what was the reason for leaving the job, I said:-

“Growth is uncomfortable and I want to be in an uncomfortable position.”

Being an employee is like playing safe and slow. So, I went back to my core philosophy while I was thinking about quitting my job:

“I don’t want my income to be tied with my hours, Instead I want my income to be tied with what I can do and provide to people at scale”.

I just wanted to eliminate all those factors that limit my growth, both in terms of my abilities, skills, and income. This also coincides with the famous Naval quote: Earn with your mind, not with your time. That hit me hard.

How I quit my high paying SEO job

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At the time of quitting my job, my other startup CampusTrail, which we started in Oct 2020, was already making around $13k MRR. We grew from 0 to 30+ employees within a span of 1.5 years. I was drawing a monthly salary equivalent to half of my job’s monthly income.

Also, note that we are 5 co-founders with 30+ employees with a lot of overheads. As a CMO, it was quite difficult for me to work simultaneously on my day job and also at my own startup.

Quitting a job is never easy. Randomly quitting your job in between without any concrete plan is like throwing a dart in the dark. You will certainly miss your target and the vision you want to achieve.

Before I quit my job, I had certain things in place that I wanted to share. So that whenever you think of quitting, you should have these prerequisites in place so that you have ample cushion.

5 things you need before you quit your job:

  • Savings (At Least 2 years, it also depends on where you live)
  • Skills (If you are not confident about your skills, don’t quit)
  • Ideas (If you don’t have any idea what you would be building, don’t quit)
  • Patience (If you are an impatient person, then being a solopreneur would be very hard)
  • Hunger (You gotta be hungry to build something useful and make money)

From the above 5, Skills, Patience, and Hunger are a must. If you don't tick these 3 boxes, then forget everything.

Savings and Ideas can be taken care of if you act smartly. This varies from person to person.

But Skills, Patience, and Hunger, you need to have those.

A lot of people also say that you need to be making revenue from your side project that is equivalent to your job’s annual income before quitting your job.

Well, I have some contrarian opinions on this.

First of all, this is quite difficult to execute. Personally, I don’t have that creative energy left to work on my project after a full day exhausting at my day job.

And I bet a lot of people do get exhausted and don’t get enough time to work on their side projects. You can easily get burned out.

The worst thing that can happen is you won’t be able to focus properly on your day job and your side project. It will hamper your performance and I have experienced this first hand.

But there are people who have done this successfully. Dan Rowden from Ilo.so has achieved this feat. He quit his job at $5.5K MRR

So obviously this helps in getting that much-needed cushion but this is practically very difficult.

Here’s what I would recommend: If you can get revenue that matches almost 30-40% of your job’s annual income, you can think about quitting.

As I said above, I was making half of my day job’s monthly income when I quit my job. That was a good cushion for me. On top of that, I already had 1.5 years of saving with me. Since I live in India, my expenses are very very low.

Big Risks, Big Rewards?

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I am 25. I wanted to take as many risks as I wanted early on. Because without taking risks, you won’t get high rewards and that’s for sure. It’s not worth living a safe and comfortable life like an employee where there is absolutely no thrill.

Going solo is a different story altogether. It’s a roller-coaster journey that is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. We only have one life, why not make the most out of it.

That’s the mantra I hold when I make big decisions.

What’s next?

When I quit my job, I had an Indiehacker strategy in my mind.

As an Indiehacker, once you quit your job, what’s the most important thing and the best thing you would actually want?

Make money as soon as you can and do it in the shortest time possible to get the cushion you need.

Here’s my blueprint. I call it the Indie Hackers way of real-life MBA:

  1. Build 1-2 small projects that take 1-2 months of time. Start monetizing it and get good revenue out of it. (It can be recurring or one-time revenue projects). Scale it up and exit on MicroAcquire.
  1. Build a long-term sustainable SaaS product with recurring income. This would be the primary project that is going to be with you for most of the time.

& here’s why this can work:

Upsides of building and selling a small product:-

  • Ships faster than a big project
  • Saves time & gets a head start
  • You get a good cash runway
  • You have a shipping blueprint to go with
  • Starts building an audience along the way
  • You start making more connections

All of the above points will help you tremendously when you start to build your sustainable SaaS product which is your big project.

This is what we are trying to do with Affiliate Corner. Btw, I am partnered with Rishabh Garg who looks after the technical part of our project and I handle the marketing side of it.

It’s good to have a technical or a marketer co-founder, it will help you ease at a lot of things when you start out.

Feel free to ask me any questions you have. I will be glad to answer them. I hope that my journey until now has inspired you in some way or another.

Glad to be a part of this Indie hacking world.

Let me know what you are doing in the comments and any questions you have for me. Feel free to connect with me on Twitter.

  1. 3

    Great post! And well done for quitting your job.

    I made the mistake of quitting my well paid job 2 years ago to work on my startup but at the time I didn't quite know what I wanted to do, had no audience, and had no product.

    I wish I didn't make this mistake, but I did, so now I share my learnings with others in the hope that make better decisions than I did.

    I wrote a post about quitting my job "too early" here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/startup-lesson-learned-dont-quit-your-job-before-there-is-interest-in-your-product-27fd24ff00 . Would love to get your feedback!

  2. 3

    This is a really encouraging post
    I'm also contemplating if I should quit my job to pursue my ideas. I don't have any profitable side hustle but I do have a good amount of savings.

    1. 3

      I agree with the OP that "hunger" is a necessary pre req. So many IHers quit their jobs and then do very little while burning through their savings.

      The good thing is you can test/develop hunger before you quit your job — just try to get to work on a side project now. It can be a nights-and-weekends project, or hell, just a weekend project.

      If you struggle to start, that's okay. Try to diagnose why. See if you can identify and fix problems that stand in the way of you being relentless and self-motivated.

      I contend it's better to figure this out while you still have your job, than it is to wait until you're burning through your savings to try to figure out motivation.

    2. 3

      I quit my job about 10 months ago and my savings are the only thing keeping me sane. The moment you quit your bootstrapping hobby become real and I immediately felt the pressure to perform. I run a community of boostrappers and it really help to have the support of like-minded people.

    3. 2

      Try and build anything that generates revenue before you quit. Even if it's only 10% of your current expenses. That way, you'll have somewhere to start from.

    4. 1

      You should start a side hustle. Start getting some money. You will learn a lot. I know its difficult to do but that's the best way to get out of the job.

      I have written multiple books, handled marketing of my 30+ employee startup, built 2 small projects, started a niche site along with a job.

      So start today and you will thank yourself later :)

  3. 2

    There are so many aspects I agree with from your attitude towards side projects over taking risks early to building small projects. Thanks for sharing this post, @tejas3732 and best success for the future!

    Are you now running CampusTrail and Affiliate Corner simultaneously? If yes, how do you manage this?

    1. 1

      Yes, I manage both of them now. It's extremely difficult TBH.

      On the one hand at CampusTrail, my mindset is very different. Need to tackle a lot of things, handle employees, and stuff like that. High-pressure environment.

      On the other hand with Affiliate Corner now, I am thinking of it as a solopreneur's project. It is so exciting with almost no pressure. Just today I hit $2500 in pre-sale revenue :)

      It's exciting and addictive.

      But I try to divide my time and do it. But I have to go one way and focus on one thing in the end. What would be your suggestion?

      I like my projects, love self-dependence, no obligations of meetings, employees, etc. I love companies of one actually.

      But I need to take care of CampusTrail too for some time as it grows. My cofounders are also my childhood friends. But again need to think in long term and take some good decisions.

      Need some advice haha.

      1. 2

        That must be difficult, indeed.

        From your message I get the impression Affiliate Corner would overall fit your values better. So, why not grow Affiliate Corner on the side like you already do. When it's stable enough, gradually go over to working on Affiliate Corner full time. Just make sure to communicate your intent to your co founders with enough time for them time to prepare.

  4. 2

    As Videographer/Editor, I have been always interested in the nomad space and recently discovered indie hackers community. I love all all the knowledge going around. I am really thinking of quitting my full time job (working for a tv show) though my foot in the door, I am always day dreaming being from under the desk and working with clients all over the world. So any down time a get I am reading, learning about cinematography, making connection with people, and as soon as i get a least few gigs rolling, I am out. I know there will be up and downs, but trying to divide time is not working.

  5. 2

    congrats. affiliate corner looks like a great idea. if you can, find appsumo affiliates with big audiences as they have a lot of revenue directly from affiliates.

    here's one trick but i'm sure you'll have other tricks up your sleeve → https://twitter.com/deadcoder0904/status/1508821259731144705

    1. 2

      You can find any affiliates with affiliate parameters in URL with Ahrefs site explorer and some filters.

      Reverse engineering their URL & backlink profile.

      I used to do this to recruit affiliates of our competitor when I was working :)

      1. 2

        damn, never used ahrefs so didn't know about it. is there something i can read about it or watch a video that does reverse engineers affiliates?

        that seems like a decent product in & off of itself.

        I used to do this to recruit affiliates of our competitor when I was working :)

        hah, that's smart :)

  6. 2

    This is great, thanks for sharing.

    1. 1

      Thank you so much. Glad that you liked it

  7. 2

    How do you get to market quickly? Technical cofounder obviously still needs to code - is he just a gun that it doesn't take him long?

    1. 1

      That is why we choose projects that can be done quickly. With affiliate corner, we started on 1st March 2022 and we are on the verge of launching it soon. So roughly 30-35 days.

      It depends on what type of project or idea you are choosing.

  8. 2

    I found a lot of value with your small project sale on MicroAcquire strategy. Do you think it is really possible to sell that easily? From what I have heard, it takes a while to find a buyer, workout all the details of the transfer and complete negotiations.

    1. 1

      Not sure about the time. But there are a lot of buyers in MA.

  9. 2

    Quite insightful post! A lot to learn from your experiences Tejas.

    We are building Vade Studio, an all-in-one data integration platform that enables you to integrate and generate unified APIs in minutes. A sneak peak into our product is here

    1. 1

      Thanks Pragyan.

      Good to know about Vade Studio. Looks interesting

  10. 2

    Interesting take on scaling and selling smaller projects so as to acquire the blueprint for executing even faster the next time.

    Is Affiliate Corner the long term one?

    1. 1

      It will depend on the success of the project and how it goes.

      If I like doing this and I am getting good sales, I will do it long term. I also have some big plans with Affiliate Corner.

      If executed, that can surely be a long term project.

  11. 2

    Awesome insights here, thanks for sharing!

      1. 2

        One question: how did you go about building CampusTrail? How did you grow so quickly? How do you get your customers? Etc

        1. 1

          Technically, that’s 3 questions 😅

          1. 2

            Pure paid ads.

            We scaled up our paid ads crazily.

            Getting 7x ROAS with Google Ads. I myself handled it single-handedly with my full time job :D

            But now we have hired an expert G-Ads consultant from the US experienced in handling multi-million dollar budgets.

            So to answer your question: Just Google Search Ads.

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