
I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors - calebporzio
https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit-dollar-100000yr-on-github-sponsors-heres-how-i-did-it
======
Ndymium
Reading these makes me sad about the law in my country, Finland. The lowest
tier of OP ($7 for no reward) would be illegal here.

We have a law called "Money Collection act", which states that to gather
donations (i.e. payments with nothing in return), you have to get a permit.
This permit costs money, is not given to individuals, and is given only for
non-profit activities.

So this means that if you see a donation/sponsorship button on a software
project where the money goes to a Finnish person, it is illegal (unless they
have obtained a permit, which is highly unlikely). If you see a
patreon/sponsorship with rewards, it's a grey area. The only clearly legal way
is by selling actual things, and of course then you quickly need to set up a
business.

I host a free project myself and I've had to set up a business (sole
proprietorship) and sell things in order to get money for server costs. Even
though people have been interested in donating, I can't do that legally.

~~~
hkai
"For each donated dollar, I will create and send you 100 random bytes that you
can use in your cryptographic applications."

$7 = 700 random bytes

$15 = 1500 random bytes + 500 bytes free!

$99 = lifetime* subscription for 25k random bytes per year

* your lifetime or my lifetime, whichever terminates earlier

~~~
duxup
Do you have any collectible limited edition bytes?

~~~
lstamour
Those would be the special one-of-a-kind bytes that we log to ensure no two
people get the same bytes twice. Bonus: the logs are numbered, so we can
validate those bytes. Downside: we’ll have to ask for a monthly donation to
cover storing the bytes and bandwidth ;-)

------
kemitchell
The more individual developer stories I look into on Sponsors or Patreon or
wherever, the more I see a recurring pattern. The vast majority of developers
don't make any significant money. The outliers that do use the platform as a
general-purpose payment processor. They take donations, but they also sell
things. The line between isn't terribly clear.

The platforms help style all the payments as "donations" or "sponsorships" or
"patronage". That avoids harshing the project vibe with overtly commercial
overtones that turn off the financially immature and preternaturally entitled.
But in reality, they're often really payments for products, services, access,
and so on. Some people do simply donate, usually small dollars, and don't
receive or care about "perks". Others buy the perks on offer specifically, as
a simple exchange. Somewhere in between, people and companies may be inspired
by donation-like feelings, but use the benefits to get their payments approved
and expensed.

It's hard to draw any broad conclusion from outliers. But it all points to
there being strange value in muddying the concept of paying developers with a
lot of ambiguity, on both the buy side and the sell side. It's like one of
those statues that looks like one thing from one angle, and something
completely different from another.

~~~
hinkley
In class and race struggles it's not uncommon to see someone worry aloud about
token individuals who are "allowed" to succeed out of proportion to their
peers. It gives the rabble hope, which keeps them sedate. But the success rate
barely exceeds attrition at the top of the pyramid.

I don't think I personally will ever know if this is just an accident of the
system (being happily exploited), planned, or a little bit from column A and a
little bit from column B.

Enough notable success stories satisfies the Availability heuristic in your
brain, but that often tricks you into thinking things are quite different than
they actually are.

~~~
gbacon
We see power-law distributions everywhere, notably the 80-20 Pareto rule. They
are the rule with uniform distributions being the rare exceptions. The claim
of a hidden puppeteer running this gigantic con that occasionally allows
success and precisely mixes column A with column B such that the rabble attack
one another only and never the mastermind pulling the strings is truly
extraordinary.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution)

------
drummer
>Now, people watching the screencasts will naturally encounter these “private”
screencasts and if they like the free ones, they will sponsor me (at $14/mo.)
to get access.

Why are we calling this 'sponsoring'? It just factually is selling a product
to people for a specific amount. Sponsoring/donating is more like people
giving money for something that would otherwise be free. Otherwise Microsoft
could also require a 500 usd 'sponsorship or donation' for a Surface Go. And
requiring it monthly is just plain subscription service payment.

~~~
codingdave
It is collecting money with an expectation of additional content in the
future. So it isn't just a purchase. A subscription is closer, but sponsor
adds the implication that your sponsorship is what allows the content creator
to keep doing it.

Also, one of the dictionary definitions for sponsor is: "provide funds for (a
project or activity or the person carrying it out)."

So it seems accurate enough of a term to me.

~~~
rootshelled
"provide funds for (a project or activity or the person carrying it out)."

So does a subscription or purchase. So not sure what you are trying to imply
with this.

He gives access to stuff if you pay him money, with a promise of more stuff in
the future. This just sounds like an subscription to me.

While I do agree there is a disconnect between open source dev payment and
business, I don't think mislabeling a subscription as a donation does anyone
any good.

~~~
poutrathor
we can argue about semantics but it's not really productive, imo.

He implies nothing, he states that sponsor definition covers the OP use case.
Having more than one word to describe the same thing is not surprising.

You imply that _your_ definition of sponsor exclude OP use case and there is
mislabeling.

The interesting point is the revenue issue in open-source business. This guy
solved it for him and present for all how he did it, with no lies and no
hypocrisy.

That someone got hung up on a __correct __word usage shed an interesting light
on where this disconnect between open source dev payment and money really
lies.

------
phodge
Joel Spolsky does a good job of explaining what's actually happening here in
his old "Strategy Letter V" from 2002 [1].

Caleb hasn't discovered some secret means of convincing people to pay for OSS
they can download for free. What he's done is create a commodity (the open
source package) and then once it's popular, make a tidy profit off its
complimentary product (training videos).

Unfortunately it's still true that people generally won't pay for software
they can download for free, but if you're willing to dip into some other types
of work (e.g. consulting, creating training videos) then you can make more
than enough profit top keep going indefinitely.

[1] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-
letter-v/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/)

~~~
z3t4
I wonder if you could just pick a big open source product with a large
community and sell complimentary product products for it... Or that you first
must be a celebrity? Or at least have enough social proof.

~~~
SifJar
Risk with that approach is that your complimentary products could become
irrelevant or redundant as the open source project evolves e.g. training
material could become outdated as functionality changes, a product that relies
on some API could get broken by API changes etc. By owning both the open
source project & the complimentary product, you can avoid nasty surprises (and
be ahead of any competitors in the "complimentary product" space when you make
changes in the open source project)

------
sytelus
I hate sponsorware concept OP is proposing. It seems to work for him but it’s
opposite to the spirit of open source. His idea is that keep code secret until
you find N sponsors. Further, he will hide important tutorials if you are not
sponsor. I would hate to use this kind of open source project.

Here is more viable freelancing:

\- create framework/library that everyone needs

\- for feature requests/bug fixes, prioritize sponsors

\- do office hours for sponsors

\- invite sponsors/allow them to vote for future road map

\- offer consulting credit to sponsors

~~~
pselbert
What you're proposing requires him to sell his time instead of his work (which
was already a portion of his time). It is impossible to scale that type of
consulting work to multiple clients because you'll always be limited by your
available time.

The spirit of open source isn't so sacred. In most cases it is hundreds or
thousands of businesses benefiting financially from the work you've done.

~~~
calebporzio
This exactly

~~~
calebporzio
I started the journey out (sorta) this way. It's a hard life.

------
bluedino
Comparing $90k as a W2 employee doesn't really compare to making $112k as a
LLC or contractor. Taxes, health insurance, retirement...

On the other hand, his amounts are going up, so I'm interested to see how high
they will go, and what it will consistently level out at.

~~~
jermaustin1
If you set the entity up correctly and work with a decent accountant, your
$112k turns into more like $40k taxable, and if you are married, that $40k
drops to $20k @ 10% + $20k @ 12% or ~ $4500 in taxes.

~~~
aj7
Aha. And now you understand why we don’t have universal healthcare, crumbling
infrastructure, and so much cash in the hands of the wealthy that interest
rates are near zero.

~~~
mullen
I would like to point out that Universal Healthcare would be funded by a
separate tax and probably would not come out of Income Taxes.

~~~
jermaustin1
I believe this is how the UK does it as well. You pay income tax, then you pay
your NHS fee.

~~~
mattlondon
We pay a "national insurance" tax in addition to income tax, but this is
mainly to cover the state pension from what I understand and maternity
allowance etc.

As I understand it, NHS comes from general taxation.

Obviously there is no actual "fee" to use the NHS at the point of use - it is
all free apart from prescriptions which are the same price regardless of what
you get (and you might get it for free anyway depending on your circumstances)

~~~
nbaksalyar
Prescriptions are also completely free in Scotland. Same for Wales and
Northern Ireland, as far as I know.

------
NickBusey
I hit $500/yr on Patreon this week for my open source work! :)

Nice work, I should think about having paid only videos as well, I believe I
can do that pretty easily on Patreon. Good tips in here.

~~~
johannes1234321
I for myself, coming from a privileged situation wonder if 500$/yr would be
worth it for me.

Do calling it "work" it is too little. Won't pay the time spent on a job.

At the same time it is an amount of money, causing responsibility. Giving the
feeling that one has to return something for it ...

So how does at affect your fun-level?

~~~
NickBusey
I don't have the feeling that I have to give something in return. It's a
voluntary donation, people can donate, or not. They can cancel at any time. I
don't feel any pressure to 'deliver' anything. They're paying because they
want to reward the value I have provided, and likely will continue to provide.
If I stop providing it, I assume people will slowly cancel their donations,
which is how things should work.

If anything the fun-level has gone way up because a community has formed
around one of my projects, which has been great.

------
vmception
> Here’s how Sponsorware works:

> Create a cool piece of software

> Make it exclusive to people who sponsor you until you reach a certain number
> of sponsors

> Then open source the project to the world

This is how ICOs worked, for the teams that actually delivered anything.
Without any other monetization path they resorted to taking presales of tokens
shoehorned in convulated ways into products that didn't need them, but
frequently involved open source code for a community. This resulted in many
misaligned interests for people that eseentially were sponsors.

It's nice to see the same sentiment reflected in other parts of the tech
industry in a way that more people respect and can relate to.

~~~
ViViDboarder
Or Kickstarter or any other kind of fundraising effort I guess. It’s a pretty
cool adaptation of a fairly established practice.

------
wongarsu
His data clearly shows most "sponsors" only sponsor him to view his webcasts.
Is it really right to call that a sponsorship, as opposed to a subscription?
What are the legal implications? (and yes, I'm aware that this is how most of
patreon works too)

~~~
kemitchell
I'm a lawyer, but I can't give legal advice here. See
[https://notlegaladvice.law/](https://notlegaladvice.law/).

If you're interested in the issue, however, you might start by reading a
little about "money transmitter" regulations. An early payments platform for
open projects shut down at least partly on account of it. I suspect the
concept of "perks" became widespread in part to differentiate fundraising
platforms from money transmitters.

------
tluyben2
The sponsorware idea was something we also want to do;

\- add sponsors as collaborators in the project

\- give sponsors access to all versions from the get-go

\- set a $ limit, when reached, will trigger full open-sourcing of the project

\- have public sponsor income page where people can follow the progress

------
rsweeney21
Sponsoring the official screencasts/educational content for an open source
project is a great idea. I run a company[1] that provides a service targeted
at software engineers and I'd pay several hundred to several thousand a month
to have a 30 second promo at the start of a video, depending on the size of
the project.

Is there a website out there where I can find content I can sponsor?

Also, keep in mind that when you are self employed you need to make 20-30%
more than your salary as an employee if you want the same take home pay. That
covers the extra self-employment tax you have to pay, health insurance,
business insurance, etc. If you charge by the hour, you might find this
article on how to calculate an hourly rate helpful:
[https://help.facetdev.com/docs/how-do-i-calculate-my-
hourly-...](https://help.facetdev.com/docs/how-do-i-calculate-my-hourly-rate)

[1] Shameless plug: www.facetdev.com

~~~
O_H_E
Although that doesn't sound like a bad idea, that is unfortunately not what he
was talking about. By sponsors he meant patrons that get a perk of accessing
screencasts when they subscribe (sponsor him).

------
jfengel
Props. Well done.

The thing that struck me most was the podcast appearance. I was distantly
affiliated with the music industry at one point and I saw over and over the
value of being in the right place at the right time. Great bands languish
because they just weren't seen.

I don't mean to diminish the work, either the technological or the effort of
finding sponsors. I just want to caution about extrapolating success stories
to utopianism. Success is more random than we'd like to believe, and there is
a risk when failure leads to victim blaming.

~~~
tnorthcutt
_Success is more random than we 'd like to believe_

Perhaps, but I think a lot of people tend to say that, then conclude that they
should just wait around for luck (not saying you're doing this, though).

Another approach is to do everything you can (podcast appearances, for
example!) to increase your "luck surface area".

~~~
cvlasdkv
> Perhaps, but I think a lot of people tend to say that, then conclude that
> they should just wait around for luck (not saying you're doing this,
> though).

I'm curious as to why you think that? It could be cultural differences but I
have never seen that behaviour except from those that are already depressed
and have given up.

IMO the simplest analogy for success is poker. You make the best decisions you
can given the information you have. You adjust as new information is revealed.
Ultimately, success or failure is less relevant than the process.

~~~
gbacon
Yet the same faces seem to show up over and over at the final table because
some are better than others at executing the process, maintaining control of
emotions, bankroll management, and so on.

~~~
cvlasdkv
Of course given a large enough sample size process wins out! People's
capabilities and knowledge differ. The issue is in determining _what_ good
process _is_ given the vast environment that is a globalized economy.

That is why socioeconomic status is so important with respect to success.
There's a difference when you can play a thousand hands vs. ten.

------
ocdtrekkie
The IRS website sometimes uses exact dollar amounts of reported tax
information as identity verification. Author _probably_ should replace
screenshots of tax forms with rough figures.

------
soheil
For those wondering here is the repo in question and it has 4.5k stars
[https://github.com/livewire/livewire](https://github.com/livewire/livewire)

~~~
zucker42
Did Github just undergo a design update? The buttons are flatter and it looks
more like Gitlab to me now.

~~~
peterkos
Yep, unfortunatley.

I left feedback the moment it entered "feature preview", left feedback on all
the accessibility it lacked (mainly reducing contrast everywhere), and well,
looks like they just rolled it out anyways.

Really wish they would take things like people being able to see their product
without difficulty seriously.

------
habosa
Wow there’s so much negativity here.

I just want to say congratulations. I think the sponsorware concept is very
cool and could be good for the community. I’m glad someone has found a way to
make money in open source.

------
iandanforth
I'm not sure I fully understand the sponsorware model. Hopefully someone will
educate me.

If my costs for writing a piece of software are initially X, I'd hope to make
at least X back before I open source it. (Ignore loss-leaders for now)

If I'm counting number of sponsors, do I calculate them as if they will stick
around for a year? 100% retention seems unlikely. Do I only open source after
I've had Y sponsors for Z time such that sum(Y.donations) * Z == X?

Then after I open source it I have ongoing costs. His experience seems to
imply that educational content (paid) then _also_ pays for ongoing maintenance
costs. Is that correct?

What if I later decide to stop supporting a project? Is there any mechanism to
stop a stream of income from a group of sponsors, or will I have to assume
they will "naturally" stop sponsoring when I kill new education content and
updates to the project? This seems problematic as inertia will cause some
people to keep paying despite not getting further value, which will cause some
of them to be angry and demand "refunds."

What if my project really takes off? What would be a possible path to scale
from say 1-5 paid collaborators?

------
adamzapasnik
I'm not sure what is more impressive, the thought of 100k in 5 months from
sponsorship or that the author ported a solution to another environment and
got 100k sponsorship out of it?

Wow, Good job!

Not really understanding the comparison to SV salaries. This opens up many
doors for the author, something that money wouldn't be able to do.

------
tomerico
If Github sponsors proves to be a viable and scalable solution for OSS
developers, this could spike a huge boost in quantity and quality of OSS.

We've seen a similar effect with YouTube - by providing a monetization path
for creators, it attracts talent, and allows them to finance a lifestyle
around it. And it's a self-accelerating cycle - the growth in quality and
quantity increases demand for the content which increases the quality and
quantity.

~~~
zepearl
I absolutely never heard anything about "Github sponsors" until now, which is
actually what I always wished that somebody would create... .

I thought as well (and still keep thinking) that if I'll ever manage to create
something successful which generates $, then I'll share a part of the revenue
with the (open-source) parts that my <whatever: app/website/etc...>
uses/needs.

------
bjoernw
Coil and Mozilla are working on something very similar to sponsorship but
instead with micropayments that are streamed to content creator's wallets via
a new open Web Monetization standard.
[https://webmonetization.org/docs/getting-
started.html](https://webmonetization.org/docs/getting-started.html)

Would be neat to see more sites adopt the web monetization standard via coil
or other sites like it that enable content creators to offer paid content and
get paid passively as more people discovered their content.

------
hirundo
"All of this works because I spent years and years honing my craft and
producing software that is truly useful. I’ve poured everything I have into
that work, and there are no shortcuts there."

This reminds me of Steve Martin's, "You Can Be a Millionaire ... and Never Pay
Taxes":

“You say, ‘Steve, how can I be a millionaire and never pay taxes?’”

“OK first,” he explains, “get a million dollars.”

------
xgenecloud
That's phenomenal! Hitting $100k in 5 months.

Here is OP's repo -
[https://github.com/livewire/livewire](https://github.com/livewire/livewire)

------
msoad
$100k is still not even close to how much you can make in SV as an engineer.
Specially an engineer at this caliber. But working on OSS full time is
probably 100x more fulfilling than building CRUD for a boring ad company.

~~~
hoorayimhelping
> _$100k is still not even close to how much you can make in SV as an
> engineer_

Oh, well then fuck this idiot, right? What a dumbass loser - doesn't even
realize they can be a s i l i c o n v a l l e y e n g i n e e r and make a lot
of money.

Jesus it's so exhausting reading the knee-jerk "SV engineers make more money"
reaction to everything. You know what this person has that 99.999% of all SV
engineers will never have? Complete freedom. You know what else this person
has that 99% of all SV engineers will never have? The option not to have live
in San Francisco, a dismal place that very few people want to actually be in
anymore.

~~~
PascLeRasc
I actually really want to live in San Francisco, but I don't want to and am
not smart enough to work for a FAANG-type company. It's one of the few
American cities where you can be a first-class citizen without owning a car
and comfortably bike/walk everywhere year-round. SF has a really fascinating
history and cool culture. I wish it was possible to work in academia there
without already being wealthy.

~~~
BrandonM
I've lived in many US cities, including SF, and your characterization rings
hollow for me. Unless you're focusing exclusively on climate, SF without a car
isn't all that much better than dozens of other cities. Notably, unless you
live near a BART stop, most transit commutes are going to involve some bus,
switching to a separate system, 30+ minutes daily commute, $12+ round trip,
etc. Or paying for rideshares. Dozens of cities in the US have the equivalent
or better, without all the other associated baggage of SF. Here are a few
examples I've lived or spent significant time in:

\- Chicago, IL: The L reaches a lot more neighborhoods, is a single integrated
transit system. \- Columbus, OH: Great bike lanes and dedicated paths, bus
system that covers the entire city. \- New York, NY: By far the most walkable
city in the US. \- Philadelphia, PA: Decent subway system, good connection to
NJ and NY via NJ Transit. Very walkable core and neighborhoods. \- Washington,
DC: Far superior version of BART with a lot more coverage.

Unless I've just happened across a half dozen of the best cities in the US, SF
isn't all that remarkable.

~~~
PascLeRasc
I do love NYC, Chicago, and Philly, but I've always wanted to avoid winter
entirely as I get pretty severe SAD. San Francisco seems like the only
walkable city where that's possible.

~~~
BrandonM
That's fair. I imagine that there are parts of LA that are similarly walkable,
but it's not like LA is immune to the problems SF has, and it has unique
problems of its own.

There are bound to be some pretty cool places in AZ, NM, TX, and the
southeast. I've been casually researching this topic for a while, and I've
found it to be incredibly difficult to find a useful, non-biased index of
walkable and interesting neighborhoods from all corners of the US.

Good luck!

------
Hedja
Since people are showing interest in GitHub Sponsors, I just wanted to
mention: The types of services listed in the article likely falls under VAT in
specific regions which can be a pain to calculate. That's one of the reasons
I'm sticking with Patreon; they handle tax and chargebacks so the fee isn't a
big deal. GitHub Sponsors explicitly says the tax is all on you. They don't
mention chargebacks in their docs so it's hard to say, if they're processing
the payment on their end, I'd guess they handle it.

[https://help.github.com/en/github/supporting-the-open-
source...](https://help.github.com/en/github/supporting-the-open-source-
community-with-github-sponsors/tax-information-for-github-sponsors)

------
omot
I honestly think that platforms like Github and Patreon is the future of
universal basic income. I think as labor becomes deprecated due to
globalization and automation, more and more people are going to quit their
jobs and pursue more creative and meaningful endeavors.

Obviously in the beginning, power law will take into effect where a few people
will have enough income to thrive in these platforms. I do think that these
platforms will eventually have more features like pooled donation, say you
could donate to a collective of creators that you care about, will lead to
significant portion of the economy to more meaningful work.

~~~
zanny
Proprietary rent seekers injecting themselves into paying for services so they
can creme 5-20% off the top of all the money movement.

Its basically the same thing credit cards do, but are more egregious because
they also try to platform the creators. So you integrate them into one
proprietary space you wholly control and can thus dominate industries by
managing the purse.

Its what almost every successful business nowadays does. Capture an audience
and then shake down whatever they are coming to your platform for while
holding the market ransom. Facebook and Google do this with advertisers, app /
game stores with their 30% cuts, etc.

------
NetBeck
It's always great to read of someone making a living from what they love and a
community supporting each other.

------
game_the0ry
Google should hire people like this.

Wouldn't it be awesome if developer talent was judged on the impact of one's
open source projects / contributions versus leetcode competency?

Yeah, I know - it'll never happen.

~~~
gutnor
Ignoring the fact that the majority of the source code is not open sourced and
that "impact" biggest variable is going to be chance.

Impact of one open source project measure slightly more than developer talent.
It is a combination of a lot of skills, development skill just one among other
like marketing, business sense, ability to make video, ... Extreme example
would be Zuckerberg: is he the best developer in the world and wouldn't you
waste a bit his potential if you hired him as a PHP dev?

And in any case, impact is always going to be a star system. You are going to
have a tiny percentage of developers (like a few thousands in the world) that
have impact and all the other that have 0. You are back to square one at
trying to find a way to differentiate between a loser that can code and
another loser that cannot.

------
recursivedoubts
Wow, that's a huge inspiration.

I've been sitting on GitHub sponsorship setup for htmx, but this motivates me
to get that done. It would be amazing to work on a passion project and get
paid for it.

~~~
stevekemp
I have a bunch of projects which seem to be popular, and a lot of followers.
Income received via sponsorship? €0.

I think a lot depends on luck, and the kind of repositories you manage/create.
Some projects are obviously more commercially useful than others, and those
are the easier ones to receive income from.

[https://github.com/skx/](https://github.com/skx/)

~~~
recursivedoubts
yeah, like most technical stuff it seems like a lottery ticket, but if it's a
lottery ticket that costs almost $0 it's worth at least setting it up...

------
gdsdfe
wow kudos, I also find it generous that github takes no cut on this giving
that they offer the service. Some people here are comparing with the pay at
FAANG, you'll have to factor in the satisfaction of seeing your own ideas
coming to fruition and the fact that you are free to do whatever the hell you
want, anytime, anywhere. Is that worth the 200k+ difference? maybe, maybe not,
it's up to you.

------
alexmingoia
> A few weeks later I added a new “private” group of screencasts for GitHub
> sponsors only. THIS is the secret sauce.

The secret sauce is selling a product (in this case courses/training), and
using GitHub sponsors as a payment gateway.

It’s great, but it’s not really sponsorship.

If you’re a dev with a popular open source project, you can profit by selling
related training/courses. A lot of devs are probably leaving money on the
table.

------
alexellisuk
This is a success story for GitHub sponsors and I hope it will eventually
become the norm and not a unicorn example. We are nowhere near this level with
OpenFaaS and with a high level of churn.

I also have a slight concern about the author’s sales tax liability in
territories such as the US and the EU. Economic nexus is real, take a look at
paddle.com if you want to know more. GitHub doesn’t collect sales tax - so you
shouldn’t be selling any taxable benefits FWIW.

My strategy so far has to turn the program into a weekly Insiders Update on
the OSS projects I maintain along with regular feature length content on the
industry and software.

There’s around 130-140 individuals, I’d like to see that get to double the
number. As for companies that use OpenFaaS in production, they do not pay any
form of sponsorship or support.

[https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis](https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis)

------
smeeth
Step 1: create a repo with 4K stars...

~~~
ghsthrw
Did a quick Google, looks like that comes to $2800. A small investment for
100k a year.

[https://gimhub.com/shop/buy-github-stars/](https://gimhub.com/shop/buy-
github-stars/)

------
oxAAAFFB
The payment scheme of the future will be something where a digital product is
created and then kept locked up until it’s unlocked by Kickstarter style
fundraising. Each individual person gets something they want (the digital
product) in exchange for their money, just like before. But under this model,
everything might be open source by default, the product only costs society
what it is worth (unlike current digital products like movies and songs) and
the convoluted nightmare of drm and each-tv-network-has-their-own-
subscription-service can finally die.

------
andrew_
I have a few NPM packages that get millions of downloads per week. I collect
about $5.50 US per month from Patreon and exactly $0 US from Github sponsors.
I still consider that $5.50 a win.

------
kabacha
Stallman was right story once again, huh?

He argued that the best way to monetize libre software is to sell
training/education and 80% of OP's income come from the educational screen-
casts.

Maybe the lesson here is that if you want to earn money from libre software
you have to learn how to create and sell training. I think this model is
really beautiful — everyone wins: good software, good training material,
strong communities and respect everyone's freedoms!

------
FpUser
Congratulations. Nicely done.

Also you've mentioned github sponsors. Did not know about that program. It is
severely restricted by small list of countries. Seems unfair as so many people
contribute through github but looks like large chunk is unable to apply for
this type of sponsorship because of location. Frankly I am quite disappointed
with such policy.

------
gumby
This is great, for a couple of reasons. One is that it works! I’m delighted
for you.

Second is that I haven’t heard of livewire because I work in a different area.
This suggests that more folks will be able to do the same (admittedly livewire
is in a popular space — which makes meeting this threshold harder, so congrats
again)

------
stevens32
It's inspiring to see that oss can provide a comparable income to the more
traditional software engineering career path. It looks like some salesmanship
is required, I wonder if there's some service out there that takes care of
that aspect to help oss projects to find sponsors?

------
spotlmnop
Happy for you. Real talent deserves recognition. Thank you for everything you
do. Keep up the good work.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
Kudos!

I've been doing OSS for twenty years, and never made a dime.

 _Qualifier: Never wanted to. It 's always been a labor of love._

Even when I have done a bit of commercial work (outside of what I did as a
9-5), I open-source that work, as well.

I like doing OSS. I take pride in my craft, and like having it out there.

------
muyuu
I love his idea, the problem I have is that I hate github. Would it work
outside of Github?

------
brightball
This feels like a good place to mention the
[https://bytepack.io/](https://bytepack.io/) service that Jose Valim created.
It's goal is to help with this type of thing.

------
peter_d_sherman
>"A few weeks later I added a new “private” group of screencasts for GitHub
sponsors only.

[ screenshot of a video being restricted to sponsors only ]

THIS is the secret sauce."

------
zitterbewegung
The next thing he could do was make a book out of his various projects and get
some passive income. This is a really great and uplifting story!

------
vxNsr
Fascinating story.

About the project: is it basically a PHP library?

------
dangus
What I’m confused about is how the Sponsorware is operationalized for people
on the paid tier.

How do you only release to people on your sponsor list?

------
ppod
Off-topic question: Is Livewire comparable with RShiny, and is there anything
that would let me do what Livewire does in python?

------
mschuetz
Nice! I'm also already at 2$/month.

------
satya71
numpy was the first project that I came across that used a similar technique
to fund the development. The numpy book was available exclusively to funders
until the early development was paid for. Travis Oliphant, the author of numpy
and of the guide, went on to found Anaconda (Continuum Analytics).

------
j7ake
Congrats! Inspiring to see that you can make a living on your own without
coding within a corporate structure.

------
blueterminal
This is a really exciting project, can't wait to try it out. I love Laravel.
Amazing job.

------
bgdkbtv
Congrats dude! Living the dream!

Been following you and your progress on twitter for a while

------
elchin
How much would this person make if working at a big tech company?

------
MangoCoffee
"Sponsorware" \- it feel like open sourced shareware

------
rglover
Congratulations :)

This is really inspiring and motivating for doing OSS work.

------
PopeDotNinja
Good work :). That's awesome.

------
saos
That was a nice reading experience

------
jglauche
Any advise for a developer with disabilities who failed hard getting most of
her projects out of 1-10 users phase if any?

------
truell20
anyone tried running ads on their open source repos?

------
llIIllIIllIIl
Congratulations!

------
_curious_
Nice, awesome achievement!

------
jcelerier
since there's no such thing as a small advice - I'd appreciate a review of my
sponsor page :-)
[https://github.com/sponsors/jcelerier](https://github.com/sponsors/jcelerier)

~~~
LeonM
Hi Jean,

I'm trying not to make this sound as a generic LinkedIn business advice, but
get a better profile picture. Maybe a picture of you in front of one of the
art pieces. Something that gives me an impression of who you are and what kind
of art you collaborate in.

It may sound stupid, but first impressions do really matter, even on Github. A
dark, blurry picture of you drinking beer does not give a good impression.

~~~
jcelerier
> It may sound stupid,

it definitely does not haha, I put a better pic. Thanks !

~~~
LeonM
Perfect! This gives a _much_ better impression on who you are (in a
professional environment)

------
sitzkrieg
these tend to come off like humble brags a bit considering working on the
right thing at the right time is a big factor

~~~
tryptophan
Believing that everything is just luck is a great way to make sure you never
encounter any.

~~~
danr4
oooh good one. saving it for future use.

------
wayneftw
Gee, it sounds like using the proper channels works way better than trying to
push trashy ads in an NPM postinstall script.

Hopefully this story will help tone deaf people to make the right decision
next time.

------
caniszczyk
Sigh, GitHub is still promoting the "open source gig economy"

[https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-
open-...](https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-source-
gig-economy-and-sustainability-tip-jar/)

It's been about 2 years of GitHub sponsors and they haven't shared any data on
how well people are doing.

~~~
foobar_
That was an insightful link. But is it really the gig economy ? This seems
more like the crowdfunding model, which is more applicable to arts and crafts.
I remember first reading about radiohead or someone else using pre-order sales
to get money and then release the album.

There really needs to be an open data for business otherwise GDPR is
pointless. Code is somehow not where the money is.

What is peculiar about software is maintenance cost which puts it somewhere
between crowdfunding and subscriptions.

The gig economy makes sense if the person doing the gig is able to set the
price otherwise it's not really fair.

