
Tell HN: Making a living from my side project – Part 1 – I'm Scared - MattBearman
About six weeks ago I decided to try to turn by side project BugMuncher into my full time job. I posted a Tell HN at the time (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10152465) and got some amazing responses, as well as some requests to document my progress - I was unsure at first, but I&#x27;ve now decided write a completely transparent blog series about it.<p>I&#x27;ve just published the first instalment, which deals very honestly with the huge amount of fear I currently feel - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.bugmuncher.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;10&#x2F;22&#x2F;from-side-project-to-profitable-start-up-part-1.html - I&#x27;d love to get some feedback.<p>Thanks,
Matt
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benologist
You've calculated how long it will take to break even on your salary alone via
becoming a successful blogger... and it's an optimistic 18 month crawl in
which helping other entrepreneurs is some sort of priority alongside
programming and kitten blog posts.

Some thoughts:

1) if traffic's not coming to you for your product the vast majority of it
won't care for your product, your best case scenario on product-irrelevant
blog posts is awful traffic and most won't even deliver that

2) don't worry about other entrepreneurs', they can find blog posts in lots of
places and they're nowhere near as important as your company

3) Buffer and Groove each have the luxury of over a $million in investments to
pay people to write content that falls off HN, Reddit etc like it never
existed while other people focus on building their businesses, you're on your
own so you're doing one or the other really

You have a finished product that some people are paying for, why isn't $3000
MRR your goal for this year? That is surely possible somehow.

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MattBearman
Thanks for the feedback. You are correct, I have been discovering through my
content marketing efforts that literally none of my signups come from
initially landing on a blog post. Yet that strange part is since I've been
content marketing, signups have noticeably increased in proportion to page
views.

$3000 MRR is my goal for ASAP :) I've said 9 months as it seems reasonable,
but more because this is virgin territory for me, I have no idea what kind of
MoM growth is possible for BugMuncher, I'll be re-evaluating as time goes on.

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benologist
You're only 6 - 40 new business customers away from that number, I think it's
less daunting that way - just reach out to companies and invite them to use
your service, you'll hit it in no time and quickly get good at selling it.

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tpiha
It was amazing to read this Matt, honestly. It was like I was reading
something I would write 6 months or 1 year down the road. I just finished my
project Synkee and now I'm trying to build up courage to post it on HN. :)

And my numbers look almost exactly the same.

Thumbs up, I will definitely follow your progress, maybe even become a
customer down the road. I wish you luck and success my friend!

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MattBearman
Thanks! Synkee looks cool, it's something I could have done with when I was
still freelancing, as some clients were stuck with FTP only servers!

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tpiha
Thank you! Yeah, that's exactly what I was aiming for, it's really a nightmare
to work with bare FTP.

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minimaxir
A personal announcement of a blog is not a Tell HN. It would be better if you
submitted the blog post directly.

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MattBearman
Yeah, I wasn't sure about posting this way, and wouldn't normally, but as this
is really a follow up to my previous Tell HN it seemed appropriate.

I would have posted the whole content on HN, but it wouldn't really work with
in the confines of Hacker News formatting. Mods please delete / turn into a
link if it's not ok.

