
Indie Hackers: Learn how developers are making money - csallen
https://www.indiehackers.com
======
radarsat1
Very cool, but also a bit misleading.. I was wondering how the hell wub
machine actually makes 900$/month, so I read it.

> Record high was $850/mo, record low was $40, with the average month bringing
> in around $300. Certainly not quit-my-job money, but it helps.

Posting the all-time high instead of the average is a bit off-putting imho,
considering it's supposed to represent "paychecks." This is more like getting
lucky once. Anyways, haven't read the rest of the stories, and I think it's
pretty inspirational. I'd just appreciate more honest revenue reporting on the
front page. (It actually says $900/mo, not just $900, so it's not like I'm
reading this ambiguously..)

Edit: On second thought, it's not clear to me from the description whether he
means that it made $900/mo for some kind of long streak or just one month.

~~~
chrishacken
Similar thoughts here. However, the one project Apex Ping, says he's making
$600/m but not cash flow positive yet. I'm confused as to how that's even
possible. I can run that service on a handful of VM's for ~$60/m.

He says he's using Lamda, perhaps he should rethink that decision if his
overhead is really that high.

~~~
tjholowaychuk
There's a lot more to it than that, and I'm currently supporting ~2000 users
on the free plan as well (though I'm phasing that plan out).

Ping is running in 7 regions, has an Elasticsearch cluster for logging,
another for the check data itself, thousands of checks running each minute and
thousands of alerts running each minute. RDS for the primary store, SES for
emails, EC2 for hosting the app itself. Add on extra services such as
Baremetrics and these things add up quickly. Run 7 EC2 nodes and you're
already well over $250, not to mention the loads in each region are different.

Lambda's pricing is indeed not competitive with VMs right now, but that will
go down with FaaS becoming wildly available from other providers. The more
important thing to me is that it's close to zero maintenance, no bastions, no
AMIs, no provisioning, no third-party monitoring, etc.

If you've ever worked with Elasticsearch you'd also know that it requires a
pretty substantial set of resources to function well. I'm happy to over-
provision for the beginning if it means providing a better experience. Nothing
would be worse than under-provisioning IMO.

~~~
alex_hitchins
>(though I'm phasing that plan out).

Would you recomend starting something with a free tier and phasing it out if
it's not working over charging up front from the beginning?

I can see pros/cons to both sides.

~~~
wwalser
I've been looking into myself recently.

From successful bootstrappers in B2B, nearly 100% of the advice that I've
gotten is to start without free and add it later as a lead-gen mechanism if it
fits your business. Early on customer acquisition is a slog and generally
relies on 1:1 conversations often with a pre-existing relationship (in-
network). Hopefully feedback from these people help you get close enough to
product market fit that outsiders will consider using the product. From there
it's a marketing and lead nurturing game where freemium may make sense.

Advice for B2C would be quite different.

------
rafapaez
This is very cool, but can I ask you a question?

Some days ago I posted a very similar website here
([http://www.transparentstartups.com/](http://www.transparentstartups.com/))
and I didn't get barely any vote whereas this one is getting totally viral
(385 votes and adding).

Please let me know what I'm doing wrong. The only thing I can think of is that
I didn't mention some key words like "developers" and "money" but "startups"
and "transparency". Or is there anything else I'm missing here?

Thank you in advance.

UPDATE: I'm learning a lot today, thank you guys for the feedback.

~~~
cyberferret
Hi. My startup was listed in IndieHackers, and here is my experience, which I
think might explain why this thread did as well as it did. A few weeks ago,
Courtland, the dev who built IndieHackers contacted my via email with a polite
request for me to list my startup on his upcoming site.

He had obviously done a lot of work scouring HN and Reddit threads to pick out
people who fit his criteria of starting independent apps and emailed them one
by one.

I was interested, so signed up on his site and started filling in my profile.
And here is the clincher - I've filled out my startup profile on LOTS of
sites, but IH was the only one where the creator emailed me back and asked for
more information and clarification about my story. It felt more like an
interview than a straight up submission, and it also lead me to believe that
someone actually cares.

Then, yesterday, I received an email from Courtland mentioning that he would
be posting about his site to HN as a "Show HN" post and asked me to support it
by upvoting.

By this stage, I had totally 'bought in' to the whole deal, and when I woke up
this morning, eagerly sought out the thread to participate and upvote. I was
actually alarmed when I couldn't find the thread. A quick email and response
from Courtland indicated that the thread name had been changed from a 'Show
HN' thread.

I am thinking that it was the personalised contact with the participants, then
the email follow and actual request to support the thread which lead to it
getting the response that it has to date.

~~~
odbol_
aka vote brigading

~~~
cloudjacker
Nothing is organically viral

------
ryandrake
I'd be interested in learning from founders of full-time businesses that
started as side projects, how they made that transition from side project to
full-time.

The amount of time you need to spend on a side project to grow probably
increases faster than revenue. So inevitably there will be some point in time
where your level of effort is much more than what you'd call a side project,
yet your revenue is much less than what you'd call a business. I bet that's a
frustrating point for many, as you can't just quit your job and stop paying
your bills. I'd love to hear creative ways people have gotten past that hump
that don't involve mortgaging the house, selling all your possessions and
depleting your life savings.

~~~
idlewords
I found two useful solutions to this problem:

1\. Work as a contractor, rather than full time. That gives you some
flexibility in how much time to devote to your side project as it grows.

2\. Compete with a Yahoo! property and wait for them to do something stupid.

~~~
Silhouette
_Work as a contractor, rather than full time. That gives you some flexibility
in how much time to devote to your side project as it grows._

My upvote won't be visible to others, so I'm also posting to second the above
explicitly.

Working independently usually means you have more flexibility in both time and
money than you typically get as a regular hours, salaried employee. You can
balance how much contract work you take on against what you need to do for
your side project. There may well still be a point where you have to give up a
relatively large amount of immediate revenue from the (absence of) contract
work in return for much less immediate extra revenue for your side business.
However, if you think the side business will grow in the future based on that
work, you might consider that a worthwhile investment.

Another advantage is that operating independently also usually means you have
a contract to work on one specific project. That contract would normally be
explicit that things like the IP rights transferred to the client are only
those relating to that specific project. In contrast, an employment contract
is usually broader, and shady employers often try to include clauses that
claim IP rights to pretty much anything the employee ever does, out of hours
or otherwise. This is a legal minefield and the effect of those clauses
depends on where you are, but in any case the last thing you need if your side
project starts to become successful is a dispute with a past employer's
lawyers.

------
inputcoffee
This is a very useful contribution.

The only thing I would add is how many man hours the project took over what
period of time.

I have to click on them and sort of guess if that site took 5hr/week for 10
weeks, or if it took 10 people working 10 hour days for 2 years.

Since you already ask for the tech stack, this would also help launch a dozen
"which tech stack is more productive?" studies.

On a final note, I appreciate that you also ask about marketing. Maybe the
marketing efforts and man hours can be summarized too?

~~~
malcolmocean
I'm the founder of Complice, one of the sites featured. It took me a bit under
2 years to reach my "poverty threshold" target, working an estimate of
20h/week on average. To break it down further, it was more like 5-15
hours/week for the first 7 months, then 30-50h/week that summer when I was off
from school, and other similar fluctuations.

These are all total ballpark estimates that I made a couple weeks ago: I've
used various time-tracking systems but none that give accurate overall time
spent. Based on my within-Complice stats though, I can tell you that I've done
2800 tasks towards Complice. That's not very specific, but still kind of a
neat figure.

I don't have a good breakdown between programming and marketing time, but I
would estimate that 80-90% of my time was spent on things more product-
development related. Only 75% of Complice tasks, but the programming tasks are
more likely to have been eg 8h working on a single feature.

~~~
leblancfg
Thanks Malcolm! Discovering your site has been a real eye-opener.

------
malcolmocean
Founder of Complice ([https://complice.co/](https://complice.co/)) here, one
of the sites featured
([https://indiehackers.com/businesses/complice](https://indiehackers.com/businesses/complice)).

I'm game to answer questions that people have that weren't answered in the
interview!

~~~
goodJobWalrus
In the interview, you said that you had 10 paying customers before you even
started coding or had a company. My question is:

How did you get those people paying you, and how much they paid? Since you
have a monthly service, surely they haven't been paying your usual monthly fee
for all that time while you were coding?

~~~
malcolmocean
I reached out to some friends of mine, pitching them something like "I'm
developing a system to help you achieve your goals. It's based on daily
planning and reflection. Paypal me $10 for the first month if you're
interested." The actual conversations were much longer than that, in which I
explained a bunch of the high-level thinking behind it, mentioned that I was
looking for some beta testers, etc. I probably also mentioned that I'd trialed
the basic system myself and informally with another person.

One of the nice things about offering "I'll help you achieve your goals" is
that pretty much anyone wants it if you can actually do it. The latter part is
of course hard. But yeah, because of this I probably asked only 15-20 friends
and got 10 to pay based on that. It also helps that I have friends who are
willing to experiment and who trust me not to just run off with their money.

Part of what also helped, I'm sure, is that I reached out to people I knew
individually and they got to have the sense of being part of this early group
of testers.

I followed the "do things that don't scale" approach. At the start, I didn't
have custom software, but I queued up emails manually using Boomerang, to bug
people each day at the time they specified, to plan their day and reflect.
They replied, and I put their data into a spreadsheet and elsewhere. I spent
about an hour per week for each of those users at the start. I was giving them
value manually/personally, rather than with software.

------
whamlastxmas
If I was personally making thousands a month from a web app I made, I don't
think I'd want to advertise that. Partially because it motivates competition,
and partially because I feel like public information about my income could
later be used against me (no concrete examples other than alimony/child
support). I wonder why these people aren't bothered by this.

~~~
cyberferret
@harmegido is correct. I am one of the founders listed (HR Partner), and
things like this go down as part of 'marketing' for me. I have already had
hundreds of hits on my site this morning from the post in IndieHackers and the
mention here, and a few sign ups, which is great.

I normally hate divulging figures too, but these days I have given myself
permission to do so. I realised that in the past, I was acting from a scarcity
mentality and was afraid that people would steal my ideas and concepts. But of
late, I have realised that this is simply not true.

I am grateful that in my previous posts here on HN and on Reddit, when I have
asked questions about marketing and sales, the most helpful answers have been
from other developers of HR or Time and Attendance apps (Special shout out to
the founders of StaffSquared and Tanda). We dance in the same space, but we
all recognise the difficulties inherent and look out for each other, rather
than steal from each other. In fact, I have actually referred some of my
customers on to these competitors when I have realised that we don't fit their
needs 100% and that someone else's solution will be a better match.

~~~
formula_ninguna
>But of late, I have realised that this is simply not true.

why not?

~~~
wwalser
The theory is that building something and turning it into a company are wildly
divergent things.

Yes, someone could copy your idea and implementation.

But are they going to dedicate themselves to this full time for a year like it
took you before you reached a poverty level income? Are they going to cold
call 10 people per day for three months? Are they going to learn to write,
nurture a following of people and provide content and value to those people in
the hopes that <5% convert to customers? Anyone who starts by copying an idea
probably doesn't have the same drive to make the idea successful.

The actual trouble isn't that transparency invites competition. The trouble is
competition that already exists somehow using the transparency against you.
Numbers, to me, don't seem like the type of thing that an outsider could use
against you. Effective marketing tactics and growth hacks on the other hand
can be gold.

~~~
formula_ninguna
Interesting. What does "The trouble is competition that already exists somehow
using the transparency against you." mean, how does it use the transparency
against me?

~~~
wwalser
Yeah, sure thing: I've seen it happen a few times mostly with companies whose
founders I listen to regularly on podcasts. It's almost always tactical growth
advice, something that every startup struggles to find early on. Where are our
customers hanging out, consuming content, how do we engender trust with them
etc.

Basically a founder says something like "We've recently discovered that paying
a couple of talented designers to re-purpose our blog content as SlideShare
presentations works surprisingly well for."

Companies have tried SlideShare as a means of creating additional distribution
around their content marketing. It works for some and doesn't for others. It's
basically target market dependent. Some markets have bloggers/curators who
will pick up the Slideshare content and embed it on their site. Other target
markets don't attach to that kind of content.

So, this founder shares this (and keep in mind Slideshare is just an example,
it could be any marketing tactic) and the week after his podcast is released
their largest competitor starts publishing content on Slideshare. Maybe their
marketing team just decided to run an experiment? If the same thing happens
three more times? Eventually that founder is going to start doing a cost-
benefit analysis of this particular brand of transparency. He could continue
sharing some stuff, their MRR and ARR seem like fair game to me but he
probably wants to hold back on being specific about growth tactics.

~~~
formula_ninguna
why do they share that advice then? to disinform their competitors?

------
epalmer
So I went to the site in Chrome and tried to back arrow to HN and the site
cleaned out the history queue in Chrome. I stopped there. This is bad form in
opinion.

~~~
csallen
Sorry! It was a bug due to redirecting from / to /businesses. Therefore
clicking the back button would take you to / again, which would automatically
redirect to /businesses. I just fixed it by using replaceState. I hadn't
tested this before, because I just launched the site and therefore hadn't
previously linked to it -- I'd always visited directly.

~~~
epalmer
Thanks for clarifying and fixing.

~~~
wwalser
As a quick tip, I don't think any modern browsers allow a site to wipe out
history from previously visited sites. In this case for example two quick hits
to the back button should have worked.

You can click and hold the back button to move backward more than one history
instance.

------
cyberferret
Hi all, founder of HR Partner ([http://hrpartner.io](http://hrpartner.io)) as
featured on Indie Hackers here. Happy to answer any questions that anyone has.
As we are 'pre revenue', I would also appreciate tips and hints with respect
to marketing and B2B sales from anyone who has been there, done that. :)

~~~
dudeget
what was your first sale like?

~~~
cyberferret
Well, since our beta a few months back, we have had about 180 companies sign
up, but all are under the 10 employee limit, which at the moment is free, so
we haven't actually had anyone pay for a higher tier as yet.

Of that 180 sign ups, about 30 or 40 are quite active and visit the site
often, although it is hard to judge because some only need to revisit the site
once a month or so to update details and respond to reminders etc.

We are looking at scrapping the free 10 employee limit soon, and making
everyone pay (except the early sign ups - we will honour their free tier
pricing indefinitely).

~~~
vatotemking
How did you find your first customers?

------
nodesocket
Founder of Commando.io here ([https://indiehackers.com/businesses/commando-
io](https://indiehackers.com/businesses/commando-io)). Let me know if you have
any questions.

~~~
pc86
Looks like a great service, I'm actually sorry to say I don't have a need for
it. Best of luck growing!

~~~
pc86
Who the hell downvotes this?

------
herbst
That you include actual numbers is awesome. Kudos

~~~
csallen
Thanks! I think hearing these types of stories is a lot more useful and
educational when actual revenue and growth numbers shared.

------
negrit
I'm very confuse with sentence:

    
    
      sideProject.generate(8500, 'dollars').per('month');
    

Those are not side projects

~~~
Arcsech
Well, some of the ones making that kind of money probably started out as side
projects. Obviously once you're making $8.5k/month, you can probably afford to
focus on it full-time.

~~~
derefr
If you're making $8.5k/mo on something _without_ focusing on it full-time, why
would you give it more of your time? Just quit your job and enjoy only having
to do a "side-project" amount of work to live comfortably.

~~~
Trundle
Business is very much a timing/market thing. The money faucet could turn off
any day. If you come across easy money you generally want to see if you can
turn it in to not so easy but still efficient use of time money in exchange
for getting a lot more of it while you can.

~~~
Guest98123
Also, it's a great time to diversify. If you have one successful project, you
can leverage that audience to help get your next project off the ground.

------
timbowhite
Great site, considering sharing some of my projects.

> Learn how developers are writing their own paychecks.

Would love to see a forum dedicated solely to "indie hacking" for developers.
ie. threads related to all the ins-and-outs of independent product
development, idea validation, market research, dealing with customers,
marketing strategies, founder Q&A, etc.

~~~
seibelj
While there are certainly nuances and specifics to marketing independent
software, the truth is that market research, market validation, business
plans, customer service, etc. are skills that are independent and not tightly
coupled with software. Reading entrepreneur / business / marketing books can
be very useful. You can take lessons learned from one business and apply it to
your software business.

But yes, I've been looking for a a place where sharp solo tech entrepreneurs
can talk, and even created a failed slack channel once, but I have yet to find
it.

------
Silhouette
On very rare occasions, there's a post on HN that I wish I could upvote so
much it would pin at the top of the home page until everyone had a chance to
see it. This is one of those rare posts: fascinating, well presented, and I
can see it being practically useful for a lot of people who aren't there yet
as well.

------
mettamage
This is awesome. Soon, I'm going to devour all the stories. How do the
companies get to know your site and share their story before you were on HN?

~~~
csallen
I spent a lot of time scouring "Ask HN" and "Show HN" posts to find people who
were running revenue-generating businesses. I think I compiled a list of over
140 people. I was able to track down about half of their email addresses and
Twitter accounts. From there, I got in contact with everyone I could, and told
them about the site. If they wanted to share and were comfortable revealing
revenue (lots of people weren't), I sent them a Wufoo form I made. Then I
edited their answers into the format you see on the site. There are still 20+
people who were interested in being included but haven't gotten me their info
yet.

EDIT: A few people have submitted their businesses since I posted this Show
HN, too.

~~~
vram22
Good hustling and startuppy stuff :)

~~~
vram22
Of the right kind.

------
johnward
I'd like to be able to subscribe via RSS

~~~
csallen
Added to my to-do list!

~~~
swiftisthebest
Please send an update to email subscribers when this is available. Thanks. :)

------
danr4
It's not every day I'm happy to give out my email. very nice.

------
stockkid
This actually motivates me a lot. Thanks for making this.

UI nitpick: when I navigate to the project's page, the if the project name is
long, it goes out of screen on Nexus 5X + Chrome.

------
gricardo99
Cool project! One forward-looking idea for your site: You could start to
incorporate a community platform where people can post side-project ideas,
skills they're willing to contribute, skills they're looking for, etc..

------
redstripe
I'd like to see an additional question asked: How did you go about designing
the interface of your app?

I'm blown away by how good these and so many "show HN" entries usually look.
Everything I've put online is functional but looks so obviously "designed by a
programmer" that it's embarrassing to mention.

Do people first work on a prototype and then run it by a graphic artist/UI
designer to make it look decent? Where do you find these people?

~~~
malcolmocean
I'm kind of a jack-of-all-trades, so I did all of my own design. I don't know
that I could get hired by a big company to do design work, but I'm good enough
to make my own UIs.

One thing that has helped a lot is doing a lot of "hallway" tests: you watch
someone sign up, then you cringe at how bad your UI is, then you fix it.

(I'm the guy behind
[https://indiehackers.com/businesses/complice](https://indiehackers.com/businesses/complice))

------
imaginology
Nice site, I enjoyed reading it.

I like the effect when transitioning from grid view to list view. Is that just
CSS or is there some Javascript magic doing that?

------
pascalxus
I think this site is Awesome! IndieDevs love to find out what worked and what
didn't. Can I make a suggestion? Perhaps, you can add a section or another
site that lists how any successful businesses got their start, especially with
elaborate insights on distribution as this is the number 1 barrier to entry
for most start ups. Thanks!

------
palerdot
Great work. Please provide an easy way to clear all the filters in one click.
Subscribed and will be eagerly following.

------
Sindrome
Was literally lying in bed sleepless last night thinking about which side
project on my list to start. Was digging through "Ask HN: How do you make
recurring revenue" posts. There's always someone asking in HN. Didn't even
think about researching side projects as a side project.

------
swah
Very motivational that some apps can make those numbers - thank you for making
this! (subscribed!)

------
was_boring
I really like this idea, and even signed up for the mailing list. I've been
scratching my head for years trying to crack income diversification without a
lot of money to begin with. It's good to see some success stories.

------
vatotemking
Very important question but isn't mentioned much is: How do you let other
people know about your business after launch?

------
tummybug
Great site for inspiration. Gave me the same feels reading revenuenumbers.com
(posted here a while ago) did.

------
andretti1977
Great job, subscribed! But here it is a simple question: what is the business
model of indiehackers.com?

~~~
csallen
I have no business model yet! What I'm focusing on right now is how to make
the site as useful as possible, so I can sustain the kind of traffic I've seen
in the past 24 hours that this has been on HN's front page.

~~~
harvestmoon
Find out what tools and services the startups/projects are using. You can then
put a link to those services and get a commission.

:)

~~~
andretti1977
Something like builtwith.com([http://builtwith.com](http://builtwith.com)).

This reminded me of the story of Builtwith, which started without knowing the
commercial potential ([http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-
perhaps-one...](http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps-one-
of-australias-most-profitable-online-companies-and-has-zero-staff/))...i wish
you to reach the same results!

------
ktu100
It would be great if there is a comment section, or private Q&A, to ask
founders questions.

~~~
chrischen
I'm the founder of Instapainting. Feel free to ask questions here!

~~~
commenter789
Techcrunch article you refered to, mentioned Instapainting is YC Backed
company. Quick look at CrunchBase says "The company is backed by Y Combinator
and Start Fund (SV Angel and Yuri Milner)."

I thought the site was about self funded single developers? I am missing
something?

Either way congrats and best wishes.

~~~
csallen
There's no rule on the site against having external funding of some sort. It
really depends on the circumstances. I wouldn't accept a company that has
raised enough money to hire a bunch of people or to spend months building out
a complex product full-time, because most indie hackers can't do that.

Chris, however, was working alone when he started Instapainting. His funding
had dried up and he was in significant debt. And it only took him 2 days to
build and launch his product. So there's a lot there that we can all learn
from, and nothing that none of us could do without relying on personal savings
and a lot of creativity and hustle.

~~~
commenter789
I definitely think it was a good success story.

I am merely asking whether Instapainting was YC Backed company as mentioned in
TC Article as reading TC and looking at CrunchBase gives different picture
from whats mentioned on Indie Hackers.

Hope the question is not out of line.

------
shellerik
Sorted by revenue only seven make more than my Amazon affiliate site. I'm not
sure if that type of site would fit in there but I did develop quite a bit of
code for it. It's not a review site but rather a searchable product catalog.

~~~
csallen
It would definitely fit, and I'm already intrigued just hearing that! You
should submit if you like.

------
NinjaTrappeur
Feature request: it would be nice to be able to communicate with the indie
developer within your website. Maybe though a comment section at the bottom of
the page or a community FAQ.

Anyways, nice website I will come back! Looking forward the rss feed ;)

------
augb
Having the month and year of the "interview" would be helpful. Down-the-road,
it will help give context to the information. A neat idea would be to allow
for follow-up "interviews" later.

------
otto_ortega
Cool idea, I hope to build something one day that I can publish on it.

------
augb
I like that you can filter on solo vs. multiple founders. Very cool.

~~~
chrischen
Interesting that there is only 1 multi-founder project listed.

------
tener
Really good read, the structured Q&A format is great.

------
avipars
Great. I wish there could be charts of the monthly cash rate, also it would be
nice to mention how much maintenance time and cost of servers and such...

------
robotnoises
This is very cool and one of the most handsome designs I've seen in a while.

------
dudeget
wow, very interesting reads. Many of them make me inspired and frustrated at
the same time. Inspired because of how cool the ideas are, frustrated because
"why didn't I think of that?!"

------
one_thawt
Cool. Although the site breaks my back button on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0;
WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.116
Safari/537.36

~~~
csallen
Yep, thanks for pointing that out. I need to fix the redirect from / to
/businesses.

~~~
gjkood
Same here on Safari Version 9.1.2 (11601.7.7). Just adding some data points to
help you fix :). Certainly not meaning to pile on.

I like it and I have subscribed.

Very useful to see practical working examples of options for passive income in
the field. I say passive because I could see myself doing something as a side
business.

------
jackmaney
Nice site, but it hijacked my back button. There's no excuse for that.

------
okket
Evil site, blocks back button.

~~~
metamet
Why do sites do this? To make us hate them?

~~~
Reedx
Yeah, unless it's just a redirect bug.

~~~
csallen
This! Will be fixed shortly.

------
azernik
Could we get a less link-baity title? Something like "Viable Single-Developer
Businesses" or the like?

~~~
tasteup
I think the current title does a better job than the title you suggested.

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azernik
Title when I wrote that didn't day "Indie Hackers". Those were a magical extra
two words ^__^

