Hey Young Makers, I’m back!
I had to take a month off due to military service commitments. After serving the military for 35 days, I had to start full-time work straight away. You know – the 8 to 5 grind can be a killer. The first week was the hardest getting used to, but I’m starting to find my pace for side hustling again.
3 Ideas
Idea 1: Lifetime Deals
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I’m a consumer and I’m getting fatigued by subscriptions. I’m not surprised if many of you are as well. Imagine having dozens of subscriptions eating away at your monthly income. Not so pleasant.
Danny figured out people might take to lifetime deals more easily. As he launched new products, he tried Lifetime Deals. He did this first with InspireFrame and he did it again with HeadLime. It was an amazing success with more than $40K in revenue thus far, if I calculated it right.
As a bootstrapped maker, lifetime deals might be a great way to get alternative capital. Use the revenue to pay yourself a salary. Or hire more people to grow your product with you. Or spend it on more aggressive marketing.
I’m already seeing many other products doing this. It’s totally possible to not be VC funded and still succeed.
Idea 2: Re-usable Side Hustles
You’re not going to have all the time in the world. There’s only 24 hours a day and you’re spending more than 1/3 of it sleeping.
It takes time to build a profitable business. Instead of trying to learn many new technologies, pick one (or a good few) and become really good at it.
I’m doubling down on my Ruby on Rails skills. My full-time freelance job is Rails based. My side projects are all built in rails. I can build prototypes in a matter of days or less.
When I learn a new trick on one of the side projects, I can apply them to the others. Re-use your tech across side hustles on one another. I know of many other makers who do the same thing.
Pieter Levels makes $1M yearly as a solo maker. He mostly uses PHP for his stack. Danny Postma makes 5 digits yearly with mainly VueJS and NodeJS, etc. You get the idea.
Idea 3: Monetize Today
Don’t wait, because you’ll keep giving yourself excuses to defer profits. Here’s a few resources to get you started.
Sales Tips for Indie Hackers by Pete Codes
Bootstrapping a Profitable Saas Business by Tyler Tringas
2 Interesting Makers
They say you are the average of your 5 closest friends. Because you learn by osmosis. Through their words, thoughts and actions. By following interesting makers who are climbing their way up, you could learn how they’re doing it. Emulate them. Here’s 2 such people you can follow.
Pete Codes
Pete shares super amazing content. They’re mostly about how he makes products and revenue from them. He’s way ahead of me in his maker journey. Currently, he’s making an average of $2-3K/mo.
Lots of insightful content that I’m personally learning so much from. Highly recommend checking out his blog!
Danny Postma
If the name sounds familiar, that’s because I’ve interviewed Danny before.
On his twitter, Danny shares actionable content that you can easily learn from. Here’s an example of him showing you how to optimize your headlines in a few tweets.
I personally know Danny and every conversation has been illuminating. Highly recommend giving him a follow on Twitter.
1 Surprise or more
Surfacing Under The Radar Makers
I’m ramping up efforts to get interviews with interesting, under-the-radar makers. If we get lucky, we’ll have an interesting interview within the next few weeks!
Know of any interesting makers that isn’t public yet? Let me know, I’ll reach out to them. I’d be grateful if you know them and refer them to me as well 🙏
Get Access to my Brain
I’m in the midst of building a public brain. It’s where I’ll keep extensive notes of anything I read and learn. Especially on bootstrapping and making products.
For all subscribers of Young Makers, you’ll get limited access to my brain when it’s out. Stay tuned – I’m committed to getting it up within the next month or earlier. Hold me accountable!
Sponsor an Issue
Want to reach out to hundreds of young makers? I’m offering 20% off if you sponsor 10 issues. Or sponsor an individual issue here.
This will help me to keep the lights on and provide surprise perks for more readers. I want to help more young makers to get to their first $10K monthly recurring revenue.
