Every single step I took to get my side project to $1k/month
Published in 2020, this chronicle by @TenJack details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $1k/month.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Pandemic Bubble (2020–2022)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 112 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 23 comments
Great article and was interesting to hear the different steps taken and the associated success and failures. In particular, it seems that the most success of the product could be attributed to the competitor closing.
I wonder how the increased price impacted existing customers, especially when the price doubled at the end of the article? Were users notified of the change with the option to cancel? It seemed that a portion cancelled given the revenue: $750/month at $12 per user vs $1000 at $24 per user.
It would also be interesting to know how many new customers were there after the price change?
Did existing users have to agree to a new ToC when you made the price change or was this automatic, i.e. $24 taken out of their account the next month without their permission? What's the standard practice for this?
This article is great. It’s not sensationalist like other articles of this ilk. It doesn’t have these unmentioned or glossed over factors like having an existing audience like you mention. And it has a level of tactical detail that I think others lack. It’s honest and shows perhaps a more realistic / representative sample of what it’s like to actually be a indiehacker. Thanks for sharing!
"Update 08/10/2020: this was written almost a year ago and I have since quite freelancing to work on my side project full time. As a result it is no longer a “side project,” but all the info here is still relevant!" ----- I think it's worth mentioning that this has since turned into a full-time project (as the article mentions).
I'm in the same boat right now as author was in the start. Like, it's just a free service that I built as a side project that is clearly very useful to _me_ and a few users that absolutely love it, yet alot of people don't see it useful right now. Definitely learnt some lessons from this article.
“I ended up trying out a PR service called Publicize for $500, which essentially has some lower level PR people come up with a pitch and then mass emails a list they have.”
I’ve always gotten these emails and thought of them as spam. Great to hear your experience using one for real