One year ago, I stopped freelancing to live off my own projects. It was not as easy as expected. This is my retrospective. ℹ️️ This article is a quick translation of “ ” (🇫🇷). Sorry for the grammar mistakes, literal translations, and thank you for your understanding! Développer et vendre ses propres produits: mon retour d’expérience . I have just enough money to survive 3 months without a salary. It’s now time to get back to financial stability. * Mid-September, 2017 For the last 12 months, I’ve been trading 1–2 days per week to earn a teaching salary. Besides that, I was free to do what I wanted! What did I do during that time? What are my results? This is my story. * If you’re curious about accounting: I’ve been living off 2500€/month since last summer. Including a 1000€/month mortgage, and 600€ of taxes. I was earning 1300€/month from my teaching job, and used my savings from previous jobs. 1. Six months to make some income In March 2016, I met a collective of young freelancers and digital nomads called Mangrove. They motivated me to spend more time to develop my own projects. _How 1 year and 4 months of freedom made me more self-aware and confident: a journey in 5 venn diagrams._medium.com From immediate profitability to pleasure, a shift of priorities I had also heard of a website on which several developers were sharing their story of how they made a living by developing their own products: . I was excited! Indie Hackers _Hundreds of interviews with successful founders who share the revenue numbers behind their businesses and explain how…_indiehackers.com Learn from the entrepreneurs behind profitable online businesses I could already see myself coding all day on my own ideas, become my own boss, and earn enough to live an enjoyable life. I couldn’t wait to start! 😋 Summer 2016. I decided to say good bye to my clients, and sail my own boat: ! develop and live off my own ideas So I published my long list of ideas online, to see which of them was most likely to succeed, based on interest feedback. Then of making 100€ per month of revenue before spring, and . I was excited by my ideas, confident of my skills, and determined to succeed! 💪 I committed to the goal adopted a strict productivity routine October 2016. : . A browser extension to track progress more efficiently on my Trello boards. It was a great start: I had convinced 3300 users in 2 months, without too much effort! I launched my first product Next Step for Trello I was getting a lot of positive feedback from users, so I asked them what would make my product really essential. Based on their answers, I launched : improvements two crowdfunding campaigns a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of , with the most requested features; Next Step for Trello v2.0 and a Patreon campaign, for users and friends who were more interested in in return for exclusive rewards related to the development process of my craft. donating In order to boost donations, I streamed several live sessions during which I was developing features and replying to questions, on and . Twitch Youtube Despite the promising feedback users had given me, those two crowdfunding campaigns ended up . 🏜 failing 2. An opportunity for productivity workshops Disappointed by this first failure, I decided to try a different direction. Seeing that I was working efficiently and , several friends were very interested in some productivity advice from me. So I decided to propose a . had been writing a lot about productivity productivity workshop _Every week, I send you free bite-sized tips on how to improve your time management, work and communication skills…_tinyletter.com Adrien's Productivity Tips by Adrien Joly After planning my workshop “ ” for January 2017, we ended up , due to a low number of sign-ups. Improve your productivity: learn how to procrastinate less canceling it Fortunately, I was able to convince one of the registered participants to convert her ticket to 2 hours of personal . coaching => : 100€ earned in February 2017, finally! 🙌 First income That being said, I quickly realised that I was about teaching or coaching about that topic. So I decided to move on to another project. not that motivated Besides, during her presentation in Paris, that, like many developers, I had some for my software. Poornima Vijayashanker made me realise difficulty to ask people to pay At that point, it also became clear that I had a lot to learn about . Especially at the era of information overload we’re living in. marketing 3. Edtech and collaborative projects After accepting that Next Step for Trello was not going to be a financial success, and that I was not motivated enough to teach about productivity, I decided to explore : other possibilities monetise the I had been developing for 1.5 years, to help me cope with grading the code of my students; student evaluation software and with a few talented friends to develop the next products. partner up So I produced and to promote my educational tools, while getting started on two collaborative projects: published several videos “ ”, a task management tool integrated into Google Chrome; New Day and “ ”, an application to enable discussions on customer forms. Clear My teammates and I were also working on other projects during that period, so we decided to spend just one day per week on each project. We also set a 2-months deadline. Two months later, we gave our products for user testing and were . So we decided to quit both projects. disappointed by their results My analysis is that we were lacking and role distribution, especially for critical product decisions. I also think that spending just to cover for the communication overhead. proper leadership one day per week was not enough Simultaneously, I was discovering the art of on my Edtech project, thanks to , , and . I had set a goal of convincing 3 teachers to try my software in their classroom, out of a list of 100 leads I had written down. At the end, I did reach that goal after contacting 67 leads. But no trials happened yet. Wait and see! marketing and client prospection Justin Jackson Sean McCabe Clifford Oravec 4. Taking a step back In April 2017, I understood why we say that entrepreneurs . Starting a business turns heaps of time and energy into failure and self-doubt. But the worst is to be seen as an alien by your family and friends. Most of them did not understand what I was doing, and did not dare to talk to me about it. And, as I was spending most of my time building my business, we did not have much else to talk about… feel lonely _Failing attempts has been fun. Now let’s find the holy market fit!_hackernoon.com Moving on, from side-projects to real products I also understood that I was spreading energy into . I had to focus more. To get rid of some of them. So I made a ( ) for each project, to help me decide wisely. too many projects at the same time SWOT analysis s trengths, w eaknesses, o pportunities, t hreats Last but not least, that I had mistakenly thought I was a “10x developer.” While, really, like one, just to cover my insecurities. My lack of self-confidence and trust towards others. I realised I was acting _This is the story that I’ve been telling myself, and why I made up that lie._medium.com I’m not the 10x developer I thought I was. Extracts: “If I want to craft and ship great products, I need to fight my insecurities and become a better communicator, a better teammate, a better human.” ( ) May 2017 “I need to know what I want, and what I don’t want. And, these days, I’m having trouble figuring this out…” ( ) June 2017 5. Letting go and closure In June 2017, I knew that my savings were almost over, and that my chances of making an income were at their lowest. I knew that I was reaching . the end of this adventure So I decided to follow 3 directives: Leave my projects in a functional and clean state; publish quality content to show what I had done during the 12 months; and invest time on the , rather than the ones that I thought were more likely to monetise. most exciting projects I ended up publishing: an informal report about what I learned during my first 2 years as a teacher; a concise video to demonstrate my student evaluation software, a landing page and mailing list for teachers who are interested in trying it; and I launched a crowdfunding campaign to sustain . The least viable but coolest project to work on. Openwhyd medium.com 🕵 Steady progress and good surprises! Against all odds, ! We raised enough to pay for 4 months of hosting, and it motivated volunteers to contribute to the project! Openwhyd’s crowdfunding campaign was a success In July 2017, I decided to participate in the Atlassian Codegeist contest, by submitting a Power-up for Trello: “ .” I did not win the contest, but Trello did integrate my Power-up. So I take it as a validation of my quality as extension developer. “Next Step for Trello” was also an extension, but it was not integrated into Trello. Feeling ! Comment Editor by AJ accomplished _Over the last 10 days, I was supposed to chill with my family in the south of France. I did. Also, I did not! 🙃_hackernoon.com 🚀 News: Power-up on its way to Trello, and WIP community! On a side note, I opened a community of product developers called “ ,” in order to help and praise developers like me who are developing their own ideas. Work In Progress And, before leaving to the USA, I rediscovered the joy of soldering! Soldering a Velleman kit. So satisfying! 😌 Conclusion I hope that this article will help my family and friends what I’ve been up to since last summer. My intent is also to ease the feelings of other developers who, like me, did not succeed as . ! better understand indie hackers That’s ok I may write a to share a few actionnable tips for those who would like to try becoming an indie hacker too. Please let me know if you’re interested. second article [EDIT] I linked it below: _7 principles I wish I knew before quitting my job, about marketing, productivity, and self-awareness._hackernoon.com What I learned while working as an indie developer for 2 years Can’t wait to read your reactions, and questions, if any!
