The blog post's title might seem a bit clickbaity, but I got you. You want to find out how I plan to reach $1,000 USD monthly recurring revenue this year, and maybe it will inspire you too.
For probably billions of other people and me, passive income is a dream. A dream that can help you make money while you sleep. Imagine what you can do with all that money.
Pay a new mortgage, invest in stocks, invest in crypto, invest in yourself etc., the possibilities are endless.
Usually, once you reach $1,000 USD monthly recurring revenue, it's a bit easier to grow it to a double or triple amount.
$1,000 USD might not sound like a lot of money for some people, but it isn't easy to make when not exchanging your time for money.
Why this amount and not more or less?
I had lots of entrepreneurial failures, some with a decent amount of success, but I could never make more than a few hundred dollars as a passive income.
This amount is the first step to achieve before dreaming of bigger things.
How do I plan to make $1,000 every month as a passive income?
Before I start to explain, let’s do some simple math exercises.
To make $1,000 USD every month, I need:
|
Customers |
Amount ( USD ) |
Total ( USD ) |
|---|---|---|
|
35 |
29 |
1015 |
|
20 |
50 |
1000 |
|
10 |
100 |
1000 |
|
4 |
250 |
1000 |
|
2 |
500 |
1000 |
Looking at this data, you might tell yourself that selling something for a high price is a no-brainer.
“Do I really want to have all the eggs in one basket?".
Imagine two people every month that pay me $500 each, and one decides to churn. That's a 50% income drop.
Do I have a sellable problem-solution if I can't find 2 or 4 people in a niche of thousands willing to pay me a few hundred dollars for something?
Now that we have an idea about the number of customers I need every month let's discuss ways.
My day-to-day job is as a mobile developer. I make a decent amount of money, I can't complain, but I want to make money without selling my time.
What can I do to achieve my goal?
-
Trade stocks ( Outside of my area of interest )
-
Invest in an offline business
-
Create a course
-
Make a software as a service mobile or web app
I will exclude stocks right from the start because even if fintech is something that I like as a domain, dealing with stocks and trading is not something that I would like to do.
An offline business
This seems like a good idea from all four items, but I’m not sure that it is.
It requires capital upfront.
You cannot create an offline business that can generate $1,000 every month without investing money. For example, you might have costs with equipment or rent or people.
Remember that if I want to make passive income, I need to automate everything, which might require training people.
An offline business sounds complicated, so let’s ignore it for now.
Create a course
I love to help people. Last year, I created a free Android mentorship program for three months where several people applied; four started, but only one finished ( This is a topic for a different story )
While I love to help people, I’m not sure that teaching is a big passion.
I do not see myself recording 10 hours of videos, editing them, and then renewing the topics on the course because it’s hard to make evergreen content on a topic that I have a good understanding of.
I can make maybe written lessons that I can sell, but are courses evergreen?
From what I saw from different people, they usually make a capped amount over the years.
Of course, I’m not saying it’s terrible, because I would like to get 10,000 USD on a course launch day, but this usually requires a big audience. ( Which I plan to also make in the following months )
Who knows, but I do not feel that selling courses can help me achieve my passive income goal. Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman from Stackingthebricks might disagree with me, and who knows, maybe I’ll create a course in the following months.
Make a software as a service app
As a software developer, it’s easier for me to build things.
The hard part comes when I want to sell it. Why? I don’t think I have an explanation. It’s probably the impostor syndrome that hits me, and I feel that my product is not good enough.
Anyway, this year I plan to change this.
I’ll build a few apps and then market as much as possible. Maybe it will take off from the first one, or I’ll fail.
I want to take an existing already successful app, build a similar app with just one feature, launch it, and then market as much as I can.
I have a few ideas in mind, and recently, I started to look into SwiftUi as I’m already familiar with Android. So my next app will be an Android and iOS app.
What do I need to reach my goal?
I need a decent MVP app that:
- Does one thing good. Solves a problem and saves 2 - 3 hours for someone per month.
- Has a median subscription of 29 $. I’ll probably have different pricing tiers, but I set this hypothetically.
- Has 35 paying customers every month.
If I build a mobile app with 10,000 users across Android and iOS, I only need a conversion of around 0.35%, which is probably very low. A standard conversion is around 1-2%.
Conclusion
I might make this sound very easy, but I know it’s not.
I have a goal in my mind and I will do my best to achieve it this year.
I know there are a lot of unknowns, but I will do my best to solve every problem that I find in my way.
What is your goal in 2022?
If you feel that you can learn something from my indie journey, please follow me on Twitter or on my personal website: dragosivanov.com