Indie-making Journey Begun
At the start of November, I started work on my English-speaking Twitter account. The goal was simple, to grow it. And during that activity, I found some interesting people. One such person was Thomas Sanlis, who created the website What is an Indie Maker? I translated it into Belarusian, as an open-source contribution, which I like to do every time. During that, I discovered, that there is a big community of interesting people — indie makers. They create their projects, make from them products, and sell them. That’s awesome! I thought.
It was impressive to see how many interesting projects people are building. I decided to jump in this boat as well. What got me hooked? People build their projects and make them profitable. And they use all their knowledge and experience that they have. It sounded too very close to my plans for the past 2022 year — to share more of my knowledge and experience. At least, after almost 18 years in software development, I have what to say.
Indie makers do a lot of activities. Not only applications or SaaS solutions. They create content, record videos, lessons, and podcasts, and create courses. Also, they write blogs and newsletters. I decided to start with something similar, but very basic — writing. Furthermore, I lack skill in writing in a foreign language, and it is a good reason to gain the skill.
I started the newsletter in the middle of November. Right after my meeting with the indie hackers community. Since that time I have learned a lot of things and examples. About how people build their projects and do marketing. How they collect customers and create their own audience to spread and sell products. It looks like startups, and it is true. With one exception. People do it from scratch alone.
To be, or even better to say to become an indie maker is interesting to me. Why? Because I already spend my free time building projects and sometimes products. It may be something for fun, other times it is open-source contributions (not only by code). I like the idea in general! One piece, which was missed, is a positive income. And indie making approach is a good way to turn products into a way of generating positive income. It should bring me closer to my main goal. I plan to reach financial independence before my 40th.
It was a natural decision, but I have 9-to-5 work, and I have a family with two kids. Seems, I can not be as fast as other makers, who left their jobs to focus on their projects only. It means that I have to learn how to use the time which I have. The skill that nobody can buy. Let’s see, how it will be going. The journey has begun.
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