Why I switched to making products
Hi š you're reading a pretty old post! I started writing on here back in high school and this page may not reflect my current views. Recommend checking out related articles and categories down below, I've likely published more recent thoughts on this topic.
Four weeks ago, I made $3,000 while stuffing my face with my grandmaās cake.
She makes this amazing Slovenian cake called a potica. You canāt really get it outside Slovenia unless you bake it yourself or go to Cleveland.
Grandmas being grandmas, her cake is much better than mine. And Iāve never been to Cleveland.
Now, I donāt visit my grandma very often anymore. Once a year, twice tops. Sure, my mum makes a great cake too, but I donāt visit her any more often than I visit my grandma.
Distance and oceans can do that to a person.
The cake is definitely a big highlight of my trips back. Thereās only so much a 70-year old woman from the rural lands and a 28-year old city slicker have to talk about.
She asks when sheās getting grandkids. I stuff my face with cake. It works.
Visiting gramps and grandma is great, even without the goats and the chickens and the rabbits and most of the cats and even with the old vineyard and most of the orchard gone. Itās great to visit.
I get a day without computers. What bliss. When Iām there, Iām there. Well, I try. Thereās like 1 bar of LTE coverageā¦
And despite enjoying my time away from the internet, I still made $3,000 in a single weekend. The work happened days before when I scheduled two emails, one to start a sale and one to end it.
Wait. What?
Elementary, my dear Watson. ā¦
No? Too much? Too much.
Products, man. Products are great. Just two years ago, I had a pretty stupid opinion about products. A local startup had just announced their sales figures ā $80,000 in a year.
I had a real dickhead moment when I thought: āMan, at that point, why do you even bother with products? You can make that much money solo freelancing, and itās way less risky.ā
I could smell that I was wrong. I could tell that there was something I didnāt understand. I was also pretty sure that a team of 5 or 6 people should be making way more than that.
For the past year, Iāve been putting a lot more energy into products than into freelancing. You could say Iāve stopped freelancing, but thatās a post for another time. One Iāve been busy putting off for a year now.
Funny how those dates coincide, isnāt it?
The focus on products has been going great. Just take a look at the sales graph for my React+d3.js ES6 book.
I know. Itās not much. $8,000 dollars. Itās nowhere near the $80,000 I was so critical of two years ago.
Why even bother, right? 2 to 3 hours of loose focus per day just to make $8,000. What a waste of life. I couldāve freelanced those out and made about $20,000 in the same two months.
Or maybe I could just spend that time with my girlfriend and my bird. Theyād love me for it. They might even stop complaining that I work too much.
Yes, yes. Grandma gets me for a weekend, girlfriend gets to put up with me working nights and weekends. Cāest la vie. ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ
But just look at that big fat spike in the middle. The $3,000 weekend. Like, holy shit, dude. How the hell did I do that?
I couldnāt dream of numbers like that as a freelancer. Thereās just no way I can do that by writing code. Some can, I canāt. Not yet.
To make that much money freelancing on a weekend, youād have to bust your ass or have a sky-high rate. Probably both.
I did neither.
I spent Saturday on a hike of some sort and Sunday stuffing my face with grandmaās cake. With 1 bar of LTE, I couldnāt work even if I had wanted to.
On Friday, an automated email went out to a few thousand people. It said āYo! To celebrate my US visa, books are 50% off this weekendā.
On Sunday, an automated email went out saying "Yo! Weekendās over. Sale ends when I get home from grandmaās houseā.
They were longer and nicer emails, but thatās the gist of it. In a nutshell, thatās how I made $3,000 in a single weekend while stuffing my face with grandmaās cake.
Thatās why Iām switching to products. Itās not quite passive money, but it sure beats selling your time.
Now Iāve just gotta figure out how to sell more products than time. How hard can it be?
Filed under: BusinessProgrammingLearningProduct designSide ProjectSlovenia
