Indie Hacking – building smol businesses on your own terms – is a strange beast to me. From my first experiments back in 2011 where I went from idea to sales in 3 days to nowadays where I have a full-time job but think like a consultant, indie hacking has been near and dear to my heart.
I believe this is the best and worst time to launch something.
The best because consumers are used to paying and they hate big tech. People want your thing and they want to pay you. Not a faceless behemoth that steals their data and turns users into commodities. Blech
And if you're an engineer or product manager, the swan song of easy money in tech is irresistible.
Sometimes it feels like my career is running backwards 😅
Swizec Teller writing a book you’ll wanna read@Swizec
Sometimes I feel like my career is going backwards.
Started as a founder, became a freelancer, focused on indie hacking, now primarily an employee.
But every step lead to more money, less stress, and greater freedom ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But I'll never stop tinkering on the side. Multiple streams of income are a great way to recession proof your career.
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Latest IndieHacking articles from Swizec
How to add Typeform as a Gatsby source
Every year I ask readers if they're enjoying my newsletter. Then fail to use those responses 😅 This year I said heck it and built a /testimonials page that shows everyone's feedback raw from Typeform. Here's how.
January 25th, 2022
What is the goal of engineering?
How can you know you're succeeding if you don't know where you're going?
January 20th, 2022
Different medium, different mindset
Ever wondered what it's like to make a physical book? It ain't as easy as shipping code lemme tell ya 😅
March 19th, 2021
That time serverless melted my credit card
Serverless is pretty cheap. But you *can* get it wrong.
March 12th, 2021
Why serverless fits side-projects perfectly
How do you provision servers for no load most days THEN ALL THE LOAD THIS MINUTE? That's how side-projects work and it's hard
March 10th, 2021
How a $12 AWS bill powers a $50k business
my point is that running server code on the web has become ridiculously cheap *and* easy
March 9th, 2021
5 years of books & courses or how I made $369,000 on the side
5 years ago I moved to America to chase a dream 👉 stop selling time.
July 21st, 2020
It's never been this easy to build a webapp
We live in exciting times my friend. It's never been this easy to build a webapp and make your first $1,000/month.
January 21st, 2020
Most professional engineers can't build an app from scratch
January 20th, 2020
5 crazy ideas that make $1,000/month
January 17th, 2020
"There's a YouTube video for everything"
September 25th, 2019
Building software is a distraction
September 20th, 2019
Hustle, life, and Bernoulli trials
July 2nd, 2019
Build better software with The Theory of Constraints
April 29th, 2019
Q1 2019 in Swizec LLC land #open
April 4th, 2019
Indie startup more profitable than Uber 😛
February 18th, 2019
React for Dataviz Turkey 🦃 sale report for the curious
November 28th, 2018
Oh the things you can learn with a fun weekend hack project 🏗
November 19th, 2018
Why you aren’t drowning in recruiters, too
October 17th, 2018
How I sponsored my own genius visa
September 21st, 2018
The surprising benefit of hiring interns to write your code
July 20th, 2018
Tech intern job
June 9th, 2018
Don't say yes when you're happy
January 17th, 2018
Am I thinking too small?
January 11th, 2018
How I sidehustled $72,167 last year, and what I wanna do next
January 3rd, 2018
My new 5K monitor – LG UltraFine 5K 😱
December 11th, 2017
Teaching backend devs how to React and Redux at StubHub Boston
December 7th, 2017
$2535 November sidehustle report
December 4th, 2017
$16,863 October sidehustle report
November 2nd, 2017
What I learned from teaching StubHub about React and Redux
October 17th, 2017
$9013 September sidehustle report – or why the React + D3v4 launch was not 6 figures or even 5
October 4th, 2017
$2629 August sidehustle report
September 8th, 2017
The story behind React + D3v4
August 22nd, 2017
$3426 July sidehustle report
August 2nd, 2017
How to start a sidehustle
July 20th, 2017
$4093 June sidehustle report
July 3rd, 2017
Initial Results of my Patreon Experiment
June 19th, 2017
First day with a new 2017 MacBook Pro
June 15th, 2017
$2890 May sidehustle report
June 6th, 2017
What happened to React + D3v4?
May 10th, 2017
How I Got Boned by Taxes Two Years in a Row
May 4th, 2017
$2529 April sidehustle report
May 3rd, 2017
$5874 March sidehustle report
April 4th, 2017
Why I don't write more Nightowls type stuff
April 3rd, 2017
A boutique React & D3v4 workshop – and my first vlog
March 28th, 2017
Why People Read my Weekly Emails
March 20th, 2017
This is how I connected my Canon DSLR as a webcam
March 9th, 2017
$3875 February sidehustle report
March 7th, 2017
Nights and Weekends
January 23rd, 2017
What I learned while 6x-ing my income in 4 years
January 9th, 2017
React Indie Bundle flopped. Here's why.
December 9th, 2016
These 19 Words are the Only Self-Help & Business Advice You Need
November 7th, 2016
Why coding is more fun than engineering
October 14th, 2016
I Got Schooled
September 2nd, 2016
After a year, my first business diary retires
August 26th, 2016
The ES6 Cheatsheet story and results
August 17th, 2016
The surprising difficulty of paying the US government
June 23rd, 2016
Things I learned from doing my first workshop
June 9th, 2016
Why I switched to making products
June 3rd, 2016
Does it even make sense to move to San Francisco?
May 13th, 2016
React Indie Bundle report, or how we made $31k in a week
December 18th, 2015
Why offices are where work goes to die
June 25th, 2015
It took me ten months to write a video course
February 5th, 2015
Dear tech companies, this is not how you hire engineers
January 20th, 2015
What I learned about freelancing by getting a haircut
December 18th, 2014
How to royally cock up as a freelancer
May 6th, 2014
Getting lucky with Bitcoin
November 19th, 2013
I published a book with a publisher. Here's what the journey was like.
October 29th, 2013
Lessons learned in a year of freelancing
September 26th, 2013
Age
July 2nd, 2013
Facebook ads: good for likes, bad for sales
June 12th, 2013
How Draft got me to pay for a free product
May 21st, 2013
Numbers that baffle
January 22nd, 2013
I made $730 by selling an unfinished book for 3 days.
November 20th, 2012
Lessons learned after a month of freelancing full time
October 30th, 2012
Do waste many a single moment
June 5th, 2012
Steal my startup idea: Rent-a-mum
May 4th, 2012
An evil business model that works
March 27th, 2012
Selling to girls
March 20th, 2012
Two business things Slovenia needs to change
February 15th, 2012
Why every entrepreneur should take up boxing
February 10th, 2012
Stypi - the perfect blogging tool
January 3rd, 2012
Why programmers work at night
December 15th, 2011
Shuush - perfect tool for all my twitter followers
November 30th, 2011
Why I only work with startups
November 17th, 2011
"Startup rollercoaster" isn't even the half of it
October 25th, 2011
postme.me - idea to sales in 3 days
October 20th, 2011
Spending money online is crazy hard!
September 24th, 2011
Clients need deadlines too
November 10th, 2010
Today was the worst day I've ever had
June 21st, 2010
Student+entrepreneur != hard
March 18th, 2010
Howto convince the iStore you're from the US and circumvent regional copyright restrictions
November 12th, 2009
Of London, Murphy and Seedcamp
September 14th, 2009
From idea to seedcamp application in a week
August 24th, 2009