My challenge to turn into a profitable indie dev in 5 months #turnIndieChallenge

by David Burgos

I'm going to tell you all about my new challenge: to be indie and profitable in 5 months, what's left of the year. From my situation, the reasons, the objective and the plan to achieve it. I will also publish monthly balances in my Twitter. Let's go 👇

My current status

Recently, the company for which I worked remotely for 3 years had to undertake a restructuring and I was one of those who stayed out 💩

These days I also do not see interesting remote job offers. Maybe because it's full summer ☀️

On the other hand, we are expecting our second child to be born in December 🍼 And another handicap is a high risk pregnancy.

If I accept a non-remote job, it would have to be in Madrid and this means traveling daily 🚆

As I have an option, I have decided to stay at home for when my wife or my other 4 yo son need me.

🌈 Something positive? I already have 10 years of experience and 3 of them in remote with what I know everything I can do and manage independently, I have time available and enough savings to live without income until the beginning of 2019

After all this I have decided to create and launch my own products, be an indie developer 👨‍💻

In December, coinciding with the birth and end of the year, I will take stock: ⚖️ I will see what I have created, launched and the respective income and growth, to see if I continue or quit.

🎯 The goal

The goal to 5 months is clear: to be able to pay the bills with my own creations

I feel it as something much bigger and more important: it's being free 🙌 I'm really looking to be free, independent, self-sufficient... that I and my family do not depend on anyone external directly.

And I think the way is what I like to do and I know to do.

Almost always I am thinking about what to create or experimenting with things so now I have free rein for it but considering that they have to be profitable, applying everything I have learned and read these years.

💡The plan

My strategy is based on these points:

  • 💵💰 Monetizable from minute 0. My apps are not going to be totally free nor with free plan. Also having limited resources, I have to focus on the true customers.
  • 💊 No steroids: linked to the previous point, I do not want huge growth in exchange for something free, or dishonest growth hacks, I prefer that it has a price and go growing little by little naturally. Nor do I consider leaving my savings in ads.
  • 🔬 Learning and experimentation: I will launch without fear that nothing will happen. My focus is to build quality things for myself and share with people when launching. I have to learn as much as possible and take each project and launch as an experiment.
  • 🌡build applications that I myself need and that I would really pay for them: in the projects I did in the past they came from ideas like "it would be nice to have it", "I had an idea, I will do it and make billions" , etc. But really, they were not based on real needs, there were no customers behind waiting or people willing to pay anymore.
  • 🚀 launch often: also the projects of the past followed a pattern of a minimum of 6 months of development. Now this is going to change, I have to be able to launch a reduced quality version that fulfills the task, in 1 month. If I dedicate these 5 months to launch a single project, I would bet that I do not get it. But neither are going to be 5 small shits. I do not have established how many I will launch or what.

In the next days I will share the first one 🤟

Please leave a comment with your opinion or experience and follow me at Twitter to see my progress 👋