A transparent look at how I generated $6,212 in revenue from my indie projects in January 2021.

Today is the third anniversary of quitting my job at Google to build my own software business. I posted updates at the end of my first and second years, so it’s time to share my progress.

The year things clicked into place

In my first two years working for myself, I earned less than $10k total. My goal for the third year was to earn $20k in revenue.

Halfway through the year, it looked like I’d fall short. My businesses collectively generated about $300/month, and none of my new ideas were working.

Highlights

• TinyPilot had another record-breaking month, with $15k in revenue.
• I sold $1.1k in pre-orders for my first ever video course.
• My attempt to slow down sales ended up doing the opposite.

Goal grades

At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals:

Release the first version of TinyPilot Pro

• Result: Released a beta version of TinyPilot Pro
• Grade: B

I thought the hard part of releasing TinyPilot Pro would be creating a separate distribution channel for paying customers. The v1 features for Pro seemed easy, but they turned out to be harder than I expected.

I had a mixed reaction to this book. Some of Ibram X. Kendi’s ideas felt novel and compelling. It broadened my perspective in thinking about race. And there’s a lot of historical discussion of race and slavery that covered details I don’t remember from school. At the same time, I felt that many of Kendi’s arguments were flimsy and his facts questionable. He cherry-picked statistics and often misrepresented details or got them outright wrong.

The struggles, failures, and financial realities of bootstrapping an indie software business in 2020.