My indie-making journey begun

At the start of November, I started working on my English-speaking Twitter account. The goal was simple: to grow it. And during that activity, I met 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 projects, turn them into 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 apply all of their knowledge and experience. It sounded too 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 something to say.

Indie makers do a lot of things, not only develop 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. From writing. Furthermore, I lack the skill to write in a foreign language, which is a good reason to gain the skill.

I started the newsletter in the middle of November, right after my meeting with the indie hacker community. Since then, I’ve learned a lot and seen a lot of examples of how people build their projects and do marketing, how they collect customers, and how they create their own audience to spread and sell products. It looks like startups, and that is true, with one exception. People do it from scratch alone.

Becoming an indie maker is interesting to me. Why? Because I already spend my free time building projects and sometimes products. It could be something for fun, or it could be open-source contributions (not just code). I like the idea in general! One piece, which was missed, is a positive income. An 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 birthday.

It was a natural decision, but I have 9-to-5 work and a family with two kids. It appears that I will not be able to keep up with other makers who have quit their jobs to focus solely on their projects. It means that I have to learn how to use the time that I have. The skill that nobody can buy. Let’s see how it goes. The journey has begun.

Subscribe to Ivan’s Weekly Focus and get weekly updates about my indie-making journey and tips, tools, and approaches that help me be more productive.

Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, DEV, Indie Hackers, and Product Hunt.