In my first year as a full-time indie hacker:

Lost my main income source
Launched 4 times
Managed $30K in revenue
Still lost money

Here's a look at my story, struggles, and financial outcomes building a self-funded business in 2020:

2020 started with two revenue-generating projects:

1. Not a Nomad Blog: My travel blog
2. Affilimate: An affiliate analytics SaaS tool (+ first cohort of travel bloggers as customers)

You can probably guess where this is going...

By March, me AND my customers were all broke.

Customers started asking to pause their subscriptions.

It made sense: an analytics tool is useless when all the numbers are *zero*.

We gave all our customers 3 months free to avoid them churning right away.

We were buying time to figure something out.

At this point, I could barely get out of bed.

No new customers, no income, and I didn't have a "normal job" to fall back on (I'd quit just months earlier).

So I did what any rational person would do:

I ordered a Nintendo Switch and played Animal Crossing for like 200 hours

Eventually, it had to stop.

I started looking for new ways to find customers. But it was WAY HARDER than I expected.

That's when I read an article about side project marketing ( https://stackingthebricks.com/5-rules-content-that-sells/).

And I decided to try something new

My new side project was @bloggingfordevs newsletter (and later, community).

Barely related to my SaaS tool, but with a critical difference: *I had a relevant audience here on Twitter.*

Launch to real revenue STILL took 6 months. But it's made $10K+ in 6 weeks & keeps going.

$10K sounds great, right?

From a no-income couch potato to successful launch, just in time for the New Year

But you have to zoom out for the full picture. Successful launches look great on Twitter, but lack context.

One good launch doesn't make up for a very bad year.

That's the thing:

$10K from "people on the internet" might feel different from $10K from a "real job".

But they both buy *exactly* the same amount of ramen.

After expenses, food, rent, & insurance, I lost money this year. The only reason I can keep trying is having savings.

I hope this kind of transparency gives people a real idea of what happens "behind the curtain".

Bootstrapping is HARD. This year's been a nightmare. But I can be grateful that the most I've lost is money.

So if you've read this far, cheers to you
And to a better 2021!