Week 51: I'm not a businessman
And like that, 2020 has flown by.
How did the ‘side-hustle’ do?
At the beginning of the year, I stated a goal to achieve $100 in monthly passive income. Not only did I not make a penny, I actually lost money from development fees and web hosting costs. From a financial standpoint, this project was a total failure.
What did I gain from this?
If I get to count non-monetary things, then this project has also made my life better in a few ways.
I learned a technique to stay motivated: I realized that writing publicly really motivated me to stick to the project and help me resist temptation from other ‘shiny object’ ideas. A friend innocently asking about an email update would be enough of a nudge to get me to fix a small bug and keep momentum alive. Publicly writing about my project also got me unsolicited but fully welcome coding assistance from friends!
I found a healthy creative outlet: I think I mentally fared quite well in 2020 and didn’t suffer as much cabin-fever as other friends because I had this project I could turn to whenever it was unsafe to go out (due to disease or bad-air etc.)
I accelerated my career development(?): This project gave me the playground to try out some newer frameworks and tools in the software development ecosystem and form opinions around them. That mini domain expertise helped me stand out at times at work. Though difficult to quantify, I feel like I shaved a few months off the imaginary promotion track just by exhibiting more knowledge (i.e. NuxtJS, API and strapi development, and data modeling experience). If I get to convert that into dollar terms, ‘accelerated promotion’ is positive and significant ROI.
What is my plan for 2021?
Though I do not regard it as a mistake, 2020 was about building the project for myself and what I imagined would be cool. I did not do much idea validation, if at all.
I plan to continue this side project in 2021, but my theme will be to build a tool for others rather than build a toy for myself. Therefore, every letter has to be accompanied by a use case or a prospective ‘user interview’. If I do not, I’m counting on you to call me out.
Stay safe y’all and see you in the next year!