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A journey to freedom from alarm clocks

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

journeyman

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Recently I made it my No 1 priority to achieve financial freedom and as evident from the title, freedom to wake up when I want and live my life on my terms.

Trying to test my business ideas, I have already had a couple of disappointments but I expect a lot more to come, nothing worth gaining ever comes easily.

I am starting a new thread to monitor key stages in my development as I have found this to help a lot with accountability and hopefully get some good advice as well.

My goal is to eventually grow my side-business income (currently 0) to match my current job income (~24K / year).

At this point I am going to quit and focus my effort and use my time in order to really pimp the side businesses and grow my monthly income to my target number.

Major mindset sticking point right now:

I am used to a certain lifestyle, which is not luxurious by any means, but allows me to live comfortably and have peace of mind in things that matter to me.

I keep thinking that I need to downgrade my lifestyle so I can save money to invest in side projects and in order to light a fire under my a$$ that will force me to hustle even more. Needless to say, there is extreme inner resistance making that decision as I truly believe it will make me unhappy for quite some time before I have my breakthrough.

#Project No 1 - Information product

This is my project that I want to be completely divorced from my time after I have set it up properly. Doesn't matter if it makes a lot of money, as long as that money comes in fully automated even when I sleep.

To this end, I have written a short ebook in which I share my hard earned advice to aspiring grad students. I had to really hustle a couple of years back to discover on my own what works and what doesn't, so I truly believe there is great value in my ebook.

So I built a landing page, and drove some traffic to test if there is potential for profit. After only a few days it was apparent that the cost of driving traffic far exceeds any profit that I can make.

Therefore this idea was abandoned. I will have to sell this ebook only with organic traffic, or really low cost promotion.

Potential avenues:
  • Just self publish it on Amazon, drive some traffic initially and do giveaways for reviews hoping that it will catch on. I am not that fond of this way since I will have limited control.
  • Start a blog, write articles consistently and offer a part of the ebook for free in exchange for email signup. After some time I expect to have built a substantial email list. Then I should be able to sell the ebook to the list, or even sell a more premium service or membership if I decide to do so.
Hitting another wall:

Experimenting with e-mail lists and blogging I keep finding that you need to include your personal details.

Since I am not a registered business, I only have my home address to work with.

It could be just mental bullshit but I am just not comfortable handing over my living address to the world wide web. At least not yet.

I am still working on getting around that and reading on the subject.

Things that I learned in the process:
  • Learned how to build a landing page from scratch
  • Had my first attempt at writing sales copy
  • Learned how to use paid advertising and faced the reality of expensive traffic.
  • Got some experience with wordpress and getting your ideas out to the world.

Project #2 will follow in the next post.
 
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journeyman

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#Project No 2 - Drop shipping goods

The idea of buying and selling products has always been appealing to me. Therefore, I am willing to give the whole drop shipping - Shopify business model a shot.

Action taken:
  • Identified aliexpress products that I can validate as profitable
  • Created a shopify store but never got past the free trial
  • Bought test samples from the same sellers so I can evaluate the products first hand

Problem faced: Lacking the money to invest in a shopify account, domains and paid advertising.

It has become apparent that this model requires a capital to begin, albeit small. Capital that I do not posses right now.

To supplement my income and be able to invest more in my new endeavors, I have decided to land some freelancing gigs on the side.

When I reach my target profit, I will stop the freelancing and focus again on the shop. That is until I run out of money and need more, then rinse and repeat the whole process until the store becomes self sustainable.

Things I am good at:
  • Scientific writing.
  • Researching concepts in depth and finding answers
I have created profiles in the major freelancing sites and I will spend quite some time looking at job postings before I decide what I can confidently apply for and as a result what skill I can work on and develop further.
 

journeyman

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Quick update: Things have been super hectic at work recently with some traveling included, I haven't done much freedom work.

What I did achieve was reject my drop-shipping idea as the products that I received as tests from Aliexpress were of such poor quality that I would never try to sell them.

On another note, I managed to make my first 4$ through freelancing. I know, drop in the ocean, but it's a start and I got my first 5 star rating and a happy client.
 

journeyman

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Current progress
For my project No 1. , which is my ebook, I have decided to self publish on Amazon with organic traffic and just get whatever sales I can get. I don't really need this to be my main source of income so even if I make 10$ profit/ month it will be something I didn't have before. I just want to get it out there to be honest since I wrote the damn thing already. In 3 weeks I will have time off work so I will have time to research the editing and publishing process properly, my absolute deadline is to have it up and selling before the end of August.

For the project No 2. I had to backtrack a little bit, watched quite a few informational videos on how to go about choosing dropshipping products and I am currently about 60% in my market research and have shortlisted several products that should be researched further for advertising and audience size. Quite excited with this development.
 
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journeyman

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Project no1 is progressing well, I am hitting all my deadlines and I will have published the book before the end of the month.

Project no2 didn't work as expected, I found a product, created a store and ran facebook ads. I didn't get a single sale.
It's annoying how much time it takes to set it up and all the money invested in subscriptions and ads... I think I might chill off the rest of my dropshipping ideas for a while...

I am also getting gradually more annoyed with being tied down in the same location year round, I crave moving around... I know it will happen eventually but my patience is definitely being tested
 

journeyman

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Quite excited at the moment, I am focusing all my energy on my eBook, I have sent it out for editing, outsourced a nice looking cover and wrote the description and keywords on KDP.
At this rate I could probably get it out in a week, I have decided on a list price of 2.99 $ ( ~18,000 words). At launch I will enroll in the KDP select and do free giveaways hoping to get reviews. After some positive reviews, I have 2 avenues of advertising to move it up the amazon ranking system:
1) Put a banner ad up in a webpage that caters exclusively to my target audience, or even use their e-mail list.
2) I have some Adwords credit leftover, could use that as well.
 

journeyman

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My latest accountability update which is more of a rant of how confused I feel lately.

e-Book
Screwed up my book launch by using the free promotion straight away and also by only asking one friend for a review... Now the book is sitting with one review and I can't do another free promotion for 2 more months. Oh well... You live you learn...

I still had a sale and several pages read through the Kindle lending library program. When I saw the first sale I was really excited, then the excitement wore off, it's funny how adaptable humans are...

Currently looking for ways to promote the book inexpensively since banner ads are going to cost an arm and a leg.

Freelancing
Another thing that I am struggling with is freelancing. For months I have been dipping my toe in it bidding for easy random gigs and just browsing all the niches to find one suitable for me. I am really apprehensive towards just picking one skill and developing it in depth as a freelancer. Why? Because I will still essentially be trading time for money and won't be much different than my current job. On the other hand it will offer location independence, which would let me move somewhere cheaper ( and refresh my motivation ) and also get me out of a daily 2 hour commute...

I am just terrified of the steep learning curve that I will have to go through the first months and especially since all of this would need be done when I come back drained from work...

More projects
I have decided that I don't want to keep toying with dropshipping, at least not the aliexpress-shopify model. Too low barrier for entry, everyone and his mom is creating a shopify store these days... Also I find the poor quality products an annoyance to market. However should I find a great quality product that I would be proud to sell and create a new label, I will revisit the e-commerce idea.

A big reason that I didn't commit to freelancing is that lately I have been getting all kinds of ideas for online businesses.

Literally every other day I will come up with a new website idea. Most of them seem so promising to me that I want to drop everything I am doing and develop them. Then after some research I find that either someone else has done it already, or that there is no market for it, or that it will require a great amount of time and money invested. Then I will get de-motivated and repeat all over.

At least I am narrowing something down, in the sense that instead of developing something new from scratch, I could take a successful model from an english website, and do the same in my small country which is somewhat left behind when it comes to Web 2.0

But then the obvious question is, how am I going to develop successful websites with no development experience ( I don't even have a hosting website account...). Maybe I should focus on learning that first?

/end of rant
Re-reading the Millionaire Fastlane to help me focus and remember the key principles.
 
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journeyman

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Are you willing to link your book? I'd be interested to have a look
Thanks for stopping by Jimyy. My first though was NO haha especially because I have it under a pen name.
After thinking about it I can't think why not though, check it out http://amzn.to/2wSBPfo
 

Jimyy

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I like the look of the book, though I have no experience in that area. Have you though of offering one on one training/ seminars etc for people looking to get in to PHD courses as a help push the book?

Have a crack at learning the basics of web development to see what you are getting into, don't need much for that.
 
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journeyman

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Cheers man, yeah I have thought about it and I am still toying with the idea even though it is not something that particularly excites me.
I am getting into web development asap, I will post an update soon. I am going to work on a couple of wordpress sites to start developing the skill
 

Xeon

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Cheers man, yeah I have thought about it and I am still toying with the idea even though it is not something that particularly excites me.
I am getting into web development asap, I will post an update soon. I am going to work on a couple of wordpress sites to start developing the skill

Just want to understand....you plan on learning web development so that you can work as a freelance web developer?
 

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Re-reading the Millionaire Fastlane to help me focus and remember the key principles.

That will be a good idea seeing as to how some of your posts MJ addresses in his book, such as other people already doing the idea you had or it would take to much time and effort.

Also I didn't read much about marketing in your posts.

I recommend the 1 page marketing plan book.
 
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journeyman

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Just want to understand....you plan on learning web development so that you can work as a freelance web developer?

I am gonna expolore web development just for the sake of learning the skill. Starting by pairing my book with a blog. If I see that this is something I have a good grasp of later on I will freelance it yes.

That will be a good idea seeing as to how some of your posts MJ addresses in his book, such as other people already doing the idea you had or it would take to much time and effort.

Also I didn't read much about marketing in your posts.

I recommend the 1 page marketing plan book.

Thanks Stevie. It might not be apparent from my posts but I have devoted quite some time to learn internet marketing, traffic generation, ads conversion rates etc. The practical application though is definitely limited, as I have only ran a few ad campaigns created landing page etc. Throw in a lack of ideas to market, which leaves only my book to market at this point.

I am quite convinced that the last thing I need right now is another source of marketing information, rather it's the opportunity to learn by application that is next for me.
 

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I recommend the 1 page marketing plan book.

All thanks to your recommendation, I just purchased the book this morning after reading the Amazon reviews on how great it is.
Sounds like it's the marketing equivalent of MJ's books!

I am gonna expolore web development just for the sake of learning the skill. Starting by pairing my book with a blog. If I see that this is something I have a good grasp of later on I will freelance it yes.

Can't say much for this, but I wish you good luck in your endeavors. I was on a very similar path last year as you are right now, but after realizing that freelancing is a path in which I can only lose, I dropped the idea (this was about 10 mths before I discover MJ's books).

Freelancing = The Ultimate Trade-Time-For-Money Job. You also have to deal with accounting while coding and finding clients. I don't quite see how one can win this game in the long run though.

The competition for freelancing (especially websites) is really cut-throat. In terms of offering value, there's almost none (zero, in fact), where we can do what others can't do. And that's not even taking into account those guys from India, Pakistan, Vietnam who can code for a price 3x lower than yours. And take into account those guys from eastern europe whom I've worked with.....those are just insane in terms of speed, quality and price.

To be free from alarm clocks, freelancing is probably a bad option. I had a coder friend who freelanced in the past. He was free from alarm clocks though. How did he achieve that? Well, lack of gigs and clients.
 
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Lex DeVille

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All thanks to your recommendation, I just purchased the book this morning after reading the Amazon reviews on how great it is.
Sounds like it's the marketing equivalent of MJ's books!



Can't say much for this, but I wish you good luck in your endeavors. I was on a very similar path last year as you are right now, but after realizing that freelancing is a path in which I can only lose, I dropped the idea (this was about 10 mths before I discover MJ's books).

Freelancing = The Ultimate Trade-Time-For-Money Job. You also have to deal with accounting while coding and finding clients. I don't quite see how one can win this game in the long run though.

The competition for freelancing (especially websites) is really cut-throat. In terms of offering value, there's almost none (zero, in fact), where we can do what others can't do. And that's not even taking into account those guys from India, Pakistan, Vietnam who can code for a price 3x lower than yours. And take into account those guys from eastern europe whom I've worked with.....those are just insane in terms of speed, quality and price.

To be free from alarm clocks, freelancing is probably a bad option. I had a coder friend who freelanced in the past. He was free from alarm clocks though. How did he achieve that? Well, lack of gigs and clients.

Your friend's and your own inability to create value as freelancers doesn't mean there's zero value to create. That's not a fact. It's a belief..your belief. That's why you're still waking up to alarm clocks, and I wake up when I feel like it (as a freelancer) with zero competition. With any luck, the book will help change that!

Here's some of my beliefs:

1. I can create value anytime, anywhere
2. I can win no matter the odds
3. Nothing is impossible and can't be proven so
4. Helping people is how you get noticed
5. When you're awesome, there is no competition
6. The only limitations are created in the mind

There's a mindset shift you have to make before you win. Freelance, startup, even at your job. If you want proof, click the threads in my signature.

I spend a few hours working on other people's stuff each week and the rest of the time I work on my own. Also I started spending 2 hours a day learning piano because I can because I'm not at work.

OP wants to make $24k/year and replace his income. Freelance is probably the single fastest route to do that. But it only becomes possible once you get the mindset part down.
 

Andy Black

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I love freelancing

I GET PAID by business owners to:
  • Find out what problems they are willing to pay for.
  • Find out how to solve those problems.
  • Find out which of those problems are held by many business owners.
  • Build processes to solve those common problems.
  • Hire other freelancers to help me solve those common problems.
  • Create repeatable processes once we find out what we keep doing repeatedly.
  • Automate repeatable processes where fit.
  • Train other freelancers how to do what I've learned to do technically.
  • Train other freelancers how to sell their services better to business owners.

All while:
  • Building a network of business owners.
  • Improving my technical skills.
  • Improving my sales skills.
  • Improving my business development skills.

Business owners are paying me to build the people, process, and technology that will solve their problems.

I GET PAID TO BUILD MY BUSINESS.

Sweet.
 

journeyman

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I never expected that my thread would see such activity lol.

I really appreciate your input Lex and Andy, I've followed a lot of your posts so thanks for stopping here to comment on freelancing.

Just wanted to clarify that it was never my intention to move full time into freelancing, but rather to use freelancing as a tool to supplement my income that I can use to fuel other business ventures. This is being hindered by my indecisiveness and several different ideas, as you can see in this thread My most promising and fastlane friendly idea seems impossible to implement

I will figure it out though!
 
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journeyman

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What I am currently working on

After lots of resistance I bought a hosting account subscription. It makes sense, all my business ideas revolve around new websites so it is essential.

  • Blog that will serve as an exposure medium for my book.
This will never be any source of major income. But any money that I can make on the side that come completely organically and passively will be welcome. Doesn't require too much work, just throwing an article online every now and then and trying to guest post on other people's blogs.

  • Blog with product reviews and affiliate links
Even though logic keep telling me that this a flawed model that I shouldn't engage in, I just had to find out if this niche can be profitable. My goal is to just make a few extra $ passively that I can use to fuel other business ideas.

  • My actually promising idea, a fastlane-friendly website
After some great suggestions on my other thread, I have thrown up a simple form with the information I need from potential leads in order to validate the idea. I need to work on the landing page a little bit and make it more 2017 because right now it looks like a 1999 era website.



Things that I am battling with

  • Seeing time disappear before my eyes and getting few things done in that period. Not beucase of luck of productivity, but purely due to too many things to be done in too little available time.
  • Fighting the temptation to engage in the easier, see results quickly schemes.
For example, I was lured by dropshipping due to the easiness of everything. Invested quite a bit of my time only to give up later, not because I felt like I couldn't master the model, but because I realized I should never have engaged in that broken model in the first place.

I feel the same thing happening with the affiliate marketing blog, but I guess we'll know soon.
  • Constantly getting new business ideas that are all equally hard and time consuming to execute and therefore are either abandoned or postponed
 

journeyman

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I am excited to have found a pretty good lifestyle adjustment that allows me to sleep less on certain days in order to work on my freedom, while not making me feel more tired or burned out than before. Sweet. I have done more work in this week than the last 3 combined.

What I am working on:

Managed to find out for myself that amazon affiliate reviews are bullshit, at least in the way that I tried. Paid for some traffic, got loads of clicks but not one buy.

I was debating whether to try and get organic traffic or shut the thing down and then it occured to me. You can't grow organic traffic like this, by providing practically no value...

Noone is going to provide links to your site, noone would let you guest-blog for them and no excited customers would like your facebook page.

Therefore from now on I pledge to not contaminate the world wide web with money-hunting, bullshit websites.

Hammers home the fact that other people's warnings are just not enough, I have to experience certain things myself to internalize them.

Fastlane business idea:
I was debating between two ideas, as seen here:
My most promising and fastlane friendly idea seems impossible to implement
and here:
Curating content that has been life-changing
I decided to go with the first one, as I believe there is a real unmet need there. On top of that, I got some amazing advice when I opened this thread and I am putting it into action. I will keep the second idea as a backup, in case this one leads to a dead end.

So, in MJ's terms I am going to be monogamous with my business and focus fully on that.
What I have done so far:
  • Mapped step-by-step the process with the websites that I need to visit in order to extract all the data that I need ( 6 sites in total :S)
  • Created an excel file with an automated formula where after inputing all the data it gives me the answers that I need
  • Uploaded a form on the homepage of my domain, where according to raddevon's amazing suggestion I will ask visitors to submit their information and then I am going to do the process manually and e-mail them back the result.
Next steps

1. Validate the potential of the idea and I will move to the next step only if it proves as promising as I think.
  • I already have the form. I need to make the website a bit more current and appealing because it looks ugly as F*ck. I have downloaded a few wordpress themes, now I am going to watch some video tutorials on making a decent looking front page.
  • Then I will drive 100 clicks using adwords and measure e-mail conversions. I will engage with the leads, to find out if the service was useful and valuable to them. Moreover, this will help me get an idea about ad costs, even though I expect it to be somewhat easy to get a good google ranking, since all the websites that come up after searching are not very relevant.
2.Find out how much it will cost to have someone to make the whole thing automated
  • First I will message the members of the forum that offered to help with estimating costs before moving to freelancers and agencies.
 

journeyman

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Realized I haven't made an accountability post in absolute ages. It's not for lack of growth and work, the opposite actually, I have been very busy. Here we go then:

Distraction #1
I have been sidetracking for a while. First I gave freelance blog article writing a chance. Didn't get much traction and realized that this is not something that I enjoy or something that will help me in any of my goals. Gave up too easily? Possibly... Hard to persevere with something that doesn't inspire you though.

Distraction #2
The other distraction has been cryptocurrency investing and a little bit of trading. I just want to grow my savings enough so that I can use all my work income to supplement my Fastlane business idea, while also having a decent amount of money I can rely on in case of an emergency. I am very close to reaching this and now it requires only minimum time investment.

The road ahead
So, for my Fastlane business idea. As I have mentioned before, it's a website that will cover an unfilled need. It is still a massive pain in the a$$ to find sources to retrieve the data that I need and I still have a lot of work to do on that.

In the meantime, I have decided that since I don't have a lot of money to spend on developers, it would be awesome if I learned how to code websites. This way I hit two birds with one stone because I will learn a valuable skill that I can freelance if I have to and I will have 100% control over my website's development.

To this end, I purchased a web development Udemy course for 11$. I thought, worse case scenario, I would just learn enough things so that I can more effectively communicate with developers I'd hire in the future...

And oh my god... Talk about money well spent... Just an explosion of value for the price of a couple coffees.

I can't remember the last time I enjoyed learning and practicing something as much as I am enjoying web development right now. I have always been fond of coding, so I feel web development suits me to a T, as opposed to F*cking blog article writing...

Just after a few hours of video and practice, I can already make changes in my Wordpress websites that took me ages of googling before. I have finished the front-end, HTML, CSS and bootstrap part and now I am jumping to javascript and later on interacting with databases.

Sweet. I haven't felt so focused in some time.
 
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journeyman

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I am currently actively coding my website. It's insane the level of knowledge you can purchase on Udemy for a few bucks... I am very happy that I went with the bootstrapping option instead of outsourcing the development. Worst case scenario, I will have added web development to my skillset.

The plan is to launch an imperfect MVP and take some user feedback before proceeding with more polished versions.

Coding is really exciting for me and I find myself forgetting about time, just typing for hours. My current struggle is that this has taken time away from social life & relationships. But it's OK, I will sort it out eventually.
 

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I am currently actively coding my website. It's insane the level of knowledge you can purchase on Udemy for a few bucks... I am very happy that I went with the bootstrapping option instead of outsourcing the development. Worst case scenario, I will have added web development to my skillset.

The plan is to launch an imperfect MVP and take some user feedback before proceeding with more polished versions.

Coding is really exciting for me and I find myself forgetting about time, just typing for hours. My current struggle is that this has taken time away from social life & relationships. But it's OK, I will sort it out eventually.

Sounds like you are on fire! Keep going! What course did you take through udemy?


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journeyman

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Sounds like you are on fire! Keep going! What course did you take through udemy?


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Thanks!

Check it out here . To be fair there are so many free resources out there that you could definitely study the same for free. It's just convenient to have it organized as a course, especially when it's so cheap.
 
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cwalto12

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Thanks!

Check it out here . To be fair there are so many free resources out there that you could definitely study the same for free. It's just convenient to have it organized as a course, especially when it's so cheap.
42.5 hours of video on coding sounds extremely intimidating and overwhelming to me haha
 

MJ DeMarco

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I am currently actively coding my website. It's insane the level of knowledge you can purchase on Udemy for a few bucks... I am very happy that I went with the bootstrapping option instead of outsourcing the development. Worst case scenario, I will have added web development to my skillset.

The plan is to launch an imperfect MVP and take some user feedback before proceeding with more polished versions.

Coding is really exciting for me and I find myself forgetting about time, just typing for hours.

That's how I felt as well when I was deep into code...

I felt it was creative for me, as well as providing me with a level of control with my software demands. Case in point: There's a ton of stuff I'd like to do here at the forum but I am handcuffed by the software. The only way to break that was to keep up with my coding skill. (Which I haven't.)
 

journeyman

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That's how I felt as well when I was deep into code...

I felt it was creative for me, as well as providing me with a level of control with my software demands. Case in point: There's a ton of stuff I'd like to do here at the forum but I am handcuffed by the software. The only way to break that was to keep up with my coding skill. (Which I haven't.)

Thank you for taking the time to write in my thread MJ. I appreciate it.

I think there is definitely something about certain personalities that resonates with coding, which is essentially a way of staying in and solving problems alone . I know that some of my friends, even though they studied computer science, they absolutely hated it due to the isolation and lack of human interaction. In fact this is a current struggle of mine, that if I don't spend time dating and having some social interaction, it will make me less happy and soon less motivated. Would be super interesting to hear how you have maintained a balance with this, since I assumed from your books that you were developing all the time, pushing everything else to the side.

In terms of control, I always try to keep in mind to maintain control as much as possible (or have a backup plan to relinguish control at a moment's notice if needed). It's interesting what you say about the forum, I would have thought that a pre-made forum library/platform would be fully customizable with add-on code or plugins.
 
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drgregw

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Thanks!

Check it out here . To be fair there are so many free resources out there that you could definitely study the same for free. It's just convenient to have it organized as a course, especially when it's so cheap.

Too many free resources, it’s like going down the rabbit hole. So for a newbie this organization and guidance is very valuable.


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journeyman

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Finally, after months of learning & coding, a bootstrapped, basic version of my web app is now live. Rewarding moment to have something tangible.

I should note that I have been sidetracked and delayed because I undertook an unpaid coding project at a startup in order to hone my newly acquired skills. It's been great, I have learned a ton and I will have the opportunity to establish a paid, freelancer relationship with them soon.

The servers and data access through an API will cost me ~100$ per month. Given that the service will be free until I acquire traffic I will have to suffer an unforeseen amount of time with just money feeding the idea but no revenue. Oh well, it could be worse, at least I can afford that much.

Now to the next steps:
Get traffic, get user's feedback and start coding the improvements. Find a designer to re-do the homepage and graphics because it could certainly be better presented.
 

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