Build Your SaaS

Freelancing does seem to be feast or famine. A lot of it is your network and happening to connect with the right person at the right time to get good projects.

For financial freedom in freelancing you need a long run of really good connections and projects. Even then you need to keep that pipeline full/moving.

I think the key is finding a way to sell products/training and/or a SaaS or productized service. You're really only going to be free when you aren't depending on a handful of clients for your lively hood.

So I would spend 80% of your time on client projects and 20% on your own info products, productized service/SaaS.

I'm just starting doing this myself 80/20. It's always a challenge to keep your own products moving forward. So hopefully setting aside 20% to really focus on my own SaaS will allow me to get this launched in 2020.

Here's some inspiration:

DHH Startup School https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/098-adam-wathan-of-refa...

https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/archives

https://saas.transistor.fm/

I know success stories are probably few and far between but this is doable. Having revenue coming in that isn't tied to the hours you work is a game changer.

Right now you have to sell your time for money, but build something that earns you money while you sleep.

Charge for hosting and maintenance, automate something valuable to your clients. Sell info products/courses. Create a SaaS.

Check out Rob Walling's stair step approach, in startupsfortherestofus.com

Good luck in 2020.

I would still choose Rails or Laravel.

When we were building the MVP for Transistor.fm, we chose Rails because it's what my co-founder knew the best.

These old-school web frameworks are mature, and still have a big ecosystem (community, resources, etc). Beyond Rails, we used AWS with Postgres, Redis, nginx/puma, and sidekiq for background jobs.

With any business (especially early stage), you only make progress when stuff gets built, deployed, and into the hands of customers. Remove anything that slows you down (like learning a new stack).

When we were in the MVP stage we recorded this podcast and went into more depth: https://saas.transistor.fm/episodes/nerd-stuff-our-web-app-t...

I do work for an American corporation, but we're not large! Less than 100 people I think. I do care about what happens to you, but I assume you're saying GitHub doesn't. I don't work for GitHub.

I'm working incredibly hard to provide a better life for my family. For my two-year-old twins. Finishing projects is part of that work. It's not easy but I think it's worth it.

If you're curious about my story of working, side-hustling, and spending time with my family here's an hour of me talking about it: https://saas.transistor.fm/episodes/bootstrapping-with-kids.

It's full of nuance that you might be wishing was in the article.