One-person online software businesses





Books

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  • 2018.06.23 - YouTube - TechLead - Passive Income: How I make $40,000/year doing nothing (software engineer edition)
    • He has four main sources of passive income:
      1. Panolapse
      2. HumanPets
      3. Blood Lust (game)
      4. Selling stock photos and videos (especially videos)
    • Panolapse
      • He began the project when there was a big timelapse boom, there were timelapses all over YouTube, and he was into them as well.
      • People wanted to do various effects with the timelapses, especially being able to move where the image was pointing and correcting for changing light.
      • There was an existing software solution but it cost $200 and wasn't as good as what he thought would be possible.  There were also hardware solutions that would move the camera but were very expensive.
      • To create the product he needed to figure out some math for handling the images.
      • He created it with Adobe ActionScript because it was a cross-platform way of creating desktop software, and he didn't want to use Java.
      • He was part of a small online community of timelapse photographers, and he knew he could just announce his software there and get customers that way.
      • Within the first day or two of launching the software he was making $500/day.  (He later says he sells the software for $80.)
      • Over the years he has added features.  One feature he added later was the ability to handle sunrises and sunsets, with their changing lighting conditions.  He also added support for fish-eye timelapses, which took him a month and he isn't sure was worth it in terms of added revenue.
      • He suspects it's easier to charge more for desktop software as opposed to phone apps.
      • He says he still makes about one sale every day.
      • He translated the website into Japanese and it became popular in Japan that way.
    • TODO: Summarize the rest of this.