The State of Bliss: 491 Days In
So it’s been 491 days (or 1 year, 4 months, 5 days) since I left “the job” and starting living “the life” — how’s it going? Well first off, I’m still here. As I’ve said before, this is something to be proud of by itself and as important a sign as any that things are going at lest somewhat well.
To recap, the basic plan at the start of Clickable Bliss was to earn revenue in the beginning exclusively from consulting work, develop products as free time allowed and then transition from consulting work to doing my own projects full time.
So far the result is this: I spent the first ten months earning my income exclusively from consulting and as free time allowed I developed Billable. Development time was longer than I might have originally guessed for the following reasons:
- Not only was I building a new 1.0 product, but I was still learning Cocoa.
- Some of the Cocoa topics were new to me and the community (Core Data) or extremely time consuming to learn and implement (UI, custom views).
- Sometimes “free time” was scarce if not totally unavailable.
- The little things added up. Doing a web store, writing a help book, making a screencast, building a web site, each added significant time to development (but in the end were just as important as the app itself, if not more so).
- Billable was not the first idea I started working on. (oooooh. Mystery.app)
So Billable was released in the end of September 2006. Since its release my revenue has been approximately 60% Software Sales and 40% Consulting. As expected Billable 1.X isn’t enough to support me full-time but things are generally on a track I expected.
Total revenue volume is less than I want it to be. To explain, my basic budget plans are split into categories like:
- What I need to live.
- What I’d like to do.
- What I fantasize about.
Needs include rent, health insurance, and taxes. The likes include things such as conference trips, gadgets from time to time and not feeling guilty about taking time off to vacation. The fantasy things would be buying a house, having a nest egg, being able to work on stuff that had no income but was really enjoyable like open source projects, and of course two chicks at the same time.
As of right now I’m floating between the needs and the likes, but probably more on the needs side. For example, it’s pretty clear I won’t be able to attend WWDC this year (again, as I missed last year too — but at least I have those WWDC videos, oh wait; crap.). Money is tight and WWDC is just too darn expensive (Ticket + Hotel + Airfare = $3500-$4000). Ironically, I used to have my employer send me when I wasn’t doing Cocoa at all and now that I earn part of my living from Cocoa I can’t go. I am still hopeful to attend C4 so not all is lost, but this is an example that I’m not where I want to be yet.
Billable development continued after the 1.0 release to produce a 1.1 in January 2007, which added more polish and a few highly requested features. The 1.1 didn’t get nearly as much blog/Mac web focus as the 1.0 did but still gave a nice little spike in sales.
After Billable 1.1 a series of time consuming events away from the computer and various financial needs had me turn up the consulting dial of my daily life and that’s where I’ve been the last two months. In the process I’ve added a little extra cash to my account (which will soon be swallowed by Uncle Sam’s tax season) and am almost caught up.
What’s next? I have started a 1.2 branch of Billable and have also started to sketch out a 2.0 release but its still at the napkin doodle stage at best. I’m also starting to work on a new project which I know I’ll be using internally and like before I hope to product-ize for others. Still too early to discuss, but it is refreshing to be working on something brand new again.
Well thats it for now. I hope you found this interesting. I’m sure I will a year+ from now when I hope to provide another update (and still be in business). Till then.
Posted on: April 10, 2007 – 1:25 am
21 Comments
As a vicarious observer, I thank you for the update. I’ve toyed with the idea of switching to “the life,” and the possibility is always on my mind.
Congratulations on getting this far. Only those who do get it done! :)
It is encouraging reading things like this. Thanks :)
Thanks — very interesting post. I’m curious what your mystery app is. One difficulty with time tracking software like Billable is the market is already so crowded with good, professional-level apps. I had to select one for my own consulting work recently and ended up going through six or seven. For the record, I was impressed with Billable’s interface but as I recall (this was a couple months ago and my memory may be foggy) a handful of features I needed were missing, for instance start times. Best of luck in the future.
Thanks for posting this. It’s really encouraging to read about the experiences of other indie developers like yourself. Good luck!
Congratulations! Sounds like you are on the right track and doing well. I’m looking forward to reading your 2-year post. :-)
And, like everyone else, very curious about Mystery.app.
My congrats. You’ve made it alone from nothing. You have something to be proud for. I started like several months ago. We’ll see where I go
Congratulations on doing as well as you are, and best of luck with revenue and with Billable 1.2 and 2.0, and your other projects …
Just for the record, you get major bonus points for an Office Space quote. :)
Second the Office Space quote and congrats for living The Life. I’m right there myself, using Billable all the way :-)
Thanks for the update Mike. I’m following a similar path to you (starting in the web dev field and trying to migrate to Cocoa dev), but I’m still at the “working for the man” phase. Since I’ve got the wife, kids and house already, making the jump to the “life” will be much harder for me, as the “needs” portion of the equation will be a larger percentage of the whole pie.
Still, you have a lot to be proud of. Billable is a great ‘lil app that I’m sure will only get better with time. Keep up the great work.
Since it hasn’t already been said, congrats on hitting the daringfireball.net home page!
As an avid user of Billable, I’m happy to hear things are on a steady course. I like knowing there is a game plan. And I appreciate your tact in not playing the vaporware card. This update scores good customer service points in my book. Thanks.
Hi Mike. I came across your blog posting last night: What a pleasant breath of fresh air. I took “the plunge” in September last year and haven’t looked back since - except maybe to reflect on where my life would have been if I’d not chosen “the life”.
You’re bang-on about the needs, likes and fantasies thing too - although a 60” flat screen telly would have to be on my list :-)
I was really happy to read that way things are turning out for you and wish you the very best of luck for the future.
Congratulations on 491 successful days. I would really love to follow in your footsteps - the ultimate fantasy for me is to be an independent Mac Cocoa developer, jetting off to WWDC each year…
One day maybe ?
Hey Mike,
Thanks for the update. Ironically, because of you living “The Life” and the resulting Billable, it now helps me to live “The Life” and manage the part of the business that as a coder, I care the least for. You’re totally doing it, just learn from your mistakes and one day soon, you’ll look back and laugh at the time when you couldn’t afford a few grand to fly down to WWDC. ;-)
Cheers! Jeff Powell
I’m a big fan of Billable. Even though you only have one product out currently, you already had an amazing start with well designed product Billable. I’m looking forward to see what you have to offer in the future.
I would be more than glad to pay for upgrade cost for Billable 2.0 when it comes.
Thanks for sharing your experiences; it sounds like things are going well. Good luck with Billable 2.0. Can’t wait to see the new Mystery app… :-)
Congratulations Mike on being able to live “the life,” which is probably harder to do in the Philly area than in other places.
As others have said, I want to follow in your footsteps. I’d like to be able to do some degree of web app development and some degree of Cocoa development as my interest constantly shifts from one to the other and back.
I’d be interested to hear about your work environment (physical environment) and how you manage the work/life balance.
Thanks for sharing this.
I too left my safe secure job to follow my dreams, always wanted to do something on my own, and well here it is KNOCKS.
And am glad i took the step :)
Good read. July 28, 2007 is my two year business anniversary so I’m only slightly ahead you.
I will be running a part time business soon and will be purchasing Billable. It’s just what I was looking for. I commend you for having the guts to “live the life.” I wish you well!
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