I’m starting my journey to the side project’s world or How to start don’t read “how-to” stories.
Hi there! I planned to start writing about one month ago but I always had some excuse or was busy. So, the starting time was moved to one-month later.
But today, I look at the calendar and understand — it was, pure laziness, and there are no other reasons why I didn’t start earlier.
I noticed that I read a lot of articles about running projects, some marketing stuff, finding side project ideas, and other related stuff but I never do anything; always just going to… again and again 😞
When I realized this, I decided to act immediately.
Today, I have decided to throw away all my excuses and publish my first post, raw version or moderated, I don’t care — I need to make my first blog post!
Where I am now
I’m from Ukraine and currently working as a JavaScript full-stack developer.
I have a full-time job and everything is great, but every developer, would like to create something of their own, like some micro-SaaS application or product,
and I’m not an exception 😌
Why I decided to do that
Somehow, I found some articles about how people described their story of running micro-SaaS/SaaS products and services that people love and use every day. Furthermore, the maker is getting some solid income, which keeps them motivated to continue to maintain and improve their product.
That shows anything is possible; just start to do something, even if it’s small steps.
I was inspired by people communities like HackerNews, Reddit, Indie Hackers and partially some of the cool guys Pat Walls, levels.io, Andrey Azimov, Reilly Chase
Thank you, guys! Your experience shows that everything possible, and I was inspired by your stories and how you did it.
JUST DO IT and DO the FIRST STEP!
OKR approach of progress and my goals
I’ll briefly describe OKR. Here is the definition from pedroo.com:
OKR consists of an Objective, which defines a goal to be achieved, and up to 5 Key Results, which measure progress towards the Objective.
If you want more details, just Google it, and you will get a ton of results.
I decided to use that approach because I don’t want to set a lot of goals and only finish part of them. I can increase my focus on getting them done by not setting a huge amount of goals.
My general goal on this is 6 months: 📌
— Increase my developer skills and get $500 MRR from side-projects until 31st Dec 2019
The five Key results of my goal:
- Run 6 MVP projects as a side project or micro-SaaS services 🚀
Accepting criteria:
— Product was uploaded on ProductHunt (Inspired by levels.io approach).
Expected Achievement:
— MVP must be built with tech stack which I haven’t used in the development yet (will increase my dev skills). - Get total $500 MRR from my side projects 💰
Accepting criteria:
— Monthly income report from the payment provider that will be used on the projects.
Expected Achievement:
— Get experience in building a marketing strategy of a product launch, promotion techniques, working with the customer base, delivering support and finding ways to improve the product better. - Write 24 articles about my progress, development tips, and tricks, additional helpful topics about launch side projects, tips, books reviews, which helps with that and other thoughts that could be useful. ✏
Accepting criteria:
— The “Published” tab has 24 articles on the Medium.
Expected Achievement:
— A good place to practice my English skills and increase my own lexicon. - Read 6 books on related topics for making SaaS products/development experience. 📘
Accepting criteria:
— Do a brief review post of the book I’ve read at the end of each month.
Expected Achievement:
— Get new thoughts from the book, learn new lessons from other big makers, increase soft skills in the secondary development topics. - Run 75mi/120 km (12.5 mi/20 km per month). 🏁
Accepting criteria:
— My Runkeeper app has 275 mi. Currently, I have 200 mi of total in my training report.
Expected Achievement:
— Keep my physical fitness in good condition and do a restart for my brain at the end of the day.
Actually, outside already in August and I skipped July… 😞
One achievement that I got in July was just 8.6 mi in running, but any result better than no result and I’m going to move forward and increase results each month for other key results.
That’s why I’m going to write a Report-type article about my progress on the last day of each month, and you can observe my progress and results.
Thank you for reading, if you read till the end or just one paragraph. 👋
Don’t miss the next posts by following me and let’s start creating something cool! 🚀
