How to monetize your side project for fun & profit
06-05, 15:20–15:50 (Europe/Madrid), Auditorium

Imagine a world where you work on your own terms. Where you are financially independent and have the freedom to work on whatever you want whenever you want to. This used to sound unrealistic, but thanks to the internet and standing on the shoulders of giants it's very much possible for us software developers to run successful, profitable, one person businesses. This talk draws on the past eight years of my life scaling Simple Poll from a humble django-admin startproject to a successful SaaS company and a team of seven. We'll cover several practical tips including how to approach building a side project while working a full time job, marketing & distribution your project, how to pick what to work on, and more.

Structure:
- Describe the ideal end state that we'd like to get to: autonomy, passive income, freedom to work on whatever we'd like, flexibility
- This is now more possible than ever, as engineers we are very well set up to achieve this

  • The Key Lessons Learned from Simple Poll + Practical Tips
  • Making “Build it and they will come” work for you
  • The advantages of selling to businesses
  • Legal things to be aware of
  • Building on top of platforms
  • Distribution is king

  • How we're applying some of the lessons from Simple Poll to building Kolo.

  • Opportunity to make something you want to see in the world

  • Rob walling stair stepping approach to building businesses

  • Finish with

  • Considerations & trade offs – when may you not want to monetize your side project?
  • Conclusion

Video: https://youtu.be/OyPRpK2URd0

Topics –

General Python, Community, Teamwork

 Audience Level –

Intermediate
Wilhelm Klopp

Wil lives in London and builds Simple Poll and Kolo. Recently he started getting into triathlons (including one a few days after Djangocon)