This is the first post on this blog and I would like to explain the reason I am leaving freelancing a going into the indie world. This whole story is for me about the freedom and control what you could have over your life. When I started working as an employee it felt great to have a salary and it was the first moment in my life when I had that option to spend my own money. Before that my parents supported me so everytime I spent on something I needed to rationalize to myself that why I’m buying this and that. This was the first step of going into the direction that could lead me to an absolute freedom and control over how I spend my time. I did work for a startup and then to a more like a normal company. (having revenue and all the boring stuff) I worked there for a while and I learned a ton about how to do proper app development. In that time, I started thinking about this new movement called digital nomadism, which now is probably super bad sounding, thanks to all the drop shipping courses and life coaches who are trying to sell a dream to other people, but this is a different story.
So I read a ton about it and according to my research, I found out that Thailand is the best place to go first. There was no Nomadlist by that time. So I pitched the idea to my boss that how about I go the Thailand and do the same thing as right now, and surprisingly he said “how about no?”, which is something I can understand, to be honest. After a few weeks I still wanted to live this lifestyle, so I resigned and just announced that I’m a freelance iOS developer. I had no clue about how to sell my service or to be honest what is my service. It wasn’t iOS development, it was making more exposure or generate more sales through a mobile app. Luckily I get a few clients almost immediately thanks to my social network. Yeah, that was my marketing plan. I changed my title on LinkedIn and on facebook. I started working as a freelancer and moved to Thailand for 2 months. I had such a good time, even though I was most likely on vacation instead of working. As I remember I worked about 10-15 hours a week, which was easily enough me to support myself financially but not really the best way to build up a bigger business. I did write a blog about it, which I’m not really proud right now, cause you know I was younger and less experienced than now. (I’m not that experienced now either, but you’ll read about this soon) You can find this blog here, but it’s in Hungarian and it was more like writing about my experiences. After two months I had to go back to Hungary because I was still doing my masters as an Electrical Engineer, but I kept doing freelancing so far.
Forgot to place my MacBook and a cocktail to create the biggest cliche ever!
So back to the points about freedom, the next step was starting freelancing, because in this position I was more in control over my financials and my time as well. Nobody told me how and when to work, which was a great improvement from going to the same office all the time. This was enough for me for a while, but later I realized that there isn’t much of a difference between being an employee and doing freelancing. I still have a boss, or better to say, bosses, all of my clients. I kept doing freelancing because that was the most comfortable way for me to earn money while I finished the university. I created a few simple apps in the previous years, which generated me about the same money as what I paid to Apple for the yearly developer account, so it wasn’t the most profitable thing to do, but it made me think that if I could go all in on this, I can earn a decent money doing it, while not having a boss at all. In the last year, I read more and more about this indie world, and I convinced myself that this is the path I want to take and this is how I’m supposed to live my life in the future.
So here I have started this journey at the beginning of the year with the idea that I can live off my savings for a year to try building up a portfolio of apps that could support me in long term. It’s may already so I’m 5 months in and I’m on my way to figure this out. So far I’m not 100% confident about sharing my numbers, but I can say right now I’m earning about $700 a month and my goal could be to reach $2000 per month after taxes at the end of the year, which is a reasonable iOS Developer salary with my experience in Hungary. I know we are earning pennies compared to the US but hey the prices are much lower as well!
This is my professional career in <1000 words! I procrastinated this blog for a while, but I decided that it could keep me accountable with my work so here it is, the first blog post of mine in English. I really hope I do not sound like a child with my English!