Ask HN: Tech people who are self employed. How do you do it?

I've gotten gigs from a Christmas email response, from a reference from an old co-worker. Was fed gigs from a company, special projects for customers, that lasted a couple of years. Recently, eating lunch at my local diner in a college town, a lady comes in, she's been up all night at the maker lab across the street. Chatted, she describes the breath analysis device they're prototyping for grants, just need some software. And what do you do? I make software for small embedded devices. That's been going two years.

So the answer is, all the ways, that's how you get gigs. Try all the ways.

Been there, done that and I don't have an answer. For around 4 years I was a de facto consultant on paper(LLC-equivalent + invoicing) but the truth is, it was just a remote role for a foreign company, nothing to do with building something for myself. In all fairness, I've started building stuff on my own countless times over the years. In fact that dates back to when I was in my early teenage years, meaning over two decades ago. At the time, there was some merit to it but I lacked the knowledge and experience. At this point, software and the functions that are expected from it are not a single-person task. Example: I cannot do UI to save my life. There are also tasks which are incredibly tedious and time consuming, which is a can I keep kicking down the road whenever I get to that part. Hypothetically you could try to look for a partner in crime, which I also have. In my experience, everyone simply loses interest sooner rather than later. You keep pushing hard for another month or two, hoping they'd get into it but ultimately it is I who get's fed up and never brings it up again. If only I could count the times me and one or two other people have started something in which we saw potential and then shove it in the back of a storage unit, only to see an identical product pop up 2 years later and explode. To give you an example: back in 2018 me and two other people started working on an video conferencing tool specifically designed for education with all sorts of wild things integrated into it, from math and literature, all the way to music classes and art. It scaled incredibly well, it was incredibly cheap to run but it was a prototype at this point. Then, just like all other instances I eventually got fed up when I ended up spending countless sleepless nights while having a full time job and did a flip table. And as you can imagine, 2 years later, COVID, everyone go home, classes go online.

Which brings me to a second point - I'm never happy when something I'm working on is completely half-assed - many people are not shy to present a semi-working product and figure out the rest along the way. In fact I've been working in such companies for much of my life. But if I were to do it myself, I'd never be comfortable promoting something, knowing exactly how bad it really is.

In a nutshell - not everyone is made for that and also you need to be at the right place and the right time with the right people. Some people call it luck, I see it just as a function of entropy.

i was in the same boat. loved coding but hated the 9-5 grind and had zero clue how to sell myself or my projects. what worked for me was ditching the idea of building something big from day one. instead i started fixing real small pains for people i knew. friends, family, coworkers.

i made dumb scripts that saved them minutes here and there, built small websites or automations that made their life easier. i never charged much, sometimes free, sometimes a small fee. but the key was getting feedback and iterating until they couldnt live without it.

then i slowly built a network, people started referring me, and jobs came from that. marketing wasnt some magic trick, it was just solving problems people already had and telling them how i do it.

also, find someone who loves marketing, partner with them. keep control over your code but let them handle the biz side.

freelance contract work can be stable and flexible too, dont feel pressured to build a product from scratch right away. grow your skills and network in parallel.

it wont be easy or fast but focus on real value, real people, and trust will follow.

>I have realized that I love building software, and I suck at marketing.

-> it's not marketing you suck at, it's building for someone else that you do

>However, as a techy, I can't seem to build useful things, or things that generate money.

-> build something for someone else, don't think about revenue. Even if you build for 1 person, something will click when you see they're using what you build and only then you will figure it out.

Think of it like this:

-> do you have someone close that calls you when they have a problem where you're the expert in(something computer i'm guessing) - if yes, do the same thing, but build something after you understood their pain, iterate until they cannot live without your solution(big/small whatever it is) - don't let them design their solution - you're the solution designer, you need to understand their pain.

I started out as a freelance marketer, selling WordPress websites to small businesses.

Over time, more and more of my clients began demanding CRM systems and automation.

Eventually, I expanded my technical skill set and studied computer science.

Conclusion:

Learn marketing — not just advertising, but things like positioning, understanding customer needs, and even cold calling. Or: get someone on your team who does understand marketing.

Current market needs (from my perspective) that a tech freelancer can solve and "easily" sell:

Websites for small businesses

CRM systems and automation

AI agents for mid-sized businesses

Working for wages doesn't have to mean 9-5 in an office. Many programmers work remotely with flexible hours. Most places I've worked had flexible hours and in-office requirements even before COVID.

Self-employment can mean selling time and expertise in the form of freelancing. Or it can mean building products you sell. It can lead to a combination of both -- building products and then selling time/expertise to customers. The biggest SAAS companies (think Oracle, Salesforce, etc.) make considerable revenue from services along with licensing their software.

I freelanced for a long time, selling expertise sometimes (not always) measured in time spent. A lot of successful freelancers bill in terms of deliverables, or on regular retainers, rather than charging per hour like a salaried job.

The main value derived from working for an employer, especially early in a career, comes from developing a professional network and accumulating business domain expertise. Building software to sell frequently fails because of poor understanding of the target business domain, which gets wrongly interpreted as a marketing problem. Businesses don't need software or code in the abstract -- they need and pay for solutions to business problems, something that adds value, decreases costs, improved efficiency, yields competitive advantage.

Form a partnership with one or more persons who are capable of doing the marketing.

Split any revenue with marketing but be sure to always retain control over your source code and development.

Switch to contract work or find a job with flexible at home hours.