Ever wondered about being your own boss? Then this talk is for you. Good experience, bad experience: I’ve had some of both as a startup founder and freelancer in the 23 years after I left my last salaried job. Let me share them with you. Whether you love your job or hate it, at some time you’ve probably wondered what it would be like to work for your self. Maybe you’re working on a sideproject and wonder how you could make some money from it? Or maybe you have the idea for the next Facebook or Uber? To be a coder in today’s world of work is to have amazing opportunities to design the business life you want. You can work remotely; you can write books, or teach, or consult, with anyone anywhere. You can have a crazy idea on Friday and have it running by Monday. Design your architecture to use cloud computing, so your tiny team can scale up your huge ideas. Or keep it small, and just earn some extra money with a Wordpress plugin, or a training course. It has been 23 years since I last had a ‘real job’ and a regular income. I survived creating and running a company through the madness of the dotcom years. I made money from sideprojects, that I had started just for fun and for learning. I have freelanced without needing to use an agency to find the work. Listen to my stories and learn from my mistakes and successes.

1. 2 3 Y E A R S W I T H O U T A
‘ P R O P E R J O B ’
R A C H E L W I L L M E R

2. T H I S T A L K I S F O R Y O U
I F …

3. Y O U A R E W H A T Y O U P R A C T I C E
So.
What do you want to be?

4. W H O A M I T O
T A L K ?

5. R A C H E L W I L L M E R
Freelance
DevOps
& Full Stack Engineer
Co-Host of Edinburgh’s Turing Festival
Keynote speaker:
DjangoCon Europe,
EuroPython, PyConWeb
Founder of Luzme

7. W H A T C O U L D Y O U D O ?
Back To You…

8. P R O D U C T ?
• Ebook, Course, Online Training, Wordpress Plugin
• One-Off Revenue
• No Support
• Good for side-project or first project

9. S E R V I C E ?
• SAAS
• Recurring Revenue
• Support Costs
• Better when full-time

10. P U B L I S H
• Blog
• YouTube Vlog
• Podcast

11. H O W T O M O N E T I S E
• Sale of book
• Affiliate Commission
• Advertising
• Sponsorship
• Data Analytics

12. S O M E E X A M P L E S

13. Y O U C A N ’ T M A K E
M O N E Y B Y
W R I T I N G A B O O K
No?
Tell that to Sacha Grief &
Tom Coleman
$300k (in 18 months)
Self-published via Gumroad

14. Y O U C A N ’ T S T A R T A
S E R I O U S B U S I N E S S
A S A S O L O
F O U N D E R
• Peldi from Balsamic did.
• Annual profits > $6m
• ($2m two years ago)

15. Y O U C A N ’ T D O
T H I S U N L E S S Y O U
L I V E I N T H E U S A
• Patio11 did it from Japan
• (by the way, he’s
amazing…)
• (and now working at
Stripe)

16. I C A N ’ T D O I T
B E C A U S E …
• Yes. You can.
• Let me introduce you to
Jon Morrow.

17. J O N M O R R O W
• has Spinal Muscular
Atrophy
• cannot move from the
neck down
• runs smartblogger.com,
writes amazingly good
copy, makes a ton of
money, and has a lot of
fun!

18. Y E S Y O U C A N
• OK to START SMALL
• You Don’t LEARN Until You Start To Fail
• Don’t be Afraid to THINK BIG
• Choose B2B and Charge More
• Choose The Customers You Want
• Charge More (Yes Really!)
• and above all…
• START A MAILING LIST

19. Lessons Learned…

20. 4 T H I N G S T O
L E A R N T O
S A Y
•

21. 4 T H I N G S T O
L E A R N T O
S A Y
• I Don’t Know

22. 4 T H I N G S T O
L E A R N T O
S A Y
• I Don’t Know
• I Need Help

23. 4 T H I N G S T O
L E A R N T O
S A Y
• I Don’t Know
• I Need Help
• I Was Wrong

24. 4 T H I N G S T O
L E A R N T O
S A Y
• I Don’t Know
• I Need Help
• I Was Wrong
• I’m Sorry

25. A D D O N E
W O R D - “ Y E T ”
• I Don’t Know … Yet
• I Can’t Do It … Yet

26. Y O U A R E W H A T Y O U P R A C T I C E
So.
What do you want to be?

27. A N Y
Q U E S T I O N S ?
rachel@willmer.org
Twitter: @rwillmer
luzme.com