Going back to a 9-5 job. Why it's the right thing to do.

I know what you’re thinking about, but weren’t you already on the side of a 9-5 job?
Well, not really.

Since I started my journey as a solopreneur, I’ve always been on the side of a 9-5, but not since September 2023. At that time, I was part of a round of layoffs at the startup I was working for.

I didn’t decide to quit my job, the job quit me.

When it happened, I decided to try full-time indie hacking, which had been my dream for the last two years.

I had some uncertainties. I didn’t know how exactly was my runaway. This is due to the taxation system in Italy, which is paid in advance, with down payments on the next year, but I decided to give it a go anyway.

At that time, I had one active SaaS product, Userdesk, generating $1k MRR, $750 revenues net of the costs.

Working full-time on my products

I have to admit that this was amazing on one side, but very stressful, especially when you’re not able to cover all your expenses, and therefore burn your savings.

It’s amazing because it’s the lifestyle I strive for. No meetings, no constraints, do what you love the most: building and marketing your products.

On the other side, not generating enough money puts you in a mental state of constant pressure.

A lesson I learned is that having more time doesn’t automatically translate into efficiently using all that time.

I passed from spending an hour a day, to having a whole day dedicated to me.
I don’t think I wasted time, at all, but you might lose the laser focus you previously had.

Also, spending more time on your products doesn’t mean that your revenues will grow linearly with the amount of time you spend. The reason is simple, the revenues grow according to the amount of traffic you can generate, and the match between your product and the people exposed to it.

And doing marketing means making experiments based on assumptions.

The default outcome of a marketing effort is usually a bad result. So you need to make several experiments, measure the results, improve them, and repeat the process.

But it was in January that I finally studied the Italian taxation system (it’s quite complicated), I analyzed my expenses, and I made all the calculations to estimate my runaway.

Bad news: I had in my bank account the exact amount of the taxes I have to pay in 2024, with €3k of monthly expenses, and €2.5k average revenues generated with Shipped.club (non-recurrent, it’s a one-time purchase product).

I immediately entered into the survivor mode (aka big anxiety, plus finding the solution to exit from that situation).

I had only a few options to improve the situation:

1. finding a well-paid 9-5 job

2. sell Userdesk

3. make more revenues

The third option was very uncertain and not fixable in a short amount of time.

I immediately listed Userdesk on Acquire, to see if I would get any offers, and started contacting my network of software engineers to see if any companies had open job positions.

In short, I sold Userdesk (I completed the assets transfer this week) and I found a 9-5 job (I start next Monday). And I’m completely convinced about this choice, there are no other ways to sustain my expenses.

I’ll return to side hustling, as I did between January 2022 and August 2023.

Is it sad? Maybe. Is it the right thing to do? For sure.

Free tools for marketing

Last week I did a marketing experiment, that involved building.

I already talked about using free tools as a marketing channel. This time I built a very simple Chrome Extension, using Shipped.club as the boilerplate to speed up the development.

It’s a Timezone Checker for Remote Workers.

I’ve worked in a company with people all around the world (India, Europe, USA), and it was quite uncomfortable to understand if a meeting I was creating, was inside the working hours of the whole team.

I built the solution in a couple of days (landing page + Chrome extension) submitted it to the Chrome Web Store and… I launched it on Product Hunt last Friday getting to the third place! 🥉

The response from the community was great, and even people outside of my bubble found it useful. It seems it solves a common problem. I’ll keep listening to the users to see if I can make it even more useful.

So far I had fun, but it didn’t bring huge traffic to the landing page of Shipped.club. But it’s a long-term game, right? I’ll keep you posted on future updates and results.

Revenues update

March was the most performing month for Shipped.club since its launch in December.

If you wonder what caused this spike, the reason is quite simple, a popular YouTuber, Simon Høiberg, mentioned Shipped.club in a video titled 5 SaaS Starters.

That’s all for today.
See you next Sunday with more exciting updates!

Luca

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