Mindset Shift & Business Models
Before you learn any tactics, swap out your "operating system." An engineer's default thinking will dig the same holes for you over and over once you're running a business. Then we'll take stock: how many ways are there, really, to turn skill into money on the internet.
From "features" to "jobs": four mindset switches
| Engineer's default thinking | Product/business thinking |
|---|---|
| Is this technically elegant? | Will anyone pay for it? |
| Build out every feature, then ship | Ship the minimum usable thing, then iterate on feedback |
| No users means the product isn't good enough yet | No users usually means nobody knows it exists (a distribution problem) |
| Chase technical "correctness" | Chase getting a specific "job" done for the customer |
The last row is the most important: users never buy your code, they buy "a solved problem" or "the outcome they want". We'll drive this home later with the JTBD framework (users are "hiring" your product to get a job done) — for now, just plant the idea in your head.
Revenue ≠ profit ≠ freedom
Lots of people fixate on "how much per month," but for an indie developer what really matters is the structure:
- Revenue: the total amount users pay you.
- Profit: revenue minus costs (servers, APIs, subscription tools, transaction fees, promotion). The beauty of software is that costs can be a tiny fraction of revenue.
- Time freedom: how many hours a day does this business need from you? Can it be automated? A product doing $5K/month fully on autopilot is often worth more than a $15K/month business that needs you on 24/7 support.
The reason Pieter Levels is a role model isn't just the high revenue — it's that he kept costs under about $200 a month on average and runs everything as one person. Aim for a small business with "high margins + low maintenance," instead of blindly chasing scale.
The main ways to make money on the internet (developer edition)
If you sort them by "how close it is to your skills" and "cash flow characteristics," there are roughly these categories:
1. SaaS / subscription software
Build a tool that solves an ongoing problem, and charge monthly/yearly. The holy grail for indie developers, because the revenue accumulates (MRR, monthly recurring revenue) — this month's customers will most likely still be paying next month, new customers stack on top of old ones, and it compounds.
2. Tools / one-time purchase (incl. desktop apps, plugins)
One-off small tools, browser extensions, desktop apps, Mac apps. No renewal pressure, but every month depends on new customers. Many developers use one as their first product to cut their teeth on, because it's simple and closes the loop fast.
3. Info products / digital products
Ebooks, courses, templates, code boilerplate (starter kits), Notion templates, and so on. Developers are especially well suited to selling boilerplate: package up the project starter code you use all the time (auth, payments, deployment) and sell it to other developers who want to ship fast. The margins are extreme (make it once, sell it infinitely).
4. Affiliate (affiliate marketing) / referral commissions
Drive traffic through content (blogs, comparison sites, tool directories) and earn commissions for recommending other people's products. Often combined with SEO and programmatic SEO. A good fit for people who think "I don't want to build my own product, but I can build a content site that gets traffic."
5. Ads / traffic monetization
Build a free tool site or content site with steady traffic, and monetize through display ads or sponsorships. It only makes sense at fairly large traffic volumes, and it's usually a supplementary income stream.
6. Client work / consulting / freelancing
The fastest way to turn skill into cash: take on work using your existing dev/DevOps skills. Don't look down on it — the cash flow is immediate, and it lets you earn money while getting exposed to real customer pain points (and those pain points are often the niche for your next product). Many indie developers support themselves with client work while incubating products on the side.
7. Product portfolio / stacked income streams
Not a single model, but a strategy: build multiple small products and let the income streams stack on top of each other. The poster child is Marc Lou, who publicly states his 2025 revenue was roughly $1,032,000, coming from about 15 income streams added together rather than a single breakout hit. This is an advanced play; we'll unpack it in the "growth" chapter.
| Model | Difficulty to start | Cash flow | Compounding | Developer-friendliness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client work/consulting | Low | Immediate | Low (selling time) | ★★★★★ |
| One-time tool/plugin | Low–Medium | Fairly fast | Medium | ★★★★★ |
| Info product/boilerplate | Medium | Medium | High | ★★★★☆ |
| SaaS subscription | Medium–High | Slow start, then compounds | Very high | ★★★★☆ |
| Affiliate/content site | Medium | Slow | High (via SEO) | ★★★★☆ |
| Ads/traffic | Medium | Very slow | High | ★★★☆☆ |
What to remember from this chapter
- Users buy "the outcome / the solved problem," not your code.
- Aim for a small, high-margin, low-maintenance business; focus on profit and freedom, not revenue alone.
- The six or seven models each have their own rhythm; the most developer-friendly starting points are client work, tools, and boilerplate.
- The advanced move is stacking multiple small products into an income portfolio (the Marc Lou model).
Once you've picked a rough direction, the next step is the most important one — "finding the right spot": how to discover a niche worth building for.