Coding Dreams into Reality: A Path to Passive Income — week 2
Welcome to my running series where I try to make the magic happen by creating passive income out of thin air.
After years in the corporate maze, I chose to diverge from the traditional corporate trajectory. It wasn’t about ascending the corporate ladder anymore; it was about gaining autonomy and flexibility. Leveraging my newly won free time I set out to explore the realm of passive income, seeking avenues to augment my revenue streams.
The goal is not to leave the corporate world, but to be able to choose freely where to spent my time and energy.
Autonomy and freedom — this is what makes it for me.
Harnessing Productivity Tools
Knowing my struggle with consistency I knew, I needed a productivity system.
Let me introduce you to the 12-week year — a system established by Brian P. Moran in his book "The 12 week year". In short, it advices to switch from 12-month annual goal setting to a 12-week timeframe supposedly creating a sense of urgency and accountability. For me, I decided to implement this system with the goal of "Achieve an income stream of 100$". I bought a Notion template and now am at the end of week 2 in my first 12-week year.
My objective is crystal clear: leveraging my coding acumen to carve a niche in the passive income space.
Structured Progression
Structure is paramount, so I divided my 12-week plan into three distinct 4-week-long phases, each finished by a product launch:
- technical setup (weeks 1–4),
- product development (weeks 5–8) ,
- marketing (weeks 9–12).
Reviewing my past week, I got a 85% completion score overall, but sadly the area lacking the most was my daily 30 min of coding. Balancing familial commitments and coding endeavors proved to be a delicate challenge, and still is to this day.
Right now, my focus is on laying the groundwork for my first product, with my first planned release already in two weeks.
My first Product
Looking at the product site of the project, I finally decided to build a ChatGPT-based web application.
Let me tell you how it works: users input their thoughts or ideas into a designated text box on the web page. Behind the scenes, ChatGPT is used to generate polished content for various platforms, like twitter, a flyer or a newsletter. While the current version will feature a text box for input, future enhancements may include the ability to accept entire PDF files and customizable parameters for refining the generated content.
What are your thoughts on this concept? Would you use it?
An Evolution of Ideas
Immersing myself into the world of passive income, my perspective underwent a transformation.
While searching for data product ideas I can build, I had started by consuming articles and videos hoping to recreate people’s success. But with time I began to embrace a more proactive approach. Instead of seeking existing ideas, I have then turned my gaze towards identifying and addressing problems in the world surrounding me.
Recently, I began asking people what their problems are in order to find opportunities for me to provide a solution.
I will try to keep this up, since this seems like a good source for data product ideas to me.
Technological Triumphs
On the technological frontier, it was smooth sailing with solid progress.
With limited to no frontend experience, the learning curve was steep. Yet, my research paid off. The Svelte + Firebase tech stack proved to be easy to work with, making learning enjoyable and enabling fast progress. My venture into web development — a rudimentary todo app hosted online here — is a fully functional PoC, with database integration and hosting on the actual world wide web.
This should enable me to focus on the product side of things in the future, not having to worry about each little technical detail.
Celebrating Progress
As I reflect on the voyage thus far, I feel a sense of achievement and optimism.
The 12-week year has been an actual help in keeping me accountable and keeping my discipline high over the past two weeks. Product ideas start appearing in my head and the tech side is fun as well as time efficient. I was not in very high hopes when I started this journey, but this is slowly changing.
Things are coming together.
