I Just Hit $100k/yr On GitHub Sponsors! šŸŽ‰ā¤ļø (How I Did It) | Caleb Porzio

Jun 2020

I have a story to tell.

My last year as a full-time developer (at Tighten[1]) was 2018. (Read ā€œOn Leaving My Day Jobā€[2] for that story)

My income for that year was ~$90k:

90k in income on a W2

Developer salaries vary like crazy, but $90k was pretty solid for me. Combined with my wifeā€™s income and some Mustachianism[3] it was plenty to save up a chunk of cash for a rainy day. (Or for a few months of working un-paid on open source lol - SPOILER ALERT šŸ˜¬)

After needing a change of scenery, I left Tighten on January 11th, 2019 to go on a ā€œsabbaticalā€ (fancy word for ā€œtake a break and do whatever the hell I wantā€œ šŸ˜›) and then start freelancing or something after a couple of months.

4 days into my Sabbatical, I read this post[4] and hastily made a proof of concept for Laravel[5].

Original Livewire tweet

This day marked the abrupt end of my sabbatical. I was completely enamored with the project (now called Livewire[6]) and couldnā€™t stop working on it full-time. (Iā€™ve never stopped. Iā€™m STILL enamored with it full-time.)

(I also created a pretty popular JS framework along the way called AlpineJS[7] that I work on too, but thatā€™s a story for another timeā€¦)

Believe it or not, open-source software doesnā€™t quite pay the bills, so I took on some small code mentorship clients to stay above the water for the entire year of 2019.

Here was my income for 2019 from that freelance work:

$21k in self employed income for 2018

I reduced my salary by ~$70k so I could pursue my passion. It seemed risky, but I knew it would only get harder to make this kind of move in life.

Lots of kind folks reached out to me along the way asking how they could help support the project. Sending me messages like this:

Email from a Livewire user asking to support on Patreon

I avoided creating a Patreon for a long time because I kept picturing a world where a handful of people give me five bucks a month. Which would be nice, but never seemed worth it to me.

Then I saw GitHub Sponsors[8]. šŸ˜

It seemed perfect. Hosted directly on GitHub and new enough that thereā€™s some excitement around it.

I was accepted into GitHub Sponsors on Dec. 12th of 2019.

@faustbrian github user sponsoring at $24/mo on Dec 12th (Thanks for being my first sponsor, Brian! ā¤ļø)

Iā€™ve since received ~$25k in cash from GitHub sponsorsā€¦ (They match the first $5k, and they take a ZERO percent cut. You keep EVERYTHING šŸ™ŒšŸ»ā¤ļø)

A payout statement from GH sponsors showing $25k in payouts

ā€¦and as of this writing, Iā€™ve grown my annual GitHub sponsors revenue to $112,680/yr. šŸŽ‰

A screenshot of github sponsors dashboard showing $112680 in yearly revenue

Wow.

I am now making more money than Iā€™ve ever made while developing open-source software for a community that I adore. Pinch me, Iā€™m dreaming.

Was it luck? thereā€™s certainly been a lot of that.

Was it fate? Letā€™s leave religion out of this mmkay?ā€¦

Was it that the software I built was so incredibly compelling that it forced 535 people to give me at least $14/mo. to keep working on it? ā€¦I wish. Itā€™s more than that though. There were some key things I did along the way to get here. Let me tell you all about them.

Here we go!

Phase 1: Good-Hearted Folks

At first, GitHub Sponsors was a place to send loyal/generous followers that wanted to support the project.

However saintly these people are, there arenā€™t that many of them compared to the number of people actually using the software (and often making money on it).

Because of the nature of open-source, people are already getting the software for free, so without ADDING any value to their lives, this strategy is seriously limiting.

The first section of this income graph is solely from kind folks who just wanted to pitch in.

Huge thank you to all those people.

Now letā€™s talk about that first spike.

Phase 2: Sponsorware

Hereā€™s where things started to get wild.

I had a cool idea for a small little Laravel package.

Sushi Laravel package tweet

While recording an episode of No Plans To Merge[9] with my buddy Daniel[10] on how to monetize it, we cooked up a novel idea called: ā€œSponsorwareā€