Turning My Side Hustle Into A Full Time Job

It's been almost six months since I released my weather app Sonuby Weather. It doesn't pay my bills yet. But I am going to change that in 2024.

There are certain points in your life when you have to make decisions even though you have no idea what the end result will be.

This is especially true when it comes to turning a side hustle into a profitable business. At some point you have to ask yourself, "Am I 100% in this or not?" because otherwise it's just not going to happen.

I am at that point right now.

But I’ve made a decision and this is what I'm going to do.

It all started in the fall of 2019.

At the time, I had just left my former employer, Swiss weather forecasting company meteoblue, to work as a freelance software engineer.

I had long struggled with the decision to become a full-time freelancer, as it meant leaving the safe haven of a well-paying job during an already difficult time.

After graduating from university, I had essentially lost my social circle. Due to mental health issues resulting from what some might call a quarter-life crisis, I had temporarily moved back in with my parents.

Long story short, it wasn't the most favorable time to become a full-time freelancer.

But I had a dream.

I wanted to start and run my own business one day.

After many sleepless nights, hours of conversations with friends and family, and countless kilometers of walking to sort out my thoughts, I came to a decision:

I was going to do it. I had nothing to lose.

And it worked.

At the time, the market for freelance software engineers was like a gold mine. Project offers came in every day. It took me two weeks to land my first long-term, and well-paying freelance project. I moved to Berlin to live with my best friend from high school. Times were great.

But I still wanted to build my own product.

In late 2019, I started working on what would soon become my passion project and side hustle, Sonuby Weather.

The idea to create a weather app for professionals had been in my head for a long time. As the former creator and developer of "meteoblue for iOS", one of the most popular weather apps on the App Store, I knew there was a market for advanced forecasting.

I also knew that the data provided by meteoblue was highly valued by professionals. I saw an opportunity. Luckily, meteoblue had already agreed to a collaboration that would allow me to use their forecast data to build my own weather app.

In the beginning, Sonuby was more of a hobby. I spent three (!) months designing the weather icons before I came up with a concept. But I enjoyed the process of working on something I could build the way I wanted. I also liked the challenge of doing everything myself.

Then COVID came along. My family was personally affected, and the general uncertainty in the market caused me to temporarily shift my focus back to making money.

It wasn't until the middle of the year that I really started to devote a significant amount of time, at least one day a week, to developing the first version of Sonuby.

Sonuby quickly became my main focus. I was thinking about it all the time. I loved imagining the final product and building new features. In the summer of 2021 I reached my first milestone: I was able to release the first alpha version of Sonuby. My friend and roommate was the first person to use the app. On our bike trip along the west coast of Sweden, we used it to plan our day. Well, at least sometimes, because it was still quite limited in its functionality.

If you've ever built a product, you know how exciting it is to give it to your first user. You probably also know the feeling when you realize how much work you still have to do to make it a competitive product. I can't count the number of times I've felt like it was all too much to actually finish the product.

But I kept on going. And slowly but surely the number of features grew.

Looking back, I still don't understand how I could keep up my motivation for a project that for a long time didn't have a concept, let alone a specific timeline or set of features.

Yes, you read that right. Even though I had a rough concept in the beginning, I never really followed it. It sounds crazy, but I'm usually more of a "follow your gut" kind of guy. I knew I wanted to make an app for professionals, but I didn't want to decide what it should look like yet. I trusted my gut feeling that I would eventually come to a crossroads that would point me in the right direction.

At some point, I can't remember exactly when, I came up with the idea of branding the app for specific activities by offering weather reports that only provide forecasts relevant to that activity. I knew this was the crossroads I had been waiting for. I felt like I had finally found the missing piece of a huge puzzle.

I decided to implement three weather reports first. One for skydivers (because my sister's boyfriend is a skydiver), one for surfers (because surfing is cool and meteoblue had ocean data), and one for everyday life so that normal users could also use the app.

I now knew my target audience, my competitors and what I needed to offer in order to create an app that people would actually use.

I started working on Sonuby 2-3 days a week.

But it took another 18-24 months to finally release the app.

And there was one main reason for that:

I waited too long to get the product in front of people who would actually use it.

When I invited users in my target groups to participate in the beta program in 2022, I received a lot of feedback that I wanted and needed to implement in order to convince users of Sonuby. The app business is tough and you really have to deliver value to get people to use your app and keep them using it.

Finally, in October 2023, I released Sonuby, which in itself felt like a great success after working on it for such a long time.

Six months after the release, the numbers do look promising. I've got about 600-800 monthly active users, about 80 paying subscribers, some advertising revenue and a loooong list of feature requests.

Of course, I'm not making a living yet, but I'm convinced that I can get to where I want to be: living off my own product.

What I've come to realize, though, is that it's time for me to make a choice. With people actively using my product and the pressure to deliver new features to keep them happy and using the app, I can no longer spend another 20-25 hours a week freelancing.

That's why I've decided to go all in and start working on Sonuby full-time starting in April 2024.

It's been a hard decision.

My head is still going crazy because I am afraid of running out of money and spending time on something that might fail.

But I also know that it's the only way forward, because what if it actually works?

The way I like to look at it now is the same way I've been working on Sonuby for the first two years: I trust my gut that I will eventually come to a crossroads that will point me in the right direction, regardless of the outcome.

I have savings and a small loan from my family that would allow me to cover my expenses for about 6-8 months. For the first two months I'll be fully committed to working on Sonuby and then evaluate if it's worth continuing or looking for a new freelance project.

This blog will be my way of holding myself accountable to my plans, sharing my progress, failures and successes, and hopefully connecting with people who are on a similar path or interested in this venture.

Here's to good decisions and happy endings.

Julian