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So You Want To Earn Money With Open Source

So You Want To Earn Money With Open Source

I earned 0 Euros from maintaining OSS software for years, and I thought that's
the way things are. I finally looked into ways to monetize my projects this year
and In this talk I want to share what I learned along the way. It didn't make
rich (yet!), but I built my first sustainable side-project with
analysis-tools.dev.

I'll talk about this and other projects and the mistakes I made on the road
towards sustainability.

Full transcript on my blog.

Matthias Endler

January 04, 2021
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Transcript

  1. money
    So you want to earn
    with open source...

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  3. It's hard
    really hard
    tl;dr:

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  4. Open Source since 2010
    trivago
    Blog: endler.dev
    YouTube: hello-rust.show
    Matthias Endler

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  5. OSS Revenue Models
    My Open Source Journey
    Outline

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  6. Go for it!

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  8. 2010 2020

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  9. Number of Repositories

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  10. Stars

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  11. 0
    225
    450
    675
    900
    2013 2016 2020
    Followers

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  12. visualizevalue.com

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  14. Money earned: $0

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  16. It's hard
    really hard
    tl;dr:

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  17. •1. Sponsoring
    •2. Paid Learning Materials
    •3. Merchandise
    •4. Consulting
    •5. Enterprise services / plugins

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  18. •Individual Donations

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  19. Product Interest Audience

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  20. Product Interest Audience

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  21. Product Interest Audience
    Build Stars Followers Sponsors

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  22. 25k 1k 3
    100% 4% 0.01%
    Build Stars Followers Sponsors

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  23. Followers Sponsors
    1000 3 0.3%
    Percent
    3421
    Me
    Top Github (Median) 0 0%
    5430
    Top Github (Avg) 2.8 0.5%

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  24. View Slide

  25. •Sponsorware

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  26. Make public
    Sponsors
    threshold

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  27. github.com/mre-early-access

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  28. •Corporate sponsors

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  29. Revenue in 2019: 70 billion US dollars Revenue in 2019: 160 billion US dollars

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  30. Gudim Anton

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  31. https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2014/05/07/the-truth-behind-open-source-apps/

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  32. https://kenreitz.org/essays/the-reality-of-developer-burnout
    http://antirez.com/news/129

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  33. http://antirez.com/news/129

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  35. https://github.com/analysis-tools-dev/static-analysis

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  37. Jakub

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  40. Sponsors

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  42. https://github.com/sponsors/analysis-tools-dev
    Exposure Content creation

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  43. Start here
    •1. Sponsoring
    •2. Paid Learning Materials
    •3. Merchandise
    •4. Consulting
    •5. Enterprise services / plugins

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  44. It's hard
    really hard
    tl;dr:

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  45. Tips!

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  46. learning
    building
    marketing

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  47. •1. Have fun
    •2. Build things you love
    •3. Find friendly people
    •4. Grow an audience
    •5. Be in it for the long run

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  48. Home icon by Edward Boatman from the Noun Project Work icon by Weltenraser from the Noun Project
    youtube icon by shwepes from the Noun Project
    Thanks!
    github.com/mre
    @matthiasendler

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