Programmer Automates Profit With Birthday Reminders

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

What's up, greetings and welcome. It's Chris Guillebeau for Cytosol School, episode 1162. This episode is going out on the 7th of March, 2020, which means that it is 30 days to go until the Money Tree is out. I'm so excited about my new book. I'm gonna be visiting 40 cities.

You can now visit MoneyTreeBook.com to see those tour dates and cities. In most cases, the events are free. We just ask that you buy a book to support the bookstore or venue. It's a chance to meet lots of like-minded people who are all trying to start a hustle or grow a hustle or otherwise do something to invest in themselves and also have an all-new presentation. There might be cupcakes.

A good time will be had by all, et cetera. Once again, MoneyTreeBook.com. All right, in today's story, a software developer celebrates when his automatic birthday greeting software gives him the ultimate present. What is that present? Well, of course it is extra monthly income.

It's also an ideal illustration of working with constraints, which we'll talk about a little bit because sometimes people see their limitations as a weakness. They say, "Oh, I only have X amount of time "to work on my project. "So I am at a disadvantage compared to somebody else." Or maybe there's some other limitation or constraint. But I think in reality, these constraints can be very helpful in giving you focus 'cause there's so many different things you could do. If you have a constraint, you're like, "Okay, well, I can only do one of these things "or I have to fit everything within these parameters." The story is called "Programmer Automates Profit "with Birthday Reminders." [Music]

Back in 2014, Stephen Braverman was fresh out of college and starting a new career as a software developer.

The company he worked for had an interesting culture in that they encouraged failure in all their employees. Their unofficial mantra was, "If you are not failing, "then you are not trying hard enough." Stephen embraced this way of thinking both at work and outside it. He spent much of his extracurricular time working on and improving his skills. He decided the best way to do that was to think of a problem, then apply a new technology in creating a solution for it. He added some self-imposed constraints.

Those were that it had to solve a problem he himself had and he would spend at most two weeks bringing it to life. It was a Sunday afternoon when he first gave birth to the idea of creating an automatic birthday greeting service. This was something he wished existed because he was always forgetting to wish his friends and family a happy birthday. The idea fit both of his criteria. It was a simple project.

He could do it in a short amount of time and it was a problem he had. So he poured himself a cup of coffee, lit the birthday candles and began the exploratory work. It wasn't long before he had reason to celebrate. What he came up with was a lightweight coded script. It worked like this.

When he opened up his web browser and logged into Facebook, it would check and see if any of his friends had birthdays that day. And if so, the script would automatically publish a message to that friend's Facebook wall. Over the next few days, he converted the script to a Google Chrome extension. Those are basically small pieces of software that you can add to your browser. He named the extension birthday buddy and uploaded it to the Chrome store.

To his surprise, people began downloading and using it. And those initial users gave him some helpful feedback. Steven took the feedback and added some requested features. First up was an ability to create multiple birthday messages and randomize between them so that your post didn't look canned. Second was adding reporting so users could see how many messages were sent and to whom.

These features were helpful and the users loved them but Steven's balloon had burst. He didn't touch the extension again for two years. He just got distracted and started doing other stuff, completely checked out of birthday buddies first birthday party. But fast forward to 2017 and a discussion with a friend led him to check his download numbers. He noticed that the extension had matured quite a bit and hit nearly 5,000 users.

This little tool he'd made was growing up. It was growing up so fast. And of course he didn't wanna be an absent parent. So he committed to spending a little more time on it and fix a few bucks. It was during that process that he had a revelation.

The one thing he disliked about birthday buddy was that you had to be logged into Facebook for it to work. If you didn't log in one day, the system wouldn't know who had birthdays and wouldn't send the greetings. This was a big problem. And one Steven thought he could solve with a bit more coding. So he pulled out the keyboard, got to work once more, eventually finding a way to solve that problem.

A user could create an account, link their Facebook profile and then birthday buddy would automatically send greetings even if you weren't logged in. Up until now, the only money Steven had made from the project was via donations. A few of his users had requested bug fixes and offered to send him a few dollars for the help. It made him wonder if this was something more people would pay for. To test it out, he launched the new version as a separate standalone product and built in a subscription layer.

He would charge users $5 per month to have all their birthday greetings sent automatically. By the time he got everything set up, it was approaching the end of 2018. There was no birthday party, no big show. Instead, Steven silently launched birthday buddy to the world. And like the perfect birthday gift, he got exactly what he wanted.

Over the next few weeks, he began receiving paid subscribers. One at first, then a few more and a few more after that. Over the course of the next year, more users signed up. And by the end of 2019, he was making around $1,000 a month in subscription income. This money has earned him enough to more comfortably spend on things he likes, including two new laptops, software, and dining out.

Built on that problem he had and that initial constraint of spending only two weeks on the project, it's a level of success worth celebrating. [Music]

Earlier this week in the classroom episode, we talked about giving people what they want. This is a really easy, simple project, especially for someone who has those kind of coding skills. And for consumers, it is a cheap way to remember your friend's birthdays. Pretty low cost commitment, $5 a month.

Of course you can cancel any time, but if you're actively using that service, you're gonna keep paying for it. And perhaps that will lead to Steven's recurring income increasing. But even if it doesn't, he's still earning $1,000 a month from a simple project built on those constraints. So my encouragement to you is to allow yourself to see constraints and limitations as something that can help you focus as opposed to something that holds you back. Now here is a weird math birthday fun fact, which we close out the episode.

This is also known as the birthday paradox. If you had a group of just 23 people, there is a 50/50 chance of at least two people having the same birthday. And in a group of 75, there is a 99.9% chance of at least two people matching. If you don't believe me, go Google it. It's called the birthday paradox, a weird and wonderful statistic.

75 people, you have a 99%, 99.9% chance of at least two people having the same birthday. And a smaller group, 23 people, 50/50 chance. How is that possible when there are 365 days in the year? I don't know, but perhaps Google will tell you. Thank you so much friends and listeners.

Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/1162. I'll be back tomorrow as we work toward that date, April 7th, book launch. But of course, much more is coming up. It is the year of interaction, new episodes every day.

And I'm so glad to know you're out there. Once again, this is your host, Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.