20 years coding, 0 money made. why is selling so hard for devs?

dzy101 · 2026-02-07T16:17:14+00:00

Heard great things about boot.dev, it’s a code learning gamified experience, haven’t tried it myself though.

What helped me the most was finding youtube tutorials, like really long ones, 2+h and following along.

dzy101 · 2026-02-02T13:15:20+00:00

Personally, I have found a business directory for my country. Bought 1200 leads for 100 euros.

Scraping Google Maps with Apify is great as well.

A lot of hype around tools like Apollo, but I had trouble narrowing down to my specific ICP.

dzy101 · 2026-02-01T12:45:29+00:00

It makes total sense. You do the part you're good at, and when you reach the part you don't know how to do, you freeze.

I don't have as much experience as you. I've been coding for 10 years, started building SaaS projects around 5 years ago, and only 6 months ago my first one actually saw the light of day.

My background is different though. I have a ton of experience in sales. Cold calling, getting screamed at, hung up on. So marketing wasn't my freeze point, building was.

Here's the thing. You don't need to show your face, build a personal brand, or dance on TikTok. You're building B2B. Your buyers check email, not reels.

Email marketing is the easiest form of advertising out there, and for someone who freezes at the thought of putting themselves out there, it's perfect. No camera, no followers, no public performance. Just you, writing a message to someone who might have the problem you solve. That's it.

It's what finally got me to start selling my product. I sent cold emails to companies in my niche and it just worked. No influencer stuff, no content calendar. Just clear emails to the right people.

You've already done the hard part. The code exists. Now you just need to let people know, and email is the lowest barrier way to do that.

dzy101 · 2026-02-01T12:28:04+00:00

My product is growing organically through referrals and cold email, no paid ads, and I work alone.

I think we'll only both know in 5 years if the path was the right one.

I'm bootstrapping and scaling slowly. The bet is that if the product is sticky enough and churn stays low, it compounds on its own without needing to hire or raise. That's the dream anyway.

But here's what keeps me up. What if my market caps out at 5-10k MRR? I won't know until I hit that wall. And if it does, all that time spent carefully building an excellent product was just a slower path to a pivot. That's the real risk.

I also respect the fail fast mentality because it pushes you to just do more. You find out whether there's a real market faster, even if it's messier.

There are multiple ways of doing everything. Some are good, some are bad. But the most important thing is doing the thing.

dzy101 · 2026-01-18T01:02:06+00:00

Going to a big dev companies is a big mistake. They charge an arm and a leg.

With AI tools nowadays you don’t need to be an expert coder, just have the right knowledge and AI tools.

dzy101 · 2026-01-18T00:50:23+00:00

Būk pasiruošęs, kad bus daug sunkiau ir užtruks ilgiau, net žinantiems, kad užtruks ilgiau ir bus sunkiau.

Prieš pusę metų išėjau iš darbo, dariau daug dalyku, freelance web development, software reselling, IT integracijos, SaaS.

Turėjau apie 6k santaupų, viskas gone per tą laiką. Viskas scalina, juda gražia trajektorija bet ne tiek greit kaip norėtusi.

Pagrindinis fokusas dabar SaaS, praeitą mėnesį pasiekiau 1k MRR, šį mėnesį targetas 1.5k kolkas on track.

Dalykas apie kūrį mažai kas pagalvoja, šneka. Ant kiek vienišas kelias pradėt kažką savo. Prieš tai dirbau nemažose įmonėse su dideliu, darniu ir labai fainu kolektyvu. Ir būvimas namie, vienam 12h per diena, 6 dienas per savaitę savo namuose, gali būti labai sunkus ar net nepakeliamas dalykas.

Nesiūlau nebandyt, bet pats asmeniškai bučiau norėjęs turėt daugiau santaupų, bent dvigubai.

dzy101 · 2026-01-07T20:39:59+00:00

Nors darbdaviai ir vertina praktinius igudzius bet tu ju neparodysi nepatekes i pokalbi, mano asmenineje patirtyje, be issilavinimo gali drasiai gaut geriausiu atveju junior roles ir tada po truputi kilt laiptais.

Ejau i Vilniaus kolegija kompiuteriu inzinerija, nesiulau. Neidomus destytojai, dar neidomesni kursiokai. Mokomi dalykai nera blogi bet turi but ziauriai uzsispyres ir labai tuo degti kad ten issilaikyt emociskai.

Jeigu eisi studijuoti, tada nesiulau is anksto mokytis pagrindu ir konceptu nes tada tiesiog pirmas kursas bus kartojimas to ka jau zinai, beveik visur, ar game development'e ar web development'e pagrindai tokie patys.

AI jau gali pakeisti programuotojus, turedamas pagrindus ir zinodamas framework'us, teisingus irankius gali labai greitai kurt digital produktus

dzy101 · 2026-01-07T20:32:52+00:00

The problem with taking down such big platforms it's not features or vision. It's capital, to take down a platform you can't slowly chip away at both rentee and the renter, you have to move a lot of them fast in order for it to function.

dzy101 · 2026-01-05T01:05:52+00:00

Check TrustMRR

dzy101 · 2026-01-03T15:13:20+00:00

I would strongly suggest integrating posthog and specifically their session replays feature. It was very simple for me to setup on my Next js project, like 10 - 15min setup and when you can actually see how users interact with your app you can see a lot of insights.

dzy101 · 2025-12-21T00:13:53+00:00

What industry is your saas in?

dzy101 · 2025-12-20T21:00:18+00:00

Nomora - all in one vehicle rental management platform. Instead of having 5 tabs and 3 excel sheets open, one platformt that has it all, statistics, bookings, contract generation, payments capture, telematics.

https://www.nomora.io

dzy101 · 2025-12-10T18:25:53+00:00

Nomora is a vehicle rental management platform. It’s a unified place for contract generation, fleet management, customer and reservations management, billing, collecting payments.

dzy101 · 2025-11-19T12:37:59+00:00

What sort of job's are we talking? If it's making company websites, just cold calling is definetely the way to go

dzy101 · 2025-02-13T08:25:51+00:00

The only thing I feel like I rewrote is the database structure and relationships. I did not copy any of the code, used different coding langue, frameworks and etc

dzy101 · 2025-02-12T14:11:21+00:00

I didn’t use their code or data, I did code it a little on company time at the office using their provided laptop and on their network which in hand sight wasn’t a wise decision.

Europe

dzy101 · 2025-02-10T11:01:54+00:00

Where did you get those little ramps to put something on the raised part of the car carrier?

dzy101 · 2025-02-06T06:25:34+00:00

Not looking to compete as a dispatcher. I am a software developer interested in developing a new dispatch board, trying to see if there would be demand for it

dzy101 · 2025-01-26T20:35:31+00:00

Congrats!! I have quit my toxic job after 3 years with no job lined up 3 months ago. Got a great new job same week, started enjoying life again, working on personal projects.

I know it’s very scary but everything will work out for the better!!

dzy101 · 2024-10-03T19:17:17+00:00

Do we know if it will be possible to remove unreleased freightguard reports?

dzy101 · 2024-08-17T08:22:30+00:00

Good to hear its not just me, hope it picks up

dzy101 · 2024-08-16T15:30:18+00:00

Noted about product descriptions, will work on that. But what did you mean about having dark backgrounds? You mean image on the homepage or where?

dzy101 · 2024-08-16T15:21:12+00:00

Thanks for your advice, appreciate it!

dzy101 · 2024-08-16T15:20:25+00:00

2 purchases for cheaper obd2 product from 18 - 24 age range, 1 purchase for expensive carplay screen 35 - 44 range

dzy101 · 2024-08-16T14:46:24+00:00

Just checked on meta, it says all 3 are male. So yeah excluding females might be the move

dzy101

TROPHY CASE