[1] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
I just wanted to point this out for any potential digital nomads out there - yes it's possible, but probably not in most people's cases, although I'd like to hear stories of people who've made it work. Personally I could never make it work with less than $1k/month - but much of that was due to housing costs.
Keep in mind though the costs of even bare bones laptop & internet connection business models start becoming significant as a percentage when you operate at revenues this low. Replacing one broken laptop is going to eat more than half your monthly revenue, for example - and laptops/desktops are generally even more expensive when you're not in the US or China.
1. I do understand that cost of living varies. Still, I will insist that $500/month is too low. Even a single $2000 computer amortized over 24 months is going to eat nearly 1/5 of your revenue. Remember, your housing probably isn't free, you do have to plan for retirement, you do have to go to the dentist from time to time. Many people make unrealistic assumptions here.
2. If you start with $500 as your goal, you will end up reaching $500. You will have something that you have to support and maintain. If you designed it as a $500 dollar business, there is no good way forward, and you are stuck.
As to 500$ a month, many people live fairly comfortably on that in very low cost of living areas. Also, setting that money aside can add up quickly.
The effort of upgrading hardware take quite a bit of development time. Even if hardware was free I don’t think a 2 year upgrade cycle is worth it based on how slowly hardware is improving.
As to buying 1k vs 2k computers without a gaming graphics card or the need for massive storage you hit real diminishing returns at around 1k. 500gb SSD (90$) case (30$) PSU (40$) CPU (200$) MB (100$) RAM (200$) -= 660 for the guts, buy two 22 inch 1080P monitors for 100$ and you got 140$ for an OS keyboard and mouse. Sure you could spend 4x that but it’s not going to make that much difference.
So no, we don't need to replace electronics every two years, we just want to :P
If you designed it as a $500 dollar business, there is no good way forward, and you are stuck.
Disagree. If my living expenses are taken care of (500$ post tax is enough for me), then I can always look at improving this, or making bigger products
Start with one $500 / month business. Next month do another $500 / month business.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
After 10 months, it's $5000 / month.
After 36 months it's over $15,000 / month.
In all likelihood, your $500/month business will open a door to a $1,000/month business which will lead you to a $2,000/month business. You have to think of each part as a step on a path. You will never get to the last step if you never take the first small steps.
To be clear, I am totally in agreement that the important thing is to start wherever you can.
“Hey Bob, we have a customer support ticket for business 65”
“What does 65 do again?”
Step 2: ???
Step 3: GoTo 1
If you've never ran a business before, one important bit of advice is that you should assume revenue targets of 2-3x of what you'd like to actually earn in post-tax personal income. Most people underestimate the costs of running a business and forget that they will need to pay for a computer, software, accounting services, and lots of other things.
Depending on where you live, I'd say target $3k-$10k in MRR.