Some initial ideas

How can we kickstart some increased income and take the first baby steps towards increased financial independence? I'm sure there's an entrepreneur inside somewhere waiting to bust out, but let's pick a few simple things to start with, ideally aligned with what I can do (tech stuff, mainly), and relatively easy to get underway (I don't want to be investing thousands to get something off the ground).

Domains

Probably the easiest place to start. Over the years I've acquired a bunch of domains that I thought might be interesting to do soemthing with (either technically or becuase of the subject matter they might represent). I've never really gotten around to doing anything with them, but that's about to change. Estibot (yeah, I know, it's about as reliable as Tesla private buyout tweet) values the current portfolio at just over 20k, so I could just list them on flippa (other potential homes for doctored adsense screenshots are available), but there's probably more potential upside if I develop them (or at least a few). That could either be as longer term revenue generators, or just to secure a better selling price. We'll pick a few of these and see what we can do to turn them into the next unicorn business (OK, maybe shetland pony rather than unicorn)

Books and Writing

You're reading this blog, it must be abundantly clear that I have a huge talent for the written word! There are a couple of areas I'd like to explore here where I think I have an interesting contribution to make, and where I think there's at least a small audience into which I could tap and potentially move the 'financial independence' needle.

For many years, I've had a reasonable idea for a fictional title that leverages my many years of experience in the tech industry. You could call it a techno-thriller (or something equally as pretentious). I've never really found the time to put pen to paper and get it out of my brain and onto the hallowed shelves (well, pixels, realistically) of a good bookshop - I've written the first paragraph, and read a couple of books about the 'snowflake technique' for crafting a novel. Now is the time (not least before my fundamental plotline, based around a well-known technology service, is obsolete) to take this idea and get it into the hands of the people. Book project number 1 is born.

Thinking on the topic of books and writing, maybe there's something more in-line with where I make my current living. I'm OK at what I do (hell, I've been pretty succesful, and people pay me more money than I ever thought possible for doing it), so why not try and bottle some of what makes me god at what I do, and market it to those people fighting a similar fight. Think of it as a self-help manual for tech executives and those trying to build successful software teams; departments; and organisations. Pretty certain I have a fair few nuggets of contemporary wisdom that could save people some pain and heartache. At the very least I have hilarious stories of dumb decisions; failed ego-trips; and other such catastrophic events in the tech industry that could serve as a lighthouse to those traversing similar rough waters to help them avoid the rocks (see, I'm painting word-pictures already).

Apps

I'm a serial geek, and still like to keep my hand in with some coding now and then. I was never the greatest software engineer, but what I was always good at was working in constrained environments - 512b of memory on the first machine I learnt to code on; eeking the last fps out of a graphics engine for some high profile games over the years - which lends itself much more closely to modern mobile development than it does to full-scale desktop apps. I've dabbled in this space before (had a few toy apps and games on the Apple app store - more for my own education puirposes than anything), and it's an area where there's clearly an opportunity for some cash injection. Yes the market is flooded; yes, it's hard to find a 'killer app'; but I have a couple of good ideas. One in particular is genuinely killer, but has two potential pitfalls - it may be a copyright violation on a much-loved classic childrens film; it may require some pretty heavy lifting on the technical side to get something up and running that does what I need it to do without people seeing through it pretty quickly. It's going on the list - if nothing else, Swift and Kotlin will be fun to learn.

On a similar note to my books strategy, there's an idea milling around in my head that's a little clsoer to my current home (I work in an an area of the tech indutry that touches education; research; and health). I quite fancy the idea of some kind of chrome plugin (think Momentum) that sits in this space and helps researchers do their day jobs a little easier. exploring a freemium and subscription model here (if I can nail the functionality) might prove a lucrative addition to the alternative income stream.

Let's leave it there for now - we'll continue to brainstorm other options as we progress towards our target, but 30 domains; two books; and a handful of apps is probably more than enough to get started and keep me out of trouble for the foreseeable future.