2025 Goals as an Indie Developer

Every year, I make New Year’s resolutions like everyone else, and every year, I fail at the ones that need discipline—things like “meditate every day,” “exercise three times a week,” or “write a GitHub commit every day.” These are still on my list, but let’s be honest—they’re hard to stick to. Unless I plan ahead and set up reminders, all it takes is an illness, an addictive game, or a family incident to derail me from my path to the ultimate discipline warrior. I’ve got some ideas to try this year, so let’s see how they pan out.

Aside from personal improvement goals, since going indie 2 years ago, I’ve been consistently hitting my main business goals every year, and that feels pretty great.

In 2023, my goal was to make $10k from my own projects—no freelancing, no day-trading. And I did it! It was incredible to earn money with just my own two hands (even if all they do is type) while building something people found valuable enough to pay for. That realization—that I could make this work—was all the proof I needed to keep going.

In 2024, I set out to earn a solid full-time salary to support my family. I pulled it off, even though juggling two young kids made it a tough year for focus. Honestly, I didn’t spend as much time on my projects as I’d hoped, but the numbers were still great. This reinforced how important it is to focus on the right things and reminded me that, as an entrepreneur, time and income don’t have to be tightly coupled. Achieving this goal gave me the confidence to say no to returning to a traditional job, despite the tempting pay, perks, and insurance that come with being a Software Engineer.

Now, in 2025, my goal is to surpass my past salary as a Senior Software Engineer at Meta. It feels like I’m competing against my 2021 self, and I’m excited to see how it all plays out. It’s a challenging goal, and I know I’ll have to stretch myself to reach it. Long term, I want this indie path to be both fun and financially rewarding. Money-wise, I’m in a pretty good state and I am fortunate to be financially secure. To me, this is more like aiming for a higher score in a game, so that I don’t go back to being a video addict. Also, the more I make = the more value I am providing to my users.

To hit that target, this year, I’m also determined to finally release more than one app on the App Store and dip my toes into the Android Play Store. I’ve had plenty of ideas over the years but never polished them enough to launch. With AI tools at my side, I’ve officially run out of excuses. The app market is only getting tougher—soon, thousands of apps will be released daily—but I’m ready to step up and stand out. (Hopefully!)