I recently published the Blender Python Cheatsheet on Gumroad a couple of days ago. In three pages, it is a collection of most frequently used functions and solutions to common problems you will encounter when writing scripts, macros or addons using the Blender API. I released it for free and I did not intend to charge anything for it. To my surprise, the free downloads went up to a hundred in a few hours.

I have the Gumroad app on my phone, so it kept sending me notifications for every download. I turned off notifications for Free Downloads, because I got so distracted that I could not work. But, five minutes later, I received another notification. I thought Gumroad had a bug that keeps sending notifications regardless of my account preferences. But surprisingly, it was a sale ā€“ for $1.

Now, this one dollar may not be much, but it is my first dollar online ā€“ literally.

So far, the cheatsheet got downloaded 360+ times and I have made a total of $19 from 7 people. Money aside, this is one of the most wonderful feelings I have had in my life in a while. And, the best part is, it didnā€™t take me much to do this. All I did was:

  1. Looked through my previous scripts and compiled a list of solutions to hurdles I faced regularly.

  2. Made it into a neat looking cheatsheet using Notion, Figma and Carbon.

  3. Posted it on Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and every possible Blender forum I knew. I also submitted it as a story to BlenderNation which gave me the most reach.

And thatā€™s it! Thatā€™s all it took me to make my first dollar online when I didnā€™t even intend to. šŸ˜… I went from idea to first customer in just 2 days. If this is possible with such simple efforts, I canā€™t imagine what all of us can achieve with deliberate and consistent efforts.

I am now feeling more inspired and confident than ever that I can do this for a living. I canā€™t wait to share the many other things I am exploring and working on at the moment and see where it goes.

Thatā€™s it for now. šŸ™Œ

Let me know what you think on Twitter.

P.S

If you are someone who wants to make a living while working for yourself on your own terms, I strongly recommend joining the Small Bets community by Daniel Vassallo. Itā€™s a community of 2000+ like-minded people who are working towards this goal.

If it wasnā€™t for Daniel, the Small Bets community and some of the people I look up to, including Louie Bacaj, Franck J, Peter Askew, I am not sure if I would have got started on this journey.

Thank you all!

And thank you Sahil Lavingia for creating a wonderful platform like Gumroad.