It made me $500k but I think content is a bad business

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A friend asked "Swiz, why do you even have a job?" referring to my pretty successful sidebiz around books and courses for software engineers. I couldn't stop thinking about it so here we are.

The business has gone through a few iterations since I started taking it seriously in ~2015 with the first React+D3 ebook. Since then it's made almost $500k in revenue (no ads), grown into a small team, launched several products, and has been wildly profitable in most years.

My pulling back started in ~2023 after 8 years of thinking, 24/7, "what's the next thing I'm gonna write about?". I was tired and the biz wasn't sparking joy like it once used to. Burnout is grind with no reward.

The business stopped being profitable almost immediately. That's the strongest sign I have that this is a bad business. It's more like owning a job than running a business.

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