If you don't mind me asking, how long did it take you to get to $2k? That's always the number I find interesting, since it's my mental threshold for "allows a person with no children to go on eating ramen noodles in a cheap apartment."
I've been working on Pluggo for 1.5 years and I'm just coming up to 1.5k month. Now something to keep in mind is, due to me not understanding how to choose a market when I started, it has taken way longer than it needed.
I was silly to choose the twitter market because (a) everyone wants the tools for free (b) It's the most competitive single tools software market EVERYONE and his uncle made a twitter client (just like me) (c) It is impossible to SEO because EVERYONE and his uncle made a twitter site.
Even so, with all of that going against me, I've still been able to reach 1.5k month and it's now starting to really pick up due to valuable lessons I've learned from other bootstrappers along the way. Like Amy Hoy (above with the $10k/month) who's obviously a little bit cleverer than me!
I should also mention that for 6 of those months I did "absolutely nothing" with Pluggio. Because I didn't believe in it. Because it wasn't doing well enough according to my Entreporn expectations.
Yes, I let it slide for 6 entire months. If I had spent that time working on it, it would be at least 5k now.
I think the first 10k a month app will inevitably be the hardest, but like Justin says it'll be a lot easier than becoming the next Facebook or Google. Most people chase/fantasize about being the next Google because they think it will buy them freedom. If you are lucky enough to get close, depending on how you play it, it might do exactly that for you. But I agree with Justin the odds are just so small it's difficult to justify spending your life in eternal lustful pursuit of such dreams.
I'm sorry to roll out the cliché, but gaining time is more likely to make you happy and free. And a few slow grown bootstrapped 'dipshit companies' are much more realistic and likely to provide you with that time along with a boatload more autonomy. Instead it seems everyone is aiming to be the head of the next big thing and indebted to VC's in to the bargain. What do I know though, perhaps it's not all that bad...?
I do think that with a couple of $10,000 a month semi-automated apps in your pocket you've got a lot of choices. Especially if you are young. It can give you the free time to really work out what you want to get out of your life. With time to think you might find it's not what your doing and/or aspiring to right now.
For me if my startup ever starts to make 10K+ a month it'll simply mean trying to spend a little less time sat behind my keyboard. Spending more time outdoors travelling and experiencing the world instead of too much time indoors reading about it sounds like a good plan to me.
The original article seems to be arguing $10K is something like a "sweet spot" where lots of micro-entrepreneurs could comfortably stay. I would contend that if an entrepreneur is able to get to $10K/month with ease or with difficulty, they've probably got the resource to go to $20K, and then $40 look promising etc. That requires extreme hustle of course but so does staying at $10K.
IE, there's no "sweet spot" or stable spot. It is more like either failure or "lift-off".
