How Florin Pop became an influencer and grew a portfolio of edutainment products to $5,000/mo

Florin Pop is an influencer with 184k X followers, 172k YouTube subscribers, and a portfolio of products bringing in over $5k/mo.

He has helped hundreds of thousands of people hone their coding abilities, and it's all because he found where his interests intersected with value.

I caught up with him to understand how he got here and where he's going. Here's what he had to say. 👇

Becoming a millionaire in a decade

My goal is to become a millionaire in the next decade. I originally gave myself a three-year timeline and it was going well, but then I burned out.

I want to be financially free — I don't want to chase money anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I really like this game of finding ways to provide value and make money. I just don't want to need the money.

I don’t have a clear path to a million yet. But it will come from indie hacking. And some combination of the skills I've acquired with skills I've yet to learn.

The intersection of interest and value

That's why I became an indie hacker in the first place. Not becoming a millionaire — learning new skills. Yeah, I wanted the revenue, but I became an indie hacker out of curiosity.

Since learning to code back in 2013, I've picked up so many different skills. Blogging, YouTubing, writing ebooks, building SaaS products... Learning is what drives me.

So my projects always begin with curiosity. I have to be really interested in the topic. And then I double down on it if I see that people find it valuable, as indicated by purchases, testimonials, etc. You can't make money without bringing value.

Those two things — interest and value — have to coincide.

The most minimal MVP

Back in 2019, thanks to my interest in learning, I created a GitHub repository called "App Ideas". It helped developers find ideas for projects that they could build in order to practice their skills or learn new languages and frameworks.

For a long time I didn’t do much with it, but then I got this idea of sharing screenshots of web components on Twitter and asking people to convert them to HTML, CSS, and JS code.

That was the MVP of iCodeThis — just some tweets. I learned from others that it’s better to move fast and launch something simple, and this was as simple as it gets.

I like simple validation too. I considered the idea validated pretty much right away, once the value was reflected to me. In other words, when people told me how much they liked the product.

So I built a platform around the idea. It's built in NextJS with Supabase.

Monetizing an edutainment product

iCodeThis is an edutainment platform that helps developers learn how to code by building projects. I launched it in December, 2022. Then, I launched the paid tiers in March, 2023. In hindsight, I think waiting 3-4 months was too long.

We make money by selling access to the premium version of the platform, which gives members access to all challenges, courses, private community, mentorship, and more. We offer both subscriptions and lifetime deals.

So far the platform has earned $60,000 in revenue in 1.5 years. At the moment, it does between $2k and $3k per month.

Focus on lifetime deals

Initially, subscriptions failed, so we went with lifetime deals only. But then, sales dropped a bit and I decided to try subscriptions again. They aren't performing well, so we'll see what happens. I still make most of my revenue from one-time payments.

And I think that makes sense. Lifetime deals are better than subscriptions, in general

I think that applies to most products, but definitely iCodeThis. Because it's education. People only subscribe until they learn what they need. How long is that, two months? Three months? Six months? Eventually, they’ll cancel.

SaaS products that people depend on, though. That's a different story.

Diversify your income

In addition to iCodeThis, I have a coding course designed to help people build 50 products in 50 days. It does about $2k per month, with a total of $160k so far since 2020. This is all passive — I marketed it in the beginning, but not for years. Udemy does all the work.

My YouTube channel doesn’t make much, despite having 172k subscribers, as I haven’t been that active lately. I do some sponsorships here and there, so it brings in up to $1k per month. I've made $23k total on it since 2020.

My ebook, Ten++ Ways to Make Money as a Dev, has made about $30k total.

Leveraging a following as an influencer

I grew iCodeThis in a few ways.

Twitter

My main marketing channel is my 184k+ followers on Twitter. There's no silver bullet or master plan here. I just post updates about the platform. And I try to be as active as possible.

YouTube

I also use my YouTube channel. I don't really have a plan with this‚ I just make videos that I enjoy and that people will find helpful. And I mention iCodeThis from time to time.

Currently, I think I'm underutilizing it. so I'm going to try to be more active.

This asset came to be thanks to an ambitious challenge that I set for myself back in 2020. I set a goal of getting to 100k subs, and started posting videos like crazy. I also cross-posted my steams. That got me to 100k subs, and it's been growing on its own since then.

Twitch

A big part of my YouTube growth — and a small part of my iCodeThis growth — has been streaming on Twitch, then posting it on YouTube.

I work on the project during livestreams. And I solve challenges that are on the platform — that way, people see it and join.

Discord

I created a community on Discord around the platform and that community slowly started to promote it as well.

I'm good at community building. I engage with my members on Discord and try to be active. I also keep my members active by doing different activities with them — like inviting them to my livestreams.

Partnerships

I also partnered with other creators I knew, and they helped spread the news. This was mostly through an affiliate program where I gave them 30-35%of the one-time payments.

Sales

Last but not least: Discounts.

Sales work.

Whenever I run a sale, people buy. I've tried a number of different ways and I've offered anywhere between 20% and 50% off. I promote them via email, for the most part.

The revenue per user is obviously lower, but I've always come out on top with sales. And the bigger the discount, the better. Once, I even made $2k in a single day.

Set ambitious goals

My biggest advantage isn't my following; it's my ambition. I like to set goals that seem very hard, or even impossible, and then strive to achieve them.

It feels good to prove people wrong. To make them say, "WOW, Florin, you are amazing!" No idea where that comes from.

That's what I did for YouTube. I set a crazy goal and I hit it.

But my ambition is a double-edged sword, though. I've burned out more than once, including when I was trying to hit my YouTube goal.

I don’t know if I've found the perfect balance yet, but what's working for me now is asking myself, "Why?"

Why am I doing what I'm doing? I ask myself that frequently. And if the "why" becomes irrelevant at some point, I just drop it.

Focus on your health

I'm also prioritizing my health these days. Yes, I want to become a millionaire, but my main goal right now is getting into the best shape of my life. I managed to lose 25 kg and completely change my life and habits in the last year.

This win gave me a big boost of energy and motivation. It made me even more ambitious.

I did it by learning about healthy lifestyle and changing one habit at a time. Those habits slowly compounded.

Parting advice

I'm still learning. I'll always be learning. It's why I do this.

But here are my biggest takeaways for new indie hackers:

• Diversify. Try multiple things.

• Validate quickly.

• Charge money sooner.

• Get feedback from the people who actually pay for your product. No one else.

You can follow my journey to a million on X, Youtube, or my blog. And check out iCodeThis.