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mastashake08

Jyrone Parker is an American software entrepreneur from Louisville, KY. Starting his first company at 14 he has travelled around the country the world promoting his startups. His resume includes senior software engineering positions at Apple, Sephora, Dell Technologies and GE. His areas of expertise include web apps, mobile apps, blockchain smart contract development and IOT.

How To Make Money As A Programmer
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How To Make Money As A Programmer

written by mastashake08

Programming Gives You A Unique Skill

Not only can you go work for a company and work your way up to a high six figure salary, but there are a few other ways you can make extra income as a coder. In this article I will explain some of these ways and if you have any I haven’t touched please leave it as a comment!

1) Work A Standard 9-5

This is the obvious option and what most people do. You find a company and either work as a freelancer or full time employee and exchange your time for your money. Nothing wrong with this method, especially since software engineers have such high earning capacity. However there are some other things that you can do to increase your earning potential, some more passive than others.

2) Tutoring

Each one teach one

There is a plethora of people who want to learn how to code and you have the knowledge they desire. Personally I do this and have put together packages such as: video game programming, blockchain programming, web apps and mobile apps. You have total control of your schedule and can charge your fair rate. In my opinion this is one of the most lucrative side hustles and even if you just have 1 or 2 students a month it’s a nice chunk of change.

3) Sell Courses

While doing one on one tutoring sessions can be lucrative, it is not scalable! What is scalable is creating your own video or text courses and selling those online! That’s exactly what I do for things such as my Intro To Web Development eCourse. What’s even better is that you can choose to sell the courses on a platform such as Udemy or do it on your own platform (and keep more profit). This tactic can bring you long term residual income off a product you only created one time.

4) Write An App

This of course is probably my favorite! There are few things more rewarding than getting paid for an app that you built with your own grit and own two hands! App money can replace your current income and what’s even better is you can sell your app for a larger lump sum payment. It requires the most time up front but it can definitely make the most money.

Conclusion

There are many ways to make extra money as a programmer outside of a standard 9-5 working shift. If you have more ideas please don’t hesitate to leave them as comments below! If you haven’t checked out or subscribed to my YouTube page head over and do so. I do entrepreneur and engineering videos weekly!

October 16, 2019 0 comment
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Living Off App Income, How Much Do I Need?
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Living Off App Income, How Much Do I Need?

written by mastashake08

How Much App Income Do I Need To Live Off Of?

This is probably the number one question I get from people looking to invest in apps. First off let me iterate that I am not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. This is simply the techniques I employ in my own life to achieve financial independence from app income.

Everyone’s ideal situation is different. For some people a $40,000 a year lifestyle is sufficient while for others a $1,000,000 a year lifestyle is what is mandatory. With this is mind there is a bunch of different factors to consider that I am not personally equipped to granularly help you decide.

What I can do however is tell you the strategy that I am implementing in my own life while I build my app empire. A lot of it is inspired by the FIRE investing method. It is broken into a few basic steps:

  1. Take care of your bills
  2. Monthly revenue equal to 3 months worth of your existence
  3. Run successfully for 12 months

Don’t worry I’m going to break it down.

1) Take Care Of Your Bills

First and foremost don’t even start thinking about retiring off of app income if your app revenue isn’t paying your bills. For me the minimum bills I need paid are:

  • Mortgage
  • Phone
  • Utilities (electric/water/trash)
  • Student Loans
  • Groceries
  • Gas/Ride Sharing

If I don’t have all of these things paid for from my app portfolio then I can’t really retire in any sense of the word. This is because these are my necessities and if my necessities are not met then I have to actively go get them, thus trading my time for money, thus working. When I can eat and sleep without worry then it’s on to the next step which is building up the app income.

2) Monthly Revenue Equal To 3 Months Worth Of Your Existence

What I mean by this is besides my bills I also have miscellaneous expenses such as entertainment, contributions to my investment portfolio, eating out, etc. I want to have fun just like everyone else, so in order to retire I have to quantify that and come up with a total monthly figure. Now in order for me to feel comfortable retiring entirely off of my app income, my portfolio needs to make 3x what that total monthly figure is per month. Once again this is what my ideal retirement is, it make not be the same for you. However I know if it dries up, I still can maintain my current lifestyle for 3 months at the minimum. Part of the idea of retirement is the peace of mind and security of knowing your money will not run out and you can live the lifestyle you want to live.

This is where the type of lifestyle I want to live comes into play. I don’t really want much in life $10,000 USD per month. Why? $40,000 a year is equal to $3,333.33 per month. Multiply that by 3 and that comes to 9,999.99 per month (add a penny for kicks and giggles). I need $10K per month and then I won’t have any worries about paying for the things that I want to pay for.

3) Run Successfully For 12 Months

So there was a point in time where I was living completely from app income and it was great however it eventually slowed down and put me in a bind for a period of time because it wasn’t following rule #2. App income can be very variable and as a result you need to build a track record of running your app portfolio successfully before you give everyone at your job the middle finger and quit your job. Enjoy the extra income while you still work for a year….and then quit.

In all seriousness if my portfolio steadily generates app income for a year at these numbers I will have 3 years worth of your lifestyle at the end of those 12 months. With that in mind I know I can actually sit back and maintain my apps.

App Income Is Addictive

It is an amazing cash vehicle that can give you financial freedom. That being said it’s not as easy as just putting out an app and collecting a check. If you are interested in adding apps into your investment portfolio and need some advice on where to get started, schedule a 1 on 1 consultation with me today!

October 14, 2019 0 comment
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401KApps & The Future Of Investing
BlogFull Projects

401KApps & The Future Of Investing

written by mastashake08

401KApps Is Almost Ready

Those of you who follow my Twitter might remember my thread about 401KApps

Ricky Mason and I put on a 3 month case study with 6 participants to buy some apps and gather the data. Needless to say the model worked so we went straight to creating the prototype.

I Don’t Follow You On Twitter WTH Is 401KApps

My apologies everyone! Let me back up. 401KApps is a new partnership I am working on with Ricky that is a private investment group that buys, holds and sells apps. The apps are bought from the owners (we only buy apps that have a current positive cash flow) and we enhance the applications, increase the marketing and promotion and share the profits. Unlike stocks, bonds, rental property where you get paid once a month, apps make money from day one. Using the app, you can invest in investment pools that are categorized. Each pool will hold 10-15 apps. After the vesting period you can choose to receive your payouts on a daily, weekly, month or yearly basis!

How Is Investing In Apps Smart?

Like I said apps make money daily. In addition to traditional investments such as stocks, bonds, real estate and precious metals I believe it is good to have an investment vehicle that gives you consistent stable cash flow. At one point in my personal life I was living completely off of my app income, which freed my other income to be used how I wish. The apps that we are buying are already complete and have a positive cash flow, by applying the power of group economics the collective can generate a sizable amount of free flowing cash to help enrich their lives.

What Is The Minimum Amount To Invest?

The minimum to invest in an app pool will be $20 with a maximum investment of $10,000. Each investment pool will raise between $30,000 and $250,000. This will allow investors to diversify their exposure to the markets and give newer investors with less capital the opportunity to get into the space.

When Will The App Be Released?

You can currently sign up for the waiting list at https://401k-apps.com but the beta MVP will be available before the end of the year so look for a Xmas gift 😉

Want To Learn How To Code In The Meantime?

Another way to invest into apps is to write one yourself! If you are wanting to learn how to code check out my video course “Intro To Web Development” In it you will learn the basics of web development and get started learning the skills needed to create rock star web applications! Perhaps you are already a coder and want to get started in test driven design? If so check out my course Test Driven Design W/ Laravel and Vue.js. Into web dev but want to switch over to mobile development? Check out Nativescript with my course Nativescript, Vue & Laravel SAAS Master Class

October 11, 2019 0 comment
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Blog

Why I Wrote A Trust Generator And What’s Next

written by mastashake08

If You Follow Me On Twitter I Talk About My Trust A Lot

My latest video on Trusts Generator

You have probably seen me talk about my trust that I set up for my family earlier this year. All in all it was not a long process, the longest part was figuring out what to do and what exactly a trust is legally. Once I understood this and consulted with lawyers I finally had a trust. I was at the bank setting up a trust account and the thought hit me

Why isn’t there an app that could have done this for me?

Oh wait! I can write it!

Thoughts while talking to the banker.

So after leaving the bank I immediately went home, grabbed my laptop and started coding the MVP. Within 30 minutes I had an app that generated a .docx trust document that was formatted using data grabbed from a vue.js frontend and charges $50. I used my trust document as a template and showed the app to a lawyer. They loved it, I just need to be sure to let people know I am not a lawyer and advise them to always consult with a lawyer. So after changing some verbiage to cover my bases I was ready to put the app out to world and get feedback. I wanted trustgenerator.com or trust-generator.com but both of those were taken so I decided on trustsgenerator.com

When I put it out I actually got my first sale on my first day and a few more on the second day. However I felt $50 was still too high for a lot of people and I didn’t want to just appeal to those who could afford an estate lawyer in the first place. I wanted this app to be for the people.

So Far This App Has Given A Nice Residual

This goes back into my investment strategy I speak about which is having a portion of your portfolio to include monetized apps. My investment goal is to have 60% of my income to come from applications. Trusts Generator is a complete self-contained system that handles file management, billing and email. I have to spend < 1 hour a month maintaining this application. This setup is the motivation behind my venture 401K Apps.

Considering that I spend so little time doing maintenance, this app can potentially give me a better return than most of my other apps. I will definitely be paying attention to the analytics heavily.

What’s Next?

I recently added an affiliate network to the system. Allowing them to share a custom link to create a new trust. I share my profits 50/50 and can pay out via Paypal or Cash App!

I am also adding the ability to generate your trusts through text message using a SMS chat bot! However currently I’m working on ad campaigns to help get the word out. My goal is to generate 1000 trust documents by the end of 2020, so we’ll see how it goes.

Analytics is huge to me so I will be adding the code to track more metrics and use that data to determine what areas of the app I need to tweak and fix. Lastly I need to crank up the marketing! If I want to reach that 1000 trust generated mark I’m going to have to make some very targeted ads and get busy. I will be updating everyone on my journey as it continues and if you haven’t already check out the app and let me know what you think!

September 30, 2019 0 comment
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How Much Do Software Developers Make?
BlogTech Talks

How Much Do Software Developers Make?

written by mastashake08

We All Know Software Is Lucrative But How Much Do Software Developers Get Paid?

We all read the headlines and the stories about mega rich tech CEOs who started out in their mother’s basement or garage and built their empire. What about the average software developer? How much do software developers make?

Factors In Compensation

When talking about financial compensation as a software developer there is a need to clarify some things. Firstly your geographical location will affect how much money you make. Engineers in Silicon Valley or New York or Dallas area are going to be paid multitudes more than an engineer from Louisville, Kentucky. That being said you must also factor in the adjusted cost of living based on the area which you reside. $100,000 in San Fransisco is not the same as $100,000 in Louisville.

How Much Do Entry Level Software Developers Get Paid?

If you are an entry or junior level developer you can expect $60,000 – $80,000 depending on your geographical location (you can expect more in the Bay Area or New York areas or any other major tech city). While this is low for the software engineering field, but it’s higher than most average salaries in The United States.

How Much Do Mid Level Software Developers Get Paid?

At this level you are starting to see the six figure range going from 100k – 120k. Once again this will widely depend on geographical location.

How Much Do Senior Level Developers Get Paid?

This is where the money starts rolling in. At this point total compensation can reach $300,000 plus! Me personally as a business owner I charge $150 per hour when working on Laravel and Vue.js projects. This is where most engineers will cap if they do nothing else but fulltime/client work.

What About Beyond Senior Level?

When I say beyond senior level I am talking entrepreneurship. Think writing your own monetized apps or creating Udemy courses. This residual income is usually combined with some active work like a 9-5. This scalability can allow a software developer to make 10s – 100s of thousands extra a year if executed correctly.

Conclusion

If you decide to go down the route of becoming a software developer, then money ultimately should not be an issue. If you want quality content on software and entrepreneur best practices, follow me on Twitter. If you want to get started with some quality courses I suggest heading over to my store and purchasing a video series!

August 28, 2019 1 comment
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Setting Up A CI Laravel Pipeline Using Bitbucket
BlogLaravelPHP

Setting Up A CI Laravel Pipeline Using Bitbucket

written by mastashake08

Continuous Integration

Is a must in today’s software architecture. Setting up a solid CI/CD pipeline will save you countless hours and money immediately and down the line.

There are plenty of tools that can accomplish your CI/CD goals from Jenkins, to CircleCI however in today’s tutorial I will be showing you how to accomplish this using Bitbucket pipelines.

Editing The YAML File

Bitbucket’s pipeline system uses yml files to spin up docker instances and run your scripts. This is an example file that runs composer, generates keys, runs migrations, installs passport and runs the tests. It also only runs when deploying to master branch and sets up a mysql instance and sets the environment keys.

# This is a sample build configuration for PHP.
# Check our guides at https://confluence.atlassian.com/x/e8YWN for more examples.
# Only use spaces to indent your .yml configuration.
# -----
# You can specify a custom docker image from Docker Hub as your build environment.
image: lorisleiva/laravel-docker

pipelines:
  branches:
    master:
      - step:
          caches:
            - composer
          script:
            - composer install --prefer-dist --no-ansi --no-interaction --no-progress --no-scripts
            - cp .env.example .env
            - php artisan key:generate
            - php artisan migrate
            - php artisan passport:install
            - vendor/bin/phpunit
          services:
            - mysql
      - step:
          name: Deploy to prod
          deployment: production
          # trigger: manual  # Uncomment to make this a manual deployment.
          script:
            - echo "Deploying to prod environment"
            - curl -X GET https://forge.laravel.com/servers/148653/sites/653797/deploy/http?token=4Q8e1kFPmFsHbxOBek7jcqikAvGVTbiX50tsPUPK
definitions:
    services:
      mysql:
        image: mysql:5.7
        variables:
          MYSQL_DATABASE: 'ben'
          MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'yes'
          MYSQL_USER: 'homestead'
          MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'secret'

Why Is Continuous Integration Important?

I did an article about why continuous integration is important to the solo developer and I suggest everyone take a few moments and read that article. It outlines why having a solid CI/CD plan in your architecture, however the TL;DR is that is saves you time, money, effort and stress by spending the little bit of time up front to ensure you have tested and tried code before you ship to production.

July 22, 2019 0 comment
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BlogTech Talks

How I Landed My First Conference Talk

written by mastashake08

I have been applying to CFPs (Call For Papers) for tech conferences off and on for the last 5 years unsuccessfully. Honestly I had all but given up and just settled for the media passes and going to cover conferences instead (whilst I cried inside). However that is no longer the case! I have been invited to speak at APIDays at San Francisco July 16th – 17th.

What Will I Speak About?

My talk is titled “Building Scalable APIs From The Beginning” and will be focused on the algorithmic and architechtural best practices needed to build enterprise level APIs from scratch instead of refactoring and redoing design down the line when experiencing rapid or hypergrowth.

What Is APIDays?

APIDays is the world’s leading API conference series. 15,000 attendees, 40 events, 1,350 speakers, 11 countries is what they advertise on their website. I also was invited to contribute to their API influencer program APIScene, where I will be providing blog content about API best practices.

How Did You Land It?

My reaction when I opened my offer email.

Well I kind of owe a lot of it to my best friend Tae’lur Alexis because she introduced me to the website CFPLand. She kept getting picked for conferences and I was like “Yo where are finding all these CFPs?”. You have to love Twitter I swear. Anywho I went on there and APIDays was the first one I applied for, I didn’t hear anything back so I assumed I wasn’t going to get picked then a couple weeks ago I got my offer email. My advice to those looking to speak at tech conferences is to use resources such as CFPLand and just submit until your wrists hurt. Make sure you pick conferences where your talk will provide value to the demographic that will be attending and speak only on things you know. I will upload my talk to my YouTube channel after I present and if you are in the Bay Area and want to meet up while I am in town July 14th – July 18th email me at jyrone.parker@gmail.com to link up with me or DM me on Twitter.

July 7, 2019 0 comment
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How To Land Your First Gig As A Self Taught Developer
BlogTech Talks

How To Land Your First Gig As A Self Taught Developer

written by mastashake08

Coding Is Hard As Is

Add on top that you are teaching yourself and you have a level of difficulty few humans understand. However the satisfaction it brings cannot be compared to anything else either. That being said it can be tremendously difficult landing your first gig ( I’m speaking from the position of freelancers, however the same advice applies to those who are looking for full time W-2 employment). Here are 3 things you can do as a self taught developer to increase your chances of landing your first gig as a self taught developer.

Do 2-3 Solid Personal Projects

The first question any potential client is going to ask you is “What past projects have you worked on?” Obviously if you are looking for your first paid gig, then you won’t have any past client work to show off. To compensate for this I highly advise that you focus on creating 2-3 complete thorough projects of your OWN design to show to potential clients.

Doing this will not only highlight your skills as a developer and show you deserve a shot, but it also highlights your entrepreneurial prowess and remember if you are a freelancer, you are an entrepreneur. You are working for yourself.

Go To Networking Events & Put Yourself Out There

You can be the greatest freelancer developer in the world, but if no one knows who you are then it really doesn’t matter. If you want to work for yourself you have to put yourself out there. This can come in the form of finding a meetup, going to a tech conference, speaking to managers at career fairs (a lot of companies are contractor friendly), etc. Humans are social creatures and building rapport is always the first step in business dealings. Remember social capital is more important than financial capital, you need the first to attain the latter.

Go to these events with the understanding that you have to follow up on the connections you make at these events. Business negotiations often take weeks to months, don’t expect to go to a conference and walk out with a contract (although I have seen it happen).

Stay Persistent, Resist Imposter Syndrome

Expect a ton of nos before you receive your first yes, this is to be expected especially when searching for your first contract. That being said it’s very important that you stay persistent! I have a mantra that I always tell myself when I face rejection.

I do not fail, I either win or I learn

Perspective is everything, don’t look at the rejections as failures. Ask for feedback and learn from the experience so when you do the next contract bid you have more wisdom to go by. Imposter syndrome is something I see a lot of new developers, especially self taught, deal with on a regular basis. Don’t fall into it! You became and validated yourself as a developer the moment you took it upon yourself to write your first line of code. You don’t need a company or university to deify your position. Keep grinding YOU GOT THIS.

March 26, 2019 2 comments
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Why Continuous Integration Matters To The Solo App Developer
Tech Talks

Why Continuous Integration Matters To The Solo App Developer

written by mastashake08

Your Continuous Integration Architecture Is Just As Important As Your Software Architecture

This is something that I learned when I was a senior software devops engineer at Apple (yes that is the exact title, it was a hybrid role). This was the first time that I was really introduced to the concept of continuous integration and I was amazed at how intricate and complex the setup at Apple was. When I left Apple in 2015 I had a thorough understanding of CI/CD and understood its importance, however I was convinced that it was really only useful and worthwhile to big corporations and I as a solo developer do not need to implement such pipelines into my small applications. I changed that mode of thinking a couple of years ago and today I will explain to you why it is important for you to implement CI in your projects as early as possible. Even simple apps such as this one has a basic CI/CD pipeline set up.

You Might Be Wondering…What Is Continuous Integration

For all my non devops folks reading this….which is most of you, you may be wondering what is continuous integration? Well here is one definition

Continuous Integration (CI) is the process of automating the build and testing of code every time a team member commits changes to version control.

Definition of continuous integration provided by Microsoft

Basically it is your setup that prevents your production app from crashing and burning if you or a team member accidentally commits crap code. Usually it goes something like this: You push some code to master, you have a service (Jenkins for example) run some tests everytime new code is pushed to master. If the tests succeed, then pull the latest code on production server from master. If the tests fails, email whoever needs to be emailed (or Slack or pigeon carrier idc).

What Benefit Is It To A Solo Dev?

So you may be reading this and thinking the same thing I thought. This is awesome if you have a ton of developers working on code, but isn’t it overkill for just one person? I can just write and test the code myself? This is true that you CAN but think about this.

1) Save Time

Instead of manually running each test and wasting time waiting for output, you can delegate that busy work to your servers, those 30 sec – 5 min wait times for testing do add up over time. That’s time that can be used to build features.

2) Safely Scale Development

You may be a solo developer now, but perhaps you want to make your source code open source to allow more developers to help you out. Let’s say you end up getting 20 developers putting in weekly consistent work. With a solid continuous integration pipeline you can have them commit code, it runs the tests, merges into master and deployed to production without you having to manually approve and check each PR. This level of automation allows more time and resources to go into the actual application.

3) Keep A Clean Healthy Production App

If continuous integration is set up correctly then you should always have a clean solid production facing application. You can sleep easy at night knowing your app will never go down just because someone committed an extra semicolon or lack thereof.

If You Aren’t Using CI/CD You Are Setting Yourself Up For Failure

I use continuous integration in all of my personal projects/apps and if I am working on a client application and it doesn’t have CI, that is the first thing that I implement. Eventually sooner or later there will be bad code committed to your repository and if you are not setting up an apparatus to catch that, then it is only a matter of time before your application will crash in production for untested code. Don’t set yourself up for failure it’s much simpler and easier to set it up in the beginning of a project than at the middle or the end. Save yourself time, energy and money.

March 24, 2019 1 comment
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How I Wrote And Deployed A Mobile App Using Nativescript & Vue
BlogJavascriptVue

How I Wrote And Deployed A Mobile App Using Nativescript & Vue

written by mastashake08

Nativescript Is Awesome!

Two days ago I put out Relaxing Sounds. RS is a android(soon to be iOS) productivity application that plays various white noise sounds like thunderstorms and ocean waves. I wrote this app using Nativescript and Vue.js in a matter of 3 hours. Now keep in mind:

  1.  This is a simple app.
  2.  I just wanted to get my hands dirty with the core framework and have something to show for it.

I integrated admob and created a free and a pro version with plans to update the application to include a relaxing sounds livestream for 24 hr continuous new calming content. I was blown away by how fast I was able to transition from the DOM to Nativescript XML. If you don’t know anything about Nativescript then check out my blog post about it.

How Did I Write It So Fast?

Well once I understood the Nativescript system (which in itself only took a couple hours to understand and master) it was just a simple matter of how well do I know Vue.js? That’s the beauty of Nativescript! It abstracts the headache of interacting with the native hardware so your mind can stay in a purely web development mode. If you can write a PWA with Vue.js then you can write a truly native mobile application with Vue.js there really isn’t any excuse. Couple Nativescript with Vue.js and Laravel for your backend API and you can be a one man (or woman) code army.

Why Did I Write Relaxing Sounds?

I have always been a fan of using calming distracting audio; Whether it be while I code, sleep, meditate or study. I have downloaded apps in the past that have provided that functionality but for one reason or another I deleted them. So to remedy the problem I just wrote my own application. 

What Are My Future Plans For RS?

Really after my next release to add the livestream I don’t plan on giving it much attention development wise. I will study the analytics and create a marketing campaign if the data says it is worth it. Otherwise it is just another notch on my project belt and I will continue to use for my own personal enjoyment. If you want to support me then please download my application and rate it with comments! If you really enjoy it then I ask that you purchase the pro version for $1.99.

October 26, 2018 1 comment
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