Someone I have never met bought an app I made. There are customers in Japan, where I live, but also in the United States, Switzerland, and Australia.
That makes me happy. I have been writing programs for a long time, but having someone pay for something I created brings a different kind of satisfaction.
Am I making a living from it? Not yet.
Since April 2026, I have had very little income. I am living on savings while developing Windows applications. This year I also tried Android development, and I have been publishing technical books on Kindle.
It isn’t that I have nothing to do. I have started quite a few things. Turning that work into enough income to live on has been much harder.
I want to write a little about that today. This is not a success story told after everything worked out. I am still in the middle of it.
When your work becomes difficult to explain
I am self-employed in Japan. I haven’t incorporated a company. I am neither an employee nor the head of a corporation.
“Self-employed programmer” sounds straightforward enough in English. It doesn’t always feel that straightforward from the inside.
I decide what to work on and do the development and publishing myself. When things don’t go well, there is no one responsible for finding my next assignment or paying my next salary. Independence and insecurity occupy much the same space.
In Japan, I feel that freelancers are given less credibility than salaried employees. Even though I am doing my own work, having no employer’s name or steady paycheck behind me can make my position difficult to explain. When I think about applying for a credit card or renting an apartment, I worry about how I would present my work and income.
What is it like elsewhere? In your country, does working freelance also make it harder to be seen as a reliable applicant? It feels a little lonely when simply explaining how you work makes you uncertain of your standing, even though you are building work of your own.
I do run a business, even if it consists of one person. Yet calling myself a business owner feels grander than my circumstances. I am not an employee. Calling myself a freelancer leaves me wondering how to explain the very small amount coming in.
I can supply several job titles: programmer, writer, app developer. They begin to feel less solid when the conversation turns to making a living.
I am still programming. My confidence is less certain.
Most of my effort now goes into YuHex, a hex editor for Windows. It displays the contents of files as hexadecimal values so that people can inspect and edit the underlying bytes.
It is not something everyone needs every day. If you have no use for it, the screen may look like rows of numbers. For someone trying to understand how data is arranged, though, that kind of tool can be useful.
I originally started it as a hobby. Now I am trying to build a business around it. This is no longer an occasional project or volunteer work. I need to earn a living.
I enjoy making things, and I need the work to bring in money. Both are true. Perhaps it would feel simpler if only one of them mattered.
“It must be nice to do what you love.”
If someone said that, I would agree. But liking the work does not remove the cost of living. Unlike the software, the person developing it still gets hungry.
When very little income comes in for long enough, I start questioning more than the business.
Perhaps I am no longer an IT engineer.
I can think that while still writing programs. I know income does not decide whether someone is an engineer. It is easier to understand that in principle than to feel confident about it in my own situation.
I have stopped attending technical gatherings where friends and acquaintances meet. I feel uncomfortable about where I am, and I have pulled back from social contact. Nobody told me to stay away. I am the one who stopped going.
I don’t think that is good for me. Recognizing it, however, does not immediately make me feel differently. A programming problem usually offers something to investigate. My own feelings are less cooperative.
A purchase is not yet money in the bank
YuHex is sold through the Microsoft Store. Sales have not been strong.
The proceeds from those purchases have not reached my bank account yet, either. There have been purchases, but I have not received a payout from the Store.
That distinction can be awkward to describe. Saying “my app sold” can sound as though I am already living on the proceeds. Saying “sales are zero” would erase the fact that people have bought it.
I have customers. The sales have not yet become money I can use to support myself.
There is more distance between a sales record and paying living expenses than I had wanted to discover.
Should I stop developing it?
Wanting to continue does not let me ignore the fact that the work isn’t supporting me. “Just keep doing what you love” does not answer that question.
There were customers on the other side of the world
Still, I hesitate before the word “stop.”
People in Japan have bought YuHex. So have people in the United States, Switzerland, and Australia. They are the first customers for this app I made.
I don’t know who they are or what work they intend to do with it. I do not have a conversation to recount in which someone told me how much it helped them.
What I know is that they bought it.
There are other hex editors. Among the available choices, someone selected mine and paid for it. As its developer, I find that difficult to dismiss as just a small number in a sales record.
Knowing there are customers abroad also makes “the world” a little less abstract. I could describe it as entering international markets, but that sounds much more impressive than how it feels.
It feels like this: something I made reached that far.
People I have never met chose the application. A program made a small connection between me and people I have never met.
My savings are still going down. The business has not suddenly turned a corner. But continuing is no longer only about my own wish to make something.
I want to meet those customers’ expectations. I cannot know all of those expectations, but I would like to make the tool something they are glad they chose.
That is not a promise to continue development forever because someone bought it. It means those people are part of why, right now, I want to keep working on it.
Before I stop, there is something I want to make
It would be tempting to write that I don’t care whether it sells.
That would not fit very well with everything I have just said about living expenses. Honestly, I want it to sell. I want to be able to continue this as my work.
But I do not want the number of purchases to be the only measure of what the project means.
YuHex also has a free edition. It lets me put something I created into the hands of people who do not buy the paid edition. Even when that does not bring in immediate income, I can leave a piece of my work out in the world in a form someone can use. There is satisfaction in that, too.
Giving software away does not solve the problem of making a living. Having people choose the paid edition and letting others try the free one are both things I want to make room for.
Having come this far, I want to see if I can build a hex editor that can hold its own worldwide. That is why I am implementing multilingual support, including the fiddly work of supporting right-to-left (RTL) languages such as Arabic.
That sounds ambitious. I do not mean being the number-one editor in every country. I mean making a tool that people can use for the work they need to do, even when they live elsewhere and use a different language.
If I decide to stop, I would rather work a little further toward that first. That is how I feel now.
There is no remarkable turnaround at the end of this article. It would be nice to finish with a revenue chart and explain how it all became a success. Unfortunately, that part has not been implemented yet.
For now, I will keep working on the application.
I hope you will look forward to what comes next. I think I will give this developer a little more time, too.
What I am making
My Windows applications, including YuHex, are collected here. If inspecting binary files is part of your work, you might find something useful.
The Android applications I tried developing this year are here as well.
Alongside the programs, I am writing technical books. This page introduces my Kindle books in English.
Top comments (1)
"I have customers. The sales have not yet become money I can use" is such an honest line. That gap between a sale existing and rent being paid is the part nobody posts about.
To your question: in India it's very similar. I'm a solo founder too, and the moment a form asks for "employer name" or salary slips, I feel the same uncertainty you describe. Being a one-person business is real work, but it doesn't fit the boxes.
The detail about buyers in Switzerland and Australia picking YuHex over the other hex editors stuck with me. That's a stranger making a choice with their own money, which says more than a big download count. RTL support is a great next step too. Rooting for you, and I hope the first Store payout lands soon.