Why I’m building SnowForge from a day-job desk

SnowForge is a small software studio I run solo, on nights and weekends, alongside a day job in e-commerce. No outside capital, no employees, no runway. Just a long-running effort to build software I genuinely enjoy using, then charge a fair price for it, until that keeps the lights on.

People ask what the master plan is, and the honest answer is that I don’t have a grand one. I have a queue. There are a handful of apps right now: SnowPipe for product feeds, SnowFort for Fortnite shop tracking, SnowGen for content generation, SnowScrape for hosted scraping, and SnowGlobe for internal lead generation. Each one exists because I hit a wall at work or in a side project and couldn’t find a tool that fit. Each one became something I wanted to use myself, which made it worth building properly.

What I’m actually after

Here’s the honest version. I want to build software that helps the people who use it, and I want to earn enough doing that to keep going. Unicorn exits, going public, magazine covers: those belong to other people. If my work helps real users with real problems, and I cover the bills with some snacks and drinks on top, I already think that’s a pretty good world.

That framing makes a lot of daily decisions easier. Each app gets to grow into what it wants to be, at whatever pace its audience finds it. I enjoy operating multiple small things at once, and the studio shape means there’s always something to work on that’s genuinely moving.

Staying small is also a constraint that forces better choices. Without capital, I can’t buy a design team, so the design has to earn its keep through simplicity. Without a sales team, the product has to explain itself. Without a marketing budget, the first users come from people who genuinely needed the thing, and that’s the best kind of feedback loop I’ve ever had.

Where the revenue comes from

The apps monetize in different ways on purpose. SnowPipe is a subscription SaaS, the flagship, priced for operators who are bleeding hours every month on feed errors. SnowFort is ad-supported with a $4-per-month premium tier for SMS and Discord alerts; the catalog is large enough that organic search should eventually cover hosting. Gumroad products ship the small stuff: a spreadsheet-based feed auditor, open-source CLI tools, that kind of thing. Different revenue shapes, so each app gets to prove itself on its own terms.

Writers and illustrators have run studios this way for a century. A name on the door, a portfolio of small works, the same person answering the phone. It looks strange in software because software people are used to the all-in single-product story.

How a studio of one stays focused

The risk with this shape of business is that you fragment your attention and none of the apps get enough care. I keep a master TODO across all repos, updated constantly, so I always know what the single highest-priority next action is. Each app has its own progress tracker that I update the moment something ships or something changes. The habit is small, but it keeps me honest about where things stand, and it’s how a solo operation stays accountable across five products without any one of them going quiet.

I publish what I build and I’m honest about what’s working. Expect posts here to read as notes from the workshop, with actual numbers. Some of what I try will land. Some won’t. I’d rather write about both than pretend everything is easy.

What’s next

For the rest of 2026 the priority is SnowPipe revenue. That product is closest to paying users and closest to real leverage. SnowFort will keep growing because the content compounds on search. The smaller Gumroad tools keep shipping as they get built. The day job stays until the numbers say otherwise. I’m in no particular hurry. The work itself is the thing I enjoy.

If you’re curious about any specific app, the toolkit on the homepage is the map. Email me at support@snowforge.dev if you want to talk about any of this.