AskHN: How to earn $1000/mth as a self-employed programmer?

I've heard such an idea that to be happy one doesnt need to earn more than a few thousand bucks per month. Believe it or not I'd be OK with only $1000 per month. I have the skills and can cut all costs for things not required in order to survive. But thinking about all the stress removed, no more thinking about competition, etc, that would be a positive gain. I think there are some YouTube videos or articles with guys who quitted development/corporate work just to have a regular job.

They say there are not enough IT workers but thats not what they mean. They mean there are not enough workers to do 5 in 1 jobs. So I'm left to work for myself. I started a first project but as I realised how long it would take to finish it and to maintain it as a one person I abandoned it. My second project is easier and almost done but having never launched a business before I have no guess if I will earn any money with it. We like to think that our ideas are so great and everybody will buy but reality is different.

My goal is not to spend lots of money to make and keep an idea alive but the goal here is to earn a small amount of money each month. So if my idea will fail I dont mind doing what everybody is doing. But I dont know what everybody is doing because I spend all my time coming up with new ideas. If people dislike copy-cats, I dislike the ideas being copied. Even successful ideas such as Uber or AirBnB are nothing new to me. If I knew that coppying an existing idea would bring me $1000 I could do that in a short time.

Last time when I had full time work for longer than 2 months was in 2010. Since than all my job attempts were failures.