Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#121

Post by tallmansixfour » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:30 PM UTC

dividuum wrote: post #72

I'm running https://info-beamer.com , a digital signage hosted service using the Raspberry Pi. It started as a for-fun project 8 years ago when I decided to do the digital info system for a local hacker conference and didn't find anything that allows quick prototyping and rapid iteration/live coding of content. I then switch from "desktop Linux" to Raspberries and added a web based service around the fairly low-level…

Excellent product. I've been testing it out and find very useful - especially dual-hdmi support.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#122

Post by huhtenberg » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

cambalache wrote: post #78

huhtenberg wrote: post #30

Beware of the selection bias before making any conclusions. For every person who currently does X successfully, there will be a multiple of those who failed at the (nearly) same and aren't chiming in.

Well, but that is the idea, the selection bias is in the question not in the answers. He is not asking what % of one-person online business are successful.

Sure, but this renders most of the answers useless. Interesting, entertaining, curious, but useless.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#123

Post by meowster » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

node-bayarea wrote: post #115

amaurymartiny wrote: post #101

During the pandemic, I launched [link redacted], an open-source tool to check if an email exists, without sending any email. Not sure what "successful" means here, but I have a couple dozens of customers, which for me is a success.

Very cool! How does this actually check without sending any email?

You can initiate a connection with the mail server, and then query it. I read about it years ago, never done it myself though.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#124

Post by makeee » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

daemon001 wrote: post #116

makeee wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first batch of alpha testers came from a single Twitter reply [0] that got retweeted by a prominent person in the React community. It certainly helped that I had an okay Twitter following at the time (I think around 1k), but it doesn't need to be huge. You just need the right person to retweet you. That was enough to iterate on until I had an MVP. Then my Show HN [1] sent like 15k visitors in a day and that led to…

How do you get visitors to the React Hook blog when you're not investing in SEO. Really curious.

The blog ranks really well without any special effort, but for Divjoy I haven't put in the work of setting up extra landing pages to rank for different topics. For example, I'd like to have a page like divjoy.com/nextjs+stripe that emphasizes that stack combination.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#125

Post by justin_oaks » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

mg wrote: post #6

I run https://www.gnod.com

Before I clicked through, I assumed the site was named after a backwards word.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#126

Post by nicbou » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

bitcoinmoney wrote: post #38

nicbou wrote: post #5

I write content to help people settle in Germany. They need certain services, and I get a commission when I refer them to those services. I don't think I could trivially reproduce the results, but I'm happy to get paid for offering free advice. I hope it lasts.

How much do you earn and is the space not saturated already? Are you expanding to new niches ?

The space isn't saturated, but there is some competition. However the quality is often lacking. I maintain a smaller set of high quality articles, and keep those updated. I also have a more simple, direct writing style, and designed the website for readability.

I considered expanding to other places or bringing other people on board, but I doubt I could maintain the same level of quality. Those articles require far more research and domain-specific knowledge than your typical SEO spam.

I'm also not that interested in growing. I want more time, not more disposable income. I am sitting on a few decent business ideas, and this website could easily grow to cover other countries, but I'd rather do more pleasant things.

> How much do you earn

About the same as I did as a developer, though it's hard to get a precise number since it varies a lot.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#127

Post by nicbou » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

0x426577617265 wrote: post #46

nicbou wrote: post #5

I write content to help people settle in Germany. They need certain services, and I get a commission when I refer them to those services. I don't think I could trivially reproduce the results, but I'm happy to get paid for offering free advice. I hope it lasts.

Where do I find your service? I am planning on moving soon.

https://allaboutberlin.com - I don't offer any services, only free content. However I do have a small network of trusted people I work with, if you need extra help.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#128

Post by kewball » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

I asked this question back in 2014 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7367243) hoping to start something myself. It's now 2021 and I still have nothing to show but failed attempts. Looking through the list of businesses from 2014 and a vast majority of them look like they are still active which is great! Thanks for the trip down memory lane. It is tougher to find the time these days with 2 kids, but I am setting myself the goal of $25K from non hour based work this year. Well done to all of you that have succeeded. To all of us dreamers, this could be the year!

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#129

Post by LittlePeter » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #53

Yes, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has been very lucrative Basically its great because everything is client side so all you have to is make frontend websites for people to interact with, and even that isn't really necessary. You just need people, with wallets, to be able to interact with your smart contract easily. The smart contract you deploy has to address a pain point for existing users, typically by consolidating…

So what's your business exactly? Can you be a bit more concrete what your smart contracts are, what problem they solve?

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#130

Post by tomcam » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 10:53 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #117

tomcam wrote: post #110

I am in my 21st year of running a service that places bids the last few seconds on eBay. I am the sole employee and I outsource all of the heavy lifting. I have been doing the four hour work week since Tim Ferriss was in middle school. My house and farm in the Seattle area are both fully paid for. It allowed me to enjoy my children as they grew up and to afford serious medical bills (two of them are handicapped). It…

That sounds awesome. What is the name of the service?

eSnipe.com