Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 294 posts

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

#121

Post by Coldmode »

brador wrote: post #95
raffi wrote: post #46

I run a business selling penetration testing software that I develop. It's completely bootstrapped. I do very little services work (I actively send this type of stuff to friend's companies). Right now, it's just me, although that's probably going to change. By most of my own definitions and the one you posted here... it's successful. How did I get started on this? Sort of by accident. I was working for Automattic aft…

When's the end of year money period?

For the US government it is usually August and September. The fiscal year ends on September 30.

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

#124

Post by tbrooks »

ohashi wrote: post #12

1 man startup - http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare I do web hosting reviews. Not the scummy pay-for-placement stuff you see, but an actual review site. It tracks what people are saying about hosting companies on Twitter and publishes the results. The story is told a bit here http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/25/web-hosting-reviews-are-a-c... I was just tired after 10 years of still relying exclusively on my exper…

I love the mad-lib style form on the home page.

I assum it converts well?

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

#125

Post by christiangenco »

I've got three:

* Textbooks Please: a textbook search engine for college students. It's grossed ~$20k, almost all of which has been reinvested, and not paying myself that much. * dbinbox: an inbox for your dropbox for receiving files too large to email. It's got ~25k users, but has made less than $1k in donations. I need to give this one a reboot soon. * Email Tip Bot: send bitcoin with email. Launched two weeks ago and I've already got my first 200 users :D

I really enjoy the process of making these kinds of things, but I find it enormously exhausting to do the other half of marketing, SEO, publicity, etc. I'm working on getting better at SEO, but would love to find someone that likes the marketing side.

PS: http://solo.im/

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

#126

Post by medwezys »

bizifyme wrote: post #123

I am running a complete payment gateway that supports VISA and MasterCard and mobile payments by SMS. The name of the service is: https://www.bizify.me For an introduction to the service: https://www.bizify.me/hacker-news/

FYI HN is not indexed by google :)

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

#127

Post by ct »

cocoflunchy wrote: post #61
stevesearer wrote: post #52

I run http://officesnapshots.com which publishes photos of office design projects from around the world. I started it in 2007 as a gin side project to teaching history. I'm no longer teaching and it is the majority of my income.

Just a heads up, I can't see any text on your website (Chrome 33.0.1750.146 on Mac) http://imgur.com/Ptmxgsm

Chrome Version 33.0.1750.117 m on Win 8.1 doesn't show text either.

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

#128

Post by fiatjaf »

dangrossman wrote: post #19

Hey there. /raises hand. https://www.improvely.com and https://www.w3counter.com Five figures a month, just me, I've written about my solo business a couple times in other Ask HN threads. Ten years ago (almost to the day), in my college dorm, I was looking at the Webalizer web stats report my web host provided for my blog, and thought "I could do something much cooler than this". So I did. I had built a few education…

Do you have lots of users for W3Counter? How much users do you need for offering free content and making a profit from advertising? I'm interested.

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

#129

Post by fiatjaf »

ohashi wrote: post #12

1 man startup - http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare I do web hosting reviews. Not the scummy pay-for-placement stuff you see, but an actual review site. It tracks what people are saying about hosting companies on Twitter and publishes the results. The story is told a bit here http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/25/web-hosting-reviews-are-a-c... I was just tired after 10 years of still relying exclusively on my exper…

I don't know anything, but when I think of reviews I think about this: http://hammerprinciple.com/

Maybe it is interesting for you to know, maybe not. Probably not.

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

#130

Post by fiatjaf »

http://nomadia.com.br/

A website generator and a login/fetch user info/filter service attached for brazilian firms/hotels/inns that offer rooms to rent for long periods/temporary housing.

A very niche market in which I fill myself inn, was developing something just for me and got the idea of offering it to others. I have just one client (so I don't qualify to "successful"), but I'm following patio11 advice of offering services do niche underserved markets. Does anyone has any advice?

My biggest problem is how to market to such a niche. I'm trying to email people, but the people in niche are really non-computer users, so it is difficult.

Post reply on HN