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Ask HN: I made $24k over the last month. Now what?

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Re: Ask HN: I made $24k over the last month. Now what?

#131

Post by andrewcooke »

Psyonic wrote: post #75
andrewcooke wrote: post #56

i think that it's pretty clear that getting rich is largely luck. you were in the right place at the right time with the right skills. if it was more than that, then you'd be able to repeat it without advice, right? given that, two approaches make sense to me: 1 - treat it as a lucky break and consider how best to make it last over the long term, as a one-off. but you say you don't want to do this in your question. 2…

24k a month is near 300k a year... doing pretty damn well, if you can keep it up, but like you said, nowhere near very rich. The very rich get richer because, like Mark Cuban says, when they invest in a company, the CEO gives them a call and asks if they have any recommendations.

i didn't mean to imply 24k a month wasn't impressive (it's way more than i earn!), but the impression i got was that this wasn't going to last for long.

which suggests another approach is to use the money to find ways to extend how long this can last. for example, by porting to android.

Re: Ask HN: I made $24k over the last month. Now what?

#133

Post by HockeyPlayer »

anigbrowl wrote: post #96

Good work. If this is solo, then I add my voice to others saying hire a few people with half and save the other half. You say you don't want to invest, but since California is in the first stages of being hit by an epic storm system that will play out over the next 2 weeks, civil engineering businesses on the west coast are about to be handed as much work as they can handle. Or talk to pg about putting some into ycom…

> Or talk to pg about putting some into ycombinator.

Is ycombinator taking investment? I thought it was closed.

Re: Ask HN: I made $24k over the last month. Now what?

#134

Post by eru »

cellis wrote: post #30
jonnycowboy wrote: post #19

Just travel, with a small laptop (for support). You'll be able to live for over a year on that money in places like New Zealand, China, India, etc etc. Or rent/buy a small RV and see rural America!

Why rural america? I've driven through my fair share of it and lived in it for a long time, and based on this heuristic I've got to say that you will mostly just be seeing large expanses of farm fields. With the kind of money he has: Costa Rica, South of France, Tahiti, [insert sunny place]. Mojito Island

Berlin is also cheap and interesting.

Re: Ask HN: I made $24k over the last month. Now what?

#135

Post by maxklein »

iamelgringo wrote: post #115

Expand, grow, conquer. - Hire a few contractors to grow your stable of apps. You seem to know what works. Expand on what you're doing so you can do more of the same. - Build your brand, that way you can use the market you've built to transfer interest from one app to other apps, (as you've been doing on line with your excellent blog posts). - Figure out a way to diversify your revenue stream. You're already concerned…

I'm starting Android this month, everything is in place. I'll post comparison posts on my blog after I test it out for a couple of weeks. I personally don't think Android will work, but I'm generally a pessimist.

Re: Ask HN: I made $24k over the last month. Now what?

#136

Post by CalinCulianu »

I have the exact same problem.

And no, don't pay your taxes YET. I would actually invest in hiring some artists and developing even MORE apps. Maybe just outsource their development. It can be a lot of headaches but if you were able to code the apps yourself then likely you can extract decent work out of shitty Indian or Chinese consultants.

Or, find some people here in the states and convince them to work for you.

Keep growing your business. Become a player.

Or, retire to a cheap country and fuck girls and and enjoy life.

That's my advice.

-Calin

Re: Ask HN: I made $24k over the last month. Now what?

#137

Post by webwright »

Seems like there MIGHT be some real estate opportunities in some parts of the US. Short sales in Vegas or parts of CA might be interesting. Income properties (strip malls) might be available for cheap. Fourplexes, too.

I tend to lean towards our current irrational spending/printing resulting in hyper-inflation (or at least inflation) though plenty of smart people support deflation, too. If you buy the inflation arguments, don't keep your money liquid. i.e. If you buy a $500k house and inflation drives it (any everything else) up 10x to $5m, you bought a $5m house for a song. If you keep $500k in the bank and there is 10x inflation... Ouch.

Re: Ask HN: I made $24k over the last month. Now what?

#139

Post by maxklein »

jeromec wrote: post #94
maxklein wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty smart, but you still need a confluence of certain things at a certain time, which was clearly the case with the app store about 8 months ago, and which I took advantage of. One can never know if everything will fall perfectly in place the next time.

Something I'd actually seriously consider in your place is YC companies. They get around 20K which is just enough to create a prototype/beta to solicit a larger round. This is not very much and I imagine many don't raise money right away after their Demo Day. Having another 15-20K could be highly desired in these earliest days. YC has already placed their bets that these companies will become great, and I think their…

I'd be ashamed to approach a YC company with my 24k. Like - it's not THAT much money!

Re: Ask HN: I made $24k over the last month. Now what?

#140

Post by webwright »

jayliew wrote: post #125
icey wrote: post #5

First, congratulations; that's a pretty impressive feat on the app store. Have you thought about taking some of the income and using it to hire other developers to increase the number of apps that you've got being developed at once? It seems like you know what works and doesn't work on the app store, so it would probably make sense to start trying to make your efforts scale up.

You have a revenue generator model that's proven and works. Why not do more of it? Scale up?

Actually, that's a good point. Could you invest some of that money in another developer to speed up dev and iteration? How about a cheap marketeer to spread the word online about your apps?
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