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Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

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Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#131

Post by iconfinder »

yawn wrote: post #119
iconfinder wrote: post #29

I'm a single founder who have run Iconfinder.com alone from 2007 until 2011, where I got a new business partner. The site reached 1,7 M monthly visits and gives me almost a full income. I won't define it as success since I haven't reached my goal yet, but I guess it shows you can build a large website alone.

How do you make your income on iconfinder? When I search for icons, the ads display below the results--I won't see them if the icon I'm looking for is in the top few rows. What percentage of income comes from merch?

All income are from ads - so far :-) I have some plans to get other revenue streams.

I hate ads my self, so I try to minimize the screen real estate used for them.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#132

Post by jackkinsella »

I'm the sole founder of Oxbridge Notes, http://www.oxbridgenotes.co.uk. I describe my job as "hacker, founder and janitor". I do it all - graphic design, programming, server administration, customer service, seo and online marketing. As someone who doesn't mind working alone and loves learning new disciplines, I couldn't be happier taking on all these roles.

I set up the site a year and a half ago out of desperation after a previous project had failed. I asked myself "what do I have that I could sell n times?". The answer: my old notes (revision notes compiled by myself, not lecture handouts) and essays from Oxford law school. I combined my knowledge of law with my knowledge of programming and found a suitable niche. There were many competitors but none of them had the overlap of skills I had, and so I had a huge advantage.

Last year the project made ~$25k profit, and this year I hope to reach $50k, with an investment of about five hours per week. (The initial time investment was huge, but it is in maintenance mode now.)

I recently began offering notes in other subjects. If you happend to have typed-up revision guides from college, I can offer you a chunky commission on every sale: http://www.oxbridgenotes.co.uk/sell_notes

For anyone familiar with real time strategy games like Command and Conquer or Starcraft, Oxbridge Notes is the turret guarding my base. It gives me the minimal income I need to survive, giving me the chance to leverage my time by taking on riskier but potentially more rewarding ventures.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#133

Post by iconfinder »

ztay wrote: post #114
iconfinder wrote: post #29

I'm a single founder who have run Iconfinder.com alone from 2007 until 2011, where I got a new business partner. The site reached 1,7 M monthly visits and gives me almost a full income. I won't define it as success since I haven't reached my goal yet, but I guess it shows you can build a large website alone.

Sweet. I've used iconfinder.com over the years. Its now a default stop when searching an icon. Seems to be getting better everytime i visit too. Keep up the good work!

Thanks man!

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#134

Post by iconfinder »

xpose2000 wrote: post #51
iconfinder wrote: post #29

I'm a single founder who have run Iconfinder.com alone from 2007 until 2011, where I got a new business partner. The site reached 1,7 M monthly visits and gives me almost a full income. I won't define it as success since I haven't reached my goal yet, but I guess it shows you can build a large website alone.

Impressive! Its a great idea and a very functional and helpful site. If you break 1,7 M monthly visits, I'd call that a success. :)

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#135

Post by iconfinder »

pagliara wrote: post #113
iconfinder wrote: post #29

I'm a single founder who have run Iconfinder.com alone from 2007 until 2011, where I got a new business partner. The site reached 1,7 M monthly visits and gives me almost a full income. I won't define it as success since I haven't reached my goal yet, but I guess it shows you can build a large website alone.

I use it all the time. Very useful.

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#137

Post by amirhhz »

acabal wrote: post #19

I'm the sole founder, developer, marketer, and everything-else-guy for http://www.scribophile.com and http://writerfolio.com . They've funded my travels across the world for the past few years. Right now I'm living in Germany with my German girlfriend whom I met in Australia. Scribophile has since become one of the largest writers communities online, and we're about to have our 100,000th critique written (sometime in…

A budding journalist friend of mine has been looking for a place to put her writing portfolio and she hasn't been happy with blogging/squarespace/etc.. I just sent her writerfolio.com, I hope she likes it and signs up :)

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#138

Post by vadepaysa »

ztay wrote: post #122

I'm the solo founder of PrintFriendly.com Two years ago I applied to YC, and was turned down in the interview process. They asked, "how is PrintFriendly going to make a billion dollars"? I'm still trying to answer that (or at least a more modest version of the question). Today PrintFriendly revenue is about $10k/mo, 1.2M visits/mo, and slow but steady growth. I'm happy with the results, delighted actually. However, I…

Can you give us an insight on how you drive revenue? Is it possible to connect offline?

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#139

Post by kariatx »

aasdfsf wrote: post #109
kariatx wrote: post #11

I started Blogthings.com (a personality quiz site) in 2004 by myself, and I've never had a job while working in it. It makes enough money for both my husband and I to live off of, and we split the work on it, which ends up just being a few hours a week (no more than 10). I spend my free time working on my programming / math and figuring out what's next.

I ran a similar quiz-site for a while before flipping it a couple of years ago. It had heavy integration with facebook, and well was rather spammy (I know I might go to hell). I just visited your website, I was wondering whether you manually create all the quizzes, or whether you have started outsourcing it seeing that you have been at it since the beginning of time? Also, I am assuming that all your revenue at this…

Thanks! I write them all myself, but I use a lot self-written software at this point to streamline the writing process. And yes, 100% ad based. Adsense actually probably pays us the most we could get for our traffic with the least amount of intrusion.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#140

Post by glimcat »

acabal wrote: post #19

I'm the sole founder, developer, marketer, and everything-else-guy for http://www.scribophile.com and http://writerfolio.com . They've funded my travels across the world for the past few years. Right now I'm living in Germany with my German girlfriend whom I met in Australia. Scribophile has since become one of the largest writers communities online, and we're about to have our 100,000th critique written (sometime in…

Scribophile sounded interesting, but I left when I found out that I need an account to actually see anything. You even have a free user tier, so WTF?

You don't have to take my word for this either. Some basic (free) analytics can give you a ballpark estimate of how often this is happening. It's probably a non-negligible ratio of your incoming new viewers.

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