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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#141

Post by ataturk »

napolux wrote: post #43

So today is the day of the week I feel stupid for not being rich (yet) thanks to my skills in coding. Thank you, @pyeu ;-)

A lot of sites like this one are geared to do just that so don't fall for it. Indie Hackers is another one. "You suck because you're not rich yet."

Most small businesses fail. Some do well for a short time, then fail. There are a lot of completely miserable people out there. Your #1 job is to NOT be completely miserable. If you can succeed with a small business (or even a large one) that's great! But like I said in my other post, there's a ton of bs out there.

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

#142

Post by RikNieu »

_xzxj wrote: post #39
superasn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this guy is truly an inspiration. If you're a one person business, you will find this tweet very useful: https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/93870716650815488... (aka stop running after shiny new things and just do it!)

No offense but Pieter Levels seems like a bit of a bastard, and you can see it in that thread. I don't pay much attention to him, but when I do come across his social media posts they're pretty off-putting. He's pretty successful yes, but €50k/mo is not exactly f-you money.

Where do you live? I always find it fascinating how the same amount of money can be valued so differently by people. €50k/mo would absolutely be f-you money in my world.

Hell, €5k that's just about passive income(like Levels business are close to being) would set me free and change my life in ways I cannot describe.

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

#143

Post by WalterGR »

WalterGR wrote: post #16

I created and run The Online Slang Dictionary - http://onlineslangdictionary.com/ . It's the eldest slang dictionary on the web. I started it in 1997 when I was in highschool. I found it interesting that slang terms frequently heard just the year before were already passe. I thought it was something that was worth capturing. It affords me a modest salary in a fairly high-priced area, on around 2.1 million visitors a…

Edit: 1996 not 1997.

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

#144

Post by cperciva »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #140
cperciva wrote: post #115

Tarsnap. I have an employee now, but I ran the company myself for the first ten years and from ~2011 onwards Tarsnap has been the vast majority of my income. I got started by... well, sitting down and scratching my itch. I wanted good backups, and it turned out that other people wanted them too.

Can you give a simple explanation why a Tarsnap backup is superior to competitors, but for someone who isn't going to understand the research paper? Does it backup my website like S3, or does it back up my personal files like Dropbox?

Does it backup my website like S3, or does it back up my personal files like Dropbox?

No. It backs up your files like tar. (Except with deduplication and encryption and cryptographic signing and off-site storage.)

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

#145

Post by 3riverdev »

cperciva wrote: post #115

Tarsnap. I have an employee now, but I ran the company myself for the first ten years and from ~2011 onwards Tarsnap has been the vast majority of my income. I got started by... well, sitting down and scratching my itch. I wanted good backups, and it turned out that other people wanted them too.

I'll add another "Thank you for Tarsnap!"

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

#146

Post by WalterGR »

et-al wrote: post #134
WalterGR wrote: post #16

I created and run The Online Slang Dictionary - http://onlineslangdictionary.com/ . It's the eldest slang dictionary on the web. I started it in 1997 when I was in highschool. I found it interesting that slang terms frequently heard just the year before were already passe. I thought it was something that was worth capturing. It affords me a modest salary in a fairly high-priced area, on around 2.1 million visitors a…

That's amazing! I've definitely stumbled upon your site while searching some phrases. How has UrbanDictionary affected your traffic?

Nice! I'm always happy when people have come across it.

Urban Doctionary gets around 30x the traffic. So it definitely gets the lion's share of slang dictionary traffic.

The Online Slang Dictionary was always a side project from when I started it in 1996 until 2007, when I started working on it full-time. It wasn't until 2007 that people could put content on the site without my manual intervention. So it's easy to see why Urban Dictionary overtook my site in the long past. Since 2011 though, Urban Dictionary's traffic has been artificially propped up due to an ongoing manual penalty against my site, which I've had no success in resolving.

So if anyone works at Google or knows anyone who works at Google - I can be reached at waltergr@gmail.com or editor@. :)

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

#147

Post by gkya »

jgh wrote: post #124
gkya wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly all the messages he has to put up with are plain stupid, so if he's being a bit of a bastard, rightly so. I just found about his websites, bookmarked nomadlist.com already. It's funny, to say the least, how people exaggerate taking some data from a database and spitting it out as HTML. The important bit here is the data and the presentation, nothing else. WRT $50k/mo, for any sane person that's two times more…

So I'm going to reply here because I think this is a good one (of the replies I've gotten) to express my thoughts a little bit more clearly: 1) I was wrong about what was going on in that thread. I sort of scanned it at first and saw that snarky "this is why I build companies and you do contracts" post and it rubbed me the wrong way. 2) The $50k (or €50k, im not sure which it is now) number is a lot, but given the wa…

Yeah, that sometimes happens, totally understandable. You can't edit after 2 hours, and I think that's too short of a window. After posting the comment you replied to, I saw you made similar clarifications elsewhere, where if you could edit you could've added a little "whoops" message under your original one.

I think it's the word you chose that brought it all on you though. Yet empathising with the way you interpreted the thing, I could've made a similar rant too, frankly.

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

#149

Post by jgh »

gkya wrote: post #147
jgh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm going to reply here because I think this is a good one (of the replies I've gotten) to express my thoughts a little bit more clearly: 1) I was wrong about what was going on in that thread. I sort of scanned it at first and saw that snarky "this is why I build companies and you do contracts" post and it rubbed me the wrong way. 2) The $50k (or €50k, im not sure which it is now) number is a lot, but given the wa…

Yeah, that sometimes happens, totally understandable. You can't edit after 2 hours, and I think that's too short of a window. After posting the comment you replied to, I saw you made similar clarifications elsewhere, where if you could edit you could've added a little "whoops" message under your original one. I think it's the word you chose that brought it all on you though. Yet empathising with the way you interpret…

Yeah I definitely used unnecessarily harsh language. Lesson learned: read thoroughly before being a jerk ;)

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

#150

Post by scyclow »

subpar wrote: post #109
scyclow wrote: post #86

I've only made about $5.00 on it so far (certainly not enough to retire on), but my latest endeavor is looking quite promising: http://fastcashmoneyplus.biz

Love this. Any interest in a merger with the cash machine that is http://subpar.biz/

I talked to the board, and they say that we're not taking merger requests at the moment, but would be open to a licensing agreement :P
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