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Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

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Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#151

Post by cpeterso »

scottmotte wrote: post #110

I started http://boxysign.com 2 months ago. It is a way to share and sign documents with just a link! It's been profitable from the start - ableit still on a very small scale.

This is a very interesting, focused service. I like how you quietly create a phantom account so users don't need to login to start working.

btw, I think I broke your site when trying to upload two test PDFs. The first worked correctly, but second never finished processing and now every page says "Application Error". The Done button on BoxySign's Account Settings dialog does not seem to work (but the X button does).

Also, the sharable URLs seemed disconcertingly short for documents that may contain private information.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#152

Post by spiredigital »

Great thread! I love seeing actual projects people are working on.

I wrote a 55-page eBook on starting a profitable drop shipping business which has been downloaded over 500 times in less than a month (http://www.ecommercefuel.com/profitable-ecommerce-ebook/). I started writing in late April and released it May 15th.

Since I'm giving the eBook away and my monetization goals are mostly long term, revenues have been very minimal - less than $100 in affiliate commissions so far. But in 2.5 months since I launched the blog, I've received nearly 10,000 visits and almost 600 subscribers which I've been really happy about...

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#153

Post by gokuknows »

scottmotte wrote: post #110

I started http://boxysign.com 2 months ago. It is a way to share and sign documents with just a link! It's been profitable from the start - ableit still on a very small scale.

Dude your service is awesome! I signed and loved it. I also think the UI is kick ass!

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#154

Post by oron »

Ark-kun wrote: post #125
oron wrote: post #17

I started a temporary email service called Air Mail which has processed over 2 million emails in the last 3 months and is already profitable. http://getairmail.com wish I had a cent for every email it processed ;-)

After briefly looking at your website, I think that mailinator.com looks to have superior features. 1) You don't even need to go to Mailinator to get an email address. You just know that any time you have any address you want on hand. 2) With Mailinator you just use any name when you register on some website. (generated names are suspicious) 3) Mailinator has different domains to avoid blacklisting (domain name doesn…

Mailinator has an interesting approach to solving the problem , to my taste it's not as simple to use as Air Mail but 1 and 2 are a big plus i must admit. I will see how to add these.

Number 4 I didn't understand what you meant.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#155

Post by einaregilsson »

angry-hacker wrote: post #145
einaregilsson wrote: post #84

I created a few javascript card games, most of them in late 2011, but they really started earning this year. So far have made Spades, Hearts, Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Shithead and a couple of solitaires. Revenue has been steadily rising, and is a nice little side income now. http://www.spades-cardgame.com is one, the rest are linked from there.

So you get all your traffic from Google?

Yes, pretty much. If I look at analytics for Spades there are around 77% returning visitors, but I'm pretty sure they originally came through Google, since the sites aren't really advertised anywhere. They're linked from my own site, and I got one site that has card games rules to link to some of them, but that's it. They're not linked from any gaming sites or anything.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#156

Post by einaregilsson »

petercooper wrote: post #131
einaregilsson wrote: post #84

I created a few javascript card games, most of them in late 2011, but they really started earning this year. So far have made Spades, Hearts, Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Shithead and a couple of solitaires. Revenue has been steadily rising, and is a nice little side income now. http://www.spades-cardgame.com is one, the rest are linked from there.

I think this has been the most interesting part of the thread - congrats. And I love the comments at the top of your JavaScript ;-)

Thanks. I used to pretty paranoid about the source, running it through my own obfuscator that changed pretty much every identifier to a $nr, but that kept giving me problems, and in the end I figured there aren't really any secrets in the source, so no it's just minified with the disclaimer that you can't republish it as is, although you're free to use it for inspiration.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#157

Post by chaseideas »

This year has been an exciting one from the very start!

I've had several successful (read: awesomely profitable) new ventures this year, such as an ad network that I established and sold to a private party for a solid 5 figure amount within a month.

On one of my more established networks, I was able to grow the unique impressions by over 100k a day within 2 weeks of focusing on it. I also established a domain parking system that already has over 500+ domains parked on it and growing quickly.

During a random latenight coding session, I created a unique new channel/model of selling category related emails to advertisers bidding on a CPM basis real-time, and lining up another venture to integrate with this platform.

These are but a few of the cool things currently being worked on by myself and my growing staff. Hoping to be hiring on more talent on soon and probably getting a swanky office in La Jolla, CA soon.

Have some pretty exciting plans for the year!

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#158

Post by ajtaylor »

there wrote: post #13

I created a push notification service called Pushover ( https://pushover.net/ ) and wrote its iOS and Android apps. I started the project in January and launched it in March ( https://jcs.org/pushover ). In contrast to some competing free apps/services, the Pushover mobile apps are $3.99 which pays for the monthly hosting costs to keep the service running. Both apps are highly rated on both app stores and so far the…

This is excellent timing for $work. We'll be needing push notifications for a mobile app we're building over the next couple months. How do we integrate Pushover in our app? Is there an SDK we include in the app, or would users have to purchase and install the Pushover app? Our app will be free, so we'd like to avoid pushing costs on to our users. But we would have no problem paying a monthly fee to you, in addition to any usage over 5k messages. The continued survival of your service is certainly in our best interests!

My email address is on my profile, or I can email your support address if that's better.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#159

Post by mittermayr »

c0balt279 wrote: post #129
mittermayr wrote: post #74

I created fruji.com, a simple Twitter Analytics service and offered $5 and $25 accounts. People just keep buying accounts! It's fascinating!!! This was a weekend project and it performs already way better (a few weeks in) than my 1.5 year startup (which is something completely different). That's some scary shit right there. Purely fascinating.

Did you do anything special to market it? (The site looks great, by the way)

Not really, the past few days, I've tried a few things. Wanted to see whether any ads (Google or Facebook) would allow me to calculate a solid sign-up / purchase ratio. But neither helped promoting the site at a sustainable/affordable rate, I stopped both since more people arrived at the site through pure searching on Google, friends of friends or reading about it on Twitter or a blog.

Also, I used Bootstrap as the foundation, it just helps a lot with getting things off the ground for weekend projects.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#160

Post by mittermayr »

mittermayr wrote: post #74

I created fruji.com, a simple Twitter Analytics service and offered $5 and $25 accounts. People just keep buying accounts! It's fascinating!!! This was a weekend project and it performs already way better (a few weeks in) than my 1.5 year startup (which is something completely different). That's some scary shit right there. Purely fascinating.

Also, HackerNews has seriously gotten crazy.

I am one random comment, in a LONG list. And all night, we have been seeing a new user every 15-30 seconds. WOW.

I also saw a bug prevented some of your reports to complete, which is perfect on a HackerNews day, haha #not. It's fixed, everything will proceed automatically.

As a thank you (to the community for finding that bug) and being so MANY, I've decided to create a promo code that upgrades all of your accounts to premium. I'll leave it running until tomorrow or so.

It's 'hackernews'. Wow, amazing community right here.

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