I run a small online game called RPG MO(http://rpg.mo.ee).
It gets about 20k unique visits every month. Money wise it generates enough payments to pay for the server and associated services and leaves a little for advertising as well. It doesn't cover all of my bills yet so I have to maintain a full-time job while studying in the university. I still have high hopes in this project though.
Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
151–160 of 294 posts
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#152I ran Scribie. http://scribie.com.
I started it in August 2008 and was the only person working on it for 5 years. In 2013 we established our first QA center and now we are around 20.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#153I wrote a book[1] that generates about $2k of revenue per month. Not quite your definition of success, but it's given me a taste. I'm now in the beta testing process for my next thing[2]. [1]: https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments [2]: http://www.pagesnap.io
Just want to say that I'm using Docverter to try to make a new business :D.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#154Just launched Pinegrow Web Designer ( http://pinegrow.com ) two months ago. The company is actually run by my wife and me, but I do all the work with Pinegrow while she is taking care of our other projects. Pinegrow has been paying most of our bills since launch and I have a lot of expansions in the pipeline: full support for Foundation alongside Bootstrap, developer edition that'll work with templates, a similar app…
Wow! You're actually on HN! I've visited your site before, and you must see a lot of click-throughs from review sites, because you guys are up there with divshot and the other site-builders.
I'll also be testing out the linux client, and I'm sure that you are probably aware of the fact that a lot of web devs use some form of linux as their main desktop.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suppose you run a professional services business where you have appointments. If people don't come to an appointment, you don't get money. You might pay an office manager to call people the morning of their appointment to remind them, so that they come into their appointment, so you get paid, right? Appointment Reminder is like an office manager who costs $200 a month, not $4,000 a month, is vastly more likely to suc…
I didn't mean appointment reminding in general - which is a good thing obviously. But I thought it was a long time solved problem by other means (and not necessary by office manager), be it some "enterprise" calendar or todo software which are integrated in most of the "enterprise"/business software products, etc...
The crucial detail is that some small HVAC company may not even be using an "enterprise/business software product"... In fact they're probably still keeping appointments on a sheet of paper.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#156I've been running http://www.vladstudio.com (where I publish my wallpapers and other stuff) for several years, and for quite some time, it was my primary source of income. Unusual, because my premium accounts are not really a "product", but just a way to "like" or "donate".
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#1571 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.
That's pretty neat frontpage. I am a bit confused as to what it's doing, who's doing it and why. But it seems like a neat idea.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#158Since you didn't specify the type of business ( http://www.dot-com-it.com) ; I run a consulting business as a programmer that is just me. In the 'early' days (I started in 1999) I sort of fell into it. I was burnt out and walked out of a job.
Networking got me 2 consulting client, and things just ballooned from there. I fell into it accidentally and learned a lot of hard lessons along the way.
In the early days I did a lot of fixed fee projects for small businesses. On some projects I made tons of income; and on other projects I put in a lot of unpaid time [due to me incorrectly bidding the project and/or improperly handling change requests.
I tried my hands at podcasting with a sponsorships model ( http://www.theflexshow.com ). That made ~$30K throughout its' life. Even though I had a huge audience for the size of the market, no one was trying to sell anything to that market. I make ~$30K or so throughout its run and gave away a bunch of sponsorship in exchange for other services. Not bad; but not enough to pay the bills.
I took the profits from the consulting business and pumped them into a product business selling advanced components to Flex developers ( http://www.flextras.com ). I did this full time, stopping all consulting. The business was, in essence, a failure. It generated $10K per year which is a nice side income; but not a "pay your bills income. The business was slowly growing, until some Adobe PR mishaps killed executive confidence in the Flash Player as an application development platform; which killed our sales. It was generating about $10K per year and was growing. But, that is not enough to pay the bills. I shut it down and open sourced all the code.
Now; I'm back to consulting, however the bulk of my clients right now are hourly as opposed to fixed fee. This is very profitable because many clients just keep renewing contracts and giving me work. However, it is the least bit satisfying because there is no defined end point and it feels like I'm just churning my wheels to kill time. Sometimes it feels like clients are creating just enough work to keep me busy so that I'll be there when they really need me.
Despite having multiple ongoing clients; it doesn't feel like I'm a business owner because they are paying for my time, explicitly. That isn't scalable in any way.
I'm prepping to launch a book under the Nathan Barry's "Authority" model which will teach Flex Developers how to program in AngularJS. More info at ( http://www.lifeafterflex.com ). People seem excited about this beyond anything I ever expected. I asked my newsletter if anyone was interested in reviewing a pre-release copy and I got 20+ responses which is a significantly higher response rate than usual. If the early interest is any indication; more people will read my book than ever bought a Flextras component.
I've also dabbled with a in Mobile Game ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.igorKn... ), a recording studio (not online), and a CD duplication business (not online). All had varying levels of success.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#159For those who have successfully started a one-man online business/app, how did you get it known? Adwords? Advertising?
My own product spread virally. I think that is about the only feasible way to do it. I've tried advertising a few times myself, but it never, ever pays for itself.
> "I think that is about the only feasible way to do it."
It may be the only way to do it very quickly. Most companies don't just go viral on day 1, they work very hard to get customers. Some times advertising makes sense, other times it doesn't, but it's certainly not the only option.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#1601 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?
It really depends on the traffic source/quality honestly. For some it can be exceptionally helpful (ie you have no idea what you need). For the HN crowd I linked directly to the data because I figured people would be far more comfortable with that.