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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#211

Post by johnward »

ssharp wrote: post #99
chebum wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why people share their revenues? Every product can be copied. If you know revenue, you know what product you should copy.

Patio11 was blogging about his old Bingo Card software for many, many years and became one of the most high-profile members of Hacker News because of it. I don't think a flood of competing Bingo Card software came in. A lot of the time, finding a good enough niche, a small enough niche, and understanding customer acquisition for that niche is all the "moat" you really need. Remember, your competitors likely don't kno…

For years I thought "bingo card" meant something else that I just wasn't familiar with. Until I actually read about it and it was as simple as cards to play bingo. I believe he sold that business now.

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

#212

Post by adpoe »

xcubic wrote: post #152
adpoe wrote: post #127

I run an ecommerce store from Shopify which fulfills the orders by drop-shipping through AliExpress. This is definitely doable for one person, and it isn't technically challenging for a software developer--but the hardest part (at least for me) is marketing, creating content, advertising, and so on. Actually running a Shopify store and fulfilling by drop-shipping is simple. I would definitely recommend that as a good…

How do you pick the products to sell? Can you share the store you're working on?

There are a few good ways, but it really helps if you know the products well. For me, my site sells guitar parts and DIY kits. And I've been playing guitar since I was about 10 years old, so that helps a ton.

I had a few other stores before this that didn't sell well at all, and I have to say that's because I just didn't know the products, or what the end users really wanted/needed/cared about.

Great ways to pick products: - Terapeak (http://www.terapeak.com/), but this is paid - eBay completed listings - Or most simple (and what I use) -- once you know your products, search AliExpress and sort by "best-selling". That's my go-to.

Feel free to check my store for ideas (or if you want to buy something!). URL is: http://modshop.guitars/

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

#213

Post by novaleaf »

samsolomon wrote: post #180
novaleaf wrote: post #168

I run https://PhantomJsCloud.com I started it as a free MVP about 2 years ago while in Thailand, and given that I was attracting a slow but steady stream of users I decided to build out a commercial v1 from it. The freemium SaaS went live in March and it's growing monthly. If I still lived in Thailand I would consider it very successful, but I am in the Seattle area now so it's ramen profitable. The biggest surprise…

This is a cool project. I'm mostly a designer, but am familiar with PhantomJS. I don't see a blog on your site. Have you considered writing about the technology? I'd think search would be a great growth mechanism for something like this. Certainly there are a ton of people searching for questions related to Phantom. I'd look around Stack Overflow and possibly Quora for topic ideas and then write posts answering those…

Yes, "inbound marketing" (a blog) is probably the biggest accelerator to growth I can (and should) do. I'm holding off for now though, as I need to make the product more friendly to business users first. Right now PhantomJsCloud is focused on developers, so I need to make some non-dev friendly tooling first. That's my excuse at least.

Regarding StackOverflow, yes, that's actually how I validated the free MVP (answering SO questions and if my product might be beneficial, providing a link to my product) but generally those traffic sources don't seem to scale very well past MVP validation. I haven't tried Quora though, I will add that to my todo list :)

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

#214

Post by adpoe »

floydax wrote: post #153
adpoe wrote: post #127

I run an ecommerce store from Shopify which fulfills the orders by drop-shipping through AliExpress. This is definitely doable for one person, and it isn't technically challenging for a software developer--but the hardest part (at least for me) is marketing, creating content, advertising, and so on. Actually running a Shopify store and fulfilling by drop-shipping is simple. I would definitely recommend that as a good…

Can you share the store URL? Please check my profile. I wonder, how do you deal with customs issues? I've had issues in the past while shipping outside EU and customers always expected me to solve the issues for them

Yes, here's my URL, feel free to share =) http://modshop.guitars/

For customer issues, you just need to be responsive and as helpful as you can be.

I've also had issues shipping outside the US, but Shopify (the platform that I use) lets you disable shipping outside of certain countries.

I've had some issues shipping to Canada, (never had an EU customer), so I only ship within the USA now. And changing that was only a few clicks.

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

#215

Post by DanHulton »

novaleaf wrote: post #168

I run https://PhantomJsCloud.com I started it as a free MVP about 2 years ago while in Thailand, and given that I was attracting a slow but steady stream of users I decided to build out a commercial v1 from it. The freemium SaaS went live in March and it's growing monthly. If I still lived in Thailand I would consider it very successful, but I am in the Seattle area now so it's ramen profitable. The biggest surprise…

That is a neat idea, and a neat site. Can I offer just a tiny bit of design advice though? You really ought to have more vertical whitespace going on there. It feels very, very crowded, especially with your h1 rubbing up against your logo at the top there. Basically, anywhere there's a large block of stuff, you should double or more the whitespace around it.

Though it may not be a winning strategy, good luck anyway! It never hurts to have it.

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

#217

Post by tmaly »

adpoe wrote: post #192
GordonS wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about drop-shipping - do you have any good resources that serve as a guide? In particular, I'm wondering about how to handle problems - when orders don't arrive, when customers want to return defective items etc.

I used Shopify's drop shipping guide to get started--it really is very helpful. They're invested in making you profitable (it's in their best interest as well, since they make $$ from you), and consequently their guides are very good. https://www.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping Fair warning though: you'll still have a ton of problems and spend time dealing with customers. For example, the first time I got a $100+ sal…

When you use AliExpress for drop shipping, are you making money as an affiliate or is it something different?

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

#218

Post by adpoe »

pryelluw wrote: post #136
adpoe wrote: post #127

I run an ecommerce store from Shopify which fulfills the orders by drop-shipping through AliExpress. This is definitely doable for one person, and it isn't technically challenging for a software developer--but the hardest part (at least for me) is marketing, creating content, advertising, and so on. Actually running a Shopify store and fulfilling by drop-shipping is simple. I would definitely recommend that as a good…

Im exploring similar options. Mind if we email? Please check my profile. :)

Emailed =)

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

#219

Post by mars4rp »

novaleaf wrote: post #168

I run https://PhantomJsCloud.com I started it as a free MVP about 2 years ago while in Thailand, and given that I was attracting a slow but steady stream of users I decided to build out a commercial v1 from it. The freemium SaaS went live in March and it's growing monthly. If I still lived in Thailand I would consider it very successful, but I am in the Seattle area now so it's ramen profitable. The biggest surprise…

very interesting, I will defiantly will be a customer, I have a question, how fast is requestSingle page? is there any guaranteed response time? Edit: adding a suggestion, if in your pricing you include a dedicated worker it would be very cool. you could price it hourly (8 hours a day, or monthly) this way I don't worry about number of request that I am sending, you don't worry about page size and amount of JS in the page! and I can keep sending requests in the rate I am getting responses.

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

#220

Post by DamnYuppie »

snorberhuis wrote: post #196
HoboHammocks wrote: post #101

I started Hobo Hammocks a year and a half ago (www.hobohammocks.com) I got the idea when a buddy of mine and myself decided to live out of our cars and sleep in hammocks on the backstop of an abandoned softball field. Doing so made me more aware of the homeless and what they are going through, and I wanted to do something to help them. I started the company and donate a meal to the homeless with every hammock I sell.…

I looked at your kickstarter and you rate your sleeping bag at 20 degrees. 20 degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit? If Celsius I am interested.

Do you mean Fahrenheit? 20 degrees Celsius (68F) wouldn't even qualify as insulation in a sleeping bag, may as well use a garbage bag and newspapers. 20 degrees Fahrenheit would make for a good 3 season bag though.
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