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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#231

Post by thenaturalist »

mylh wrote: post #229

(Un)successfull one-person business is https://botproxy.net (rotating proxy) Started couple of months ago as I needed such a service for my other project and I thought why not to make it as Saas. Now I have a dozen of active subscriptions and balancing around 0 in monthly profit while having to do a lot of work to keep things going. If I knew in advance all the stuff I know now would never start anything like this bu…

Care to elaborate on what exactly you didn't anticipate? Unsustainable unit economics? I guess bootstrapping anything alone is a stressful to get the wheels rolling. What keeps you from a) shutting down or b) experimenting with prices etc.?

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

#232

Post by stevesearer »

msaharia wrote: post #196
stevesearer wrote: post #154

I run https://officesnapshots.com which highlights office design projects from around the world. I guess I don't technically qualify for these posts anymore since I've hired a couple employees, but it was a one-person business for 9 years before doing so. The basic origin was seeing photos of Google's offices and looking for a website that showed photos of other offices. There wasn't one so I made it.

Do you get the snapshots from the companies themselves or your employees collect them? What's the incentive?

We receive the project photography from architecture and design firms responsible for designing the offices. The incentive is to promote their work for others to see.

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

#233

Post by stevesearer »

ya3ad wrote: post #211
stevesearer wrote: post #154

I run https://officesnapshots.com which highlights office design projects from around the world. I guess I don't technically qualify for these posts anymore since I've hired a couple employees, but it was a one-person business for 9 years before doing so. The basic origin was seeing photos of Google's offices and looking for a website that showed photos of other offices. There wasn't one so I made it.

Would you mind to share that is this business profitable or not?

It pays for me to work on it full-time and I have a couple employees now.

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

#234

Post by ca98am79 »

Hi, I started and run park.io by myself. It is a place to backorder expiring domain names. I started it for fun and it grew into a business. You can read or listen to an interview I did on Indiehackers here: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/034-mike-carson-of-park...

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

#235

Post by jjeaff »

eurticket wrote: post #223
sixQuarks wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely misunderstood the point. What would invite competition is the realization of how much revenue can be made with that product.

So you could say that by not advertising it, for risk of competition, you're missing out on potential revenue too?

I may be wrong, but my assumption is that you are assuming putting your story on something like indie hackers is a lost marketing opportunity.

But I'd say a large percentage of successful small saas products are very niche and would not benefit in the least from talking about it in a public forum.

In my case, none of my customers would be reading anything like indie hackers so I have no reason to get the word out through those channels. It would just invite competition without returns.

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

#236

Post by brandfountain »

mailjenil wrote: post #210
brandfountain wrote: post #127

https://brandfountain.com I have curated a stellar portfolio of brandable domains geared to startup community, allows me to dev other projects without raising seed. I succeed by being flexible/sympathetic with early stage companies, expect to reach six digit sales on almost autopilot.

How often your domains are sold? Are those all inbound inquiries?

I rely on word of mouth and random visitors for sales. With very little time, interest or expertise (in marketing) my approach is quite basic - offer domains that I would buy for my own projects and be humane with pricing. The extent of my customer strategy can be summed up in: if a customer has a good experience they will tell a friend. If they have a bad experience they will tell 10. I'm not trying to build an empire with Brandfountain, small is perfect for me as I am very busy with another project.

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

#237

Post by stevesearer »

goshx wrote: post #176
stevesearer wrote: post #154

I run https://officesnapshots.com which highlights office design projects from around the world. I guess I don't technically qualify for these posts anymore since I've hired a couple employees, but it was a one-person business for 9 years before doing so. The basic origin was seeing photos of Google's offices and looking for a website that showed photos of other offices. There wasn't one so I made it.

I've been visiting your website for years and never realized it was an actual business. Have you written or presented about it somewhere? I'd love to learn your process.

When I talk about it on HN it is mostly in the context of not using ad networks and selling/hosting our own advertising since that is of interested to the folks here. Other than that though, the audience here isn't the main one we're trying to build so I haven't spent much time talking about the process of building the site.

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

#238

Post by umen »

osrec wrote: post #138

I do employ a few people now, but in the beginning, it was just me for about 4 years: OSREC - https://osrec.co.uk Bx - https://usebx.com Got started with OSREC because I could see a gap for a good suite of tools that could automate mundane data tasks in banks and hedge funds. Also, I did not enjoy my investment banking job. Got started with Bx because many people complained to me about Quickbooks/Sage/Xero and I thou…

this look great what is more profitable the online Batch processor or the accounting app? can you explain the technical side of things ?

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

#239

Post by sixQuarks »

eurticket wrote: post #223
sixQuarks wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely misunderstood the point. What would invite competition is the realization of how much revenue can be made with that product.

So you could say that by not advertising it, for risk of competition, you're missing out on potential revenue too?

If your product does not target entrepreneurs, then you're not really missing much, other than stroking your ego.
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