Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by mapster » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

fecak wrote: post #126

For the past 20 years I've been a recruiter, and a few years back I started a resume writing and career consulting business called Resume Raiders ( http://resumeraiders.com ). It's a literal mom & pop operation and I do 99% of the projects myself. I started the business because I've always loved writing, am good at navigating tricky job search and career situations (I've seen it all after 20 yrs in recruiting), and I…

Congrats. curious why you don't list the grid of services on your main page? do you use PPC or other lead gen practices you can share?

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

#242

Post by le-mark » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

SirLJ wrote: post #224

imhoguy wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your Feb results so far? 2018 started not so easy as 2017 was.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I am flat, but my strategies are not really competing with the broad market... Actually my losing years are at the bottom of the market cycle for some reason...

Have you back tested your strategies for down weeks/months? What is the time horizon for you typical trade (days/weeks/months)? Just trying to get a feel for what type of trading you're doing! Congrats by the way :)

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

#243

Post by osrec » Thu, Mar 01, 2018, 11:30 PM UTC

umen wrote: post #238

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 ?

Both are fairly profitable, however the bulk of our income is via HeavyMETL as we can get customers that are willing to commit to big contracts (>$1MM/year). Bx was a labour of love, because I too did not like the existing bookkeeping packages.

We're going to be releasing an improved version of Bx with some additional project management and task management functionality, so stay tuned! It's going to be a pretty awesome addition to the basic project management stuff on there already, so be sure to check back in a month or two :)

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

#244

Post by vshabanov » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:46 AM UTC

I'm running BazQux https://bazqux.com paid feed reader. It's my only source of revenue.

I wanted to read comments in feed reader (there were few forums with very interesting discussions) and Google Reader only allowed to read blog posts. So I've started developing my own feed reader.

I believed that comments reading feature is killer and thought that Internet is big and many people will like it and I will be rich soon ;) I saved some money and quit my job to focus completely on my product.

Guess what? After initial release nobody purchased my product. I was quite disappointed and started asking people what they didn't liked (turned out to be the most important thing to do). And I've started to add features they've missed, asked again, improved again. And got first purchase few months later and second purchase few more months later.

Few times I thought to abandon project. But then Google announced it will discontinue Google Reader. By that time I had more or less usable product and got a lot of new clients and a lot of feedback (which is very important). Worked like crazy for a few months and after Google Reader was closed I've had enough clients to pay the bills.

It's still in active development with a huge TODO list.

Can't say that it is success. I would make more if I go to day job (and won't worry as much about what to do next to have income in the future) but I'm working on my own project, talking with my own clients, using technologies selected by me and can work on my own schedule (although after being burned out and birth of baby I returned to working 5 days a week in office -- my own office indeed, with piano ;)

Having one-person online business is definitely possible but it's not as romantic/easy as it sometimes shown. "Wow, this guy could work on the beach" is actually "damn, I must work even on the beach".

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

#245

Post by odonnellryan » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:10 AM UTC

vshabanov wrote: post #244

I'm running BazQux https://bazqux.com paid feed reader. It's my only source of revenue. I wanted to read comments in feed reader (there were few forums with very interesting discussions) and Google Reader only allowed to read blog posts. So I've started developing my own feed reader. I believed that comments reading feature is killer and thought that Internet is big and many people will like it and I will be rich soo…

> "Wow, this guy could work on the beach" is actually "damn, I must work even on the beach".

This is a fantastic way to put it.

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

#246

Post by msaharia » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 1:27 AM UTC

stevesearer wrote: post #232

msaharia wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you.

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

#247

Post by fecak » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 3:33 AM UTC

mapster wrote: post #241

fecak wrote: post #126

For the past 20 years I've been a recruiter, and a few years back I started a resume writing and career consulting business called Resume Raiders ( http://resumeraiders.com ). It's a literal mom & pop operation and I do 99% of the projects myself. I started the business because I've always loved writing, am good at navigating tricky job search and career situations (I've seen it all after 20 yrs in recruiting), and I…

Congrats. curious why you don't list the grid of services on your main page? do you use PPC or other lead gen practices you can share?

No lead gen services at all. Most clients via referral or Reddit and HN. I could list the services on my main page, that's not a bad idea.

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

#248

Post by mylh » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 5:42 AM UTC

thenaturalist wrote: post #231

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.?

Every part of the project went not as planned. Most bright example is billing. I was initially implemented everything using PayPal preauthorized payments API and only going live it appeared that this API only available to merchants with personal account manager, and to get one you need to already accepting more than 2500$/mo in paypal. So I have to re-implement it. And not only billing as subscription management also depends on billing. Then getting many IP addresses for outgoing proxies appeared to be much more problematic than I was expecting. Answering the second part of the question. I use it for my other project where I need to pull data from many websites on a daily basis. And I use it in my browser to change IP location and avoid country level blocks. I hope that eventually I can convert it into more or less profitable project, but the main lesson I learned from this is that when something looks simple it doesn't mean it simple in reality.

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

#249

Post by WA » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 6:20 AM UTC

csallen wrote: post #167

overcast wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, those site are just advertising for your business.

That's one of the big reasons people share for sure. Another reason that can't be underestimated is that, sometimes, it just feels good to talk about something you've been pouring your heart into in obscurity for years. Also, the interviews are just one part of the site. Arguably the most useful part of Indie Hackers is the forum where people share what they're working on with the goal of getting feedback and advice…

I have my doubts about this. The interviews made IH take off when the forums had maybe one Post per day or less.

I bet the interviews get way more traffic than the forums.

For lurkers, it’s the interviews for sure.

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

#250

Post by tuananh » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 8:17 AM UTC

chadwilken wrote: post #90

adbachman wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's already his own boss, the whole point of f-you money is being able to tell your boss, "f you!" That means you can either go for the lump sum or the annuity, either one gets you out from under The Man.

Not to mention he could probably have f-you money if he accepted an acquisition. So I would say that he is double smart for not doing that and continuing to build.

i dont think VC would be interested.