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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#251

Post by bildung »

dceddia wrote: post #172
sixQuarks wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I would only do it if I was targeting entrepreneurs

"Entrepreneur" is only one label for the people who read Indie Hackers, though. They are software developers, designers, creatives, fitness enthusiasts, etc. All the people who currently work a day job and are hoping to do their own thing. Entrepreneurship may bring them together, but it's not necessarily their only (or even their primary) identity.

Yeah, but that still is a tiny part of the overall economy. If you don't target those small niches, it makes no economic sense to get profiled on Indie Hackers et.al.

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

#252

Post by SirLJ »

le-mark wrote: post #242
SirLJ wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Yes, you have to test for years, as many years as you can find data for, to cover at least few market cycles, so you know how your strategy will perform in both bull and bear markets...

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

#253

Post by le-mark »

SirLJ wrote: post #252
le-mark wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Yes, you have to test for years, as many years as you can find data for, to cover at least few market cycles, so you know how your strategy will perform in both bull and bear markets...

You've mentioned you wrote your trading bots in Python, how does one go about doing that? If I write a script that executes buys/sells via an api, I still need to periodically get market data, build candle stick charts (or whatever) and calculate moving averages (or whatever) to then decide to buy and/or sell.

Then to back test, you have to do all that, not with an api, but against and data from a flat file or whatever. I guess you could do it by hand for awhile, but that would certainly become tedious.

It's actually quite complex. Would you recommend anything to read to get started building trading bots?

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

#254

Post by SirLJ »

le-mark wrote: post #253
SirLJ wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you have to test for years, as many years as you can find data for, to cover at least few market cycles, so you know how your strategy will perform in both bull and bear markets...

You've mentioned you wrote your trading bots in Python, how does one go about doing that? If I write a script that executes buys/sells via an api, I still need to periodically get market data, build candle stick charts (or whatever) and calculate moving averages (or whatever) to then decide to buy and/or sell. Then to back test, you have to do all that, not with an api, but against and data from a flat file or whatev…

You'll have to start the other way around: start testing ideas using the back data and in the end you'll have not only the test to prove the theory, but the algo written as well...

The automation after that is easy, the current data is not a problem either, you can get it trough the API from your discount broker, here are the docs for Interactive Brokers for example:

https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=5041

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

#255

Post by csallen »

WA wrote: post #249
csallen wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The forum and the discussions there get 3x the pageviews the interviews do, and that gap is widening every day.

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

#258

Post by ksaitor »

Heya! Depends what's your definition of "successful", of course, but would like to plug in CJL - job board for blockchain companies.

- https://cryptojobslist.com

- current progress https://twitter.com/ksaitor/status/968690695031500800

- will share revenue figures shortly, but TL;DR — it's ramen profitable

Been running it solo and launched in October 2017. Previously did a few other consumer+saas startups with a team, funding, etc — and this simple job board seems to be having way more traction and revenue than other funded projects with fancy apps that I've built before. AMA :)

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

#259

Post by mattbgates »

I specialize in creating useful apps that help me, first and foremost, and then share them with the world.

I have released these two products: https://callmeprivate.com https://textmeprivate.com

Working on some apps that I haven't released yet dealing with some telecom API, I got the idea of having a phone number without having a phone number to stop scam callers from calling me. But that evolved, of course... I started a virtual number service that privatizes your phone number with many added options -- basically your phone number can become a very useful piece of software.

I released Call Me Private about 3 months ago on Hacker News ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15905375 ) and just started marketing it a lot the past few weeks.. so far, I've got about 12 customers or so. Since I've released it ... I've also had a few organizations contact me for some minor customization requests, which I was able to make happen. My early customers are definitely helping the product to evolve more to suit their needs... and what they are asking for.. I usually weigh whether it would be beneficial to that one person ... or many. If its able to help many, I spend more time on it. If just that one person.. I might or might not, depending on the usefulness of the feature.

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

#260

Post by Jack000 »

sixQuarks wrote: post #239
eurticket wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the main benefit for those businesses would be the seo value. Relevant, high PA links are hard to come by these days...
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