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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#271

Post by danpat »

peterjancelis wrote: post #78
danpat wrote: post #24

I created: http://skitrails.info/ I'm an avid cross-country skier, and traditionally daily trail reports are done by hand by the maintenance staff after they're out all night working on the trails. I had the bright idea of putting GPS tracking devices in grooming equipment and creating the "what's been groomed" report automatically, in real-time. It took about 4 seasons to really get it right, and there was no apprec…

I looked at your website and don't really understand how customers start using your site and how they pay you. Do you sell them a GPS tracker and show them their GPS logs in an online map maybe? If so, I'd make the selling of the GPS tracker more obvious. You can also do customer testimonials.

The site is focussed mainly on the consumer, the skiers, for whom the service is free (they just look at the maps).

The "customers" are ski area managers, they pay me to publish their maps and generate their trail reports.

The sign-up process is slightly obtuse on purpose. Because I'm still busy developing the site, only the really motivated customers actually contact me (via the "Contact" page), so I don't have to spend too much time doing a sales pitch that goes nowhere. I'm fortunate that I have a decent runway to play with.

I'll change that a bit this summer once I'm no longer frantically building out features.

There is effort required on my part for each sign-up, mostly around cleaning up GIS data that new customers supply, although I do supply a backend with tools for map management. The ski area managers are often extremely non-technical, and like the personal touch. I charge a modest premium for that.

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

#272

Post by danpat »

sixQuarks wrote: post #187
danpat wrote: post #24

I created: http://skitrails.info/ I'm an avid cross-country skier, and traditionally daily trail reports are done by hand by the maintenance staff after they're out all night working on the trails. I had the bright idea of putting GPS tracking devices in grooming equipment and creating the "what's been groomed" report automatically, in real-time. It took about 4 seasons to really get it right, and there was no apprec…

OP asked for businesses that provide a majority of your income. With a site that has an alexa ranking of over 3 million, there is no way this is your primary source of income.

The income from this website isn't strongly correlated to it's global web ranking.

Ski areas pay me to generate trail reports, and either link to the "default" report I publish for each area, or they publish the reports on their own websites. Reports are also printed and pinned up in lodges, or emailed by marketing departments to subscribed skiers. I'm not depending on people visiting my site for revenue.

What you have to realize is that people aren't out there searching for "gps grooming reports" (although I think I do pretty well in the search results for that phrase now). A this stage, they don't even know it exists. The sales channels that have worked so far are: word-of-mouth (it's a tiny industry where everyone knows everyone), personal introductions and a few cold-calls when I can summon the courage, and I don't expect that to change significantly.

This is the first "season" that I've worked on it full time and I've almost hit minimum wage. I expect to do better than that next winter. I have a decent runway, live very cheaply and don't have billion-dollar ambitions. I've supplemented the revenue with a little bit of side-consulting, but not a lot.

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

#273

Post by itengelhardt »

davidw wrote: post #255
itengelhardt wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, considering that you actually DESIGN their products. :)

eBooks don't actually allow for a lot of fancy design if you want them to work well on a variety of platforms.

I image cross-platform compatibility is a PITA. But I find it interesting that people who pay for ebook design, don't care about website design. Mind you: That's no criticism of you OR your work. I just love the fact that people are more interested in the value than in the website design, even if they get value out of design work.

Hope that makes things clearer. Again: You're doing a great job!

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

#274

Post by graeme »

I run http://lsathacks.com, and have a related book series

I sell e-books on my site and through affiliates, and sell print books on amazon. All told I make around $3,000 a month in passive revenues. I also make $4000-$5000 more in tutoring revenues.

However, the site is fairly new (I just sold the books through affiliates/print previously). As I grow the site I expect I may be able to get over $10,000 per month passive.

The LSAT is an admission exam for American and Canadian law schools. My materials/lessons teach people how to do better on it.

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

#275

Post by davidw »

itengelhardt wrote: post #273
davidw wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBooks don't actually allow for a lot of fancy design if you want them to work well on a variety of platforms.

I image cross-platform compatibility is a PITA. But I find it interesting that people who pay for ebook design, don't care about website design. Mind you: That's no criticism of you OR your work. I just love the fact that people are more interested in the value than in the website design, even if they get value out of design work. Hope that makes things clearer. Again: You're doing a great job!

eBooks are mostly about stripping out people's "design" stuff and replacing it with some fairly standard components that actually work, and adding in some various bits and pieces in XML, a hyperlinked table of contents, and stuff like that.

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

#276

Post by tatalegma »

peterjancelis wrote: post #77
iagooar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little bit off-topic, but I find it really interesting how some American webpages have a look and feel that is recognizable in a fraction of second. The website https://www.appointmentreminder.org/ is one of these, the second you enter, the second you know it is a US American page.

It's a theme from WooThemes, a company with 2 South African founders and one Norwegian one and, as far as I know, an international customer base. Not sure what is so US American about this theme.

Are you talking about appointmentreminder? I thought that was a single owner, the guy who lives in Japan and who also created Bingo Card Creator?

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

#277

Post by bacon »

imjk wrote: post #183
gmays wrote: post #5

I'm doing http://justaddcontent.com solo and self-funded. It turned into a bigger project that I anticipated, especially for my first product. I started working on it full-time in October. It started as a hobby project about two years ago. It took particularly long because I have a non-technical, military background and had to teach myself to code, design, write copy, marketing, etc. It's been a fun challenge. I stil…

When you say, "built on the same platform trusted by Ford, NFL, Sony, eBay, CNN," do you mean they use the same backend technology, or that they're actually customers of yours?

He means WordPress.

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

#278

Post by Harelin »

tatalegma wrote: post #276
peterjancelis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a theme from WooThemes, a company with 2 South African founders and one Norwegian one and, as far as I know, an international customer base. Not sure what is so US American about this theme.

Are you talking about appointmentreminder? I thought that was a single owner, the guy who lives in Japan and who also created Bingo Card Creator?

He's talking about Appointment Reminder's theme.

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

#279

Post by MikeX3 »

stevesearer wrote: post #52

I run http://officesnapshots.com which publishes photos of office design projects from around the world. I started it in 2007 as a gin side project to teaching history. I'm no longer teaching and it is the majority of my income.

How do you earn income from this site?

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

#280

Post by mattblalock »

mattront wrote: post #17

Just 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…

Man, 3 days is nothing!

Give me some time to fall in love, and I'll happily pay. It seems so shortsighted, as if I'd somehow use up all the usefulness of your app in 7 days or perhaps even 30 days.

Its a tool for work, and if it can reduce my load in any significant way I'd pay $500 for it. Now, I'll never really know. Too bad... for both of us.

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