Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

Incomes on social media are highly skewed power-law distribution. PieDiePie/Logan Paul make millions while everyone else makes pennies.

I run Sales for Founders (https://salesforfounders.com) - a course where I teach (mainly technical) founders just enough about sales to find their first customers and grow to $10k MRR.

Since starting work on the course in May, I’ve been through 3 iterations and made about $40k.

The ‘final’ version of the course will open for sale in early November, and I expect it to continue to be my main source of income for the next year or so at least.

If you’re thinking about running a course (I was very sceptical at first) or want to hear more, you can check out my recent interview on the IndieHackers.com podcast.

Still the same answer, I develop the firewall app Radio Silence (https://radiosilenceapp.com) for macOS.

It covers all my basic living costs. But I kind of got bored (again) of being happily unemployed (for the second time), and started a small consulting business on the side. A four-day workweek in addition to the Radio Silence stuff keeps me quite content.

I have a consumer app with a subscription model. I'm a single developer with no employees. I work between 10-30 hours per week. Last year, my EBIT was close to 300,000€. This year, it's going to be around 370,000€ (and since I live in Germany, my income is in the top 0,5% or so). In the first year, my EBIT was merely 30,000€. It's been going up steadily since then and my product has been around quite a while.

Please don't ask what my business is. I rather share true numbers, but don't link to my product. I see no upside in being super transparent about the financials in a non-anonymous way (although I enjoy transparency from others ;)).

What I think makes my product successful (and I keep this short, because luck plays an important role. Most startup stories suffer from survivorship and hindsight bias):

- It serves a niche and does so very well, better than all others. I have clearly defined my niche, although it took me years to exactly pinpoint it. There's a tendency to want to grab a "bigger audience". Since I make more money than I ever imagined, there is no need to grow bigger or reach a wider audience. This would also make the product less focused on the specific niche.

- Start working on something, release a prototype after 2-6 weeks. Don't invest months or years in something without users.

- For me, marketing = SEO. I never really got into social media. But I have to admit that nowadays, my SEO rankings dropped a bit and people talk about my product in Facebook groups.

- If there are two books I'd recommend: "Rework" by Basecamp. It helps you to focus on a minimal set of features and think about what's truly important. Couple this with "This is Marketing" from Seth Godin, where he explains how traditional marketing is dead and how it's important to find a niche. Don't read more books, interviews or whatever. Get into a "starter mindset" by reading and then do.

- The subscription model helps you to stay afloat. People will pay for a product they use every day (and thus, derive value from every day). If your product is not used every day, but only once per month or so, expect way lower revenue.

My website is https://phito.be :)

I ship in the EU and any other countries that have trade deals that allows plant transfer without requiring phytosanitary certificates (Switzerland for example)! Sadly after Brexit I don't know if I will still be able to ship over the UK :(

Finding the growing space is hard, especially if your plants are big. Thankfully I focus mostly on the Drosera genus, which are mostly small plants. I can fit multiple plants in a 7x7cm pot. I grow the winter-hardy ones in a greenhouse, the tropical ones are grown inside under LEDs.

Finding rare species is not too hard if you have good contacts in the community (I've been part of it for more than 10 years, so it was relatively easy for me). The hard part is propagation. Thankfully for me, a lot of Drosera are really easy to propagate by leaves cuttings but for the species that are not easily propagated, I work with an university that propagate them in tissue culture for me.

Good luck with your project, it requires a lot of work but if you're passionate about it, it won't feel like work!