Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 685 posts

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

#431

Post by cpeterso »

mittermayr wrote: post #357

My business is in my bio, don't want to link it here. Pays about the same as my previous job at Microsoft did, but with a lot less involvement — I haven't touched the main code in about a year now. I probably spend about two or three hours a week on customer support, that's it, really. No marketing spend, all word-of-mouth and Google. The idea came about when I wanted to post to Instagram, but the API didn't allow it…

Very cool idea to use the real app. Do you have a rack of real devices or do you use emulators, if you don't mind sharing?

How do you differentiate Busy from competitors like Buffer (with its 69 employees, according to Wikipedia)?

btw, there is a small typo on your "How it works" page: "secure and: affordable" should just be "secure and affordable". :)

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

#432

Post by imhoguy »

jfoster wrote: post #133
bekman wrote: post #129

I run a popular Quiz website. I make around $6,000 per month from Google adsense. I work between 2-3 hours a week usually posting quiz links on my Pinterest page. My only expense is hosting which is around $20 per month (Digital Ocean). I have never advertised my website and it gets all the traffic from Pinterest Organically. Compare to my salary, I'm an IT Administrator in my day job and make $400 per month. I live…

If your job is less than 10% of your income, why keep it?

I think some people get shocked of something which may raise from cultural difference, especially compared to highly capital-focused West. Work doesn't have to be modern financial slavery. There are places where there is no overtime or weekend work at all, you go to work to meet nice people, learn interesting stuff and have some common goal which benefits your community. All that is possible.

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

#433

Post by vfc1 »

shrimpx wrote: post #416
vfc1 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is highly unlikely, such a mundane job as a sysadmin compared to having your own online business. If he liked it that much, then probably he wouldn't have started a whole side project that must have consumed evenings and weekends for years. If he would have found professional fulfillment in his job, he would not likely have started a side project in the first place. As he mentions in his own reply, he stays beca…

Your reply seems rooted in the fairly widespread assumption that having your own online business that makes solid "mrr" is some kind of supreme achievement and you should relish in it solely. Some people have higher-dimensional desires and interests in life.

I have a simpler explanation, what likely happens is that most people don't even try to do it (even though they could do so like the case here) because it's different than the social norm, which says that you should be an employee working for someone else.

I'm saying that there are other dignified ways to live that are different, you don't absolutely have to be an employee at all costs.

Independent work, running a small business, those are other alternatives to live that are equally valid.

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

#434

Post by MrDresden »

wakatime wrote: post #411
MrDresden wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Wakatime now for a few years (I highly recommend it), and have been going through one of the toughest projects of my life in the last 8 months. At one point I reached ~16 hours per day (for only a couple of days). This kind of output is not sustainable for more than a few days without incurring serious problems from it. I have now gone back down to a more normal 6-9 hours per day.

Tip: Turn up your timeout preference. https://wakatime.com/blog/37-when-is-time-tracking-too-accur... The default 15 mins is very accurate, and only represents time typing not time working.

Thanks for the tip, didn't know I could modify this.

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

#435

Post by lemming »

krn wrote: post #104
spv wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot believe that you make more from such a niche dev tool than your job at Google. I always thought people who use clojure/scheme would be using their custom setup in emacs or vim. I'm interested to learn more details, how things were when you first started out selling the app and the trend.

> I cannot believe that you make more from such a niche dev tool than your job at Google. It's important to note, that there are markets where Google pays 70-90k / year[1]. [1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Berlin-Salaries-EI_I...

I'm not talking about those markets - this was after an acquisition and I was supposed to move to either SV or NYC. In the end I didn't want to work at Google or move to the US so it was pretty brief.

Thinking about it, I'm not sure Cursive pays more than my total comp at Google, but certainly more than salary + bonus.

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

#436

Post by DangerousYams »

phito wrote: post #15

I sell carnivorous plants online. It's not my main job/revenue so it doesn't fit your description of successful. It could certainly be my main income but I like keeping it as a side job. Here's a few things I do that made it "successful": - Obviously, selling good quality product is the most important thing. - Offering rare species that are hard to find elsewhere - Having a good website that works, is well organized…

best idea in this list!

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

#438

Post by latest-release »

Am running a website https://www.nmmapper.com/ that offers Pentesting tools Most of this pentesting tools are being moved from Kali linux to used online without installing Kali linux. This is an interesting project in less than a year I had over 160+ active years. this is a one man work. And drive the traffic from organic search.

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

#440

Post by lemming »

jcadam wrote: post #122
spv wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot believe that you make more from such a niche dev tool than your job at Google. I always thought people who use clojure/scheme would be using their custom setup in emacs or vim. I'm interested to learn more details, how things were when you first started out selling the app and the trend.

As a Clojure (and Java) dev, I started with Cursive and eventually moved to emacs w/CIDER as I became more comfortable with it. Cursive is great for people new to the language who may not know emacs - learning a new language is challenging enough without also having to constantly refer to an emacs cheat sheet :).

FWIW Cursive is also great for people who have a lot of experience with Emacs and just can't be bothered with it. Popular examples include David Nolen and Timothy Baldridge (and me), but there are plenty more too.

One representative comment that someone made to me at a conference was along the lines of "Since my boss encouraged us to move to Emacs, I've never spent so long fiddling with and arguing about my editor config. After a while most of us moved to Cursive and all that just went away".

I think Emacs is generally easier to get along with these days, but it'll never be as easy to use as a "normal" app where things just work out of the box. Some people like that, and others don't, but it's not as simple as a division between newbies and experienced users. They're roughly equivalent in power these days, some things Emacs does better and others Cursive does better - fortunately there's plenty of room for both, even in a userbase as small as Clojure's.

Post reply on HN