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

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

#451

Post by segmondy » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #368

bekman wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question, my career is very important to me. It gives me an identity. I just can’t sit at home all day. I’m gonna die with boredom.

I don't think I'll ever quite understand this mentality that "not having a job"=="sitting at home all day". Do people not have hobbies of any kind? They really only find meaning in pursuit of money?

In some parts of the world, if you meet people and they ask what do you do, and you say, "I do X, I work for Y" they nod and understand. If you say, "I run my business" you are met with serious suspicion, as a possible scam artist. It can impact you real life social network, dating etc. Not only that, online businesses are not guaranteed for life, things changes fast. But career is. You can say I have been a teacher, IT admin, programmer or XYZ for 20 years. Doesn't matter if you changed job once or 30 times.

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

#452

Post by warent » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

okramcivokram wrote: post #13

warent wrote: post #8

I run a business called FontPeek ( https://fontpeek.com ). It doesn't provide the majority of my income, but it does provide a meaningful amount and it's constantly growing (pretty linearly). It's a simple tool that allows font designers to add a secure font previewer to their web store. Only needs like an hour of technical support a week, and it's currently costing me nothing to run because Firebase has incredibly g…

(not a designer) I would not start my 7-day free trial without beforehand having more information on what the product looks and feels like. In the "How FontPeek Helps" section there's "Show your fonts" sections, but it shows no fonts. I'd love to see some demo fonts/pages with embedded fonts at least, perhaps a list of links to the designer's websites showing the widget (I assume it's a widget, there's no info on it)…

Thanks for the perspective. It's been on my todo list to add customer testimonials with links back to their websites along with samples and tutorials. It's just a matter of getting it done :)

Typically though people just email me or message me via Crisp asking for live examples.

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

#453

Post by warent » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #276

warent wrote: post #8

I run a business called FontPeek ( https://fontpeek.com ). It doesn't provide the majority of my income, but it does provide a meaningful amount and it's constantly growing (pretty linearly). It's a simple tool that allows font designers to add a secure font previewer to their web store. Only needs like an hour of technical support a week, and it's currently costing me nothing to run because Firebase has incredibly g…

It looks like your only pricing tier is $10/mo - which is an _insanely_ cheap price in the scheme of things. Keep everyone grandfathered in at the current prices and raise it to at least $25/mo with a premium plan(s) at $100/mo and $350/mo. I suspect that you'll pretty quickly triple your revenue.

With the current pricing model, I'm undercutting the possibility of any competitors to arise, plus I'm not sure how ethical it is to charge so much for a service that's basically a monopoly (i.e. price-gouging) when I doubt font designers even have very high margins as it is.

I've considered doing this though, and the fact that you're validating it now makes me think it may be worth testing it out for a little while just to see what happens.

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

#454

Post by thedangler » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

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…

How did you get access to Instagrams posting images API? Was it a long wait?

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

#455

Post by udayrddy » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

My definition of "Success" at this point (launched 4 apps earlier never tried to generate revenue) is generating revenue. Launched couple of months back - https://extracttable.com adding paid clients at an average of 3-4 per week.

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

#456

Post by ifemide06 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

yccheok wrote: post #374

WA wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500K users, that's quite an achievement as well, pretty solid! It's hard to say anything about your pricing model. If it works for you, there's probably no need to optimize. However, 500K users with a $20 IAP – I wonder if you could introduce subscriptions for something like $1-2 per month. Maybe make it cheaper per year, but more expensive on the long run. But this depends heavily on how often your app is used. If i…

> "500K users, that's quite an achievement as well, pretty solid!" Not quite :) As, majority of them are from tier-2 countries. Purchasing digital goods is not part of their culture. > "But again, just from my gut feeling: I wonder if there's a way for you to REDUCE the number of active users and turn free users into loyal paid users." Thank you for your suggestion! What you have mentioned are valid. Maybe at some po…

I honestly can learn a lot from you.. just launched an app struggling to get users. Would you be able to mentor me and provide some insights??

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

#457

Post by lemming » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

billconan wrote: post #301

lemming wrote: post #60

I develop and sell Cursive ( https://cursive-ide.com ), which has paid my bills nicely for a couple of years now. Currently I make more than I made in my last job at Google. I never thought I'd be able to make a living selling developer tools, much less into a niche market, but I'm constantly amazed by how well Cursive does. The work is a mix of fun and boring slog, like most jobs I guess. A lot of my time is spent o…

I also want to focus on the developer market. How did you do marketing? I found it difficult. How do you handle sales tax? I found it very very complex.

I think that marketing is one of the main advantages of selling into a very niche market - I really do no explicit marketing at all. I've spoken at various Clojure conferences, appeared on Clojure-related podcasts etc but I've never run a single ad for Cursive. Just by being active in the community (which I would do anyway, it's just part of my job) people hear about it, and it doesn't take much SEO for Cursive's website to appear when someone searches for "Clojure IDE".

Re: sales tax, it is indeed mind-bogglingly complex these days, and really requires using a provider who handles it for you. This is Stripe's biggest limitation and the single reason I'm not using them. I use Paddle, who I've mostly been very happy with. If I were really dead set on using Stripe I'd have to use it in conjunction with something like Taxamo, but that looks like a hassle I don't need and would be more expensive than what I'm paying Paddle now anyway.

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

#458

Post by binarysolo » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

noobly wrote: post #417

binarysolo wrote: post #380

My former one-person online biz (2013) is now 10 people - we run Amazon end-to-end ops for a few large brands and manage ~100k SKUs -- basically the work is all operations research + grunt work. We do mid eight digits in revenue. A friend of a friend was the COO of a brand, spent a couple mil to position themselves online strategically, but that team couldn't deliver results. As a grad student in ML I spent a disprop…

>I spent a disproportional time procrastinating on Craigslist and Slickdeals and flipping inventory between those venues Did you do this manually, or did you have some automation to help you out (finding deals, relisting, etc)? If so, what did that look like? And, out of curiosity, what's the hobbyist niche?

Semi-automated -- with CL you have (had?) RSS feeds that post search queries to you, now I think there are email options as well? I wrote my own reader for fun and it would basically ping me when a certain combination of items hit the site - say "lot Aeron" or something to that effect.

The hobbyist niche is a pricey and time-consuming athletic activity. :)

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

#459

Post by jndsn402 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 8:02 PM UTC

adamqureshi wrote: post #177

I run https://onlyusedtesla.com/ its an online marketplace to buy / sell a Used Tesla. I have been living off the income this whole year. This is my bread and butter. I do not have a 9-5. I launched the business with 4 listings in 2016. I live in New York. My main goal is building brand equity. Business Model. Private Seller $199 to list $299 to list with a social boost Dealer: $99-list I do not use cookies. No Track…

What's involved in building a site like this? I am subscribed to an industry forum in the beverage space where people buy and sell equipment using forum posts - t's really inefficient and I often think they could use a simple marketplace site.

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

#460

Post by aacook » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 8:02 PM UTC

I'm working on NanaGram (https://nanagram.co). The tagline: Text or email your photos and we'll send 4x6 prints to your loved ones.

It doesn't provide the majority of my income (yet) but by far and away it provides the majority of my life's meaning. I haven't crossed the mental hurdle of sharing all my numbers publicly yet but let's just say it is turning a profit and there are thousands of happy NanaGrammers.

I got started on it at my grandfather's 94th birthday party when by brother 1-uppped my gift of live lobsters with the gift of "InstaGrandpa." He prototyped it the night before and asked me to help build it.

Working solo is a challenge for many reasons. One thing I did early was automate the customer feedback loops. I set up an automated loop to collect customer reviews (https://nanagram.co/#happy). Collecting feedback from grandparents is a bit tougher so I set up a phone line for them to dial in and leave voicemails (https://nanagram.co/#happynanas). I get a couple voicemails and reviews each week and it's like maker fuel.

Another big challenge is fighting isolation. I like to practice deep work but there's a fine line between deep work and isolation. I would've given up a year ago if it weren't for the advisor-like support from my brother and my friend Dan. I did YC Startup School last summer and that was huge as well; I remember sharing with the group that I was on the edge of throwing in the towel, then last December MRR grew by over 2X. The next big thing I plan to change in my life is adding weekly volunteering.