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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#561

Post by dabernathy89 »

samuraicode wrote: post #337

Last year I went full time on my side project https://dropevent.com , a group photo sharing site. I've doubled revenue but it is still far from matching my previous software developer salary. Growth has all been pretty organic with just a few forays into adwords and facebook marketing. Growth is really the keyword for 2017 and what I will be focusing on.

That's a very cool product!

My first thought on the pricing - if I am planning a one-off event like a wedding (which I assume would be a major niche for y'all), I would be scared off by the monthly pricing scheme. I would be more interested in paying $X for a single event to be ad-free for the duration of the event and for a short-time afterward. (I know that's technically how it would work if they signed up for a month and then cancelled, but there's a big difference in upfront perception).

It's also a little confusing what 'Upgrade a single event' means on the pricing page. Makes it sound like that plan is only for existing events.

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

#562

Post by eappleby »

Similar question was asked last year (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12065355). Here was my answer then, which is about the same now, but the business has continued to grow:

I started https://www.pubexchange.com in 2013 and have been running it solo ever since. PubExchange is a platform that helps publishers establish traffic exchanges with other sites (similar to a social network) so that they can promote one another via widgets, social, and in-article links. It's been profitable since 2014 and I work with over 600 sites, including HuffPo, Refinery29, and POPSUGAR.

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

#563

Post by ge96 »

gottebp wrote: post #411

My grandfather has Parkinson's disease and the hand tremors that go with. This makes using a mouse nearly impossible because the cursor flies all over the place. I created free software called SteadyMouse[1] back in 2005 to remove this tremor while letting normal mouse motion through. It eventually moved up near the top of Google's search results. At the same time, the free version began to show its age with compatib…

That sounds smart regarding the software approach vs. mechanical/hardware where you'd have to build a physical decide versus code.

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

#564

Post by dbancajas »

malux85 wrote: post #47

I'm running https://SignalBox.ai alone, I wrote all of the software and am working on partnering and sales right now. Previously I have 2 other startups, one was media monitoring and one was forex. The media monitoring is B2B only. The forex trading is automated and run from my home research cluster. Both are generating enough revenue to live off (media monitoring 120k forex, 60-80k) I guess they fit the definition o…

whats your email?

Can you elaborate on the forex gig? I've always wanted to do it. Are you doing only TA? it seems you scrap media sites for sentiment analysis too?

Where do you get your forex data tick feed? do you pay for that? What timeline you trade? Hourly/4H? Which broker you use? Metatrader to make your trades or using FIX protocol? EUR/USD only for low spreads?

not asking for your algorithm, just wanna get a background what someone successful is doing.

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

#565

Post by confiscate »

patio11 wrote: post #66
UK-AL wrote: post #8

I think it's getting harder, now the world is getting more developers and more fully funded startups.

A developer isn't a software company in the same sense that a kid good with numbers isn't a bookkeeping firm. Software companies don't compete with developers; they hire their services. Small software shops don't meaningfully compete with funded startups, because funded startups have to have some plausible path to growing massive, and the types of things small software shops ship just have to have a plausible path to…

Hey patio11, do you have any advice for someone who wants to join the small-software-shop community you mentioned? Would be happy to volunteer or help out with this community as well

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

#566

Post by dbancajas »

adpoe wrote: post #127

I run an ecommerce store from Shopify which fulfills the orders by drop-shipping through AliExpress. This is definitely doable for one person, and it isn't technically challenging for a software developer--but the hardest part (at least for me) is marketing, creating content, advertising, and so on. Actually running a Shopify store and fulfilling by drop-shipping is simple. I would definitely recommend that as a good…

what's the revenue or profit for 2016?

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

#567

Post by kovacs »

shutton wrote: post #485

I started Gaggle Mail ( https://gaggle.email ) just over a year ago, it's making around $400 per month and growing nicely. I've really enjoyed the experience watching something I have sole responsibility over grow and be appreciated by the people who use it. I set out to build something I could be proud of and other people would find useful - in those terms it has been successful. And with another year or so of growt…

You have some dupe text on your about page....

"When starting a new group with a diverse membership you don’t ask for everyones Twitter handle or Snapchat name, you ask for their email addresses. Done.. When starting a new group with a diverse membership you don’t ask for everyones Twitter handle or Snapchat name, you ask for their email addresses. Done."

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

#568

Post by dbancajas »

ikeboy wrote: post #306

I'll refer to my recent comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13267536 It's not quite single person, I have two remote virtual assistants handling various tasks like ordering, sourcing, etc, but you only really need that above a certain scale. Most of the business currently is drop shipping from US retailers to Amazon and eBay. I got started reselling a year ago with a specific stacking deal (discover had 1…

I read your post so you basically arbitrage from US retailers to amazon/ebay? It seems you are doing retail arbitrage? Like when there is a sale on Toy R Us, you list that same item on Amazon/Ebay. But don't you need to keep the stock you buy at some place first? How do you deal when AMZ just price matches it?

I am currently reselling alibaba stuff but after amazon PPC and shipping, it seems it's just break even, not including my effort. It's mostly PL so I can control my price but there is a lot of competition because I don't have patent on my product. It's a white label basically.

In your post history, you said 300K sales. That's all from drop shipping?

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

#569

Post by blazespin »

novaleaf wrote: post #168

I run https://PhantomJsCloud.com I started it as a free MVP about 2 years ago while in Thailand, and given that I was attracting a slow but steady stream of users I decided to build out a commercial v1 from it. The freemium SaaS went live in March and it's growing monthly. If I still lived in Thailand I would consider it very successful, but I am in the Seattle area now so it's ramen profitable. The biggest surprise…

I've often though the real hard core startup community should be in Chiang Mai living in 250$ per month condos. Pretty easy to get to Ramen profitable..
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