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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#71

Post by coollector »

rypskar wrote: post #66
coollector wrote: post #58

Coollector Movie Database: https://www.coollector.com/ Small income, but profitable.

Looks great, will check it out in the weekend. Do you have any plans for an Android app which can read bar-codes to register DVDs? Have planned to make that for years but never got around to actually do it. Have tested several before but all have had major problems

I can't wait to start working on the Android app, but as a single-person shop, maintaining the desktop app is already taking most of my time. When you're alone, everything takes longer :(

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

#72

Post by pieterhg »

_xzxj wrote: post #39
superasn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this guy is truly an inspiration. If you're a one person business, you will find this tweet very useful: https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/93870716650815488... (aka stop running after shiny new things and just do it!)

No offense but Pieter Levels seems like a bit of a bastard, and you can see it in that thread. I don't pay much attention to him, but when I do come across his social media posts they're pretty off-putting. He's pretty successful yes, but €50k/mo is not exactly f-you money.

Not sure where I’m being a “bastard”? I answer most replies, many of them odd questions about tech stack when the whole point of the original tweet is that tech stack is irrelevant here.

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

#73

Post by pieterhg »

adbachman wrote: post #63
_xzxj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense but Pieter Levels seems like a bit of a bastard, and you can see it in that thread. I don't pay much attention to him, but when I do come across his social media posts they're pretty off-putting. He's pretty successful yes, but €50k/mo is not exactly f-you money.

He's already his own boss, the whole point of f-you money is being able to tell your boss, "f you!" That means you can either go for the lump sum or the annuity, either one gets you out from under The Man.

Yes exactly. Also why would anyone need more than $50k/m? Even if you have a family?

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

#74

Post by MattBearman »

jandem wrote: post #70
MattBearman wrote: post #32

I run BugMuncher on my own ( https://www.bugmuncher.com ), I've been working on it full time since October 2015, and it's been profitable since November 2016, providing all of my income. If you're interested I've been documenting the entire process of taking BugMuncher from a side project to my full-time job on my blog starting here - https://www.bugmuncher.com/blog/from-side-project-to-profita...

I get a certificate error on Firefox Nightly. This is likely caused by https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/Upcoming_Distrust_Actions

Thanks for letting me know! I'll get that sorted

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

#75

Post by pieterhg »

matte_black wrote: post #41
chrishn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not many expenses, though.

Then why not just list the profit? Typically when I see revenues posted it means the profit must only be a fraction of that amount.

Good point and I agree! I posted revenue first because it’s easier to collect the data.

I’ll be importing costs from several sources (like PayPal, bank etc) in the next few days and adding it to my open revenue dashboard:

http://nomadlist.com/open

Rough calculations is that it’s somewhere from 80% to 90% profit margin pre tax.

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

#76

Post by hackerman12345 »

tomascot wrote: post #18
nhorob67 wrote: post #15

I ran a one man side gig for a couple years (farm management software). Got it to $200k and growing after 6 months in the market but I needed to bring the development in-house. Could've used outsourced talent for all dev and customer support but interestingly enough the reason why I hired was "what happens to all of our customers if I die?". I felt like I owed it to them to put a team in place, albeit a small one.

How do you get in a market like that? We tried but failed because the owners didnt like the fact that we where from "the city".

Find a cofounder who can talk comfortably with the country folk*.

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

#77

Post by MattBearman »

Danielalonso91 wrote: post #56
MattBearman wrote: post #32

I run BugMuncher on my own ( https://www.bugmuncher.com ), I've been working on it full time since October 2015, and it's been profitable since November 2016, providing all of my income. If you're interested I've been documenting the entire process of taking BugMuncher from a side project to my full-time job on my blog starting here - https://www.bugmuncher.com/blog/from-side-project-to-profita...

Just checked out your website - great stuff, and super professional also.

Thanks! It's been a long journey, but totally worth it :)

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

#78

Post by prabuw »

ikeboy wrote: post #14
philbarr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what kinds of things do you sell? how do you advertise? do you have a marketing campaign? how do you know people will want to buy what you have?

1. Random, electronics/toys/health/office supplies 2. Not much advertising, just checked and YTD spend is $600, most on a single product. Most traffic is organic 3. Mostly sell existing items that already have a lot of sales and we just get a share of those. That's what I'm paying Amazon enormous commissions for - to bring the eyeballs

How do you figure out what items have a lot of sales?

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

#79

Post by pieterhg »

mikekchar wrote: post #62
matte_black wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why not just list the profit? Typically when I see revenues posted it means the profit must only be a fraction of that amount.

I don't know anything about the person in question, but any "profit" number is going to have to be fictitious anyway. Ideally, you make as little profit as possible so that you avoid paying taxes. You want your money working for you rather than going to the government (or sitting in a bank account). This is one of the nice aspects of taxes and tax avoidance -- it provides incentives for companies to continue investin…

I agree and observe the same. I honesty do it because I want to show you can build a business without venture capital funding, and do it as an indie (and in my case solo) maker with a strong disregard for hip tech stacks and frameworks.

I sell a book but that’s less than 5% of my income. 95% is business.

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

#80

Post by filipm »

WalterGR wrote: post #23
filipm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you only monetize it with Google Adsense?

A small amount of Google AdSense ( https://sortable.com/ . Switching from only-AdSense to almost-entirely-Sortable is what made me able to afford to live off the site's revenue: my earnings doubled overnight.

Thanks, very interesting!
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