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

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

#81

Post by WA » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:05 AM UTC

BerislavLopac wrote: post #75

WA wrote: post #47

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…

> I'm a single developer with no employees. I work between 10-30 hours per week. I'm curious -- how much time do you spend on marketing? How do your customers find your app?

Nowadays, I spend zero time on marketing. I have a whole bunch of well-written articles on my subject. They still rank okay on Google and are evergreen. Marketing these days is word of mouth + SEO.

But for someone starting out: Write articles that teach people something (in a niche). Articles get read for many years. Social media posts go down after minutes.

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

#82

Post by chrischen » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:06 AM UTC

I've been running Instapainting.com as a 1-person business since 2014. I started out with a single page with a Stripe checkout button on it. I've been living off of the income since inception, even though the first few years were poverty levels of income ;). Many have tried, but I'd say most just gave up when they realized they could make more money just getting a job.

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

#83

Post by johnmorrison » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:09 AM UTC

gitgud wrote: post #32

[1] Mike Carson is an interesting character, he runs a few websites single-handedly [2] park.io being one of the bigger ones. His [1] indie hacker interview is very interesting, as he resists growth and hiring people [1] https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-automating-tasks-... [2] https://park.io

Thank you so much for linking park.io, you might have just given me a miracle.

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

#84

Post by krn » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:10 AM UTC

WA wrote: post #73

krn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). Is your business focused on the German market or the US market? Or is it multi-lingual / international? What percentage of time is spent answering support requests? > 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). H…

German market only. Going international is an option I considered, but it is a lot more complex than simply localizing the app. Since I make more money than I need and I don't want my job to become a different one (I still get to code a lot), I didn't do it yet. > "Have you experimented with different pricing models?" No, I kept the pricing model very simple. The price increased a bit throughout the years. I charge w…

> If you serve a niche, people talk.

Another thing probably is, that a subscription price of a niche product can be considerably higher than of a mainstream one?

For a single person, it must be much easier to support 1,000 users paying something like $25 / month than 5,000 users paying $5 / month.

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

#85

Post by 44Aman » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:12 AM UTC

khuknows wrote: post #14

I run https://pageflows.com and have been living off it full time for a little over a year. The business makes a bit more than what I was earning a few years ago as a junior developer in London, so it's not a huge amount of money, but it's enough. It's a fairly boring business to run and not as predictable or sexy as some sort of micro saas, but it's I'm happy with how things have been so far. Happy to answer any que…

This is great! I assume most of your customers will be businesses, so why not offer a bulk "@domain" subscription for $999 (lifetime) so that anyone in the business can use it without restriction. Restrict the other packages to personal use and you should be able to drive up your income.

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

#86

Post by johnmorrison » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:12 AM UTC

I heard levels.io (twitter.com/levelsio) makes like $50,000 per month off of Nomad List, and I'm pretty sure it's a one-person thing.

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

#87

Post by mkl » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:15 AM UTC

mutatio wrote: post #52

I run https://encycolorpedia.com/ - its origins are from a "JavaScript as CSS" library I was developing - there were/are superior projects available, so ultimately I used the colour manipulation code to produce the site. The idea was to take a seed colour and render the page uniquely, additional on-page information grew from that. From feedback I guess the primary use of the site is paint searching and comparison. It…

If you also own encycolourpedia.com, you should probably set up a redirect. If it was someone else that grabbed it (registrar is different...), well that's unfortunate!

I have a domain I got for a future project where there's a UK/US difference, so I made sure I got both.

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

#88

Post by WA » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:18 AM UTC

krn wrote: post #84

WA wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German market only. Going international is an option I considered, but it is a lot more complex than simply localizing the app. Since I make more money than I need and I don't want my job to become a different one (I still get to code a lot), I didn't do it yet. > "Have you experimented with different pricing models?" No, I kept the pricing model very simple. The price increased a bit throughout the years. I charge w…

> If you serve a niche, people talk. Another thing probably is, that a subscription price of a niche product can be considerably higher than of a mainstream one? For a single person, it must be much easier to support 1,000 users paying something like $25 / month than 5,000 users paying $5 / month.

Thanks for asking this, because it is a thing that many many people have in their mind: "Will support requests crush me?" And this was actually my biggest fear when I turned my hobby project into a commercial one many years ago. The reality is this:

I have over 10,000 paying customers. I receive maybe 5 emails per day. There was never a time when I received much more than 10. I have three explanations for this:

1. I have a really good FAQ that answers almost any question. On my contact form, I urge people to read the damn FAQ. If they still send me an email, I usually reply with a specific link to the FAQ item. If a question comes up a couple times, I add it to the FAQ.

2. Since my product isn't free (and not cheap compared to a 0.99 one-time-fee app), there's a lot of self-selection. I don't have to support freeloaders with their stupid questions. If people pay for something, it seems to help to reduce the support burden.

3. I wonder if this is a mentality thing and Germans are more likely to help themselves through reading FAQ than others who rather send an email like "yo, shit is broken, fix asap". Most emails I receive read a lot more like a letter and not this one-line blurp bullshit some have to deal with.

In essence: Build a product with a somewhat sophisticated target group. They are more likely to pay, more likely to help themselves by reading FAQ and more likely to send no stupid emails.

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

#89

Post by msbroadf » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:22 AM UTC

I started https://www.virtualhere.com about 10 years ago, it provides a good income. I developed/sell/support everything myself. I felt there was a need for this type of product 10 years ago and with cloud computing/gaming its become very useful for a lot of use-cases now.

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

#90

Post by WA » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 10:23 AM UTC

jawngee wrote: post #28

I'm doing pretty well selling a WordPress plugin, https://mediacloud.press/ It's an equal mix of rewarding and frustrating. It's a lot more work than you'd expect and now I've a deep understanding of why support tools are as obtuse as they are. It's generating enough income that's livable and freeing me up to focus on other related projects. I'm going to be launching a SAAS version of the plugin later this year.

I can relate. Everything is always a lot more work than the usual "I can build this on a weekend". If it's a good product, there are so many details and edge cases the software considers, which aren't obvious if you simply build a clone. Only a true customer feedback and improvement cycle can make a product better.