Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#91

Post by kayhi » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

Single Founder of P212121 (http://store.p212121.com/) bringing together great priced scientific research and supplies.

Background story: I was a full time PhD student in chemistry and unfortunately our group was running out of funding. I ended up spending weeks searching for deals on the supplies we needed. This process took a long time since there are hundreds companies and literally millions of chemicals. The result was a disturbingly huge spreadsheet comparing all the prices (lucky the process has evolved since).

The word spread to other labs and soon had people asking me for the best prices on products they used. This led to the next step of creating a site where people could just buy them based on the list. The sales increased and resulted in being able to attain discounts from manufactures based on volume.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#92

Post by zerostar07 » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 5:33 PM UTC

tlack wrote: post #61

zerostar07 wrote: post #9

I 've been living off facebook apps since 2008. Upside: life free of commitments. Downside: Too much free time. Right now, i 'm doing a PhD course.

I'd love to hear more about your apps if you're comfortable with sharing the information. Background: I've been working for a couple of months on a Facebook Page app called FanBldr.com and I've found it fairly difficult to operate.. it's hard to get feedback from users, Facebook is always updating the platform, and I'm not even sure what percentage of my users will upgrade to paying once I drop the paywall bomb. I fi…

I am on hold for G+ or the next social platform. Facebook has decided to screw developers after they signed the Zynga deal that guarantees for them 30% of zynga's revenue (I won't be surprised if at some point facebook buys Zynga and closes the platform)

OAuth is all I use, i keep facebook integration to the absolute minimum. Working as an external website means it's completely portable. Minor changes are needed to turn it to a G+ application.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#93

Post by chops » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 5:34 PM UTC

I'm the solo founder of an MMO guild hosting company (5 years and counting as of this past May), which was doing quite well years ago ($90k+/year), but is now much less busy. The site: http://www.dkpsystem.com.

Honestly, I blame the fact that I've had almost the opposite mentality as the 37 Signals guys, where I've added most of the features my customers ask for, thus making the system more complicated than it should be. But then again, I feel guilty taking some of those features away were I to do such.

That said, it still provides a meager living for limited work (10 hours a month or so) while I work on my up-and-coming projects: Sports league management websites (http://www.BracketPal.com). I'm targeting bar-league volleyball initially. As an avid beach volleyball player, this is my new calling. And it's giving me the ability to work with businesses who won't balk at higher figures (unlike my MMO customers who will balk at anything above $10/mo), and cold-calling, though I still get a little bit of the "sweats" before each call, I end up enjoying the conversation.

My results so far are looking very positive for this upcoming spring.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#94

Post by DavidTO1 » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 5:34 PM UTC

I've created 3 apps for the Mac App Store. I'm not too sure if its a success since I'm making about 5k/month in sales and I'm still keeping my day job. I guess its just more disposable income.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#95

Post by dchuk » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 5:36 PM UTC

I founded and ran http://serpIQ.com by myself up until about last month, when I added a business partner from previous projects to the company to handle customer service and marketing efforts. It's an SEO Competition Analysis tool built on Rails, it's been a fun project :)

Project has been live for about 4 months, and provides me with full time comfortable income and him a decent secondary income for now (he's not full time yet).

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#96

Post by nateberkopec » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 5:36 PM UTC

zerostar07 wrote: post #50

no_gravity wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Are you making money off your own facebook apps or by writing facebook apps for others?

Own. Given the speed with which you can test new ideas on the platform, i don't see why anyone would want to work on the cheap making apps for others.

What kind of apps? Games, mostly?

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#97

Post by zerostar07 » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 5:39 PM UTC

Hyena wrote: post #36

davcro wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also living off Facebook apps from 07. Biggest downside is having too much free time and working alone. Right now im studying for the MCAT

Would you mind giving some income information? Like a rough approximate or something? The viability of this strategy is something I'm very interested in.

It all depends on the number of users and the nature of your app. Typically 1-2% of users buy virtual goods, and eCPM from ads is pretty decent for US/Aus/EU/Ca audience. Aim for an addictive experience and the users will come.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#98

Post by kadabra9 » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 5:40 PM UTC

chops wrote: post #90

gopi wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, people downvote me because i don't want to share the details?

The whole point of this thread is to share the details. Coming in and saying "oh yeah, I also make a ton of money, but I can't tell you how" doesn't really do anything for the conversation. Even if it's minor details like the fantasy sports guy that uses the Yahoo API, that's contributing to the conversation.

Yeah, so in other words he's either in this discussion purely to brag, or he's lying. So in other words he contributes nothing at all to the discussion. Moving along..

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#99

Post by zerostar07 » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 5:41 PM UTC

nateberkopec wrote: post #96

zerostar07 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Own. Given the speed with which you can test new ideas on the platform, i don't see why anyone would want to work on the cheap making apps for others.

What kind of apps? Games, mostly?

Games. Nothing else sells on facebook. Seriously, don't even try it :)

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#100

Post by gopi » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 5:42 PM UTC

chops wrote: post #90

gopi wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, people downvote me because i don't want to share the details?

The whole point of this thread is to share the details. Coming in and saying "oh yeah, I also make a ton of money, but I can't tell you how" doesn't really do anything for the conversation. Even if it's minor details like the fantasy sports guy that uses the Yahoo API, that's contributing to the conversation.

Okay, Let me try to be a bit more specific :)

In the start it was mostly SEO mini sites then its more PPC arbitrage and then when search marketing got tough i started creating sites that depend on word of mouth/viral traffic. At my peak i was making $400k per month!

BTB, Most people with my kind of track record start to develop their personal brand and become a "Make money online Guru" and start sellimg systems and ebooks. But that life is not for me :)