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Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

snowday2011.com

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Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#71
post #60

It might be a sensitive question for you. If you use PayPal as a payment platform, do they charge you income tax or will you have to claim income tax by yourself?

When you're setting up the "buy now" links/buttons, you can choose to add sales tax.

As for income tax, every man for himself I believe. That's not Paypal's business.

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#72
post #58
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty cool. I assume you have prior experience with the industry? Clothing and prints, I mean. Definitely a great way to capitalize on the moment. I wonder if anybody have a business that visits with a truck to melt all the snow. So much snow I don't know where to put it anymore.

He runs http://beetnikaesthetics.com/ so this is an off shoot of what he does already. Nice site for sure..

FWIW that site/project/business is pretty much defunct. Not that it failed or anything, but it was really just too slow paced for me and I got bored with it. High effort for low return. I actually ordered hundreds of shirts that I never even posted for sale on the site. They have been sitting on shelves in my bedroom for 2 years. Hm.

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#73
post #59

Could you post a follow up statistics in a week or so? As this is a one shot sort of deal I wouldn't imagine you feel the need to keep the numbers under wraps.

Yep, planning on it. Keep an eye out on http://madebyloren.com - my future blog for my startups/projects. I'll certainly make a post here on HN as well.

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#74

I know this is not the norm for projects here on Hacker News and I realize that it may be seen as rather exploitive, so here's a very very brief background and my thought process: - Idea was conceived around 2am this morning. Saw a few events on facebook picking up speed (hundreds of thousands of attendees) so decided to leverage that instant-market - Wasn't sure whether or not it would work, but I didn't have too mu…

Quick, write a book before Tim Ferris steals your idea: The Four Hour Startup

I like that - maybe a good title for the upcoming detailed blog post!

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#75

I know this is not the norm for projects here on Hacker News and I realize that it may be seen as rather exploitive, so here's a very very brief background and my thought process: - Idea was conceived around 2am this morning. Saw a few events on facebook picking up speed (hundreds of thousands of attendees) so decided to leverage that instant-market - Wasn't sure whether or not it would work, but I didn't have too mu…

I don't think the idea is exploitive...just opportunistic, which is an awesome mindset to have in business if you stay on the right side of things. So, kudos on the idea.

That said, I do have a problem with the execution:

The section "Please don't buy this shirt if you died. That's just lying, and nobody likes a liar..." is obviously intended just for laughs, but it's not really that funny and you run the risk of offending someone that, say, knows someone who actually died in the "Snowpacalypse." My wife, for example, knew one of the seven people that are known to have died in Chicago as a result of the blizzard. I'm one of the least sensitive or "PC" people on earth, but I think you might rethink what you gain vs. what you lose with that particular sentence. Offending people can be fine (and inevitable), but there should usually be a reason for it. [BTW, "I survived X" is a common T-shirt meme and Snowpacalypse is a recent meme, so I didn't think anything of it until the one sentence made a more concrete connection between 'death' and the blizzard...which made me think of the news reports etc. - which might tip the creepy scale for some potential buyers. Maybe A/B test it?]

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#76
post #59

Could you post a follow up statistics in a week or so? As this is a one shot sort of deal I wouldn't imagine you feel the need to keep the numbers under wraps.

Yep, planning on it. Keep an eye out on http://madebyloren.com - my future blog for my startups/projects. I'll certainly make a post here on HN as well.

I would suggest publishing an RSS feed for your posts, because I probably won’t remember to check your website again. Either way, please keep submitting updates to HN.

Looking at your site, you seem to be using a custom blog engine. Any details on your setup and how it came to be?

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#78
post #75

I know this is not the norm for projects here on Hacker News and I realize that it may be seen as rather exploitive, so here's a very very brief background and my thought process: - Idea was conceived around 2am this morning. Saw a few events on facebook picking up speed (hundreds of thousands of attendees) so decided to leverage that instant-market - Wasn't sure whether or not it would work, but I didn't have too mu…

I don't think the idea is exploitive...just opportunistic, which is an awesome mindset to have in business if you stay on the right side of things. So, kudos on the idea. That said, I do have a problem with the execution: The section "Please don't buy this shirt if you died. That's just lying, and nobody likes a liar..." is obviously intended just for laughs, but it's not really that funny and you run the risk of off…

Anything you'd do will offend at least one person on earth. This time is you, next time will be somebody else. Get over it.

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#79
What would be cool, and a nice courtesy gesture since HN gave you so much traffic, is if you shared actual numbers with us. Data we can use. I'd like to see:

Cost price of your tshirts, how many you sold over X time, conversion rate on the site, main sources of traffic, highest conversion source, lowest conversion source, fraud levels if known yet. Thanks.

Re: Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable

#80
post #78
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the idea is exploitive...just opportunistic, which is an awesome mindset to have in business if you stay on the right side of things. So, kudos on the idea. That said, I do have a problem with the execution: The section "Please don't buy this shirt if you died. That's just lying, and nobody likes a liar..." is obviously intended just for laughs, but it's not really that funny and you run the risk of off…

Anything you'd do will offend at least one person on earth. This time is you, next time will be somebody else. Get over it.

It didn't offend me, dickhead. I was just offering my opinion about something that might lower sales conversions. Why piss off a potential customer just for a weak joke...?
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