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Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

#41
post #37

My startup is a fashion magazine. If you look at a monthly fashion magazine's masthead, you'll see a list of 100 people. But I've done everything myself- from sleeping on the floor of the print shop for a week during printing, to photographing runway looks during fashion weeks, to casting, to selling ads, to creating web back ends & JQuery plugins, to art directing & designing fonts, to finding things (clothes/movies…

You have 100 people but did everything yourself? :S

That's not what he said ...

Re: Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

#42

My startup is a fashion magazine. If you look at a monthly fashion magazine's masthead, you'll see a list of 100 people. But I've done everything myself- from sleeping on the floor of the print shop for a week during printing, to photographing runway looks during fashion weeks, to casting, to selling ads, to creating web back ends & JQuery plugins, to art directing & designing fonts, to finding things (clothes/movies…

That's impressive. Are you making any money on that? It seems like it would be hard to do.

Re: Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

#44

Been working on this for a while... http://www.strategic-options.com/trade But people keep paying to build there lame websites... I got to stop doing that.

Link to wiki on that page (http://trade.strategic-options.com/index.php/open/wiki) seems to be broken.

Re: Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

#45
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you find your first 10 customers? How about the first 100? That's always the hardest part when you start something.

I'd like to say I did something clever, but the first customers just came from a little bit of advertising. I'm talking $100-200/month in AdWords clicks the first few months, and a $79/month banner ad on a web stats site I bought through BuySellAds.com. I'm no novice to advertising, so I had the right keywords and the right ads to make sure I only paid for people looking for what Improvely offers. I then spent my aft…

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. When you say you are no novice to advertising, care to share a few tips? Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

#47
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you find your first 10 customers? How about the first 100? That's always the hardest part when you start something.

I'd like to say I did something clever, but the first customers just came from a little bit of advertising. I'm talking $100-200/month in AdWords clicks the first few months, and a $79/month banner ad on a web stats site I bought through BuySellAds.com. I'm no novice to advertising, so I had the right keywords and the right ads to make sure I only paid for people looking for what Improvely offers. I then spent my aft…

"I'd like to say I did something clever"

...

"I then spent my afternoons all summer with a live chat widget on the site that automatically prompted a conversation to anyone who kept the page open for 10 seconds"

Given that's the first time I've ever heard of that particular approach, I'm not exactly a novice to marketing either, and it's sufficiently smart that I'm going to test it out myself on a project in the near future... I think you may, in fact, have done something quite clever there. :)

Any recommendations for backend technology for that? I've found that live chat solutions tend to be... sub-optimal.

Re: Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

#48
I have invented a new agile method that makes it really easy for leaders to give makers a purpose, autonomy and mastery.

The method is called TimeBlock and beside teaching users the method after selling it to companies (paid onboarding) I am building an app to support teams better than the paper and pencil version ever can do.

http://timeblock.com

Re: Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

#49
I run BugMuncher (http://bugmuncher.com/) - a website feedback tool that allows users to submit screenshots direct from their browser, no plugins required.

I started BugMuncher as a side project about 4 years ago, but this month I quit freelancing and started on my quest to make it my full time job. Exciting times!

Re: Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

#50
post #42

My startup is a fashion magazine. If you look at a monthly fashion magazine's masthead, you'll see a list of 100 people. But I've done everything myself- from sleeping on the floor of the print shop for a week during printing, to photographing runway looks during fashion weeks, to casting, to selling ads, to creating web back ends & JQuery plugins, to art directing & designing fonts, to finding things (clothes/movies…

That's impressive. Are you making any money on that? It seems like it would be hard to do.

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