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Running a Software Business on 5 Hours A Week

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Re: Running a Software Business on 5 Hours A Week

#71

Post by patio11 »

wglb wrote: post #69

An additional interesting number is the number of hours that freelancers have worked on this project, if that wouldn't be telling too many secrets.

Yikes, no clue. That would be upwards of 10 freelancers and $6,000 worth of projects.

(I have always paid by task, not by hour -- as you might have noticed I tend to center on small, well-defined projects with easily verified deliverables. I cultivate trust with my freelancers such that they know I'm not going to screw them on a neverending scope-creep deathmarch for the $400 project. Thus, I've really got no clue whether they're taking their sweet time doing projects or figuring out ludicrously efficient ways to do them and earning more per hour than I do -- and if they have done that, bully for them.)

Re: Running a Software Business on 5 Hours A Week

#72

Post by patio11 »

webwright wrote: post #70
Periodic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tend to have quite a problem with survivorship bias[1] on HN. We like to look at the cases where things went well and we assume that is because they did something right that the others did not, and since the founder believe this, he will list the things he intentionally did that he thinks helped. In reality, it may have been something he was taking for granted, or it may have been that he happened to miss some com…

One thing that he did (dunno if he takes it for granted) is get a URL that matches with the top search phrase. If he'd named his company "GridFriend Creator", we'd be reading a VERY different article. Every time anyone links to him, it's like the George Bush "miserable failure" googlebomb [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb ]... Except that it's not frowned upon by Google.

I think that is of fairly minor consequence to the overall success of my business. I've been #1 for that phrase for almost four years now -- and as of four years ago, it was worth about 150 visits a month, or substantially less than five sales. "Whee."

It is worth more these days, but that is because people searching for [bingo card creator] are probably looking for Bingo Card Creator (for example, with five seconds of checking into my stats, I can guarantee at least 30% of folks searching for it last week and clicking on my site already have an account with me).

(Have I mentioned that "Google owns navigation on the Internet"?)

Re: Running a Software Business on 5 Hours A Week

#73

Post by theycallmemorty »

patio11 wrote: post #53
vaksel wrote: post #3

I think a large part of it is competition...you don't really have any so you can work as much or as little as you want. If you have competition like in 99% of the niches...you'll be working a lot more than that

There are three companies listed on the American stock exchanges with over 1,000 employees who sell products which directly compete with me. (They are, of course, much less important to those companies than they are to me.) Software-wise, there were ~15 shareware products and ~7 web applications last time I checked a few years ago. At least three of them actually know what they're doing (and one of those was launched…

Just out of curiosity, have you ever thought about adapting your bingo card creator to make cards for plain old bingo. You know, with the numbers and not words?

Re: Running a Software Business on 5 Hours A Week

#74

Post by jseliger »

dangrossman wrote: post #45
jseliger wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works for me too. I often spend less than 5 hours a week working, and I have a 6 figure income. My web applications compete directly with Google and Microsoft, among others, so the "no competition" argument is out. I realize that HN doesn't encourage heavy self-promotion, but what is this business? Where is its website? Your story sounds wildly implausible, though it obviously isn't impossible. Still, it reminds me o…

http://www.awio.com or http://www.dangrossman.info/folio/ if you'd like to take a look. I'm extremely open about my business. I've thought about writing this type of article to share on HN before, but it always comes across as bragging instead of sharing so I can the idea soon after starting. This is not an overnight success story. I earned my first paycheck on the internet when I was 15 or so, 10 years ago. I've had…

Thanks for posting that—incidentally, something like awio sounds pretty useful, so you might see someone with my last name in the demo pool in the near future.

Re: Running a Software Business on 5 Hours A Week

#75

Post by dimarco »

patio11 wrote: post #48
dimarco wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It Japan, as far as I know, it's not "periodic bouts of crunch time" that brings salarymen to small hotels instead of home, but "nightly bouts of alcohol".

I do not drink. Most of the engineers in my company go straight home to their wives and children when they leave the office. (Our salesmen appear to have the more traditional salaryman attitude.)

patio11: I certainly wasn't implying you drink. (A few downvotes to my post tell me that people thought I was attacking you)

Re: Running a Software Business on 5 Hours A Week

#76

Post by ericd »

patio11 wrote: post #72
webwright wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that he did (dunno if he takes it for granted) is get a URL that matches with the top search phrase. If he'd named his company "GridFriend Creator", we'd be reading a VERY different article. Every time anyone links to him, it's like the George Bush "miserable failure" googlebomb [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb ]... Except that it's not frowned upon by Google.

I think that is of fairly minor consequence to the overall success of my business. I've been #1 for that phrase for almost four years now -- and as of four years ago, it was worth about 150 visits a month, or substantially less than five sales. "Whee." It is worth more these days, but that is because people searching for [bingo card creator] are probably looking for Bingo Card Creator (for example, with five seconds…

Doesn't that help it also rank for "Bingo " and "Bingo Card ", though? I'm very hazy on how Google uses anchor text, but this is how I assumed it works.

On a related note, I'd be very happy to pay you for an SEO consultation.

Re: Running a Software Business on 5 Hours A Week

#77

Post by synchromesh »

nostrademons wrote: post #41
garply wrote: post #21

I appreciate the point that running a software business is only 10% development and 90% business. "If you want to spend your time writing code, go work for Google." This hits close to home as I am gradually learning that I provide far more value to the world by using my knowledge to have others do technical implementation than if I were doing it myself. For someone who loves code, it's a painful transition. But I thi…

That's a complicated statement. The depth of your own technical knowledge sets a ceiling on the depth of the people willing to do technical implementation for you. After all, most people are unwilling to do grunt work for people dumber than themselves. The main thing your workers get out of it is a learning experience and the chance to be mentored by others more experienced than themselves, so if you're not more expe…

It's a simple statement. You confuse naïveté with stupidity. If there is a "ceiling" as you describe, then Sergei and Larry must have godlike intelligence to have 20,000 engineers working for them.

The point is not "I'm not capable of coding this, I must hire someone smarter", it's "I'll manage someone to do the coding I don't have time for, and they can observe my attempts to run the rest of the business (or whatever)."

Re: Running a Software Business on 5 Hours A Week

#78

Post by webwright »

patio11 wrote: post #72
webwright wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that he did (dunno if he takes it for granted) is get a URL that matches with the top search phrase. If he'd named his company "GridFriend Creator", we'd be reading a VERY different article. Every time anyone links to him, it's like the George Bush "miserable failure" googlebomb [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb ]... Except that it's not frowned upon by Google.

I think that is of fairly minor consequence to the overall success of my business. I've been #1 for that phrase for almost four years now -- and as of four years ago, it was worth about 150 visits a month, or substantially less than five sales. "Whee." It is worth more these days, but that is because people searching for [bingo card creator] are probably looking for Bingo Card Creator (for example, with five seconds…

Hrm-- that's some pretty selective data. I'd be curious to hear you fill in the blanks on this sentence:

"Organic searches with the word 'bingo card' makes up ___ percent of my sales."

As you say, tho-- might be hard to parse out brand searches. But every single one of your holiday-specific landing pages benefits from "bingo card" being in your URL. Isn't long tail SEO a big part of your acquisition?

Re: Running a Software Business on 5 Hours A Week

#79

Post by gwern »

phatbyte wrote: post #20
phatbyte wrote: post #18

"...However, you’ll quickly find that there is literally a world of people out there who are willing to work for $1.50 an hour and would be terrifically overpaid at that price..." That's the number one reason why some clients of mine comeback to me saying their last developer didn't quite accomplish what they wanted. And the reason why sometimes I have to struggle to fix bugs and identification (yes, many low-cost de…

identification/Identation

I always enjoy incorrect corrections.
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