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Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

indiehackers.com

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Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#21

Post by k__ »

lalos wrote: post #11
redleggedfrog wrote: post #4

Ug, is it just me, or does that he took money before actually having anyone to paint the pictures seem unethical? Would people have ordered if they had of known there were no artists as yet, or for that matter the artist were going to be friends of the website owner?

It's a common hustle/business tactic. Read up on how Microsoft was made into the giant it is today[1], similar trick. You are basically validating your idea, if you have a lot of orders coming in you have what I call a positive problem, a way to make money. [1] http://gizmodo.com/5825184/bill-gates-spent-the-best-money-o...

Alternative would be getting money from somewhere (credit, VC, friends, etc.) build the stuff in advanced and hope people will buy it.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#24

Post by avitzurel »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #12
avitzurel wrote: post #9

"acquiring artists turned out to be far from the hardest part of the business." This. I consulted many businesses as an engineer and often times technology can get you so far. You have to "get your hands dirty" and do the work. Tech is rarely the bottleneck, it's often sales, understanding needs, contracting work to 3rd parties etc... Kudos to the owner, great job

... the author was saying the opposite. "far from the hardest" = "not the hardest" and you can see it in context: > Shortly after the launch I was contacted by many artists, mostly from China (they already saturate other marketplaces like eBay, Alibaba, and Etsy). The initial batch of orders were break even, but once the market-rate artists contacted us, I knew it was going to be profitable. Sounds like the difficult…

Reading is hard :)

You're right. I guess I read what I wanted it to say and what what it actually said. I'll leave it up here as a reminder to read better next time.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#25

Post by chrischen »

csallen wrote: post #5
chrischen wrote: post #2

I can answer any questions, whether about how to get a great Christmas present, or questions about the article!

I have a question! (Even though I could've just asked you this during the interview itself.) You say that you've automated most of the process of running the business: "I've gradually adapted the software over time to automate every process, and generally I only have to step in in rare instances of high-level disputes." How much time do you spend working nowadays? And on what? What's your typical day look like?

It's passive income in the sense that if I just dropped everything and played video games all day, the income would sustain itself.

However that's far from what I actually do :). It simply means I can free myself up to work on new features or increase revenue. So I'm still working about on average 5-8 hours per day, 6-7 days a week.

I like to travel a bit, and work while traveling. Since I have no employees, this makes it easier to have this lifestyle. Whenever I get a chance to sit down in a coffee shop I'll usually stay a few hours and do work.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#26

Post by chrischen »

jacquesm wrote: post #13
chrischen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To real artists, perhaps, but we currently only offer direct photo to painting services, which mean the only services offered by artists on our site are directly copying photos and turning them into physical artworks. So unless deepart.io is combined with a painting robot, we don't feel threatened. And in fact we already released both a painting robot and the first free-to-use neural network style transfer demo.

You keep saying 'we' whereas my impression is that this is a solo project, is the lady you mention in the article your partner in the business (since you mention no employees)?

Right now the business is just me. We is used out of habit, since it's technically a C corp and I technically have investors.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#27

Post by jacquesm »

chrischen wrote: post #26
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep saying 'we' whereas my impression is that this is a solo project, is the lady you mention in the article your partner in the business (since you mention no employees)?

Right now the business is just me. We is used out of habit, since it's technically a C corp and I technically have investors.

That's a nice thing you've built there, congratulations. Very impressive!

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#28

Post by chrischen »

hiou wrote: post #14

Nothing like exploiting people to make a living. Maybe the people doing the actual paintings should get that $32/mo? Gross US imperialism at its finest. So embarrassed to be from this country. FYI: Exploiting artists isn't some kind of disruptive innovation. Ever wonder why the arts are much less likely to adopt open source licensing? People like this jerk. Oh wait, I forgot. They aren't real artists because they hap…

We operate almost exactly like Etsy or Ebay in this regard, we just don't expose the marketplace to the front end because we offer only a single product type (photo to painting) at the moment. Many of our sellers are listed on Ebay or Etsy too (at higher prices).

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#29

Post by morgante »

csallen wrote: post #5
chrischen wrote: post #2

I can answer any questions, whether about how to get a great Christmas present, or questions about the article!

I have a question! (Even though I could've just asked you this during the interview itself.) You say that you've automated most of the process of running the business: "I've gradually adapted the software over time to automate every process, and generally I only have to step in in rare instances of high-level disputes." How much time do you spend working nowadays? And on what? What's your typical day look like?

For what it's worth, I think "What's your typical day look like?" would be a great question to add to your standard question battery.

(Also, I cannot overemphasized how much I like Indiehackers. It's become my new must-read newsletter.)

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#30

Post by thang »

chrischen wrote: post #2

I can answer any questions, whether about how to get a great Christmas present, or questions about the article!

How much customer support (for either artists or buyers) did you have to do as this grew before you managed to automate everything?

How long did it take to define/implement/automate these processes?

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