Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

indiehackers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 277 posts

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

#181

Post by AJ007 »

hilop wrote: post #156
danso wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, what experiences have you had that make you think otherwise? Google is the greatest information-finding service invented but it can still surface poor results. But in this case, I don't think Google was necessarily "fooled". The developer happened to be multitalented enough to create a game that was popular. Assuming that the traffic it receives was legitimate (which I imagine Google can know based on Google Anal…

The problem is thst people use infographics that get a lot of links, to get SEO juice for the rest of their site thst is utter garbage. Ideally, Google wouldn't credit one part of the site that is lower quality than the other part.

They may temporarily bump a site up based on new "authoritative" incoming links and then make judgements from a combination of user time on site/bounces back to search results and clicking on more results and additional pages. Longer term there is definitely manual human review looking for "spam."

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

#182

Post by AJ007 »

dkrich wrote: post #94

The hardest part was actually conveying that it wasn't just some print or photo filter, and this is something I still have difficulty with today. Curious about whether people care about this. As somebody who takes a lot of pictures, if somebody could produce one of my photos as a painting using Photoshop that was indistinguishable (or close to it) from a person, I really don't think I'd care. From a business perspect…

One big aspect to painting is what happens when multiple coats of different colored paint is layered on top of each other. You could reproduce that mechanically but you would need more than a flat source image file.

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

#183

Post by asenna »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #23

Usually I don't like these kinds of pieces, but this one had lots of good examples that anyone could apply. Congrats on your success!

Out of curiosity, why do you usually not like these kinds of pieces? I have enjoyed all of the IndieHackers interviews and find them pretty inspirational.

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

#184

Post by rockdiesel »

TheGRS wrote: post #168
rockdiesel wrote: post #163

I was pretty close to ordering a gift for the holidays until I saw the charge of $3.00 to NOT appear as a sample on your website. [1] Why are you making people pay $3.00 to NOT appear in your gallery of samples? Sorry, but that seems absolutely ridiculous and is a deal breaker for me. [1] http://imgur.com/a/RMcvV

Would you have agreed if it were a discount instead of an added charge? i.e. Yes is -$3?

Are you saying I either have to pay $3 to opt out or save $3 to opt in?

Or are you saying the base price remains the same if I opt out, but I would get a $3 discount if I opt in?

I would find scenario #2 a more suitable option. Meaning I'd happily pay the standard price in exchange for opting out, but people who choose to opt in receive a small discount in exchange for their willingness to be used as marketing collateral.

Explicitly charging people to opt out just leaves a bad taste in mouth. And it just makes me thing you are going to nickel and dime me every chance you get.

To be honest, if all the standard painting prices were increased by $3 to roll in the opt out cost, I probably wouldn't care. It's the explicit charging for opting out that rubs me the wrong way and I don't think I've ever encountered it before on any other online transaction I've completed.

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

#185

Post by AJ007 »

dkrich wrote: post #135
angus-prune wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really worth getting yourself to a gallery. Painting is applying pigment to a page using a liquid which then dries after it has been applied. This liquid could be water (for watercolours), an acrylic polymer compound (for acrylic paints) or linseed oil (for oil paints). The liquid used has its own properties which mean you can achieve different styles and textures. For instance, water colours absorb into the paper an…

And there's really no comparison between the leather in a Rolls Royce Phantom and the leather in a Honda Accord, and yet somehow Honda moves hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year. My question was not a refutation of the claim that original oil paintings are superior to prints. It was rather an honest attempt to understand the market opportunity of a business and whether the OP believes that a market for prints exi…

Here is a better analogy than the one you gave: compare a Honda Accord painted with a can of spray paint to a Honda Accord painted at the factory.

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

#187

Post by oDot »

OJFord wrote: post #120

What's going on with the shipping pricing? > Standard delivery (approx 3 weeks) > Guaranteed (+$15) > Within 25 days (+$20) > Within 15 days (+$20) 3 weeks is 21 days, so assuming "guaranteed" just removes the "approx", why would I ever pay more for "within 25"? Further, why would I ever pay for "within 25" when "within 15" is the same price? Surely this can be condensed to: > Standard delivery (approx 3 weeks) > Gua…

Here's a great bit by Dan Ariely (behavioral economics) that might answer your question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOhb4LwAaJk

And while I'm sharing Dan Ariely links, here's another one (but I can't tell you what it's about, just watch and wait for it):

https://vimeo.com/63062967

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

#188

Post by chrischen »

OJFord wrote: post #120

What's going on with the shipping pricing? > Standard delivery (approx 3 weeks) > Guaranteed (+$15) > Within 25 days (+$20) > Within 15 days (+$20) 3 weeks is 21 days, so assuming "guaranteed" just removes the "approx", why would I ever pay more for "within 25"? Further, why would I ever pay for "within 25" when "within 15" is the same price? Surely this can be condensed to: > Standard delivery (approx 3 weeks) > Gua…

Guaranteed lets you select a specific day. If it falls within the bunber of days it gets that pricing.

However selecting a shorter turnaround time reduces the pool of interested artists, so it shouldn't be used unless necessary.

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

#189

Post by patio11 »

pierrebai wrote: post #78
googletazer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a second, so how do you imagine it working? Millions of artists each with their own individual pages connected to Stripe? Out of these, some will still be top 10, the rest will be behind. Every artist who uses his platform wins since thats what connects them to consumers and work orders.

The connected economy does have aspects that can be concerning: * Many see bartering as a grey business. Profiting from a disparity in pricing between buyers and sellers is always a touchy subject. The usual justification is the service of connecting sellers and buyers. One can honestly wonders if buyers and sellers really would not have found each other otherwise. * How much is the match-making worth. One person doe…

Middlemen exist because it is not obvious to middle-class Americans that they need to know what the relevance of Dafen is to getting a painting done and because most middle-class Americans do not speak excellent Chinese, and most Chinese painters presumably do not dream at night of putting down their brushes and opening up an SEO consultancy.

Instapainting captures customer demand and transforms it into a servicable and fully-paid series of work orders, to painters (and firms employing them), for the thing they want to sell. This has value. Media depictions to the contrary, artists do not enjoy starving.

If you feel strongly that this model is exploitative, you can apply corrective capitalism by making your own website, doing your own SEO, selling your own paintings with fulfillment by your own outsourced team of painters, and compressing the margins. I wish you the best of luck and skill in this endeavor, but if you model your business as being viable at 1% or 5% above COGS [+], I will warn you that your first year in business is going to be a very educational experience.

[ + ] Cost of Goods Sold; an accounting term for the expenses of the business which directly represent fulfillment as opposed to e.g. marketing, engineering (this company sells paintings, not software, so software isn't COGS for them even thought it might conceivably be for SaaS), or business overhead.

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

#190

Post by csallen »

ska wrote: post #98
chrischen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mak…

So it is not passive. That's ok, almost all "passive income" isn't, and the term has been abused into near uselessness. Sounds like the term you are actually looking for is "lifestyle business" Nothing wrong than that, and it's a more sensible (i.e. well defined) goal that passive income.

I think passive is more to do with something "making money while you sleep" or, at least, "making money even if you quit." Thus, continuing to work to increase your business' revenue doesn't mean the money it already makes isn't passive. At least not to me :)
Post reply on HN