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

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

#221

Post by [deleted] »

chrischen wrote: post #105
qwrusz wrote: post #96

Congrats on the success. Thanks for sharing the business story too. Disclaimer: this is not a paid endorsement. I don't know Chris. But I happen to be a customer - having bought a painting as a gift. It is framed on the wall at this moment. My only feedback. Your prices felt too inexpensive. Knowing something was handmade I would have paid more than I did. I'm sure you have researched the market and margins and all t…

Hi! Thanks for the comment! All I can say is that the reason I don't charge more is it'd just be lining my pockets since the artists set their prices at a pretty consistent rate. I don't get lower rates from the artists than my competitors, so I just undercut them in final retail price instead.

[deleted]

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

#222

Post by mistermann »

ska wrote: post #197
chrischen wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is passive. The revnue quoted is not sustained by the regular work. That I put into the service. As I stated, if I stopped working then that income would stay, and be considered passive.

Would it? Or would it slowly decrease? Nearly all businesses have some momentum, after all. If you can walk away for say a year without touching it at all and the revenue remains basically steady, I'll agree it is passive. Anyway, it doesn't really matter - it sounds like you are working at growing a business you enjoy and that's great.

It seems fairly reasonable to me that he could walk away for a year with no noteworthy effect. Google tweaking their algorithm obviously would not count.

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

#223

Post by mistermann »

reledi wrote: post #131
chrischen wrote: post #2

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

- Have you experimented with painters from areas other than China? - What's the onboarding process like for a painter? - I read on the reddit soft-launch post that one way the business handled scaling was by printing out the photos and then painting over them. Did it turn out to be a successful strategy?

What a great idea....I woulda kept that one a secret.

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

#224

Post by tempestn »

teh_klev wrote: post #170
dkrich wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So here you say: > Let me be clear- I have been to many, many world class art galleries. Yet you claimed: > No, never. I just asked about it because I heard the term once a long time ago, but to be honest I'm note even sure what an oil painting is. and asked: > Is it like the same thing they put in engines to make them run smoothly? Src: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12800067 How does claim to one visit "many,…

I read the "No, never" and motor oil lines as sarcasm, especially considering the latter part of that post.

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

#225

Post by graeme »

ska wrote: post #197
chrischen wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is passive. The revnue quoted is not sustained by the regular work. That I put into the service. As I stated, if I stopped working then that income would stay, and be considered passive.

Would it? Or would it slowly decrease? Nearly all businesses have some momentum, after all. If you can walk away for say a year without touching it at all and the revenue remains basically steady, I'll agree it is passive. Anyway, it doesn't really matter - it sounds like you are working at growing a business you enjoy and that's great.

There can be middle ground. I have a very similar situation to the OPs.

If I stopped working for over a year, eventually there would be complaints, competitors, etc

But within a one year timeframe, there's very little I have to do. And I could get away with working a couple months of the year only + maybe three hours a week maintenance, and the business would grow, slowly.

But, I work consistently, adding new things, because I want it to grow faster. I also know that the environment changes and eventually the current model may stop working or need adaptation.

What do you call that? It's not 100% passive. But, it's not particularly active either.

Actually, having written all this, I remembered someone did come up with a better term: residual revenue.

Meaning that I did a bunch of work in the past that continues to pay off. It will eventually decay, but not very fast. So I can devote most of my energy to new growth, or leisure, over the short to medium run anyway.

Do you think residual revenue (or income) is a better term for this case?

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

#226

Post by icebraining »

hilop wrote: post #195
angus-prune wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a missing piece of automation here still. The robot can replicate recorded movements - brush angle, pressure, timing etc. An photoshop filter can shift pixels around to make a photo look like an oil painting. What nobody has come up with yet (and would likely be hard to develop, or at least costly) is a way to translate a photograph, or a photoshop filter into the set of movements required to render it in ph…

For copying a painting, you could fake it with a 3-D printer that reproduces a depth+scanned painting and a topcoat of paint

Until we get 3D printers with an atom-level precision, you can't really reproduce a brush stroke with a vertical nozzle, so you'd need to somehow identify those strokes from the depth scan.

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

#227

Post by zem »

dismantlethesun wrote: post #174
redleggedfrog wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's just me then. :^) For me it's the difference between purchasing a product and investing in your business. If presented as an investment, where my money is going to enable you to produce the item for me, then I'd be fine with it, because I would know the current state of your business. Now, if I knew you had no artists and were just floating an idea I would most likely refrain. The worst case scenario als…

Worst case scenario, he'd have returned the money for any specific painting that couldn't be done, right?

well, worst-case scenario the customer wanted the painting as, e.g., a graduation gift for their kid, and suddenly got told at the last minute "we couldn't do it, here's a refund"

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

#228

Post by zem »

dismantlethesun wrote: post #174
redleggedfrog wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's just me then. :^) For me it's the difference between purchasing a product and investing in your business. If presented as an investment, where my money is going to enable you to produce the item for me, then I'd be fine with it, because I would know the current state of your business. Now, if I knew you had no artists and were just floating an idea I would most likely refrain. The worst case scenario als…

Worst case scenario, he'd have returned the money for any specific painting that couldn't be done, right?

well, worst-case scenario the customer wanted the painting as, e.g., a graduation gift for their kid, and suddenly got told at the last minute "we couldn't do it, here's a refund"

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

#229

Post by jimmijazz »

Shoes of Prey have done a similar thing here in Australia with shoes. Last year they raised a solid amount of capital to expand into the U.S as well. I wonder, what other industries would the ability to produce unique products in China at scale apply to?

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

#230

Post by mistermann »

TheGRS wrote: post #218
rockdiesel wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Q. Big Mac meal $6.99. Can we put a picture of you eating it in our next commercial? (No: +$3) A. Keep the Big Mac. I'm going to get a Whopper from Burger King.

I get why it seems distasteful, but I personally thought it was pretty clever. This site thrives on good, real world examples in the home page, so it would make sense to incentivize people to agree to let the site use their examples. If it were a larger company I would probably not like it either, but I'm willing to give a pass to a very small business.

I'm surprised he didn't use the second, less-offensive wording though, it does feel weird as is.
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