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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#151

Post by beachstartup »

dbancajas wrote: post #120
chrishacken wrote: post #109

I'm not sure if this qualifies as an "online business", but I started an ISP in November '15. It's also not entirely "one-person". I am the sole founder, but I do hire part-time help on occasion if I'm swamped. It started off as a WISP and has finally grown to the point where we are beginning to deploy fiber. The site is https://nepafiber.com I still work full-time as a systems engineer, but the business started brin…

Can you expand on this? How do you compete with AT&T/Google? Are you pretty much on business because AT&T/Goog/TWC are not serving in your area? Can you do summary of how you grow the business if it's not too much? Really curious about all the logistics. Best of luck!!

i run a small tech company, though not an ISP.

i hear this question a lot. "how do you compete with xyz megacorp?"

delivering a better/faster product for less money, is the easy part. nearly everything is overpriced from megacorps. believe me, it's easy. even the accounting is harder.

the hard part is selling it. people will complain all day about megacorp sucking, but when it comes right down to it, they won't go with the little guy 99% of the time even when the benefits are staring them right in the face.

unless of course, you happen to offer a service in an area the big guys simply don't exist in, which is awesome and good for OP for spotting the opportunity.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#152

Post by xcubic »

adpoe wrote: post #127

I run an ecommerce store from Shopify which fulfills the orders by drop-shipping through AliExpress. This is definitely doable for one person, and it isn't technically challenging for a software developer--but the hardest part (at least for me) is marketing, creating content, advertising, and so on. Actually running a Shopify store and fulfilling by drop-shipping is simple. I would definitely recommend that as a good…

How do you pick the products to sell? Can you share the store you're working on?

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#153

Post by floydax »

adpoe wrote: post #127

I run an ecommerce store from Shopify which fulfills the orders by drop-shipping through AliExpress. This is definitely doable for one person, and it isn't technically challenging for a software developer--but the hardest part (at least for me) is marketing, creating content, advertising, and so on. Actually running a Shopify store and fulfilling by drop-shipping is simple. I would definitely recommend that as a good…

Can you share the store URL? Please check my profile.

I wonder, how do you deal with customs issues? I've had issues in the past while shipping outside EU and customers always expected me to solve the issues for them

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#154

Post by snowcrshd »

cookkkie wrote: post #64

Hi, here's mine: http://mee6bot.com :) . You can read a short article I wrote recently about it: https://medium.com/@anis.blk/the-mvp-that-got-to-480k-unique... . Transcript: Last March, in my little darky flat somewhere in the middle of France, I had this idea to launch a little chat bot in a platform called Discord. I was coding all day long to deliver a functional and satisfying version of what I had in mind. Thes…

Man, that is so cool and the name is specially awesome!

I've been thinking of launching a bot service too, but focused on order deliveries through FB messenger.

Do you still think the chat bots market is a good niche to explore?

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#155

Post by jayroh »

jasonkester wrote: post #67

I'm running two of the same ones from that list 3 years ago ( http://www.twiddla.com/ and https://www.s3stat.com/ ), and have just launched another one ( https://unwaffle.com/ ). Every year that passes makes it easier to get something like this off the ground, as the infrastructure becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, and the knowledge you need for the business side get better packaged into step-by-step guides. It's…

Hey s3stat looks AWESOME! I'm working on a product that's built on the back of S3 as well (https://shubox.io) so this might come in super handy for me and my customers. Do you have an affiliate program my any chance?

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#156

Post by dmalvarado »

nickjj wrote: post #123
DeanWormer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah my BS meter has tripped. Most of his submissions are links to his own site and his comments here are "would anyone be interested in ____" and "let me tell you a secret" self promotional spam.

I only post comments like that when it makes sense. If you asked me, "hey I just downloaded Sublime Text, what are some good packages for a Rails developer?". Why wouldn't I link you to a blog post that lays it all out so you can consume it quickly? "Let me tell you a secret" is a line I used twice. As a software developer I like testing things and analyzing the results. So when I reply to people, I tend to make note…

The point is, change your pitch. Your wording leads to thoughts like the two commenters had above. Shouldn't be too hard if you have real substance to sell.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#157

Post by zlagen »

dgranda wrote: post #79

I run https://www.fortsu.es (also https://www.fortsu.co.uk , https://www.fortsu.de and https://www.fortsu.com ) a price comparison website for running shoes. Original one is focused on spanish market while expanding into interesting ones. It started as side project some years ago when I wanted to buy running shoes online and it has been improved over the time. To-Do list never ends ;)

I'm interested in this kind of projects I have a lot of experience working with scrapers. How do you earn money from them? via affiliate sales?

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#158

Post by chrishacken »

beachstartup wrote: post #151
dbancajas wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on this? How do you compete with AT&T/Google? Are you pretty much on business because AT&T/Goog/TWC are not serving in your area? Can you do summary of how you grow the business if it's not too much? Really curious about all the logistics. Best of luck!!

i run a small tech company, though not an ISP. i hear this question a lot. "how do you compete with xyz megacorp?" delivering a better/faster product for less money, is the easy part. nearly everything is overpriced from megacorps. believe me, it's easy. even the accounting is harder. the hard part is selling it. people will complain all day about megacorp sucking, but when it comes right down to it, they won't go wi…

I'm working on a deal with a local private school and that was the first question I got. "How can you offer faster speeds and better pricing than Frontier, Verizon, etc?".

They were previously paying $2,000/m for 100 Mbps. It's not that hard to compete with that. haha

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#159

Post by GordonS »

adpoe wrote: post #127

I run an ecommerce store from Shopify which fulfills the orders by drop-shipping through AliExpress. This is definitely doable for one person, and it isn't technically challenging for a software developer--but the hardest part (at least for me) is marketing, creating content, advertising, and so on. Actually running a Shopify store and fulfilling by drop-shipping is simple. I would definitely recommend that as a good…

I don't know anything about drop-shipping - do you have any good resources that serve as a guide?

In particular, I'm wondering about how to handle problems - when orders don't arrive, when customers want to return defective items etc.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#160

Post by dgranda »

tuffer wrote: post #143
dgranda wrote: post #79

I run https://www.fortsu.es (also https://www.fortsu.co.uk , https://www.fortsu.de and https://www.fortsu.com ) a price comparison website for running shoes. Original one is focused on spanish market while expanding into interesting ones. It started as side project some years ago when I wanted to buy running shoes online and it has been improved over the time. To-Do list never ends ;)

Very nice! Couple of questions if you could answer please. How do you host your site? How do you compare the similar products and aggregate them within your database? Unique identifies etc.

Thanks!

> How do you host your site?

TL;DR: entry level Virtual Private Server (VPS) per country.

Based on some SEO articles, I decided to go for Top Level Domains depending on target market (.es for Spain, .de for Germany, etc.) so I needed properly geolocated IP addresses for each country. Each server is around 10 USD/month making this approach affordable. I do all operations.

> How do you compare the similar products and aggregate them within your database? Unique identifies etc.

Each product is manually added (using self made web based template) into database basically because of custom description, picture and specifications. Similar products are linked based first on category and then using properties like weight and drop.

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