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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#241

I made an almost-full-time income off programming content in 2016 (through my Rails performance course at https://www.railsspeed.com ). I'm writing up a big blog about how I did it right now, but the gist is: 1. Treat blog posts like miniature products - opportunities to test, measure, learn. 2. Have a unique voice and viewpoint. 3. Write about a growing or mature field. (early to late majority) 4. Main distribution…

Where will you publish it?

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

#242
post #230

I've been running Bowtiful Ties ( http://www.bowtifulties.com ) as a side project for the last 4 or so years. Everything is vertically integrated and hand made by myself, from the bow ties, to the packaging, to the website and all processes. Bootstrapped from the start, it's pretty low volume, but nicely profitable.

Those look really sharp! I still tried wearing a bow tie. I've always been a necktie kind of guy. Maybe it's time?

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

#243
I run a network of online vinyl lettering design sites I have written over a period of 5 years. I started with the custom cart platform on asp.net MVC and just one website. It is a multi tenant platform with end to end web to print capability. The designers are built in Knockout in a modular way so bits and pieces can be tweaked depending on the use. The Racing site is written in Durandal so not all of the code has been rewritten. I now have 4 websites on the platform. I also wrote a stand alone cloud based service to handle the image generation (http://ionapi.com) and outputting vector files for production. It was originally intended to be open but I have gotten so swamped handling production it hasn't materialized. Most of the nuts and bolts of it are there, but no documentation. I do have it setup behind HAproxy and load balanced on several servers.

I farm out most of the production process but handle customer service. I originally got into all of this to be a side income to supplement web consulting. I have since concluded I hate all of the baggage that comes along with dealing with small town local businesses. I have been fortunate enough to be able to move into a bigger facility for production now and intend to do some work in house now along with hiring an employee or two rather than farm out.

A few of my sites:

Image Generation API - https://ionapi.com Boat Decals - https://boatdecals.biz Race Graphics - https://racegraphics.com

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

#245

I made an almost-full-time income off programming content in 2016 (through my Rails performance course at https://www.railsspeed.com ). I'm writing up a big blog about how I did it right now, but the gist is: 1. Treat blog posts like miniature products - opportunities to test, measure, learn. 2. Have a unique voice and viewpoint. 3. Write about a growing or mature field. (early to late majority) 4. Main distribution…

Interested in that blog post, but you don't have your blog linked in your profile or anywhere.

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

#247
I run https://mapchart.net .

It is a simple tool that lets you create custom maps of the World, USA, Europe, UK, France and more. I treat is as a side-project, but I am constantly adding new maps or expanding some features.

The biggest advantage is that it costs almost nothing to maintain it, as it is completely client-side, so the only cost is the basic hosting plan. I launched it almost 2 years ago and right now it is the no.1 search result for queries related to creating maps and gets an occasional boost from Reddit posts or other blogs.

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

#248
post #99
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why people share their revenues? Every product can be copied. If you know revenue, you know what product you should copy.

Patio11 was blogging about his old Bingo Card software for many, many years and became one of the most high-profile members of Hacker News because of it. I don't think a flood of competing Bingo Card software came in. A lot of the time, finding a good enough niche, a small enough niche, and understanding customer acquisition for that niche is all the "moat" you really need. Remember, your competitors likely don't kno…

The BCC was never profitable enough with constantly declining revenues. Patrick ended 2016 with $120,000 in debt and working in Stripe to pay it down.

Probably, revenues started to decline after bragging about them.

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

#249
I run a site that teaches organic chemistry online. Started in 2010. 7 million visits last year. Most content is free, but has some "cheat sheets" and other study guides that are for sale. I have some contractors for various tasks but am the only employee. http://www.masterorganicchemistry.com/blog

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

#250
Back in August I launched https://IndieHackers.com, a site where the founders of profitable online businesses share their stories and revenue transparently. I actually got the idea after reading lots of threads like this one on HN :D

Indie Hackers is my full-time job now. Is it "successful"? I think so! I've done over 90 interviews, and they've been read over one million times in the past 5 months, largely by you guys! I also made $2239 in December and hope to grow revenue another 50% in January. (As I do every month, I just blogged about that here: https://IndieHackers.com/blog)

I'm working on a podcast as well that I'm really excited about, as I've found it's a bit easier to get famous founders to agree to that format and to speak transparently about behind the scenes details.

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