Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by jastr » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 8:56 PM UTC

napoleond wrote: post #418

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…

How are you promoting your products? I am part marketer and part developer, but I am finding it difficult to market to developers :) I recently launched http://www.smsinbox.net for Twilio devs, and am slowly gaining some users, but finding it very difficult to reach the target audience, and/or get visitor/user feedback.

The landing page looks a bit too sparse (and unprofessional), which would turn me away. [1] Consider filling it out a bit more with: screenshots, pricing, a privacy policy, etc.

Take a look at s3stat.com above for a good example, it's much more polished without much more content.

[1] I send a few thousand SMS a month via Twilio for thesimplepostcard.com

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

#432

Post by csallen » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:06 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #414

csallen wrote: post #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 gu…

How can you afford to be full-time on $2239/month? O.o

I saved up money contracting before I took the plunge. This definitely wouldn't have been possible otherwise! But also, if you don't have a family, serious debt, or health issues, it's pretty easy to be resourceful and live cheaply, even in an expensive city like San Francisco.

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

#433

Post by DamnYuppie » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:06 PM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #354

DamnYuppie wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean Fahrenheit? 20 degrees Celsius (68F) wouldn't even qualify as insulation in a sleeping bag, may as well use a garbage bag and newspapers. 20 degrees Fahrenheit would make for a good 3 season bag though.

I bet you could get 4 seasons out of it in the south, don't you think? I don't know much about sleeping bags, though.

In the south maybe, but if the temp gets anywhere near 30F then no.

I do a fair bit of camping and I use a 0 degree down quilt from September through May where I live, rest of the year a 20 degree down quilt or bag.

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

#434

Post by csallen » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:06 PM UTC

countryqt30 wrote: post #269

csallen wrote: post #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 gu…

IndieHackers is one of my favorite platforms! I've read most stories and do business with some of the founders there successfully after reading about them on your platform. THANK YOU! You are not making only yourself wealthy, but many more so. I really appreciate your site.

Thank you! I love having incentives aligned where me doing my job better helps everyone both myself and everyone else :D

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

#435

Post by petercooper » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

chebum wrote: post #35

switchstance wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. An idea is just that, an idea. It takes months and years of hard work to turn an idea into an income stream.

Most of the businesses in the list are very easy to copy. There are neither rocket science, neither patents to protect them, neither big money to pay lawyers to protect their work. Knowing how well the product sells, you can copy it piece-by-piece by saving a lot of time trying different approaches. Author of original product already did all the hard work guessing what will work the best. You just come, copy and prof…

You're not entirely wrong, but building most products is easier than finding the right audience and being able to sell it to them. That's the business.

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

#436

Post by zazpowered » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:10 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #414

csallen wrote: post #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 gu…

How can you afford to be full-time on $2239/month? O.o

A lot of people are full time on $0 a month

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

#437

Post by cjmb » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:12 PM UTC

adpoe wrote: post #400

nathan_f77 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, ok. So you can just set up a Shopify store, set up an oberlo account, find some products on AliExpress... and that's it? Do you use any other services? And how often do you need to reply to customer emails?

From an inventory perspective, yes. =) But -- you still need to get people coming to your site somehow, which is actually the harder part. You can buy ads, do social media marketing, blog posts--lots of techniques. And there are a ton of services for that. I've experimented with many, and continually try to refine that aspect of the business, but I can't claim to be an expert yet. I reply to emails every day. Once yo…

Would you mind sharing what has been your most effective method of generating inbound interest to your site?

This was actually fascinating to me and I've spent the last 3 hours reading stuff from your links. Just trying to wrap my head around how you built enough inbounds to make that sort of revenue...

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

#438

Post by csallen » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

wastedhours wrote: post #385

csallen wrote: post #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 gu…

Love IH, only a few newsletters that get kept and read as reference in my inbox (the others being SaaS Weekly by Hiten Shah, OfficeSnapshots and The Hustle), and it's only been a few months but already one of my most anticipated emails each week. Hope the hockey stick goes up, and like a lot of people here, hope to be on those pages soon :)

Awesome! Love The Hustle and Office Snapshots, will check out SaaS Weekly. Been meaning to interview Stephen from OS since back in August, we were on Product Hunt on the same day :D

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

#439

Post by wessorh » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

One of my best friends helped me found and run the company (support-intelligence.com) for the first couple of years. I've run it for the last eight years on my organic farm in the East Bay (of the san francisco bay area)

I split my time between farming and writing code. Support Intelligence is a boutique cyber security company. We have F100 customers and I really enjoy living in two worlds.

The choice for me was simple, I greatly dislike what silicon valley does to entrepreneurs. I don't think many folks understand how VCs destroy lives.

So I'm happy with not being rich and having two jobs that keep me engaged in life, technology and politics.

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

#440

Post by hahamrfunnyguy » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:14 PM UTC

I'll toss this out there. I am a software guy who manufactures a simple electronic device on the side

The product cost around $30k to develop plus around eight months of full-time development effort. We currently make about $15k-20k a year in profits. I've been doing this for six years now, and we make small incremental improvements every release that don't cost a lot to do. I mostly focus on overseeing manufacturing, QA and maintaining a dealer network who will sell the product.

I am embarrassed to say I haven't spent a lot of time on growing the operation, but on the flipside the return is pretty good for the amount of work that I put in to it.