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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#461

Post by soneca »

gottebp wrote: post #411

My grandfather has Parkinson's disease and the hand tremors that go with. This makes using a mouse nearly impossible because the cursor flies all over the place. I created free software called SteadyMouse[1] back in 2005 to remove this tremor while letting normal mouse motion through. It eventually moved up near the top of Google's search results. At the same time, the free version began to show its age with compatib…

Congratulations for the project! It looks great (from the GIF demo) and it is certainly a project that adds value to the world!

Do you need any help on the marketing side?

I am no biz genius, but I have good experience as a generalist digital marketer and also with customer development. I think I can help you with the content side of SEO and contact with niche media to spread the word about the profile.

The 90s look and feel of the site is on purpose? If not, I can help with that too. I can do all of that respecting your goals and principles.

Email me (on profile) if you are interested.

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

#462

Post by coderholic »

jrnichols wrote: post #447
coderholic wrote: post #281

I launched http://ipinfo.io a few years ago. The API gets over 250 million requests a day, and is profitable. I left my job at CTO of calm.com at the end of last year to focus on it fulltime. There's more of the backstory here: https://getputpost.co/from-side-project-to-250-million-daily...

Ahhhh... Geo IP stuff. That's the reason that I can't get a lot of the local channels on streaming apps. :-P I'm actually n hour north of Dallas, but pretty much all of the Geo IP products show me as being out in east Texas, usually Mount Pleasant or Longview. That's 150 miles from where I am. As a result, I get streams coming from Shreveport, LA instead of Dallas, TX. Not sure if there's a way to fix this.

Interesting. Can you contact me with your IP address at ben@ipinfo.io and I can look into what might be going on here?

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

#463

Post by donmatito »

gottebp wrote: post #411

My grandfather has Parkinson's disease and the hand tremors that go with. This makes using a mouse nearly impossible because the cursor flies all over the place. I created free software called SteadyMouse[1] back in 2005 to remove this tremor while letting normal mouse motion through. It eventually moved up near the top of Google's search results. At the same time, the free version began to show its age with compatib…

Having family members going through problems like this, I think this is awesome. I hope you can generate enough revenue to be able to focus on this and improve the life of our parents.

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

#464

Post by nthState »

ethans1992 wrote: post #353

I am running https://fandemic.co for a couple months now. We essentially create beauty kits for social media influencers. It was spawned by the Kylie Jenner Lip Kit popularity and we decided to make a builder for influencers to create their own.

Hi, Have you got any public stats? - Thanks!

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

#465

Post by donmatito »

jimbokun wrote: post #441
novaleaf wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fyi, I did a small edit: I forgot to mention "support" which is arguably the most important role once you have an actual product. I solicit users to email whenever they have a question/comment/issue and reply to everything. Overall I think I have provided email support to aprox 50% of my paying customers, and maybe half of the support was provided before they decided to pay, so it is very important :)

Yes! Support is also the part most potentially terrifying to me, considering starting something while still employed at a full time job. Seems like it could quickly become a massive time sink and source of stress.

I love doing support actually. I love talking to users, understand how they use my app. I have 600 Slack threads open with them. Any confusion, bug fix, etc... is an occasion to improve the app and learn from them.

What I hate is writing content :-)

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

#466

Post by donmatito »

novaleaf wrote: post #168

I run https://PhantomJsCloud.com I started it as a free MVP about 2 years ago while in Thailand, and given that I was attracting a slow but steady stream of users I decided to build out a commercial v1 from it. The freemium SaaS went live in March and it's growing monthly. If I still lived in Thailand I would consider it very successful, but I am in the Seattle area now so it's ramen profitable. The biggest surprise…

> I think doing a SaaS as a solo founder is only practical if you have extremely broad skillsets: Business management, UX, full-stack webdev, devops, sales, marketing, support.

This is so true. But look at it from a personal growth perspective. You get to learn so much! Crash course in server-down-at-2am, in contradictory-marketing-advices, and in my-pricing-is-really-screwed :-)

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

#467

Post by Swizec »

csallen wrote: post #432
Swizec wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah that makes sense! You sound better at living affordably than I am ... doing very similarly with the sidehustle and still pretty far from going full time.

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

#468

Post by jly »

dr_win wrote: post #240
tylerhall wrote: post #206

I started selling macOS (and now iOS) software on my own website back in 2007. https://clickontyler.com My original goal was to earn enough money to refinish the hardwood floors in my house. Since then, however, it's taken on a life of its own and become a suite of three main products. It enables me to live comfortably in the Nashville suburbs. All that said, I've been doing this for ten years now and am burnt out. I…

Nice job. You've been an inspiration. Best luck looking for someone to take over. We've tried to do a similar thing, I was burnt out and we found another dev to take over: https://blog.binaryage.com/meet-steve-the-new-lead It didn't work out in the end. But at least I got 10 months of "recovery time" out of it. And that seems helped a lot. Maybe you just need a break for 6+ months and then you could return with recha…

I thought I recognized that link...I've been a user of TotalSpaces for years. Great products.

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

#469

Post by IAmGraydon »

coderholic wrote: post #281

I launched http://ipinfo.io a few years ago. The API gets over 250 million requests a day, and is profitable. I left my job at CTO of calm.com at the end of last year to focus on it fulltime. There's more of the backstory here: https://getputpost.co/from-side-project-to-250-million-daily...

Congrats. I'm a bit confused as to why you got a warning email from Linode. I'm a customer, and as far as I know you can use 100% of the CPU that's assigned to your virtual machine without a problem. Were they informing you that you need to use less CPU or were they just suggesting that you might want to upgrade?

Also, why didn't you just expand to a more capable Linode or add another Linode? I've found their transfer to cost a small fraction of what AWS charges. I would think your operating costs would be less with Linode.

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

#470

Post by thepredestrian »

dgrigg wrote: post #403

I have been running https://pageproofer.com for 3 years. It allows web designers and developers to easily leave feedback and track issues directly on websites (like digital sticky notes). It has been profitable from year 1 and continues to grow month over month. The growth is slow and steady but not at a point where I'm doing it full time. I don't think 'successful' needs to be determined as 'majority of owners incom…

I've always wondered - what kind of tech stack is required to run a service like this? Would you classify it as a webapp?
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