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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#471

Post by donmatito »

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…

Unwaffle looks really promising (I came on it while brainstorming/researching for a potential side project). Let us know how it grows !

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

#472

Post by nthState »

kd22 wrote: post #199

I recently built a Yoga Subscription Box service with my girlfriend called https://www.namaslaybox.com/ We are both programmers and she always wanted to do something like this so gave it a shot..It's been successful so far and we are starting to see a rise in orders. Like a lot of people here, we started from scratch. No mentors, no prior experience. Worked on it weeknights and weekends.

Hi, do you have any public stats?

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

#473

Post by MattBearman »

GordonS wrote: post #181
MattBearman wrote: post #172

I run BugMuncher ( https://www.bugmuncher.com ), it started as a side-project 5 years ago, then in September 2015 I packed in freelancing to focus on BugMuncher full time. As of November 2016 BugMuncher reached profitability - ie: it's my sole source of income, and covers all of my living expenses.

My first thought when I read the name was that it only needs the 1st letter changed to take on a whole new meaning as a heterosexist slur. Then I saw you were in the UK too, and wondered if you've also noticed this or it's just me?!

You're not the first to notice that, and it's one of many reasons I'm planning to change the name.

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

#474

Post by MattBearman »

nkkollaw wrote: post #343
MattBearman wrote: post #172

I run BugMuncher ( https://www.bugmuncher.com ), it started as a side-project 5 years ago, then in September 2015 I packed in freelancing to focus on BugMuncher full time. As of November 2016 BugMuncher reached profitability - ie: it's my sole source of income, and covers all of my living expenses.

Your blog is awesome!

Thanks! Writing it has been really beneficial, helps me keep on top of the figures.

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

#476

Post by GordonS »

MattBearman wrote: post #473
GordonS wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first thought when I read the name was that it only needs the 1st letter changed to take on a whole new meaning as a heterosexist slur. Then I saw you were in the UK too, and wondered if you've also noticed this or it's just me?!

You're not the first to notice that, and it's one of many reasons I'm planning to change the name.

It's a tricky one that - you don't want to lose the identity you've built up, but recognise the name may have issues.

I'm actually in a similar situation; I chose a company name 15 years ago that I now regret because it's difficult to spell and pronounce (and I couldn't get the '.com', which I mistakenly thought wouldn't matter at the time). I've always been too scared to change it!

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

#477

Post by coderholic »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #469
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 transfe…

You can use as much CPU as you like - it was just a configured alert. I thought they were enabled by default, but perhaps not (you can turn them on at https://manager.linode.com/linodes/settings/).

I did initially add additional capacity at Linode, but eventually outgrew that. It'd been a long journey from the original Linode VPS to the current setup :)

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

#478

Post by coderholic »

thecatspaw wrote: post #336
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...

if I understand this correctly, ipinfo is basically a lookup in a db? What is the advantage of this over a local lookup, say with maxmind or similar? edit: also, when I press the back button from this page: http://ipinfo.io/AS6830 all I get is a json

Thanks for reporting the back button issue. I've also seen this occasionally, but haven't seriously looked into it. Is this Chrome, or another browser?

> if I understand this correctly, ipinfo is basically a lookup in a db? What is the advantage of this over a local lookup, say with maxmind or similar?

There are 2 parts to that.

1) What's the advantage of using an geolocation API over a local database?

It's simpler. There's no need to download a database, or to remember to update it. You can call it from anywhere.

2) Why use ipinfo.io over other geolocation APIs?

The main 2 reasons are speed and reliability.

i) Reliability - we have multiple servers in auto-scaling groups all around the globe with auto-fail-over, and an excellent uptime record

ii) Speed - our API is designed to be extremely fast. We have servers on both US coasts, Germany and Singapore with geoDNS to route your request to the closest servers to reduce latency even further

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

#479

Post by nthState »

hahamrfunnyguy wrote: post #440

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…

I've been interested in making a hardware device too, is it a custom PCB? - Did you prototype with Arduino?

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

#480

Post by jdc0589 »

kerryfalk wrote: post #224
jdc0589 wrote: post #209

This barely counts, but I started a small premium handmade custom leather goods brand about 6 months ago: http://vulcancrafting.com . cash/card wallets, notebook/journal wallets, belts, etc... I didn't want to spend all my time after work sitting at a computer. I'm not in the positive yet; there's an equipment investment cost, I intentionally don't keep a huge order backlog, and I don't charge as much as I could for…

A friend of mine has been doing this for many years. I have bought a lot from him, and he's not cheap. I know he could make a lot more if he worked on his marketing a little bit, but I'm not sure he wants to. https://www.instagram.com/madeinzaidasbasement/ Anyway, I love that there are more people doing this kind of stuff. Good luck!

he's got some good looking bags! Still strategizing on if I want to move in to any larger stuff like that.
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