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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#511

Post by ck_one »

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…

I enjoy reading articles on your website. Just curious, how do you know whether the numbers of your guests are correct or faked?

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

#512

Post by jraby3 »

eldavido wrote: post #424
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…

> From a skills perspective, I think doing a SaaS as a solo founder is only practical if you have extremely broad skillsets I think this is what's changed from a few years ago. Expectations of usability, design, support, number of platforms, etc. have all gone up even from casual users. 37signals, probably the most-celebrated bootstrapper shop, grew up in the 90s. Imagine getting started today. You need a responsive,…

I'm not sure. It's pretty easy to build a Wordpress site, use various plugins, and outsource stuff you can't or don't want to do to upwork. Expectations are higher but buildout is much easier IMO.

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

#513

Post by jason_slack »

Dragonai wrote: post #115
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…

I never would've imagined an ISP being run almost entirely by one person. This is super dope - best of luck in the continual expansion of your business! :)

I am currently starting a small ISP to bring internet to our lake community. Fiber from Level3 and Ubiquiti wireless gear (and other hardware, routing, packet shaping, firewalling, AV, e-mail, voucher system, etc). About 110 houses around the lake spanning about 1.5 miles long and .40 miles wide.

e-mail in profile if you want to chat.

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

#514

Post by dgrigg »

csallen wrote: post #442
dgrigg wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IndieHackers is a brilliant idea. Being able to learn from other people's successes and failures and seeing that most startups are not unicorns is a great help.

Hey Derrick! Glad to have Pageproofer on the site :D

thanks, it was great to take the time to work through the interview process. Great to review where PageProofer has come from and think about where it's going.

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

#515

Post by patio11 »

chebum wrote: post #248
ssharp wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I swear sometimes recently I feel like I'm reading comments from a weird alternate universe HN where I simultaneously claimed to be Elon Musk and also fabricated everything.

Hello, Earth 2 HNer. Back here on Earth 1 I ran a succession of small software businesses. They're anomalously well-documented; BCC more than any other. If you have access to the Earth 1 Internet you can read the first month'a report where I "bragged" about $24.95 and follow the curve from there. Please give my regards to fellow Earth 2 denizens who told me in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 that publishing numbers would bring a horde of competitors to kill me.

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

#516

Post by elt0n »

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…

I love IndieHackers!

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

#517

Post by napoleond »

jastr wrote: post #431
napoleond wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Awesome feedback!! Thank you.

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

#518

Post by dgrigg »

thepredestrian wrote: post #470
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?

I would classify it more as a widget or add-on in that it's use lies in being added to an existing website (much like Google Analytics). The entire admin/dashboard area for managing sites, adding users, integrations etc is like a typical webapp though. The stack is a pretty vanilla LEMP stack on the backend, with some extra bits for handling queues. The trickiest piece is the widget that gets embedded on sites, it needs to be bullet proof across browsers and devices since it's used for feedback and testing. It needs to work on pretty much everything that people visit websites with.

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

#519

Post by bemmu »

xiaoma wrote: post #85
bemmu wrote: post #17

I've been running https://www.candyjapan.com for about five years. It has (just barely) made enough to support my life in Japan. I'm currently writing a "year in review", will probably post it next week.

Do you think you've saturated your market? I.e., are you looking to put it on the back burner and build something else or are you still focused on scaling candyjapan?

I feel like I probably should be focusing on something else, but some nice discounts would kick in if I can reach 1000 subscribers. That's still a bit far, but seems possible, so I'm obsessing about reaching that level.

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

#520

Post by jason_slack »

bglusman wrote: post #51

Gabe Weinberg started DuckDuckGo solo, as well as his previous businesses... I think it was several years before he brought on anyone else, and while other early stage investors talked about preferring to fund a small team of at least two, he talked about how he was willing to fund individual founders :-)

Technically, I think he goes by Gabriel Weinberg. http://ye.gg/

Not to be confused with: http://gabeweinberg.com/

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