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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#591

Post by stanley »

lewsid wrote: post #259

I run https://geopeeker.com It's a free/subscription-based tool that views sites from a number of locations from around the world, sending back a screenshot and DNS information. Originally launched in 2013, it's been profitable since 2014 and requires very little care-and-feeding while it serves up around 225,000 queries a month. I'm currently working on an overhaul which will dramatically improve its feature set and…

This is a cool product. The screenshots w/ uptime monitoring is useful on its own, but I esp. like that you provide a way to specify resolutions and locations.

After looking at the features and pricing, what's still not clear to me is if this is intended to be used for monitoring only one destination URL, or if it's possible to add multiple ones.

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

#592

Post by alexjv89 »

tomek_zemla wrote: post #351
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…

Indie Hackers is great. Two comments/requests. It would be great to have some business and entrepreneurship books reviewed by the community. Some are worth reading, but many are not and Amazon type reviews are not reliable indicator or hype vs. value. Another great feature would be to have a small follow up with some of the showcased businesses. Especially the ones that just got started. Great work and good luck!

Have you seen this? - https://www.highlyreco.com/

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

#593

Post by alexjv89 »

kinkora wrote: post #460
csallen wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Been thinking about doing book reviews on the blog actually. Any tips/ideas for crowdsourcing it and getting the community involved? Maybe I'll try using the forum for that. 2. Will try to do updates every few months or so in the future, don't want the interviews to get stale!

hey courtland, another big fan of indiehackers here. keep up the good work! Consider this suggestion as my form of paying it forward. ;) Don't do book reviews and the value of your site is in the data. What you should do is, for every interview, add a question in the form of "what books do you read" or "what do you recommend people should read?". Then for every book listed, add an amazon affiliate link (don't forget…

this might be relevant here - https://www.highlyreco.com/

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

#595

Post by chudi »

nthState wrote: post #453
dangrossman wrote: post #179

I run two SaaS analytics services on my own, https://www.improvely.com and https://www.w3counter.com . Improvely is 4 years old, W3Counter is 12 years old, and together they earn $45-50K/month.

Please tell me you have a write up of your history/journey somewhere?. You get a +1 from me!

Check his comments history, the story was already told multiple times

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

#596

Post by soneca »

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.

Congrats for the profit and great MoM!

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

#597

Post by ikeboy »

dbancajas wrote: post #568
ikeboy wrote: post #306

I'll refer to my recent comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13267536 It's not quite single person, I have two remote virtual assistants handling various tasks like ordering, sourcing, etc, but you only really need that above a certain scale. Most of the business currently is drop shipping from US retailers to Amazon and eBay. I got started reselling a year ago with a specific stacking deal (discover had 1…

I read your post so you basically arbitrage from US retailers to amazon/ebay? It seems you are doing retail arbitrage? Like when there is a sale on Toy R Us, you list that same item on Amazon/Ebay. But don't you need to keep the stock you buy at some place first? How do you deal when AMZ just price matches it? I am currently reselling alibaba stuff but after amazon PPC and shipping, it seems it's just break even, not…

> you basically arbitrage from US retailers to amazon/ebay?

Yes.

>It seems you are doing retail arbitrage?

Retail arbitrage has a technical meaning in the industry, it refers to physically going into stores to buy inventory. What I'm doing is referred to as drop shipping or "online arbitrage" (where you buy inventory online then take possession and sell it).

>Like when there is a sale on Toy R Us, you list that same item on Amazon/Ebay. But don't you need to keep the stock you buy at some place first? How do you deal when AMZ just price matches it?

First of all, it's not all sales. Many of the items I sell are a regular price at the source, amazon just doesn't have stock or charges more. Items where Amazon isn't on the listing are much better.

For drop shipping, the point is that you have the retailer ship directly to the customer, so I don't need to keep the stock. There are some things I do buy, have it sent to amazon warehouses for fulfilment.

>In your post history, you said 300K sales. That's all from drop shipping?

Around half drop shipping, around half either FBA or MF but with shipping it myself (or a warehouse). Did over 100k in November, and 50k in December. I'm hoping to build up to 250k a month or so over the next year.

I've never done PL so I can't help too much there.

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

#598

Post by andegre »

I started the website http://www.wrestlestat.com 3 years ago. It is a college wrestling website where the main feature of the website was to be able to view common opponents between 2 wrestlers. There's no other product out there for this, so it's 100% unique. In addition to that, it provides, rosters, schedules, results, statistics, rankings, as well as 2 different fantasy platforms.

Now, is this successful? To me, yes. When I started it originally, it was just a "fun" side project, the first website that I developed once I got into web programming (10 years on client server architecture prior to). It's a 100% free site, but I monetize through AdSense. Taking out my hosting costs, it doesn't make very much money, but it IS profitable. No way I'd be able to make a living off of it though.

So in my eyes, yes it's successful, in terms of HN folks, probably not so much. But I'm having fun with it!

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

#599

Post by coreymaass »

dvko wrote: post #389
arrmn wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also thinking about developing my first product and wanted to start with wordpress, I think a Saas would be too ambitious, how did you start promoting it?

Starting out with WordPress has made a lot of things, especially when it comes to marketing, very easy for me. There's a free version that is used on over 700.000 sites right now and it got there mostly organically. That said, if your plugin does anything visual, be ready for a lot of beginner questions. Some of your non-paying users will be the hardest to please, especially in WordPress land where you as a (real) de…

As stated, make sure you create a free version first and put it in the WordPress plugin directory. Most of your traffic will come from there. Make frequent updates, include good keywords, and if there's a need for it, people will find it. It's also a great way to start testing for premium features.

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

#600

Post by Cerium »

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.

Sounds like your good with money. Wealth has offense and defense, earning a lot is helpful, but spending less than you earn is key.
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