How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#11

Post by mike2477 » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 1:05 AM UTC

hudibras wrote: post #8

PhilWright wrote: post #3

Goes into good details about the tactics used to come up with an idea and then recruit the first few customers. After signing up $5k/month revenue it meant he needed to generate 5,000 leads per month for those customers. That is the hard bit, how did he do that on a side project? He says that the income was passive, so how did he generate 5,000 targeted leads passively? That is the magic, not the ability to recruit s…

True, but I'm pretty sure he's not going to tell us about the "secret sauce," especially since he's sold the company.

Happy to share the "secret sauce" if helpful. Planning to go into how I scaled ops and automated stuff in the next post. But fire away any questions you have now and happy to share. All about transparency!

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#12

Post by PhilWright » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 1:08 AM UTC

TeeJay942 wrote: post #7

PhilWright wrote: post #3

Goes into good details about the tactics used to come up with an idea and then recruit the first few customers. After signing up $5k/month revenue it meant he needed to generate 5,000 leads per month for those customers. That is the hard bit, how did he do that on a side project? He says that the income was passive, so how did he generate 5,000 targeted leads passively? That is the magic, not the ability to recruit s…

He said that as a salesperson himself, he outsourced this work to VAs. I assume he continued to do so for this side project.

Aha, so he is performing arbitrage. Charge customers a $1 for something he can buy for much less than a $1. I wonder if the recursion works, use the virtual assistants to bring in leads to also get his own customers.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#13

Post by holoduke » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 1:08 AM UTC

I created a successful side project back in 2014. It is still running and making 20 times more than I would get with a normal job. But i was lucky. Lucky to be born in a rich country. Lucky because I was given a computer at the age of 5. Lucky because I had unlimited education opportunities. Lucky because I had a friend who gave me access to something I needed for my business. And many other lucks. I will never deny that fact. But reading these stories makes me a bit angry, because it is just not that simple. It's always easy to translate a successful story into a guideline. But that guideline isn't worth anything when all those luck properties are different.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#14

Post by saagarjha » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #13

I created a successful side project back in 2014. It is still running and making 20 times more than I would get with a normal job. But i was lucky. Lucky to be born in a rich country. Lucky because I was given a computer at the age of 5. Lucky because I had unlimited education opportunities. Lucky because I had a friend who gave me access to something I needed for my business. And many other lucks. I will never deny…

What was your side project, if you don’t mind me asking?

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#15

Post by yellowapple » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 1:13 AM UTC

I witnessed "Play #3" firsthand. The first startup for which I worked (developing a peer-to-peer learning system that paired up students to learn off one another, whether in person or via video chat) had an uphill battle getting customers and investors because we had to convince them that the problem our product solved was actually a problem they had. Our product happened to chiefly operate by integrating with a different one (Khan Academy), so much of our time "in the wild" pitching to potential customers was spent giving KA free advertisement before we could even explain what our product did.

There were multiple other factors behind why we ultimately didn't succeed and ended up all going our separate ways (and I know I wasn't blameless there), but in hindsight I think this was the central factor. We barely had the resources - sapient or monetary - to sell our own product; trying to sell other people's products upon which ours depended was doomed to fail.

I still think we had an excellent and valuable product, and I stand by the code we wrote and the platform we built; we were just too far ahead of our time :) One of these days, when things like Khan Academy are a bit more mainstream in classrooms, I'd love to (with my old boss' permission, of course) try restarting that particular project and giving it another go.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#16

Post by arbuge » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #13

I created a successful side project back in 2014. It is still running and making 20 times more than I would get with a normal job. But i was lucky. Lucky to be born in a rich country. Lucky because I was given a computer at the age of 5. Lucky because I had unlimited education opportunities. Lucky because I had a friend who gave me access to something I needed for my business. And many other lucks. I will never deny…

In hindsight, all these stories seem to have a clear thread running through them which can be replicated by anyone with reasonable intelligence, drive, and time.

In practice that particular thread likely required all kinds of environmental details to occur - details the entrepreneur might not have noticed at the time, might have forgotten about later, or might be discounting as unimportant.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#17

Post by gonehome » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 1:22 AM UTC

hudibras wrote: post #8

PhilWright wrote: post #3

Goes into good details about the tactics used to come up with an idea and then recruit the first few customers. After signing up $5k/month revenue it meant he needed to generate 5,000 leads per month for those customers. That is the hard bit, how did he do that on a side project? He says that the income was passive, so how did he generate 5,000 targeted leads passively? That is the magic, not the ability to recruit s…

True, but I'm pretty sure he's not going to tell us about the "secret sauce," especially since he's sold the company.

Replying for mike2477 who wrote the article and responded to this post, but his comments are dead.

Mike - it looks like you got shadow banned, but it’s not clear why?

Maybe dang can help.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#18

Post by beezle » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

Left unsaid is what the bottom line margin is. 10%? 30%? More?

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#19

Post by mcguire » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #9

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #5

> Most people in the tech industry are brainwashed by Silicon Valley group think. These people believe that every business must have a billion dollar opportunity. If anything, I’d say that most people in the tech industry in Silicon Valley are brainwashed into thinking that entrepreneurship is the One True Path to salvation. Much like whoever wrote this article. Who else would recommend that someone follow the path t…

> Who else would recommend that someone follow the path that “led to depression, social isolation, and the hardest time of my life” just because they got lucky in the end? One of my favorite Ewan McGregor quotes from watching Long Way Round recently was when he would say ”This is the part that really sucks right now and is just so hard it makes you wanna cry, but it’s the part we remember most fondly later” He said t…

What about sucky experiences that don't end well?

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#20

Post by MuffinFlavored » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 1:35 AM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #13

I created a successful side project back in 2014. It is still running and making 20 times more than I would get with a normal job. But i was lucky. Lucky to be born in a rich country. Lucky because I was given a computer at the age of 5. Lucky because I had unlimited education opportunities. Lucky because I had a friend who gave me access to something I needed for my business. And many other lucks. I will never deny…

I worked for a mom + pop Amazon seller (manufacture + ship from China to America, stick packaging on it, send it in to Fulfillment by Amazon, collect a check)

He's probably worth $50m as one of the top 250 sellers. Probably ~20 SKUs. Tons of competitors trying to bring him down but his product has so many reviews that it is just a money printer.

He was smart to be at the right place at the right time. He undercut the bigdogs back in the day (~10 years ago maybe?) and gained momentum.

He refused to admit to me that he was lucky. He refused to admit that he had the right idea at the right time. Was his execution great? You bet. Good marketing/product advertising/images/pivoting/getting through hardships/blah blah blah.

But like... he couldn't do again if he had to start from scratch in 2019. Things are different. And he refused to acknowledge that. He wanted to believe everything he did was perfect and he got his wealth purely from skill.

I think that's a bad trait :(