Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

campfirelabs.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 261 posts

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

#51

Post by yeldarb »

burtonator wrote: post #34

I actually did this too... I create Datastreamer ( http://www.datastreamer.io/ ) which (when I created it) was an RSS syndication platform as a service. You gave us RSS feeds and then we would index them and send you the output without having to deal with the insanity of RSS feeds. This was a decade ago though. I've been running it since and now it's more of a massive search engine of content - nearly a petabyte at t…

> I was more focused on enjoying life, traveling, backpacking, etc.

> In retrospect when you're sitting on a rocket it might make sense to buy more gas and light up that bad boy.

I can identify with this. I started a Facebook game in early 2008 that picked up a million users in its first year.

Back then all the stars were aligned and if I would have had a bigger vision for it there’s no reason it couldn’t have turned into a massive company.

I remember reading the TechCrunch article about Zynga raising 100 million in VC and laughing because “why would a Facebook game company need that much money? I’m really profitable being completely bootstrapped!”

Don’t get me wrong, the lifestyle it has allowed me has been amazing. And it’s still going strong 10 years later (we have users who have been paying $10/mo for their premium subscription for that whole 10 years). But the opening to grow it into something huge was only available for a short period of time. Now users are too expensive, organic traffic is minimal, and most users on the platform are locked into their existing games and resistant to trying new ones.

Zynga rode that into becoming a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company. “Think bigger” is a take-away I’ll definitely bring with me to my next venture someday.

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

#53

Post by eruci »

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…

But it has to be more than just luck. Many kids get computers at the age of 5, have lots of educational opportunities, etc. Very few do what you did. I agree that a "guideline" like this is not worth much. It probably takes some luck and a lot of skill..

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

#55

Post by derekp7 »

wyldfire wrote: post #33

Stupid question, how could you possibly automate lead generation? For that matter, how do you do it manually? Search for potential customers and read up about their business?

What about Reddit type ads ("Promoted posts"), in a relevant subreddit, with comments enabled? I've seen that on other advice lists, would like to know real-world experiences on that though.

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

#56

Post by csa »

Only a tangent to the OP, but...

I find it hilarious that he calls Abercrombie & Fitch the “high end clothing brand for middle schoolers”. A&F used to target “elite outdoorsmen” (not a joke — think a high end LL Bean), and they made some really good stuff. Some of that quality lasted until the 90s and early 00s after changing hands and shifting towards targeting youth casual wear, but their clothing line is almost all overpriced junk now. Such a sad loss.

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

#57

Post by hnzix »

kokokokoko wrote: post #36
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…

Based on when this product was created, I can almost guarantee they are just manually scraping LinkedIn (plus a few other places - Facebook, twitter, Bloomberg, maybe even Pitchbook). There are custom Google search portals you can use to search LinkedIn via keyword that not everyone knows about. From there one can use a bunch of services that will provide you (mostly)valid emails at various companies. I imagine he ma…

> the fallacy of low rent/cost of living in developing economies

Let's say a knowledge worker in a developing country could survive on $1 USD a day, adjusting food and rent to local cost.

If a local white collar job paid them $5 a day, and a remote "exploiting" job paid them $15 a day, but an American could earn $50 a day for the same task, is this really a moral hazard?

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

#58

Post by michaelchisari »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #46
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is this new trend of belittling accomplishments down to luck? At the very least, thousands of people had the same opportunity to do what your boss did. And that's if we take your word that this is all he did, and he didn't negotiate at all or spend any time researching what products to sell, or take a loss in the beginning to provide good customer service for future gain. Even seeing the opportunity is a skill i…

What is this new trend of belittling accomplishments down to luck?

A need to balance out the notion that "anyone can do it".

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

#59

Post by csa »

wyldfire wrote: post #33

Stupid question, how could you possibly automate lead generation? For that matter, how do you do it manually? Search for potential customers and read up about their business?

1. Know the keywords that will lead you to potential leads.

2. Pay a VA to use the keyword list to locate businesses and/or people in search engines, FB, and LinkedIn, and record their contact info.

3. Sell this info.

The steps are easy. The execution is decidedly less so.

Post reply on HN