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How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

campfirelabs.co

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

#161

Post by Aeolun »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #152
adrianN wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universe is rarely best described by boolean logic. There are other options that are currently not feasible, but not forbidden by any laws of nature. For example robots could provide everybody's needs. Or we could genetically engineer people so that everybody finds their particular job meaningful and fulfilling.

... and then everyone needs those robots. The horror of society deciding who gets "genetically engineered" (ugh) to like shitty jobs is actively making my skin crawl.

Don’t worry, you wouldn’t mind.

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

#162

Post by Aeolun »

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…

I think the thing is, at any given time, there may be a thousand people trying to do the same thing at a certain level of competency, with only a few actually managing to gain any traction due to a combination of luck or timing.

Then these people say they were much better than the others, while objectively they were executing at about the same level.

If everyone does everything right, there will still be winners and losers.

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

#163

Post by executesorder66 »

chucksmash wrote: post #89
csa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vouched for the dead comments. The story might need to have a missing date on it (4 years old?), but the two comments that the author of the post made don’t seem to violate the terms or spirit of HN rules. If someone can show me how the rules were broken in his comments, I will gladly unvouch.

Maybe shadowbanned because he's the Mike of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13339723 fame?

So he wrote an article that misquoted someone, and they didn't like it. Is that against HN rules?

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

#164

Post by dspillett »

tiuPapa wrote: post #118
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…

What's code war?

It is what some are calling parts of modern espionage: using social media and other distributed systems to spread misinformation & propaganda, and more generally destabilise "the other side".

A play on words with "cold war" to highlight the similarities with what went on in that period.

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

#166

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Aeolun wrote: post #162
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the thing is, at any given time, there may be a thousand people trying to do the same thing at a certain level of competency, with only a few actually managing to gain any traction due to a combination of luck or timing. Then these people say they were much better than the others, while objectively they were executing at about the same level. If everyone does everything right, there will still be winners and…

The mythology is that hard work + cleverness = success.

The reality is that probability * (work + cleverness) = success.

The size of the probability makes a big difference. If it's too low you're likely wasting your time.

You can improve it with good business/sales techniques, but if it's tilted the wrong way you're always going to be fighting against it.

Objectively, you'd need to know the hit rate for specific business ideas/approaches/fields.

Realistically, some fields are more likely to be successful than others. Analytics, sales aids, and off-shore arbitrage are far more likely to make money than - say - software support for the disabled, or starting a band.

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

#168

Post by nl »

kokokokoko wrote: post #125
DATACOMMANDER wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because he should be employing Americans, or because he should be paying the developing-country worker $50/day? If the latter, how do you think that workers in developing countries are going to go from making $5/day to $50/day if they never make anything in between? Surely a 200% pay increase given immediately is better than a 900% pay increase that’s purely hypothetical?

Because he should be paying human beings a living wage no matter where they are. Pretending that living costs in a developing nation is somehow magically non existent is immoral. Pay people a reasonable wage to live their lives and provide for their families. Just because someone lives in another country does not give a person the moral authority to pay them an amount that does not allow them to properly feed and car…

A "living wage" depends on where you live.

It's pretty common to see articles about people moving from SF to the Mid-West, taking a pay cut but being happy because they improve their standard of living.

We also see articles about people moving from the mid-Est to Thailand, taking a pay cut but being happy because they improve their standard of living.

Going by the BigMac index for example[1], it is perfectly reasonable to think that developers in the Philippines, Vietnam or India would be happy on roughly 50% of a US salary (presumably a non-SF salary too). Obviously this is very much a rough guide, but it's something to start from.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/274326/big-mac-index-glo...

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

#169

Post by haihaibye »

500 emails for 20 signups = 96% off target.

>> By May of 2015 I had sent over 30,000 sales and marketing emails

.96 × 30,000 = You just annoyed ~28,800 people. It's only because this immense amount of time lost is borne by strangers that it's a viable business.

Let's not glorify spammers.

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

#170

Post by chosenbreed37 »

goatlover wrote: post #113
wildermuthn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of comments here about “luck” ignore the essential nature of it: its subjectivity. Objectively, there is no such thing as luck, but only circumstance. Circumstance can certainly be beyond our control. Luck, however, is our subjective interpretation of circumstance, and is very much within our power to control. Are you lucky or unlucky? Are your circumstances lucky or unlucky? Your answer to that question doesn’…

> Do these beliefs change anything about the real opportunities or obstacles that come our way? Not one bit. But beliefs dramatically affect what we see and what we do. Wouldn't it be better to believe the truth that beliefs don't change the circumstances that come our way instead of believing in good or bad luck? The downside of thinking you're lucky is a tendency to overlook problems. I've noticed that when people…

> The downside of thinking you're lucky is a tendency to overlook problems. I've noticed that when people (including myself) are being overly optimistic, potential challenges and pitfalls are minimized.

One could argue that it is that exact overlooking of the problems that enables many to embark in entrepreneurial pursuits to begin with.

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