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I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

indiehackers.com

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Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#101

Post by thaumasiotes »

hinkley wrote: post #85
blorenz wrote: post #11

I'm curious why with $20K MRR it will take a Kickstarter to create a mobile app.

He mentions mobile and internationalization. In both cases hiring consultants may be more reliable than trying to build the expertise in-house. I've become the de facto internationalization expert at several companies and it's always rough. Everyone wants sentence structure to be simple and will fight you when you insist on something like interpolation instead of fancy string concatenation. Like Yoda, you will sound.…

> And then there are straight up dodges like using Arabic numbers for everything in Japan because they have multiple counting systems. Apples and humans use different words when counting.

In Chinese, the Arabic numerals wouldn't get you out of this, as they replace the number, but not the measure word:

3 apples -- 三个苹果 -- 3个苹果

3 people [needing to sit in a restaurant, or being honored, or what have you] -- 三位 -- 3位.

3 cats -- 三只猫 -- 3只猫.

Will an Arabic number replace both the number and the measure word in written Japanese? What's being dodged?

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#102

Post by jmull »

blorenz wrote: post #11

I'm curious why with $20K MRR it will take a Kickstarter to create a mobile app.

It sounds like there's about 1 FTE to run the site. Along with other costs I can see why there isn't a lot of money for development. And it sounds like the site could use some work too, so maybe any money left for development is going back into the site.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#104

Post by blorenz »

busterbenson wrote: post #98
kolbe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have no clue what his costs are. For all we know he loses money each month. There's no faster way to get me to stop listening than to tell me your revenues and omit your costs.

This is a great point. I’m the creator of 750words.com and am happy to provide loose estimation of costs if it’s useful. It’ll take me some time to put together, and I’m not at my computer, but I can share high-level numbers in a bit if it’s of interest.

Thank you! I, for one, would be keenly interested in this. I think it would enlighten about the operating costs and expenditures that are associated with this service and where they go. I'm hoping that the scrutiny of this might serve you well and you are able to get some takeaways to increase your profits. I appreciate your candidness and willing to be transparent to those ( at the head of the line, myself ) who you owe absolutely nothing to and possess zero vested interest.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#106

Post by egwynn »

pmoriarty wrote: post #103

Is there any way I could read this article without enabling javascript?

Probably not. Looks like the contents is loaded from Firebase after the main page loads. Not taking sides on whether this is a good/bad thing, just answering the question.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#107

Post by detaro »

busterbenson wrote: post #105
pmoriarty wrote: post #103

Is there any way I could read this article without enabling javascript?

View source? :) What happens if you try to print it?

View-source and executing JS in your head, because the content is loaded dynamically :)

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#108

Post by yorwba »

detaro wrote: post #107
busterbenson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

View source? :) What happens if you try to print it?

View-source and executing JS in your head, because the content is loaded dynamically :)

Printing it without executing JS first yields two blank pages. No idea why one wasn't enough.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#110

Post by busterbenson »

blorenz wrote: post #104
busterbenson wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great point. I’m the creator of 750words.com and am happy to provide loose estimation of costs if it’s useful. It’ll take me some time to put together, and I’m not at my computer, but I can share high-level numbers in a bit if it’s of interest.

Thank you! I, for one, would be keenly interested in this. I think it would enlighten about the operating costs and expenditures that are associated with this service and where they go. I'm hoping that the scrutiny of this might serve you well and you are able to get some takeaways to increase your profits. I appreciate your candidness and willing to be transparent to those ( at the head of the line, myself ) who you…

Okay, I looked over our financial statement from 2018, summed a few things up that would be way too boring to provide in detail, and turned the numbers into percentages so that you don't have to do all the math in your head. Here's what I have:

2018 costs:

48% to salaries and contractors (my wife and I are the only people on payroll, and draw $60k salaries for ourselves)

12.1% to operations (health insurance, renting a desk at WeWork, minimal travel, lot of SaaS subscriptions, misc equipment and other costs)

7.5% to PayPal fees (I really need to renegotiate this)

4.9% to AWS

4.2% to payroll taxes and other business administration

23% to profit (goes to saving up to quit my job last year, finish my book, and then dedicate ourselves to this full time)

Hope that's useful! Let me know if you have any other questions about this stuff and I'll do my best to be as transparent as I can without revealing every little detail.

Update: I should also mention that the salary we draw is in now way sufficient to actually support a family of 4 in Berkeley, so since quitting my tech job last October, we've been draining our savings and preparing to find a way to turn this little business into something that could sustain us longer term. I call it our flying rickshaw (the opposite of a rocketship). Outcome still uncertain.

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