Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by callym » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:45 AM UTC

phito wrote: post #49

callym wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whereabouts do you ship to (and if possible can you share a link or something)? I'm always looking for more Europe/UK plant suppliers! I'm also trying to start up a small online plant shop but am finding it hard to a) get the growing space, and b) get the interesting stock - would love to hear about how you dealt with these issues when first starting up! :)

My website is https://phito.be :) I ship in the EU and any other countries that have trade deals that allows plant transfer without requiring phytosanitary certificates (Switzerland for example)! Sadly after Brexit I don't know if I will still be able to ship over the UK :( Finding the growing space is hard, especially if your plants are big. Thankfully I focus mostly on the Drosera genus, which are mostly small plan…

Yeah there's been a lot of Brexit talk in the orchid communities, it's a big problem because of how hard they are to propagate - there's only a few orchid nurseries left in the UK that can grow from seed because you need a lab setup, which is a huge shame

I've had good luck growing a few Drosera from seed, never even thought about leaf cuttings, that's super interesting!

Hopefully depending on Brexit I'll be able to order from you next Spring! Do you have a mailing list or something?

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

#62

Post by krn » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:46 AM UTC

WA wrote: post #47

I have a consumer app with a subscription model. I'm a single developer with no employees. I work between 10-30 hours per week. Last year, my EBIT was close to 300,000€. This year, it's going to be around 370,000€ (and since I live in Germany, my income is in the top 0,5% or so). In the first year, my EBIT was merely 30,000€. It's been going up steadily since then and my product has been around quite a while. Please…

> This year, it's going to be around 370,000€ (and since I live in Germany, my income is in the top 0,5% or so).

Is your business focused on the German market or the US market? Or is it multi-lingual / international? What percentage of time is spent answering support requests?

> The subscription model helps you to stay afloat. People will pay for a product they use every day (and thus, derive value from every day).

Have you experimented with different pricing models? Is Duolingo / Tinder model (1 month / 6 months / 12 months) the best choice for B2C subscriptions without Spotify / Netflix-like licensing costs?

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

#63

Post by jwr » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:46 AM UTC

I created PartsBox (https://partsbox.io/) and I'm quite happy running it. It's a tool for companies building electronics (also available for free for hobbyists/makers). The business was (and is) a "freedom project" for me: I wanted to be independent of everyone, so no investors, no partners, and no employees. So far it has worked out pretty well.

The nice thing about running a business in a niche is that you get to interact with nice people. My customers are engineers, I practically never get those mythical "toxic customers".

The bad thing about running a solo-founder business is the stress and anxiety. These are difficult to deal with.

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

#64

Post by 0898 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:46 AM UTC

I run a series of events for people who run agencies. (By agency, I mean creative, marketing, or technology agencies.)

Events are a good business to get into as a solo founder. You can book a venue, and you don't have to pay until a few weeks before the event. If you haven't sold any tickets you can just cancel the venue and walk away.

I started Agency Hackers in 2017 and I'm almost ready to quit my job and focus on it full time.

It took me two years to figure out that instead of selling individual tickets to events, I should offer a "membership" option where people can subscribe and just come to every event.

Since I started offering membership last month I've signed up 30 agencies – for a MRR of £4,500. Once I hit 50 I will quit my job.

To market the events, I don't run adverts or have much of a social presence. The only way I promote the events is via cold email - and an opt-in email list to customers. The cold email platform I use (Reply.io) did a case study on me if you're curious: [https://reply.io/case-study/agency-hackers/]

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

#65

Post by tilolebo » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:49 AM UTC

WA wrote: post #47

I have a consumer app with a subscription model. I'm a single developer with no employees. I work between 10-30 hours per week. Last year, my EBIT was close to 300,000€. This year, it's going to be around 370,000€ (and since I live in Germany, my income is in the top 0,5% or so). In the first year, my EBIT was merely 30,000€. It's been going up steadily since then and my product has been around quite a while. Please…

I have so many questions, but let's start with a few ones:

Is this a web application or a smartphone one?

What did you have to learn, tech-wise, to be able to build it?

How long did it take you, from your first line of code until you released the first prototype?

How did you get your first user(s)?

How did you get the business idea (without details)? Was it a personal pain point, or did you work in that field before?

And congrats BTW, it looks like you did an amazing job.

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

#66

Post by stanislavb » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:50 AM UTC

mutatio wrote: post #52

I run https://encycolorpedia.com/ - its origins are from a "JavaScript as CSS" library I was developing - there were/are superior projects available, so ultimately I used the colour manipulation code to produce the site. The idea was to take a seed colour and render the page uniquely, additional on-page information grew from that. From feedback I guess the primary use of the site is paint searching and comparison. It…

I didn't know about it. It's great. I dunno you could try with some minor AdSense.

I've also submitted Encycolorpedia to SaaSHub. You should verify it there https://www.saashub.com/encycolorpedia

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

#67

Post by sellingwebsite » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:52 AM UTC

jwr wrote: post #63

I created PartsBox ( https://partsbox.io/ ) and I'm quite happy running it. It's a tool for companies building electronics (also available for free for hobbyists/makers). The business was (and is) a "freedom project" for me: I wanted to be independent of everyone, so no investors, no partners, and no employees. So far it has worked out pretty well. The nice thing about running a business in a niche is that you get to…

how did you find your first customers if you dont mind sharing that ?

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

#68

Post by Jaruzel » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:53 AM UTC

For the period of 2008 to 2014 I built and ran an online webshop[1] selling Bath bombs and soaps - the product was specifically picked because in 2008 there wasn't that many online shops selling low cost bath products in the UK.

What I did differently was I wrote everything from scratch, built the product databases, designed the graphics, wrote the front and back ends etc. I did it mainly as a learning exercise.

It never made enough money for me to live on, but for someone with modest outgoings it could have replaced their income. Sales started to drop off as the site design started looking dated and due to no mobile device support. I was busy with my better paying day-job at the time, and had no impetus to fix the problems.

I'm about to do the same again, but this time using dropshipping for stock and delivery, and I also intend to blog my journey (mainly as a record of what I've done) as I create each element of it, once again as a learning exercise using more modern tools/platforms.

--

[1] http://www.jaruzel.com/files/fuzzybuttons-2012.jpg

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

#69

Post by freshfey » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:53 AM UTC

tilolebo wrote: post #65

WA wrote: post #47

I have a consumer app with a subscription model. I'm a single developer with no employees. I work between 10-30 hours per week. Last year, my EBIT was close to 300,000€. This year, it's going to be around 370,000€ (and since I live in Germany, my income is in the top 0,5% or so). In the first year, my EBIT was merely 30,000€. It's been going up steadily since then and my product has been around quite a while. Please…

I have so many questions, but let's start with a few ones: Is this a web application or a smartphone one? What did you have to learn, tech-wise, to be able to build it? How long did it take you, from your first line of code until you released the first prototype? How did you get your first user(s)? How did you get the business idea (without details)? Was it a personal pain point, or did you work in that field before?…

I'd argue that only the last two questions are relevant.

- Both web and smartphone apps can create this kind of revenue. - The tech stack is 99% irrelevant unless the end customer depends on it, which in 99% of the times, isn't the case.

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

#70

Post by __jonas » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 9:54 AM UTC

warent wrote: post #8

I run a business called FontPeek ( https://fontpeek.com ). It doesn't provide the majority of my income, but it does provide a meaningful amount and it's constantly growing (pretty linearly). It's a simple tool that allows font designers to add a secure font previewer to their web store. Only needs like an hour of technical support a week, and it's currently costing me nothing to run because Firebase has incredibly g…

Just for my understanding, as soon as someone buys a cut of a font and uses it in a web context, it is basically "out there" and could technically be downloaded by anyone visiting that website since there is no font DRM right? Is this mainly targeted at people making fonts for print?