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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#291
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your job is less than 10% of your income, why keep it?

Good question, my career is very important to me. It gives me an identity. I just can’t sit at home all day. I’m gonna die with boredom.

It takes a very wise man to realize something that sounds like the obvious answer won't make you happy.

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

#292

I run https://updown.io since 2012, a website monitoring service I created. I'm working about 5-10 hours per week on it. It makes about $6,000 per month and is still growing linearly. I also keep a full-time job alongside for now as an engineering manager. The key for me is to take time, make something useful, delight your clients, and don't try to become uber or airbnb.

how much time do you spend maybe talking to people who are constant clients? or is there little interaction?

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

#293
post #118
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot believe that you make more from such a niche dev tool than your job at Google. I always thought people who use clojure/scheme would be using their custom setup in emacs or vim. I'm interested to learn more details, how things were when you first started out selling the app and the trend.

You say that but one thing that i always dislike when i consider taking a look at Lisps is how everything seems to be either on Emacs or looks like it'd really like to be Emacs. Personally I want a full blown IDE that takes advantage of advanced modern technologies such as displays that can draw individual pixels, have a model of the codebase that allows advanced features such as word completion and preferably fits n…

FWIW I've found Clojure has pretty decent support in a few editors. I know Cursive is quite popular, but I've also used both VS Code and Atom to some extent, and they have nice features.

Somebody else could probably speak more to it than me, since I do primarily use Emacs, but I definitely don't introduce my friends to Clojure with it.

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

#294

Everytime I see these threads I end up feeling inadequate. For the rest of the folks like me, I will share a small tidbit of wisdom: Starting a business is really hard and it's totally OK to just go work for Salesforce. You do you.

What's preventing from starting something small while at Salesforce that could eventually grow into something bigger?

Too busy tryna learn to play the damn piano

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

#295

I sell freemium software that blocks distractions on your computer so that you can focus on doing work. Unlike my competitors, it's a one-time payment business model. The idea for my product first came to me when a friend in university had trouble staying focused on writing papers. He was constantly playing World of Warcraft and needed a way to temporarily block himself from playing the game. So I quickly made a litt…

Can you share numbers airing how much you Male yearly from this?

great autocorrect!

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

#296
Started with apps in the early ios and Android days. Made quickly about 300k a year with them. I quit my job as a developer and focused on apps only. They still make roughly 0.5 million a year these days. I bought several real estate in the years after and they give me about 15k monthly in rental income. I did spend 2 years doing almost nothing except traveling and spending lots of time with my kids. Then I co founded a more serious company where I act as the CTO. We got quite some people working for us so I back in normal work life. Work 4 days a week from 10 to 6. I actually enjoy it more than before. Being somehow free of constant thinking about money is a really nice thing though.

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

#297

I run https://updown.io since 2012, a website monitoring service I created. I'm working about 5-10 hours per week on it. It makes about $6,000 per month and is still growing linearly. I also keep a full-time job alongside for now as an engineering manager. The key for me is to take time, make something useful, delight your clients, and don't try to become uber or airbnb.

Ha neat! I was actually looking at your product a few hours ago. Might use it in the not-so-far future.

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

#298
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…

In all those year did your app become top ranking or all the income comes from small no of people?

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

#299

I run & operate a VPN company. Found a niche that at least 600 people would pay me a monthly amount for, totalling nearly $3k a month. Costs are Everything is automated so it's probably less than an hour a week. It was my learn how to code project that has become my basic income. All the money is funding my secondary project.

I could be mistaken, but I believe I read your article on IndieHackers.com (Chrome extension etc..)? In all cases, kudos!

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

#300
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…

Thanks for sharing. Do you have stress or anxiety that some other competitor will gain market? Future technology change worries etc.

Competitors: No, I've seen competitors come and go.

There are some competitors, but they target a broader audience (and have to because of VC money) and thus, their product is less focused on sophisticated users. What would you rather buy, a general purpose app that does many things half-assed or the specialized version that is exactly what you need? I can say that my app is simply the best in its category and there are way too many small details so that a copy-cat can't get everything right. Furthermore, in that niche, most people know my app, which helps.

Future technology changes: Not really. They will probably take a long time to replace the domain I'm in. However, there could be a black swan kind of thing, something nobody expects ;) But I don't really stress myself about this.

I have no daily anxiety, but there's one thing on my mind: The app space will get more regulated in the near future. GDPR was one thing. ePrivacy is coming. More privacy laws, upload filters and whatnot. The entire health and fitness market WILL get more regulated. So far, you can claim whatever health benefits you want with your app. Expect that you might need some kind of light FDA-approval (or the European equivalent) in the coming years if your app claims things. On the one hand, this is a big annoyance, on the other hand, I am in a good position and make already enough money to build up cash reserves to handle regulatory affairs if they happen to affect my app.

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