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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#301

Post by billconan »

lemming wrote: post #60

I develop and sell Cursive ( https://cursive-ide.com ), which has paid my bills nicely for a couple of years now. Currently I make more than I made in my last job at Google. I never thought I'd be able to make a living selling developer tools, much less into a niche market, but I'm constantly amazed by how well Cursive does. The work is a mix of fun and boring slog, like most jobs I guess. A lot of my time is spent o…

I also want to focus on the developer market. How did you do marketing? I found it difficult.

How do you handle sales tax? I found it very very complex.

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

#302

Post by tasuki »

vfc1 wrote: post #267
PakG1 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those things require certain skills and whatnot though. If someone has a good thing going and doesn't want to plunge into the abyss, I'd say good on them. The abyss is full of pitfalls and ways to lose life savings and go into major debt when the lucrative side gig can no longer pay for the vision. Employment is at least guaranteed no debt, especially while the lucrative side gig is going. Correspondingly, when t…

There is not much financial risk involved in his case, and it looks like he already has the skills needed. He already makes over 10 times his salary. In one year of employment, he spared the equivalent salary of 10 years. I think people exaggerate the dive into the abyss thing and risking it all. If you have some savings, you can try to launch a business and if it doesn't work you can always go back to work for someo…

Perhaps he genuinely enjoys his job? Why should he have to launch another business? He already started one and it's very successful! Let the man enjoy his freedom and have a regular job if he so pleases!

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

#303

Post by WA »

codesternews wrote: post #298
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…

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

Rankings plays no significant role for my app, although it does affect downloads a bit. My app has been in the top 10 for a while, but also around 30-40 or so. It was never featured by Apple.

My app doesn't target people who just browse the app store and look for new stuff. It requires people with domain knowledge to actively seek a solution (I offer). So, before people get to know my app, they usually find themselves to get to know about the domain.

As an example: Before you download an app for vegans, you read about veganism first. There is no point in downloading an app for vegans otherwise. It's similar with my app (different domain though). But once your vegan app is somewhat popular in vegan communities, you depend less on rankings and more on SEO and word of mouth.

Of course, being featured by a vegan magazine would do a lot for you, probably more than being #1 in the app store or being featured by Apple (in terms of customer loyalty).

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

#304

Post by krn »

barry-cotter wrote: post #199
WA wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for asking this, because it is a thing that many many people have in their mind: "Will support requests crush me?" And this was actually my biggest fear when I turned my hobby project into a commercial one many years ago. The reality is this: I have over 10,000 paying customers. I receive maybe 5 emails per day. There was never a time when I received much more than 10. I have three explanations for this: 1. I…

This isn’t just because you have a good FAQ, it’s because it’s relatively expensive. The more expensive your product is the more likely people are to respect it and you, and to be the kind of professionals who actually read to find answers to things. Yet another reason to charge more.

> This isn’t just because you have a good FAQ, it’s because it’s relatively expensive.

As a B2C SaaS product it actually seems to be relatively cheap: 10,000+ paying users and 370,000€ in yearly revenue points to around 2.99€ / month and 29.99€ / year subscription fees – similar to Instapaper Premium[1].

[1] https://www.instapaper.com/premium

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

#305

Post by allannienhuis »

johnmorrison wrote: post #252
stefanos82 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you did there...well played even if it were unintentionally ^_^ haha!

I don't see what I did, mind explaining the joke?

possibly: https://www.linkinpark.com/

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

#306

Post by amwelles »

fbelzile wrote: post #251

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…

Your software is a godsend for me! I absolutely love it and attribute my focus at work to it. I bought the full version as soon as my trial ran out a few months back. It works especially well alongside Forest. Keep up the good work!

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

#307

Post by shantly »

josephwegner wrote: post #237

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.

It mostly makes me sad that I can't come up with any good ideas, and when I do I find it's already a thing and they're charging so little I can't figure out how to even cover costs at twice the price.

So there's that.

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

#308

Post by elorant »

bekman wrote: post #129

I run a popular Quiz website. I make around $6,000 per month from Google adsense. I work between 2-3 hours a week usually posting quiz links on my Pinterest page. My only expense is hosting which is around $20 per month (Digital Ocean). I have never advertised my website and it gets all the traffic from Pinterest Organically. Compare to my salary, I'm an IT Administrator in my day job and make $400 per month. I live…

What's the average clickthrough rate on your site for AdSense?

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

#309

Post by adrienjarthon »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #245
adrienjarthon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks Haha, less than 1% now that the trend is over, when I added it (2014) it was around 5%.

Hope you kept those coins -- must've made a decent chunk of change on the valorization of those alone!

I kept only a small part, I sold most of them right away as there were already over-valued to me ^^

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

#310

Post by adrienjarthon »

aspyct wrote: post #297
adrienjarthon wrote: post #146

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.

Sounds great ;) let me know if you have any question.
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