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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#361

Post by blunte »

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.

My #1 frustration is having ideas that are pretty good (I know this because I see them done by someone else within 1-5 years of me wanting to do it), but not yet knowing how to raise capital.

I see all the crazy shit like WeWork and other companies where people have millions thrown at them while never making a profit (and even actively cheating their investors). I don't want to be one of those guys, but I would like a shot at doing one of my ideas. Yes, I could work on it in my "garage" while doing my day job, but because I am so personally invested in whatever job I do, there's not a lot of me left over.

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

#362

Post by MrDresden »

ratsimihah wrote: post #348
wakatime wrote: post #341

Seven years ago I solo-started an automatic time tracker for programmers called WakaTime [1] and launched here on HN [2]. Partly from listening to developers too much, I waited way too long (almost a year) before adding a paid plan, but now it generates more MRR than an SF developer salary not including stock options. Technically I make more from RSUs and stock from past startups as a regular employee, but if I wasn'…

How does top 1 code for 13 hours per day? o_o

I've used Wakatime now for a few years (I highly recommend it), and have been going through one of the toughest projects of my life in the last 8 months. At one point I reached ~16 hours per day (for only a couple of days). This kind of output is not sustainable for more than a few days without incurring serious problems from it. I have now gone back down to a more normal 6-9 hours per day.

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

#363

Post by holoduke »

codesternews wrote: post #347
holoduke wrote: post #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 founde…

Thanks for sharing. Which category your apps have? Do you think the current situation of appstores(google and apple) apps can earn money? Any advice for app developer who want to make and sell apps?

I am mainly in sports apps. I think it is still possible to have succes. It requires a lot of patience. Don't focus on the revenue part. And don't try to build a new hype. Very slim chance you build the next angry birds. Instead try to build a product that is based on an already successful specific category/ product. Very important is that you understand your customer and genuinely try to make a product that is better than the competition. You should love your own product. The good thing is that bigger companies tend to destroy their own product with too many ads, notifications, non relevant features etc. Furthermore I believe it's important that your product contents can be automated without too much manual work. After all you are the only person with only so much time. I know a guy who created a fitness diet app. He cooked and photographed more than a thousand meals. He wrote many articles. In the end he gave up. It took him 80 hours per week to maintain and update all the content. His app was making maybe 100 a month. I know another guy who created a successful formula 1 live app. He is using paid data feeds and scrapes a lot of additional data. Everything automated. Spends like 10 hours a week maintaining things. Makes about 100k a month. Similar story for a guy who created a popular weather app. In essence the only thing what they do is aggregation of data and present it in a relatively simple app. Also don't spend too much time on analytics, seo and other optimizations. It may take 2 years before you get traction anyway. First the product then after (if it's worth) the optimization. One concrete product where I think you can still have success is a baby monitor with 2 phones. Couple of good apps only. All premium priced. Not too difficult technically. I don't have time for it, so go for it :)

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

#364

Post by falco925 »

I run an edtech platform that helps users improve their analytical skills and prepare them for technical interviews. It's somewhat niche in that it's a platform focused on beginner marketing analytics and data science.

I launched it 2 years ago, mainly to help me teach a university class more effectively (I wanted something easy for non-technical beginners to learn). I spend about 5-10 hrs a week bouncing around developing and marketing. I make enough to hire a part-time developer that helps me with engineering. Otherwise, I do everything else myself.

The toughest part for me is marketing. Currently, I do a lot of writing on Medium to talk about the industry and will include a short call out to my platform at the end. I've tried other marketing channels like Youtube and Google ads but haven't found anything that beats writing articles.

While the platform is only 2 years old, I make almost 6 figures in revenue and it keeps growing linearly. My ultimate goal is to passively have this income take over my professional salary so that I can have financial freedom. I plan to continue to work, teach, and run this side business because I love all the different aspects that each venture provides me.

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

#365

Post by brianwawok »

jamil7 wrote: post #144
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…

> release a prototype after 2-6 weeks I'm in the situation where my product overlaps significantly with others but brings (IMO) some missing features and a better overall experience. I would love to launch quickly but feel I need some feature parity with competitors first.

You can't reach feature parity to an active product.

Say they have 10 developers and 200 features. You can go from 0 to 200 features in 2? years. How many new features have they added in 2 years, 100? So the cycle repeats.

Do a subset of the competitor but do it really well.

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

#366

Post by kerkeslager »

runevault wrote: post #291
bekman wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm gonna have to disagree that "sit at home all day" is the obvious answer. In fact, that's quite obviously not the answer.

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

#368

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

bekman wrote: post #147
jfoster wrote: post #133

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.

I don't think I'll ever quite understand this mentality that "not having a job"=="sitting at home all day". Do people not have hobbies of any kind? They really only find meaning in pursuit of money?

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

#369

Post by eps »

WA wrote: post #88
krn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you serve a niche, people talk. Another thing probably is, that a subscription price of a niche product can be considerably higher than of a mainstream one? For a single person, it must be much easier to support 1,000 users paying something like $25 / month than 5,000 users paying $5 / month.

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…

#3 is not specific to Germans, it depends mainly on the audience. The more technical it is, the more likely it is to generate non-trivial and meaningful support requests.

Also the fact that you don't sell at discount likely filters out the bulk of self-entitled users that tend to stress support with trivia.

And your summary is 100% spot on - catering to a more savvy audience and aggressively culling other users is a good way to keep support manageable (and even pleasant!)

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

#370

Post by adamqureshi »

babycake wrote: post #290
adamqureshi wrote: post #177

I run https://onlyusedtesla.com/ its an online marketplace to buy / sell a Used Tesla. I have been living off the income this whole year. This is my bread and butter. I do not have a 9-5. I launched the business with 4 listings in 2016. I live in New York. My main goal is building brand equity. Business Model. Private Seller $199 to list $299 to list with a social boost Dealer: $99-list I do not use cookies. No Track…

How did you gather teslas to have something to sell on the website initially?

I hit up a bunch of forums where tesla owners hang out , ask for help like best spots to sell thier teslas without being tracked and i listed for them for free and asked for $50 when / if they found a buyer. This was back in 2016. It was all the honor system. I actually didn't plan anything. I just kept experimenting over and over and over jacking up the price / testing all day and night. I think there was a LOT of luck too.
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