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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#381

Post by t0ughcritic »

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…

How come so much focus on Seo rather than ASO or paying to acquire users directly from the App Store? I’m launching an app soon and Wondering if what the conversion would be from web to App Store and where to focus my marketing

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

#382

Post by abhikarthick »

I'm running http://remoteleaf.com

- Remote Leaf sends you hand picked remote jobs that are made for you from about 20+ job boards & 100+ company pages.

- Using filters based on your skill preferences & location, Remote leaf would be able to know that job that befits you and send you job postings daily or weekly to your inbox.

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

#383

Post by WA »

stevofolife wrote: post #315
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…

Thanks for sharing. How do you price a prototype? I have a bias of thinking people won't initially pay for it. What are your thoughts?

I think you can't really price a prototype. On the other hand, people are paying actual cash on promises every day (see Kickstarter, or does anyone remember this blogging engine powered by "AI" that pre-sold at $1 and increased by 1 with every purchase?).

But you need something to get some kind of validation. If you fail to attract users for a free product, nobody will pay for it either. It's a small test if anyone wants to have it – and for yourself: whether or not you want to keep investing time and energy into this project.

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

#384

Post by kingkongjaffa »

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.

Can you explain who you customers are and why they want to know the stats for uptime and would be willing to pay for it?

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

#385

Post by WA »

t0ughcritic wrote: post #381
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…

How come so much focus on Seo rather than ASO or paying to acquire users directly from the App Store? I’m launching an app soon and Wondering if what the conversion would be from web to App Store and where to focus my marketing

Because I don't want to acquire some random people. I serve a specific niche. This niche is better reached with high quality articles. Writing good articles costs once (and the occasional updates and improvements). Paying for reach isn't scalable. SEO is.

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

#386

Post by kerkeslager »

puranjay wrote: post #330
ryanlol wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might sound harsh, but if the best thing in life is IT administration for some company then you haven’t looked very far. But hey, who knows, maybe they work for a charity or something?

At a personal level, I'm not a fan of this generalization that being an IT admin (or any other boring job) is inherently inferior than, I don't know, skateboarding or playing the guitar for a living. Different people like different things.

That's true, but the way people do things they enjoy when it's a job is very different from how they do them when it's a hobby.

I write code for a living, and I write code for fun. I would never choose to write the code I write for a living if I weren't getting paid to, and it's unlikely I'll ever get paid for the code I write for fun.

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

#387

Post by jsgo »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #368
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.

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?

I read that more in jest to be honest.

I know people who work within their industry (health care) in a specific place that tends to be low paying. They could very easily switch (because people have tried recruiting them to do so because they worked with them previously and they know they're good) to a higher paying job with a lighter workload without moving but servicing a different group. But part of the appeal of the job is that they are working in support of this specific class of patients.

Dunno, I could see aspects other than money being a driver in someone sticking with something when a better opportunity or situation seems to be present with little effort.

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

#388

Post by WA »

technics256 wrote: post #334
WA wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. I have two kids, so there are some deductions. I don't know for last year yet, because the tax forms aren't yet submitted by my accountant (and last year it was a lot more than the year before). I calculate with about 59% take home pay. Give or take 2-3%.

Thanks for the response. Are you GmbH or selbständig for this? Wondering which is better for a situation like a one man job. I'm in a similar situation.

I am sole proprietor / Einzelunternehmer. A GmbH works too. Cons:

- more work to set it up

- more paper work

- unnecessary in some cases

Pros:

- cash flow for you as a founder is more stable / taxes can be calculated and predicted more easily (only relevant if you expect a good year and then a bad year)

Neutral:

- Your personal liability is supposedly limited. This is only partially true. There's still the liability of the owner of the company (Geschäftsführerhaftung) and if you do illegal stuff, they can still hold you liable.

- Also for a GmbH, it is more important to manage risks by getting the required insurances and NOT rely on "limited liability". For apps, this would be "IT-Betriebshaftpflicht", possibly something about data protection with regards to GDPR violations. Maybe add insurance that covers personal liability so that you don't lose your personal cash if something goes wrong. That's about it. Optionally add domain-specific insurance if your domain is complex.

This is, btw. a typical German question. Mulling about the type of business is secondary. Get paying customers first, you can still incorporate a GmbH later. On the other hand: If nobody pays you money, you don't need a GmbH or be a sole proprietor.

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

#389

Post by khuknows »

Havoc wrote: post #345
khuknows wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would your guess have been?

Probably around 60% of that. But as I said if professionals are willing to happy then no point in being shy on pricing

I was just curious to know your number - it's an interesting data point. I have experimented with pricing, but not enough, so it's something I have to do at some point.

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

#390

Post by WA »

yccheok wrote: post #374
WA wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500K users, that's quite an achievement as well, pretty solid! It's hard to say anything about your pricing model. If it works for you, there's probably no need to optimize. However, 500K users with a $20 IAP – I wonder if you could introduce subscriptions for something like $1-2 per month. Maybe make it cheaper per year, but more expensive on the long run. But this depends heavily on how often your app is used. If i…

> "500K users, that's quite an achievement as well, pretty solid!" Not quite :) As, majority of them are from tier-2 countries. Purchasing digital goods is not part of their culture. > "But again, just from my gut feeling: I wonder if there's a way for you to REDUCE the number of active users and turn free users into loyal paid users." Thank you for your suggestion! What you have mentioned are valid. Maybe at some po…

Sounds like you have a plan, good :)

> "Can you recommend me a publishing platform to publish all writings?"

Whatever works best for you. Wordpress, Ghost, whatever. It doesn't matter. I have mostly static files.

I think you need a somewhat okay design. Doesn't have to be fancy, but it should be clean and professionally-looking. I do design myself. I'm self-taught. If you can't do it, get someone who does it. You don't need a lot of images, but yeah, it should look clean and good. There are millions of themes, which are alright if you just start. Don't stress too much over the design. The message is more important.

Also: This is a bit out of scope of this discussion. There's probably a lot of discussion on the internet for designing articles or blogs :)

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