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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#421

Post by duanem »

duanem wrote: post #419

I develop Flowx [ https://www.flowx.io ], an Android weather app. It makes around $2,500 USD/month with about $500/month in costs excluding my time. It covers about 60% of my total costs including my time which is 40+ hours a week. I cover my remaining costs through contract work. This might not seem like a success but the business allowed us to move to the Rarotonga, Cook Islands from Auckland, New Zealand. Lifestyl…

Just an added note. I started Flowx as a side-project in 2012. In 2016, we moved to Rarotonga and we decided then to try to grow it into a business. It was making ~$100/month at that stage. Since then, it has grown it to $2500/month through added pro features and a better subscription prices.

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

#422

Post by WA »

ryanhuff wrote: post #418
WA wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Is this a web application or a smartphone one?" It used to be a web app, but nowadays, most people use it as an app. > "What did you have to learn, tech-wise, to be able to build it?" At first, PHP. Then JS. I've been coding for 15-20 years now. The app is made in Ionic + Cordova. As I wrote often here on HN: End users give zero fucks about the technology. Most people (unless they're designers or coders) don't eve…

How has Ionic and Cordova performed for you? Have you considered moving to another framework?

Pretty well. Performance isn’t an issue anymore, although it’s still faster on iOS. My biggest issue with it is the lack of fine-grained control over input elements. Safari is the culprit here. For example, you can’t really make an input element that allows entering a time in this format "23:30" AND only show a specific keyboard with decimals and the colon.

Textarea elements are also sometimes behaving weird when selecting text, just like your regular iOS Safari.

And of course, all input elements and animations don’t respect your OS accessibility settings. Neglectable in some apps, not in others.

I probably wouldn’t write a diary app or an app for writers in Ionic, but for most other things it’s good enough.

Keep in mind that all development comes with trade offs. Native iOS development gives you maximal control over the platform, but your code isn’t really re-usable. As a solo developer, having a single code base is gold and customers don’t really care.

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

#423

Post by technics256 »

WA wrote: post #388
technics256 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You hit the nail on the head, that's for sure. :)

Hit me up and would be glad to buy you a beer if you're ever in Munich! Email is in the profile. Cheers.

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

#424

Post by machbio »

maxencecornet wrote: post #195
justaguyhere wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does batgrowth make money? Interesting project.

Do you see the "Try out the Brave Browser" button on the main page ? It redirects towards this page: https://brave.com/bat684 I get payed by Brave Software around 5$ for each user that download the browser and use it for at least 30 days

just FYI - "Try out the Brave Browser" button is blocked when using Ublock Origin

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

#426

Post by imhoguy »

vfc1 wrote: post #409
bitreality wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're forgetting is that running an online business all day is isolating. Going to work with colleagues, all working towards a common goal, gives a sense of community. When you are not dependent on the money from your job, it also gives you a certain amount of leverage people normally don't have. Then on top of this, for this gentleman to see a big change in his/her lifestyle, considering they are already earni…

There is not a lot of sense of community in most companies these days, its often each person for itself. Especially in IT, people stay for a couple of years and then leave or get laid off, there is no employment for life anymore. You can run the business from a shared workspace, it's not an issue. And even hire a couple of people to help you out since the salaries there are relatively affordable, and build your own c…

I don't agree with your generalization. When you keep in touch with people you used to work with then some relationships usually expand beyond companies and employment duration. In the future they can become your business partners, employers, referees, spouse or just friends.

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

#428

Post by blhack »

I have a CRM/business intelligence product that targets a very specific niche of an industry. I'm the only employee, although I am currently looking to expand by hiring a sales person and a support person.

Here's a startup idea I want, by the way. If this exists somebody please tell me:

I'm good at creating products. I'm a good programmer, I can do design well, I understand marketing well, I can sell things, etc. However, the things I am TERRIBLE at are basically anything involving paperwork. I hate these tasks, and I am terrible at them. I want a company that I can hire that will take care of all of my backoffice/HR tasks. So:

-An accountant.

-A lawyer.

-An HR person who can deal with compliance around hiring and firing staff.

Many of the aspects of software businesses can be looked at services, and fit well into an engineering mindset. Hosting is from digital ocean, costs $f00, and gets mentally compartmentalized. I don't care very much about how DA deals with routing, provisioning their own resources, etc. I tell them in abstract terms the things I want, and they provide them in a package for me to consume. Twilio does similar things for me for telephony. Coworking spaces do this for physical offices.

I want more of that for more traditional parts of business. Essentially I want to hire a controller in the cloud (or at least the way that controllers have been used at various companies I have worked at in the past). IF this exists, please reply with the name of the company! Maybe this means this is something I should start myself.

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

#429

Post by ryanhuff »

WA wrote: post #422
ryanhuff wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How has Ionic and Cordova performed for you? Have you considered moving to another framework?

Pretty well. Performance isn’t an issue anymore, although it’s still faster on iOS. My biggest issue with it is the lack of fine-grained control over input elements. Safari is the culprit here. For example, you can’t really make an input element that allows entering a time in this format "23:30" AND only show a specific keyboard with decimals and the colon. Textarea elements are also sometimes behaving weird when sel…

As a solo developer, I tried maintaining two native code bases for an app. It was first iOS native only. The Android version came later, and never reached feature parity. It was just too much work.

If you were to start over, would you still choose Ionic and Cordova, or go with something else like Xamarin or React Native?

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