I run https://pageflows.com and have been living off it full time for a little over a year. The business makes a bit more than what I was earning a few years ago as a junior developer in London, so it's not a huge amount of money, but it's enough. It's a fairly boring business to run and not as predictable or sexy as some sort of micro saas, but it's I'm happy with how things have been so far. Happy to answer any que…
Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
461–470 of 685 posts
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#462I got started doing it as a fluke of writing tutorials and then realizing a pattern around people using the OSS tools I made to help me write the tutorials (people were using the tools to build their apps and then coming to me for help and I realized "oh hey, this is a business!").
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#463Everytime 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…
Once you have some form of a track record (not employment, but the ability to produce a result on your own), then you have a little more leverage.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#464You might recognize classics such as "Legalize 4Loko 2020" and "BREAD" as featured in Elle magazine.
All on-demand printing. Order goes through Shopify's API to the supply center, order gets fulfilled, shipped. No inventory. Kinda pricey, but zero maintenance. Set and forget.
Find the most extremely dank and niche memes possible so you hit the little nugget inside of someone's brain that makes them want to spend $15-30 on a t-shirt.
A good print would net me somewhere like 300 orders a month. A sweatshirt could go for $50-60. You have options.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#465Everytime 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?
Lots of reasons.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#466I run Codepip ( https://codepip.com ), coding games for learning web dev. Started out making a single game as a weekend project, it got a good reception, so there was obvious demand for learning to code in this interactive way. Have since branched out to more games covering different HTML, CSS, and JS topics with more coming. It's continued as a one-person operation, for the time being.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#467Any Ideas or help would be highly appreciated
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#468I ran a Shopify site selling meme shirts for 3 years. You might recognize classics such as "Legalize 4Loko 2020" and "BREAD" as featured in Elle magazine. All on-demand printing. Order goes through Shopify's API to the supply center, order gets fulfilled, shipped. No inventory. Kinda pricey, but zero maintenance. Set and forget. Find the most extremely dank and niche memes possible so you hit the little nugget inside…
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#469Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you drive traffic to the website?
To be honest, The customers do that now. they share my site whenever they see someone looking for the best spot to sell a Tesla. I don't sell personal info to marketers. I also have a guy to write a blog post a few times a week.