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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#531

Post by hnick »

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…

Have you considered integrating haptic feedback for those of us who might need a stronger slap in the face to re-learn our habits? :)

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

#532

Post by deevus »

Freeboots wrote: post #273
deevus wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bonjoro is great for reducing churn. https://www.bonjoro.com Check out how Matt Ragland from ConvertKit uses it here: https://www.bonjoro.com/uses Disclaimer: I'm the CTO

So, how exactly does this work? You get a notification that a customer has triggered your bonjoro, and then you record a video and send it to them via email?

Generally it works like this

- Discrete event (new signup, product purchased, new blog subscriber etc)

- Task is created in Bonjoro

- Bonjoro user records a video and it is sent to the person who caused the event

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

#533

Post by hnick »

istjohn wrote: post #143
nickonline wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the list of businesses in this thread this was the one that caught my eye. However, I am Australian and a lot of the time businesses don't ship here. Like you say, it's a physical business, you need to move physical products. I opened your website and immediately looked for shipping, 'countries you ship to' is nowhere to be found until checkout, where there is a dropdown with no options other than the USA.

Are there mail forwarding services that cater to people in your situation? Would you pay $10-$15 plus typical US-to-Australia shipping costs for this service? I guess I'm wondering if this is a business opportunity for someone to provide a US delivery address and then forward the mail abroad.

There are, Australia Post runs one which I've never used at https://shopmate.auspost.com.au/

International shipping is typically not that difficult or unreasonably expensive for most items (I help to send some physical goods from Australia, which is conveniently near nowhere else).

The problem is usually customer expectations, we can submit their parcel the same day but any delays in customs, processing, or their local courier/postal service becomes our fault since the customer has no one else to contact, but we have no real ability to change the outcome for any individual parcel.

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

#534

Post by whitepoplar »

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…

Wow great copywriting on your homepage. I love the main line.

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

#535

Post by Enginerrrd »

MiSeRyDeee wrote: post #508
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need luck to become a unicorn startup. You don’t need luck to build a one-person online business, only hard work.

Hard work itself means clearly nothing. You need to work hard into right direction. And getting into right direction requires certain amount of luck.

If you're relying on luck, you're headed in the wrong direction. I was very late in the game, at least 2 years past the big market boom in my area of expertise, but I saw that the momentum was there to keep carrying on. I was working during those two years to be ready to fully launch, and I'm now making a modest but comfortable $200k/yr in a place with moderate cost of living.

If this hadn't come along, I had several backup plans I could turn into a viable business. You have to learn to see the money and take the money, but that's a learnable skillset.

I also had an uncle that just had a nose for what the next big thing was going to be. He made more money than I do, but he knew what the next big thing was going to be because he learned everything he could about small reaches from his current operation and talked to everyone.

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

#536

Post by Enginerrrd »

xtracto wrote: post #488
partyboat1586 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are struggling with being overly invested in your day job I suggest you go contracting. Get payed a day rate for a fixed number of hours a day, either work a day or don't no inbetween. Bill for the number of days you did at the end of the month (or week). Sick days and holidays cost you hundreds of dollars per day. You will learn to value your time (even if it costs a small amount of your soul). As an added bo…

The problem with contracting is that you have to learn to sell. Which is also one of the main skills of raising money, something that the GP post struggles with. I myself would love to have a more independent job but I suck terribly at selling myself.

Yeah, that is an absolutely essential skillset. If not that, you at least need to have an eye for other people's talents and how they could be best utilized, and know how to connect the dots for other people.

This is definitely something you can get a LOT better at with practice and study though!! You probably will never be ungodly talented, but you probably don't need to be either.

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

#537

Post by cleverfoo »

For the last 9+ years I've worked on https://scanii.com, a content identification service (think of it as the unix file command on steroids wrapped around an easy to use API). Started with a real MVP hacked on a weekend (https://web.archive.org/web/20101209005314/http://scanii.com...) after identifying the need on a day job I had a long time ago. With 0 marketing and sales it took a while to start gaining traction but I always knew that we were solving a real problem with a good and fair-priced product. Nowadays it’s big enough to be classified as a lifestyle business and that’s all right by me.

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

#538

Post by hnick »

jawngee wrote: post #28

I'm doing pretty well selling a WordPress plugin, https://mediacloud.press/ It's an equal mix of rewarding and frustrating. It's a lot more work than you'd expect and now I've a deep understanding of why support tools are as obtuse as they are. It's generating enough income that's livable and freeing me up to focus on other related projects. I'm going to be launching a SAAS version of the plugin later this year.

Any thoughts on the Wordpress plugin ecosystem as a whole for building some income? I'm in a position where I need to learn more about Wordpress but not sure how deep I want to go.

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

#539

Post by woutr_be »

idlewords wrote: post #358
woutr_be wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame he hasn't updated the financials since 2017 tho. I always liked reading up on it.

They're up there. https://blog.pinboard.in/2019/07/i_cant_stop_winning/

Thanks, the main Pinboard blog link seems to link to blog.pinboard.com/blog, which doesn’t seem to list your latest post.

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

#540

Post by idlewords »

woutr_be wrote: post #539
idlewords wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're up there. https://blog.pinboard.in/2019/07/i_cant_stop_winning/

Thanks, the main Pinboard blog link seems to link to blog.pinboard.com/blog, which doesn’t seem to list your latest post.

That's why I pasted the link for you.
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