Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 685 posts

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

#541

Post by person_of_color »

How are people starting and maintaining these side projects and still finding the time to satisfy human needs? I'm mid to late 20s, single, and there's no way I could spend the time whilst also having a robust social life.

I would like to know a sampling of age or status. Are people with the successful side projects fairly settled down?

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

#542

Post by thrower123 »

person_of_color wrote: post #541

How are people starting and maintaining these side projects and still finding the time to satisfy human needs? I'm mid to late 20s, single, and there's no way I could spend the time whilst also having a robust social life. I would like to know a sampling of age or status. Are people with the successful side projects fairly settled down?

I can't imagine. With a fiance and two dogs and a house, I barely have time to steal an hour or two before bed to play with my side projects. My weekends are spoken for.

If we had kids, I can't imagine I'd have a moment to myself.

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

#543

Post by gkontos »

This thread is pure magic. I love the grit and creativity of these stories. There's been some talk of survivorship bias. I can relate to both sides of that. About 15 years ago I ran an online shop selling auto accessories. I did that for about 5 years and made a decent living with about 10 hours of work per week (more during the holiday season). The business folded as shipping expenses and competition rose around 2008. (In my downfall story, I like to ignore the fact that I worked 10 hours per week rather than expand the business). My successful business started due to a combination of ability and luck. I 'lucked' into a situation where I had a B2B sales position (commission only) and I was able to sell products to my own website. In that case, I took a bad job and had the ability to develop it into an online business. Since then I have launched a number of largely unsuccessful online businesses. I've done paper mache for hire, crawl space 'clamps', an online game, a video aggregation service, several blogs, an android todo list app, and a few machinery based things that never rose to the level of 'fail' (those ended in the "didn't really try" phase). Currently, I have a new project that I am trying to focus into a market at https://gasket.appspot.com. The reason I bring up survivorship bias here is to point out that the bias doesn't really matter. In aggregate the solo businesses which succeed are creative applications of an uncommon skill. Based on this thread those skills are currently ML and data aggregation. In 2002 those skills were web development and online ad purchasing. Businesses fail because either the idea is meh (ie paper mache for hire) or the creator doesn't bake in the feedback mechanisms they need to keep going (ie, requiring payment for an online game). Other people's failure does not shed any useful light on what you should try yourself (unless you want to start an online business creating customer paper mache; don't do that, it's a dumb idea [unless it works]).

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

#544

Post by tbyehl »

MiSeRyDeee wrote: post #509
kingkongjaffa wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm curious too. Tracking your own website makes sense but there're definitely better ways if that's your own website. Why do people want to track other website regularly?

I think you're giving too much weight to what's in their example image. I use a competitor's free tier to monitor my own stuff. Using a SaaS is better for several reasons:

  1. Don't have to install / maintain anything.
  2. Who monitors the monitoring?
  3. Monitoring from inside my network doesn't always fully approximate end-user availability.

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

#545

Post by listenallyall »

adamqureshi wrote: post #207
acoyfellow wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome work. What does your overhead look like roughly?

Rent. Food. Utilities. $3,500-month Server $150-month Facebook $35/month

Very impressive, any reason you haven't cloned the site for other car makes? Porsche, BMW, Audi...

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

#546

Post by andy800 »

mrskitch wrote: post #227

I run a headless browser service called browserless.io. Got started due to lack of a comparable service, and all others seemed more geared for testing. It’s been around two years now, and makes more than any prior engineering job I’ve ever had. You do have a lot of other stresses you might not otherwise have, but you’ll also work a lot less than at a traditional job! I’m working on a few interviews for some sites, wh…

Not too excited that you just doubled the prices, but the service is very good and I've found it to be much more effective than running locally. And you've also been very very good with personal replies to support requests. Congrats on your success.

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

#547

Post by listenallyall »

puranjay wrote: post #167

I worked with a client recently who ran a successful site comparing products in a very popular and lucrative industry. His affiliate income was in the high six figures annually. He runs the entire business by himself Personally, it might not be completely successful yet, but I started a music blog a while back (don't want to share the URL) just to test some SEO strategies. It's pulling in low four figures every month…

Mattresses?

https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...

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

#548

Post by codingbbq »

ssiddharth wrote: post #178
bekman wrote: post #129

I run a popular Quiz website. I make around $6,000 per month from Google adsense. I work between 2-3 hours a week usually posting quiz links on my Pinterest page. My only expense is hosting which is around $20 per month (Digital Ocean). I have never advertised my website and it gets all the traffic from Pinterest Organically. Compare to my salary, I'm an IT Administrator in my day job and make $400 per month. I live…

Could you share your contact details? Or email me at sid at ssiddharth dot com? I run https://jquizzy.com/

Hola. Not related to this post, but I remember you from the early days of Envato when Jeffrey way and you had most of the blog posts. I learned a lot and kickstarted my career from those tutorials. Cheers and All the best..!!!

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

#549

Post by pakwa »

bekman wrote: post #129

I run a popular Quiz website. I make around $6,000 per month from Google adsense. I work between 2-3 hours a week usually posting quiz links on my Pinterest page. My only expense is hosting which is around $20 per month (Digital Ocean). I have never advertised my website and it gets all the traffic from Pinterest Organically. Compare to my salary, I'm an IT Administrator in my day job and make $400 per month. I live…

Wha tech do you use for your site?
Post reply on HN