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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#611

Post by orasis »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #502
huangc10 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just really hard. I think the hard part most people can get by. It's the luck part that a lot of us are missing. You have to be lucky enough to be that 1 person who catches the train at the right time. Imagine the odds of that. That's what gets me. It's not necessarily how hard you work. It's the window of opportunity that most people miss.

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

Successful solo entrepreneur here - I agree 100%. Owning a niche is based on experience. I could restart at 0 in my market and be back to profitable in a year.

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

#612

Post by thomasht »

awayitthrows wrote: post #264
thomasht wrote: post #154

I run & operate a VPN company. Found a niche that at least 600 people would pay me a monthly amount for, totalling nearly $3k a month. Costs are Everything is automated so it's probably less than an hour a week. It was my learn how to code project that has become my basic income. All the money is funding my secondary project.

I was considering doing this recently, to help people in my home country get around censorship blocks. I was wondering, however, have you run into issues where you've had to turn over log/account data to law enforcement due to terrorism/child pornography/etc?

It's a single purpose VPN, so I've only whitelisted 5 sites.

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

#613

Post by thomasht »

tuxxy wrote: post #526
thomasht wrote: post #154

I run & operate a VPN company. Found a niche that at least 600 people would pay me a monthly amount for, totalling nearly $3k a month. Costs are Everything is automated so it's probably less than an hour a week. It was my learn how to code project that has become my basic income. All the money is funding my secondary project.

I've always been curious about where these DIY operators market themselves. Where did you find marketing successful for you?

Reddit. Word of mouth & now SEO would some mild success.

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

#614

Post by thomasht »

ronyfadel wrote: post #299
thomasht wrote: post #154

I run & operate a VPN company. Found a niche that at least 600 people would pay me a monthly amount for, totalling nearly $3k a month. Costs are Everything is automated so it's probably less than an hour a week. It was my learn how to code project that has become my basic income. All the money is funding my secondary project.

I could be mistaken, but I believe I read your article on IndieHackers.com (Chrome extension etc..)? In all cases, kudos!

Yes, you did.

Thanks!

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

#615

Post by thomasht »

foodscraps wrote: post #204
thomasht wrote: post #154

I run & operate a VPN company. Found a niche that at least 600 people would pay me a monthly amount for, totalling nearly $3k a month. Costs are Everything is automated so it's probably less than an hour a week. It was my learn how to code project that has become my basic income. All the money is funding my secondary project.

Interesting! Any pointers or code you wouldn't mind sharing on how to do something like this myself? Thanks.

Find a niche, build a product. A friend of mine realised that there's not much of a email testing platform.

4 months later, he released https://www.mailslurp.com

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

#616

Post by TurkishPoptart »

yccheok wrote: post #230
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…

Thank you for sharing your success. I hope I can learn one or thing from your sharing. Currently, I'm selling a consumer productivity app (Android only) in Google Play store. The characteristics of this category are large consumer demand, and low barrier to entry. Because of this, there are a lot of players in this category. My pricing model is pretty simple - $20 one time payment to unlock everything. I know I can e…

I would be interested in writing blog posts and articles for you. Send me a message at [redacted] for some samples and ideas.

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

#618

Post by cperciva »

commandersaki wrote: post #617

I would've thought the poster child for this would be tarsnap.com. In any case it isn't really a one person business anymore, I see Colin's brother provide support from time to time.

Indeed; Tarsnap was a one-person company for almost a decade, but now it's a two-person company (which is why I didn't post about it here).

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

#619

Post by satvikpendem »

jamil7 wrote: post #144
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…

> release a prototype after 2-6 weeks I'm in the situation where my product overlaps significantly with others but brings (IMO) some missing features and a better overall experience. I would love to launch quickly but feel I need some feature parity with competitors first.

Remember the Innovator's Dilemma. Worse is better for new products, because competitors over time add so many features that they become bloated, and so a newer entrant can create a basic version that doesn't have all the features, but it has the top 1 or 2 or even 3 features that most customers want, for a lower price. This usually will win out and the cycle continues :)

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

#620

Post by tyzerdak »

mittermayr wrote: post #585
cpeterso wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very cool idea to use the real app. Do you have a rack of real devices or do you use emulators, if you don't mind sharing? How do you differentiate Busy from competitors like Buffer (with its 69 employees, according to Wikipedia)? btw, there is a small typo on your "How it works" page: "secure and: affordable" should just be "secure and affordable". :)

Real devices yes! I tried to use emulators a couple of times, but the first few attempts failed due to Instagram detecting it (missing cameras, etc.), and later attempts failed when I realized it's not going to save me a lot if I went the emulator route, because they need quite a lot of resources too, and you can't just run 10 emulators on a regular computer unless you optimise them extremely well and know what you'r…

Is it something like buffer? If yes, what your prices?
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