Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going.
I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job.
People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a day. Still worked on it for many many hours.
App is still running today and generating 2k per day. It gave me freedom to quit my day job and the opportunity to start a business as around it a few years ago. And just recently I started an entire new (more serious) fintech business.
Although I know it's not easy to start something like I did. But on the other hand. Most people are not even trying it. I always tell people to really start making something you feel passionate about. (I am talking from a developers perspective) Don't look at others and don't do something other want you to do. If money is the motive, then you will fail for sure.
Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue
41–50 of 319 posts
Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue
#42Cool project, I like that you've clearly stated on the front page exactly what it's for.
Just FYI the bottom of your Blog pages contains a button with a strange label CANVAS::BLOG.BUTTON.NEXT
Also the link to your Privacy Policy has (almost) the same foreground and background color.
Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue
#43Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a d…
I love these stories a lot more than that I love the venture capitalist backed start-up that makes 3x for their investors.
Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue
#44Looks very nice!
Do you have some sort of upload API, so music creation software could potentially upload directly, without going through a GUI? (I realize this may be an exotic request, so I understand if this is not of interest for you to implement).
Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I see those stories in the same way that I see stories about people winning the lottery; it can happen, but it probably won't. Growing slowly has aided me hugely in being able to refine and optimise as I went. If I had the money to throw at marketing 2 years ago, to get loads of eyeballs on the site, it would have failed. Because the product wasn't ready then. It's been 2 years of listening to feedback and making…
Thanks for replying. If you don't mind me asking, how did you get your first users and when did you decide it was worth asking money for?
I decided it was worth asking money for before I laid a finger to the keyboard.
Getting first users was really tough. I "launched" on product hunt and that was a bomb. I posted around some forums and that got some attention, but it was a post on reddit that was seen by the owner of a niche forum for audio engineers that helped.
He allowed to me to post in their commercial thread and that got me going with a bunch of audio engineers who saw real value in the product.
That burst of interest and Q&A gave me a TON of feedback to improve things and add features.
Then things just VERY slowly started to snowball. and I do mean VERY SLOWLY.
I also get a lot of traffic from organic google searches as I rank number 1 in google for some very relevant search terms. Even outranking soundcloud. Have no idea how that happened.
As far as I'm concerned it was 2 years of refining the product. Only in the past 6 months have I seen consistent month on month growth, and it's still very early days.
Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue
#46Cool project, I like that you've clearly stated on the front page exactly what it's for. Just FYI the bottom of your Blog pages contains a button with a strange label CANVAS::BLOG.BUTTON.NEXT Also the link to your Privacy Policy has (almost) the same foreground and background color. https://i.imgur.com/HcU0wOy.png
Ooops... thanks so much I will address these issues tonight.
Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue
#47Why only $30 for the Pro plan?
It was $50, it was $7. I've done a bunch of experimentation of price points over the years and the setup now converts by far the best. Started seeing conversions shoot up instantly upon deploying the latest pricing. Prior to this setup it was $10, $25 and $50. No-one took out pro. When I changed to $10, $20 and $30 it all changed. Now the majority of my paying customers are on the $20 and $30 plans.
Note that such things are not written in stone and it may be worth experimenting again a while later. You may be drawing in different customers with different sized wallets and attitudes.
Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue
#48Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a d…
Thanks for sharing this. There are echoes of my own journey here.
I truly believe that "slow and steady wins the race".
Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Theres many tools out there that will handle the follow up marketing part for you. Most will offer powerful workflow tools based on conditions etc.
I do utilise such tools but I 100% advocate for being a human being and just speaking to people. Customers really appreciate it. I guess its not for everyone, and it's not infinitely scaleable but it is highly valuable in the early stages.
I think this is the essence of the much-bandied "do things that don't scale" advice. Scaling inherently involves abstraction and generalisation, engaging with individual human beings can generate much clearer insights until it becomes impractical (scale being a forced issue).
Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue
#50Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a d…
I love these stories a lot more than that I love the venture capitalist backed start-up that makes 3x for their investors.
100% ditto