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Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

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191–200 of 319 posts

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#191
Love it! Great looking site, very professional. I agree with another comment that your name/face on the 'why' page could be useful, but not a deal breaker.

Out of interest, do you have the rights to embed Wrecking Ball? If I was musician who saw you using another musicians music without permission that would turn me off.

(Also on android chrome the count up timer worked on the player, but the bit that would tell me how long the song was stuck at 0.0)

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love these stories also but I am genuinely curious how you were able to work 8 hours a day on it and also work your regular job. I assume you don't work a full time job, otherwise it seems unhealthy. I put a lot of time into my side projects but that is mostly the whole saturday and sunday, but even then I obviously don't feel so well rested on monday.

A friend of mine (who's nearly 50) put in over 2000 hours into playing Destiny one year. That's about the same as a full time job. He has a wife and two kids, and a very full time job. Doing that much work on a side gig is totally possible if you want to do it and have the right disposition.

Granted, 2000 hours is a lot, but most humans need at least some time to unwind and relax in order to maintain high levels of productivity.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others. It's very common in academia that many professors spend their entire lifetime in 60-80hr work weeks their entire life. > but the majority of professors would spend most of the midday break meeting each other Spending 60-80 hours in meetings is not "work". Attending lectures is not "work". Work requires either mental or physical effort to which al…

This is such an ignorant comment. 1) actually paying attention to an advanced academic lecture requires serious mental effort, so by your definition it is work. It is also not useless, unless purely academic work is useless to you 2) I don’t know what kind of experience in academia you have (my guess is not much) but grad school can be very intense in terms of work. Sure you can slack off, but if you want to do well…

No it is not an ignorant comment.

1) If you missed my quotes around "work" it is because some people describe certain tasks as work equivalent to other tasks. The effort of digesting vs. producing material is about 2 orders of magnitudes for me. I took 60 hours of lectures (time spent in class) during one of my semesters of undergrad. 12 hours of lecture everyday. That is completely sustainable because all you have to do is listen. Reading papers is the same, it's a low effort activity. Something you can do for 12 hours a day. Yes, "advanced academic lecture" is more draining than Harry Potter but less draining than driving a vehicle.

2) Working hard (or long hours in the case of academia) vs. working intelligently are orthogonal. I can't really address the entirety of graduate school because history is going to be much different than engineering. Applied much different than theory. I'll repeat my claim, if you actually take the useful bits of a grad student's day, it often compresses to 1-2 hours. Yes, reading is important. Yes, there are often other teaching commitments that are usually treated like second class citizens. I'm not debating the time spent in an office. Merely, that the "60-80" hour myth really needs to stop.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#195
Hi, Congrats on hitting that milestone . As others have said, the site looks great and it's clear you've put a lot of time into it. I can offer a few feedback points:

The pricing tiers could have better names, from a quick glance I wasn't sure which plan fits me. Maybe take a look at what are common traits for customers in each plan and see if you can come up with a one word persona for each plan that way.

The product tours after signup are really clear and crisp well done. I've found that getting users to Wow fast is key to drive conversions, and that tours aren't enough. They show me how to get to wow but don't bring me there.

A common pattern is to prepopulate the app with some data and lead the user to a likely wow event quickly. That's super hard, because you need to know what wow is, but it's gold when you crack it.

I've asked customers "What made you decide to give us money" and that can get some good insights towards what wow is.

I just visited the site for the second time, and my dashboard is empty because I haven't done anything. A real user will likely churn, because they don't know what to do. Nudge them hard towards the action that will bring them to wow.

I'm parroting patio11, but your pro plan is priced to low. Try raising prices on it (a lot) and see if anyone goes for it. Anecdote: I set a pricing page to have $50, $180 and $1200. $50 sold the most, but one day someone self served themselves an annual $1200/month plan, which is 24 $50 customers. Point being, if someone wants to give you a lot of money, give them the chance to do so.

Last point, I just noticed the video under the the pricing section. My personal opinion is that it's weak for marketing purposes, it tells me how to use the app, but doesn't immediately show me what the app can do for me. The point of a video on a marketing page is to get me excited to try and then convert. Make me feel excited ... On the other hand, it is a very good tutorial video, maybe put it on the dashboard of the app if the user hasn't uploaded any tracks yet.

Good luck!

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#196
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's 24 hours in a day. Read Bezos or Musk's or anybody stories and they'll tell you they worked 20-23 hours a day. It's fucking crazy with some people, but that's what it takes to get ahead of the competition. Edit: Please note that I'm not advocating that anybody should do this, but just be aware that a lot of people are setting that level for themselves and in some cases for their subordinates.

Quite naive of you to believe Musk or Bezos worked 23 hour workdays. Even if that was remotely true, everything bears consequence. It might have "worked", but the downsides of this toxic work ethic are bound to present themselves, in the present or future. Never mind working such hours does not guarantee success. Hell, it only about guarantees poor relations and health with any chance of success a very distant second…

Well it's presented them with billionaire fortunes. That's a fact.

I think it's fine for entrepreneurs like them to work however much they want, but it's not cool to put that on employees, especially if they don't have any ownership in the company.

I don't buy the theory about poor relationships and long hours. I could see it going either way, especially if one was single and would otherwise spend their time at home watching tv or whatever.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#197

Perhaps this is outside the scope of what you want the app to be, but... I teach high school English. We will frequently create audio products like podcasts, speeches, Tedtalks, etc. Traditionally, I would offer feedback in person while a student is drafting/editing their products - but with distance ed. that is somewhat more challenging. The feature I would like is the ability to add an annotation to the audio track…

This is a great idea and I already have schools as paying customers. Right now their use cases involve sending audio recordings (eg from music class) to parents, privately. Will look into this for sure. Thanks so much.

If you have schools (e.g. institutions, not individuals) already paying, maybe experiment if you can make a pricing tier for institutions. E.g. Special School package 3k/yr includes unlimited tracks, group by classroom, some other school specific feature ...

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#198

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 d…

Wow! nice story man! Can you please tell us how did you get the product idea, and what you did to promote your product (content marketing, paid marketing...)? Thank you so much for sharing this <3

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love these stories also but I am genuinely curious how you were able to work 8 hours a day on it and also work your regular job. I assume you don't work a full time job, otherwise it seems unhealthy. I put a lot of time into my side projects but that is mostly the whole saturday and sunday, but even then I obviously don't feel so well rested on monday.

I could do it if I didn’t have a family, I used to commute 2 hours each way so considering getting a part time job for the commute time I am now at home for - if it wouldn’t cause a divorce I’d get two jobs or work on a side project for that time. You need to take time off though at weekends etc if you are doing it longer term. (Note this isn’t a recommendation) Also note that I don’t care for tv or gaming so don’t h…

So I'm not wanting to get into what appears to be a growing argument. But I have a young family and an intense day job. I still managed to build SongBox.

I just love building things. I don't do social media, don't watch shitty tv. I just like to build.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#200

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 d…

One word: Persistence! I have realised that too many people quit early and yet it is clear that their ideas are good. I hope many are inspired by this story, I know I was... inspired to keep on fighting. As I said here > https://twitter.com/getflookup/status/1332767868002455554 "If you quit, you did it early" BTW, what app is this, if you don't mind sharing?

Are you asking me? (the OP)?

It's https://songbox.rocks.

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