Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#41

Post by fxtentacle » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #26

I run BeeLine Reader, [1] which launched on HN years ago. [2] BeeLine makes reading on screen easier and faster. At first, most of the revenue came from B2C mobile apps and browser plugins, but in 2020 it hit a tipping point and most of the revenue now comes from B2B technology licensing. Blackboard recently adopted the BeeLine technology, and there are several other large education platforms that are planning to ado…

What a brilliant idea :) Plus I like the name, it very nicely summarizes the product.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#42

Post by makeee » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

Divjoy [0] is now profitable and my full-time thing. It did $50k in year one and my goal is to break $100k this year. It all started with a Show HN [1], so thank you HN :)

It was rough going at first, but I won the $15k YC Startup School grant [2], which let me jump into it full-time and give it my full focus. I managed to hit ramen profitable before having to go back to freelance.

The conventional wisdom is that devs won't pay for software (especially code!), but I've found it to be the opposite. There are a lot of employed software engineers who have disposable income and who are happy to pay for a dev tool if it means they can actually build and launch an idea in a weekend.

[0] https://divjoy.com

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688044

[2] https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-startup-school-2...

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#43

Post by masa331 » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

khuknows wrote: post #21

https://pageflows.com has been paying my bills for a couple of years now To give you an idea of revenue, it’s about as much as I’d be getting paid as a junior-mid developer in London and requires a day or two of work a week unless I’m adding a new feature, redesigning etc. https://screenjar.com is also making a small amount of revenue, but nothing meaningful yet.

Screenjar looks very cool. Great idea! Bookmarking for later use

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#44

Post by WanderPanda » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 8:07 PM UTC

pasttense01 wrote: post #7

A great many people [including myself] have a successful online business flipping which is buying and selling of goods (more used than new). Buying is from local thrift shops, auctions, garage sales, Craiglist, Facebook Marketplace, etc and selling is at Amazon, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, etc. If interested follow the Reddit sub-reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Flipping/

Isn’t this almost a zero sum game?

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#45

Post by vb6sp6 » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 8:08 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #20

I feel like the question is wrong. I used to run a profitable one-person online business. And I felt miserable every time I had to get up at night to fix server issues, or when I had to do customer support from my laptop while I was supposed to be on vacation instead. Now that we're a team, I feel so much better about the whole thing, even though profit margins are slightly lower than before.

I know quite a few people who answer emails on vacation and who do on call rotations at their "normal" jobs. So I think part of the appeal of these types of questions is that the individual gets to reap the benefits of their extraordinary effort instead of passing the profit upstream.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#46

Post by 0x426577617265 » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #5

I write content to help people settle in Germany. They need certain services, and I get a commission when I refer them to those services. I don't think I could trivially reproduce the results, but I'm happy to get paid for offering free advice. I hope it lasts.

Where do I find your service? I am planning on moving soon.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#47

Post by lemming » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

I develop Cursive - https://cursive-ide.com, a plugin for Clojure development in IntelliJ. I started working on it seriously in 2014, started selling it in 2015 after about 2 years in beta (during which time I had a daughter) and it has provided all my income since then. The sales are more than my salary + bonus (but less than total comp) at my last job at Google. This year is the first year that sales have dipped slightly, probably due to COVID and a better competitor for VS Code, but it's still very profitable.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#48

Post by makeee » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

lcx3 wrote: post #10

Lunch Money ( https://lunchmoney.app/ ) is run by one person. It is a personal budgeting app that is very well-designed and easy to use. The founder's journey is also quite interesting as she has been traveling as a digital nomad while building Lunch Money.

Big fan. The founder is worth following: https://twitter.com/lunchbag

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#49

Post by gnicholas » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #41

gnicholas wrote: post #26

I run BeeLine Reader, [1] which launched on HN years ago. [2] BeeLine makes reading on screen easier and faster. At first, most of the revenue came from B2C mobile apps and browser plugins, but in 2020 it hit a tipping point and most of the revenue now comes from B2B technology licensing. Blackboard recently adopted the BeeLine technology, and there are several other large education platforms that are planning to ado…

What a brilliant idea :) Plus I like the name, it very nicely summarizes the product.

Glad you like it! Happy to send HNers a monthlong free pass — I'm nick@[domain].

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?

#50

Post by sideproject » Sat, Jan 02, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

I had many un-used domains I've purchased over the years (>40) and I wanted to make use of them without having to spend time, so I built Newsy - launched 9 months ago.

https://www.newsy.co

It turns your un-used domain into a Reddit-like content aggregator with all sorts of features - membership, voting, comments, newsletters and monetization. The best thing for me is that it is completely automated and all of my domains are hosted on the platform. :) Not Ramen-profitable yet, but pushing it to get there.