A solo journey to $100k in sales • Hacker News Board

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#91

Post by kylegalbraith » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

zenorocha wrote: post #2

Hello HN friends! Today is a special day. My solo side project has hit 100K in sales, which is absolutely insane. When I started this thing, I never thought this would happen. Monetizing an open-source project is very difficult, so I decided to share my personal journey and lessons learned. This is a visual timeline showing all the lessons learned from $0 to $100k in one year. I hope this can be helpful and inspire y…

Just wanted to say congrats on the success and that I really enjoyed the post. The timeline outline of it all was a lot easier to read and follow than similar posts I have read around these types of things.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#92

Post by praveenperera » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #35

brtkdotse wrote: post #15

Without knocking the creators achievement, I find it curious how devs will rage and cry murder when LastPass wants a few bucks for a hosted product but don’t bat an eye for shelling out $99 for what is, when you come down to it, a config file for your IDE .

$99 for a great config file is buying time. A good config can take years to hone. Easily adds up to 50 hours over 10 years. How much are your 50 hours worth? What about cutting that 10 year lead time down to 1h? LastPass on the other hand is a tool you use because the world sucks. And their UX is pretty bad. And switching away is an annoying chore. You feel trapped and extorted into paying. I configured my own editor…

Agreed, mostly. Expect for switching being an annoying chore.

Took my less than 10 mins to switch everything and download 1Password on all my devices. Super simple. Everything got imported over.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#93

Post by musicale » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

brtkdotse wrote: post #15

Without knocking the creators achievement, I find it curious how devs will rage and cry murder when LastPass wants a few bucks for a hosted product but don’t bat an eye for shelling out $99 for what is, when you come down to it, a config file for your IDE .

> LastPass wants a few bucks for a hosted product

Many people already have cloud storage (dropbox, icloud) and don't see the need for another subscription. I certainly don't.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#94

Post by rwieruch » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

zenorocha wrote: post #2

Hello HN friends! Today is a special day. My solo side project has hit 100K in sales, which is absolutely insane. When I started this thing, I never thought this would happen. Monetizing an open-source project is very difficult, so I decided to share my personal journey and lessons learned. This is a visual timeline showing all the lessons learned from $0 to $100k in one year. I hope this can be helpful and inspire y…

Congrats! \o/

NB: Really refreshing how you created this timeline! You should make a (Gatsby) theme out of it :)

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#95

Post by quaffapint » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

pta2002 wrote: post #31

I checked out the theme itself, and immediately a message showed up saying that it detected my country and offered me a discount code to make sure that the theme is still affordable for my country. It's simple things like this that probably help a side project like this get to where it is, great job!

What do you use to provide this?

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#96

Post by laurent92 » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #65

laurent92 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2001, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar thought “Let’s sell an equivalent to the dozen of free open-source bugtrackers, but for a price.” Today Atlassian is worth about $60bn, they owned about 75%.

And it's ripe for a lightweight alternative that gets customers that want the fast, basic set of bug tracking features. Jira is horrific.

People have always said that ;) but Jira is super-expensive. It was $60 per user (permanent), and they’ve increased the prices a lot. Especially since you buy Confluence and all the little addons separately.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#97

Post by iujjkfjdkkdkf » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

Lich wrote: post #64

xtracto wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I am one of those. I generally don't like "subscription model" products. I am OK paying whatever price one time to buy something, but having to keep paying recurrently for some service incites locking to me, as the moment I decide I don't want to pay anymore I end up empty handed.

I’m asking out of curiosity, as someone who is thinking about implementing a subscription model, do you not like it even though you know the product you’re using has recurring costs for usage (e.g. charges for API/DB calls), or are you only against subscription models when the cost of usage is minimal to none (e.g. MS Office, Adobe CS)?

I have no problem paying for recurring usage costs. For example I have a paid vps and paid email. But in my mind I'm paying precisely for the compute, storage, and network infrastructure behind them, not paying, e.g. to run linux. And I'm happy to pay for someone else to manage that infrastructure because the setup is nontrivial, I dont need to own the infra, etc.

Contrast this with Office 365, or even more niche pay per use or per month products, that are not better in any way that matters to me because they are hosted elsewhere. With these products I feel like someone wants me to pay a recurring fee just to run their code. Some of it is psychological, but I feel like I'm getting ripped off, that someone is trying to find a way to get me to keep paying for something (which they are).

Spotify and Netflix have found a good balance of offering a subscription, but providing such a large catalog that the value vs. actually owning all the content is clear. Most SaaS feels more like having to pay monthly just to own a single DVD.

But TLDR for me is I dont want to pay recurringly for the privilege of executing your code, I will pay recurringly for needed* infra, support, etc that goes along with it.

*not just tacked on to make it SaaS or to deploy it as SaaS

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#98

Post by thitcanh » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #65

laurent92 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2001, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar thought “Let’s sell an equivalent to the dozen of free open-source bugtrackers, but for a price.” Today Atlassian is worth about $60bn, they owned about 75%.

And it's ripe for a lightweight alternative that gets customers that want the fast, basic set of bug tracking features. Jira is horrific.

Horrific but people keep buying it.

From Jira’s owner POV, Jira is pretty great.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#99

Post by mritchie712 » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #65

laurent92 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2001, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar thought “Let’s sell an equivalent to the dozen of free open-source bugtrackers, but for a price.” Today Atlassian is worth about $60bn, they owned about 75%.

And it's ripe for a lightweight alternative that gets customers that want the fast, basic set of bug tracking features. Jira is horrific.

https://linear.app/

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#100

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:18 PM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #65

laurent92 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2001, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar thought “Let’s sell an equivalent to the dozen of free open-source bugtrackers, but for a price.” Today Atlassian is worth about $60bn, they owned about 75%.

And it's ripe for a lightweight alternative that gets customers that want the fast, basic set of bug tracking features. Jira is horrific.

[deleted]