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A solo journey to $100k in sales

draculatheme.com

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Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#111

Post by Nullabillity »

TameAntelope wrote: post #105
DrBazza wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I find the most common source of Jira-hate is a combined refusal to leave many of its features on the table by management and general ignorance about how little Jira actually imposes on you by the gangpressed users. Most of that bloat you have to deal with? Blame your bosses, not Atlassian.

Jira is a bloated piece of garbage out of the box. It doesn't need PHB configuration to get there.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#112

Post by ct0 »

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! Im just hoping that you can include Rstudio in your list of apps. Thanks!

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#113

Post by idlewords »

Congrats to the OP! One lesson in these graphs that is very important to internalize is how spiky they are. When you're small, you'll make most of your money on a few special days, based on events that might be out of your control.

Given that dynamic, it can be hard to distinguish cause from effect, let alone layer on things like A/B tests or other statistical analysis that might hold for things at bigger scale.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#114

Post by Nullabillity »

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)?

Usually both of those costs are added to the product specifically to have an excuse to charge a subscription, which gets especially galling when 99% of users have no real use for it.

But the most hilarious/sad model has to be Elastic's "you need to pay us based on how bloated our garbage is, regardless of whether we're actually involved in hosting it".

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#116

Post by [deleted] »

quaffapint wrote: post #9

I commend you for getting people to pay for a color theme - something that people think of as a freebie. I would just think that no one would ever pay for this and not even try. You tried and you are succeeding. There's a lesson in that.

[deleted]

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#117

Post by GVIrish »

iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: post #97
Lich wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So if a SaaS offered a prepaid consumption plan alongside a monthly subscription you'd be more likely to buy?

Like $19/month unlimited use or $50 for x amount of usage (api calls, transactions, assets, etc.)? Then you decide if you want to reup when you've used up your credits?

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#118

Post by grumple »

suyash wrote: post #40
matwood wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People pay for convenience every single day. Just look at Starbucks.

not developers, look at GitHub - it's all for free

Yeah, but that also serves the purpose of making us encourage our workplaces to use GitHub, and they pay for it.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#119

Post by HenryBemis »

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…

Thank you for sharing!! This can act as an insiration and a guide to many who are thinking about making a similar step, but don't.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#120

Post by ggerganov »

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!

I wonder how does one put a price on a product like this. For example, if I am paying for a cloud VM instance, I could calculate the energy per CPU, hardware costs, etc. and ultimately come to a reasonable price. What would be the thought process for reaching a certain price for this specific product?
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