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

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#121

Post by notwhereyouare » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

quaffapint wrote: post #95

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?

he mentions in one of the embedded tweets: https://twitter.com/zenorocha/status/1349340816964153345

seems a combination of cloudflare worker and a couple other tools

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#122

Post by An0mammall » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:25 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 man, that's amazing ♡

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#123

Post by dlkmp » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

zenorocha wrote: post #21

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.

I never thought people would pay for a color scheme too. That's why, I tried to position in a way where you'd not only get the actual themes, but also a bunch of other resources to make you more productive.

Might be just me but once I saw that "x tips to get better" ebook, the offer lost credibility in my eyes. It just feels more believable to me that there might be some guy who knows so much about colors and the corresponding theory that he can actually can come up with a theme worth 100 bucks than that there is a guy who can do this _and_ give me tips on random semi-related topics.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#124

Post by kcartlidge » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

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

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

I do use the free stuff (GitHub, VS Code, etc).

And I also pay for NCrunch, Wallaby, RubyMine, Rider, GoLand, PyCharm, FastMail, PCloud, and more.

Most of the stuff I pay for has free equivalents (and yes, I know JetBrains have an all-products subscription rather than separate Ruby, .Net, Go, and Python, but I have reasons).

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#125

Post by the_af » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #36

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.

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

True. On the other hand, $79 (or even the discounted price of $29) is pretty steep for what is only one minor optional tool in a dev's toolset. Imagine if you paid a similar amount for every single tool you use, no matter how trivial.

If you have a microtransaction for everything in your computer, they start to add up pretty fast. At some point you have to pick and choose, and nice UI themes start to seem less essential...

(Also, do note outside the first world $29 is not such a small amount of money. And $79 is unthinkable for a UI theme).

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#126

Post by andreygrehov » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

Question.

In this tweet [1] you mentioned that Dracula PRO was in the works for 7 years.

1. Would it possible to start monetizing the product earlier?

2. If yes, how much earlier in the case of Dracula PRO?

While $100k looks like an impressive number, in the grand scheme of things, it's just 14k/year, which is about $1150/month, which equates to an hourly wage of $6,50. Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently if you were to maximize revenue?

[1] https://twitter.com/zenorocha/status/1227622330731335686

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#127

Post by xmly » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

Great theme! Nice to have it!

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#128

Post by joshgachnang » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

Nullabillity wrote: post #111

TameAntelope wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. Brand new project, no configuration? Runs like trash. And then you add in all the manager/PM overhead.

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#129

Post by yaml-ops-guy » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

I am truly amazed and impressed with how many different software you bothered to create a consistent design language for with this theme.

From Ableton, one of my favorite DAWs to Blender, one of my favorite tools for modeling.

Like seriously, WELL DONE, friend. I'm happily making my way to checkout right now, thanks for sharing this with us

Re: A solo journey to $100k in sales

#130

Post by zenorocha » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

jqquah wrote: post #101

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 man Really enjoyed reading the journey, it was long but wow.

I'm glad this was helpful!