171–180 of 197 posts
My technical blogs, while not technically a startup, do have the habit of making me mid-four figures per month with very few hours per month investment.
I just finished reading your book. It is very well done. I recomend it to everyone interested in this thread. ( http://technicalblogging.com )
I built Femtoo.com in my 'spare' time. It was built whilst working at a day job over the course of a year or so. It brings in a small amount of money each month and it pretty much requires no maintenance. However I would not say that it is profitable (yet), there is a fair way to go before it brings in enough money to have justified the time. I would spend more time implementing new features if I thought it would res…
* Use twitter bootstrap or some other framework to make the site look more professional.
* Why are the prices in weird denominations? $1.60 per month? Just make it $25/year.
* Don't show the social sharing button (G+) until you have a few hundred shares already
* Why is the video so small? Have screenshots on the homepage.
Basically, I'd suggest copying the style of a landing page of a well-known SAAS product. Nice bright colors, big fonts, screenshots, etc. I'm sure your product is feature complete, just work on design (or hire someone to make the above changes).
I have a start up in the black since 2006. All three partners contribute to the code, help debug, and provide customer support. All of us work at other jobs, or independently. Currently we use profits to pay anyone willing to work on the code and add features. It is self-sustaining, at least. See: http://www.examprofessor.com Comments, ideas, suggestions are welcome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>you're doing is not startuppy enough to count I have always had a problem with that. A start-up is a start-up if you decide it's a start-up and want to transform it into a viable business. There is no magic line that you have to cross to transform your project into a start-up. I always advice people to call their projects a start-up from the beginning.
> I always advice people to call their projects a start-up from the beginning Could you expand on why you advice this, meaning, what is the advantage of it? According to your post simple message above it could be the other way around (always call your startup a project).
Secondly, other people take it more seriously. Everyone has some sort of a side project, very few people have a start-up. They give you more time and listen to your more intently.
All anecdotal, no data to back any of the claims.
What's the point of this question? There are people who did that and that's possible. patio11 is one example and I must say very good one. I am example of person who has not managed to do that in 3 years but I have learned a lot and my trial contributed to my well-being in many positive ways. Some of those are like salary growing faster than planned and some are small but pleasant things like Nokia N950.
I would love to know why I am downvoted.
I have a start up in the black since 2006. All three partners contribute to the code, help debug, and provide customer support. All of us work at other jobs, or independently. Currently we use profits to pay anyone willing to work on the code and add features. It is self-sustaining, at least. See: http://www.examprofessor.com Comments, ideas, suggestions are welcome.
I just released http://www.examcommunity.com about two weeks ago... its a ghost town now... hopefully that will change.. How long did it take for you guys to get some traction?
We initially geared our site towards teachers, but later learned that wasn't the market that was willing to pay for our services. Maybe your experience will be different.
It is a slow process. About 1-2% of our customers convert to paying accounts. When we started limiting what was free it seems people stepped up to the bat and subscribed to a paying account.
Note - your prices seem very low. You could experiment with your price structure, people might value your service more than you realize.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. I started waking up at 6 am and working until 8:30 a month ago, and it's been a great boost in my productivity.
Cool. I've been having good luck with on and off. The hard part is getting back into an early sleep routine when I have the odd late night. Anything you do to help reset the routine?
I have two profitable SaaS products that were built while I was theoretically working full time on something else. I was a bit fortunate that my "something else" was Consulting, which you can ramp down by exactly as many hours per week as you'd like to devote to your side project. The thing is, if you use the term "Startup" here to describe anything other than a zero-profit 80hr/week scramble for VC funding and event…
Your latter input is appreciated, but I'm not sure being a "full-time consultant" qualifies you to answer this question, which is almost certainly directed at those with less daily flexibility. If my site explodes in activity while I'm at work, I can literally do nothing to sop up any problems that might arise, unless I decide to try to cash in sick time and head out early, or sit on my hands til I get home. A fullti…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love to know why I am downvoted.
Because you aren't contributing to the thread, just complaining.
1) I have encouraged question's author to do that anyway even if there will be no profit because that has indirect positive effect;
2) I have tried to point out that such question is wrong to ask and there is very simple reason for that. It will attract only people who have succeeded in doing that: they will write what they did, maybe how they did that and maybe will try to identify reasons why they succeeded (not necessary correctly).
For every successful startup there are 10 unsuccessful (unprofitable) and if stating the reality is complaining then well OK - all who downvoted me has right to live in their rosy dream illusion world where they get rich just by reading HN.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Submedia.tv? What is Submedia?
We put boxes on the walls of subway tunnels that, when the train passes, look like movie screens to riders. We sell ads on the displays on a monthly basis and share revenue with transit authority. Some videos here: http://www.submediaworld.com/submediaworld/Submedia_Tunnel_A... I also make art with the medium, but that's another story.