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Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#161

Post by wahnfrieden »

rd wrote: post #129
wahnfrieden wrote: post #98

Surprised how few of these answers involve automating revenue, mostly selling continued labor Currently the best I've made is from iOS apps with little to no server backend, or async server-sync'd offline-first local DBs tolerant of downtime to minimize on-call requirements. I make money through recurring IAP, and offer student etc. discounted rates without any verification to capture more sales. These apps grow orga…

I'm trying to get into this. Have a ton of ideas for apps that I know I would myself find useful, just don't know if they would ever be noticed by anyone else but me. any tips?

I targeted a niche (Japanese language learning) with communities that already exist and discuss resources intensively. Then I built what they're looking for (and what I could tell from other language communities that they would like but aren't actively asking for) and went to those existing communities where people already are to introduce it. I also actively respond on Twitter, Reddit, other niche forums etc. and plug my couple apps in non-intrusive ways when relevant. My users also recommend the apps within these communities. Some journalists and competitor publications also mentioned/reviewed my apps which helped, without me pitching them. I think the niche I chose to start with is particularly good because it is full of many tech-oriented people who already share and discuss resources, and has people who are fatigued with overly-configurable setups and are looking for easier solutions.

I have plans for pushing this much further (getting people to spread word of mouth more actively, virality elements, interesting ways to share content) but this was enough to get going and quit my job.

I also put keywords of some loosely competitive apps and former dead apps or Android-specific apps that people will still look for into iOS app store keywords so that my apps show up in search results. Technically not allowed but it is the norm and I see competitors do it with mine.

I also try to leverage everything I do in multiple ways, so that I have features I can reuse across other apps, a common foundation, etc. I'll start documenting these practices in the open under indiedevstack.com but haven't set that up yet.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#162

Post by dicriseg »

thesandlord wrote: post #59
dicriseg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great landing page. Did you create that yourselves? The one thing I seem to struggle with is creating a nice looking landing page - it's just not something I'm good at. If you used a third party, any chance you'd say who that was?

Co-founder here. We originally made the landing page in Webflow. This worked ok but had some negative SEO benefits because our main app was forced to be on a subdomain. We remade the page using a Tailwind template, which coincided with migrating our app to Tailwind. I highly recommend just using a template unless you are a designer, plenty of free or low cost ones out there. I like these: https://cruip.com/ Most impo…

I really appreciate the detailed response and the advice. Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#163

Post by roland35 »

Kept at embedded engineering personal projects through some years working as a backend web developer, and finally got a chance to interview for a big tech job and landed it! I am much happier now and I have no urge to do side projects as I scratch that itch at my day job. My desk is covered in electronics again!

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#164

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #95
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #60

I have businesses which gave me a taxable income of $4 million. Mostly passive. All of them are tech businesses. Started off with a few foundational ideas I came up with through trial and error over 10 years.

Amazing! Care to elaborate more?

I won't give away the exact niches but they are in the universal, evergreen problems: wealth, health and love.

I charge really high around $300 per month. That way you cut through the b.s. and it is clear you are delivering value or not. Also helps with the marketing as I can get more per customer than I spend on acquiring them.

Usually saas businesses all seem to charge really low like $10 / month for some reason. That is a mistake in my opinion.

There are lot of wealthy people in the world for whom $300 and even higher is nothing if it totally solves a problem.

I also provide human customer support because of that high price point so they like it if they have a problem.

Then I hired managers for each business who manage it for me and now it is almost a replicable model that I can use when starting any business.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#165

Post by michaelsalim »

giegs wrote: post #138
lawkwok wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I know the name of the phone size comparing app? That sounds very interesting!

Sure if you give me a way to contact you.

Very interested in this too. Would love to see the app myself. My email is in my bio, thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#166

Post by ipaddr »

mrichman wrote: post #158
itake wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. JW what rate do you charge and whats your stack? I do about $60k/yr at 8-10hrs per week at $130/hr. Not sure if I am under charging. If you bill more than me, any advice on how to find bigger clients?

Why on earth do you bill by the hour? You should be doing fixed fee based on value.

Good luck holding the bag when your client changes/misunderstands requirements.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#167

Post by windowshopping »

fxtentacle wrote: post #100

https://www.newaudiotechnology.com/ A shared friend introduced me to someone who claimed to be a struggling Hollywood genius. We were all drinking at some university party. He told us about all the cool shit he would do if only technology wasn't so bad. So I built a tool to solve his issues. To my surprise, he used it on the Expendables 3 blurays. Later, the audio crew for George Lukas' Red Tails praised the tool in…

I'm a bit confused - this doesn't look like a quick tool built to solve one issue - this links to what appears to be a whole company with many sophisticated products. You did this all yourself?

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#168

Post by sohnakukkar »

sarora27 wrote: post #52
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's impressive, how did you go about marketing those?

The b2b saas was a grind tbh. Lots of cold emailing directors & VPs. Classic top down sales motion. For Kbee, I actually wrote up our journey here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/our-journey-from-idea-to-p... Would love to know what you think and if you have any follow up questions :)

How do you find companies for cold calling? Where do you find phone numbers?

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#169

Post by gualang »

Suing lawyers as side income. we all know most lawyers are scummy using all sorts of deceit to gain advantage. However in the increasing documented world, it is a matter of digging(using text search) to find fault with the offending lawyer's deceit and then file a DIY action in court.

I am involved in estate litigation since 2016 where I discovered collusion by many lawyers with the estate administrator to defraud the estate. Our laws for anti corruption are stringent in my country where a lawyer causing a beneficiary damage as the estate's lawyer is liable for 20 yrs imprisonment and 5x penalty fine for the gratification received.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#170

Post by Mushhh »

Aromasin wrote: post #149
Mushhh wrote: post #16

My partner and I created a very successful business in the UK out of selling mushroom grow kits and microscopy spores. We didn’t think there would be any market here because there weren’t any UK shops doing it. Then a couple of years later it took off and growing mushrooms became cool. In this time we learned how to run a webshop and navigate an industry where every payment processor dropped us - to the point where w…

This is one of those business ideas that I must have had around the same time, but never pursued because I was studying; figured engineering would make me more more than selling mushroom growing kits and spores ever would. I had a large setup in my shed for a few years. Lots of labor getting the substrate boiled and bagged, but once that was done it was easy. Figured that surely there was legs to selling the means of…

I dare you to try it and see. You might be surprised! Competition is healthy and we don’t personally feel like we have enough of it yet :)
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