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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#111

Post by lightning19 »

anyfactor wrote: post #36
jarebear6expepj wrote: post #5

I ran a collection of websites that I built (see bolted together) with PHP, MySQL, and nginx. Most of them were curated media sites which made income with advertising revenue. A few services, most notably was a dating site I made for Mormons, which the church interestingly enough used a blind broker to buy and shut down within a year of going live. I mostly ran the websites in to the ground with my custom wannabe fra…

Any tips on how to run a site on a 5 dollar vps? I built an MVP on a 5 dollar VPS. But I had to recently upgrade to a 12 dollar VPS as some of my analytics process were being stopped because of low memory. Aside from writing better code, I found out that using linux utils/app via system calls is the most effective solution as nothing I can write can ever be even remotely as performant as something like grep. I am fol…

I run a SaaS that makes between $1000-$2000/yr on a $5 VM. My operations are as follows:

On the VM:

- Nodejs + React SSR

- Nginx

- Certbot to manage my SSL cert

- Integrated with Grafana's cloud service (free tier)

Outside of the VM:

- Managed MongoDB cluster

- API health check's every 3 min with email alerts (I use multiple uptime services to check from different regions) - DB backup cron jobs, backups are stored in 2 cloud providers

- Service desk for customer's to send queries/raise issues

- Alerts if CPU/RAM usage is too high (never got an alert for the past 2 years)

I also nuke the VM once a year and re-provision otherwise you have to maintain the OS, do cleanup etc.

Future work:

- Find way to backup my DNS records

- Probably need to monitor the SSL cert expiration in case certbot breaks

- CI/CD

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#112

Post by LoganDark »

msbroadf wrote: post #8

I have run my one-man business for 13 years now. https://www.virtualhere.com . Back then I saw the market moving to the cloud and thought bringing device access there was needed. There was no one really doing this cheaply and easily. I posted a link to my software on the raspberrypi forum when that board came out and started getting my customers immediately that way. It took a year to write the initial software. Ive…

Oh, the VirtualHere website does a really good job of hiding the fact that it's paid - I did all the research and was really excited about a convenient solution until I found out that it's $50. Whoops.

Though I guess I should've expected that on a comment thread about businesses, heh~

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#113

Post by LoganDark »

msbroadf wrote: post #63
RileyJames wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s awesome! Congrats. Are there any feature requests / product directions that have been requested, that you’ve rejected / neglected? For better or worse. Solo building is often about hard decisions on what NOT to do. And with a generic piece of software like this, I imagine there are plenty of niche operators asking for “just one thing to make it perfect for xxxxx”

Yes generally i reject any request if its customization just for one customer. I try to generalize the change by e.g adding an API call. Also i get requests to keep xp/win7 support which i reject often. The biggest thing I learned is to basically do nothing on the product, unless its needed. I used to be tempted to change things/add features for fun and for a challenge but its a mistake. The reason is it might introd…

> Also i get requests to keep xp/win7 support which i reject often

XP sure but win7?

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#114

Post by fshr »

LoganDark wrote: post #113
msbroadf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes generally i reject any request if its customization just for one customer. I try to generalize the change by e.g adding an API call. Also i get requests to keep xp/win7 support which i reject often. The biggest thing I learned is to basically do nothing on the product, unless its needed. I used to be tempted to change things/add features for fun and for a challenge but its a mistake. The reason is it might introd…

> Also i get requests to keep xp/win7 support which i reject often XP sure but win7?

Microsoft ended extended support for Win7 in 2020 and security updates in Jan this year. Seems reasonable to stop supporting it for third party, networked software.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#115

Post by smarri »

sahillavingia wrote: post #49

Gumroad has one FTE (me) and 21 part-time contractors. I write more about it here: https://sahillavingia.com/work It was a natural outgrowth of working remote and then async to lean on the hourly contractor model. It’s a little tough to scale, so we built some custom software to do payroll, contracts, etc: https://flexile.com

I read your book not long ago, thoroughly enjoyed it. One of the best business books I've read in a long time.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#116

Post by msz-g-w »

LoganDark wrote: post #112
msbroadf wrote: post #8

I have run my one-man business for 13 years now. https://www.virtualhere.com . Back then I saw the market moving to the cloud and thought bringing device access there was needed. There was no one really doing this cheaply and easily. I posted a link to my software on the raspberrypi forum when that board came out and started getting my customers immediately that way. It took a year to write the initial software. Ive…

Oh, the VirtualHere website does a really good job of hiding the fact that it's paid - I did all the research and was really excited about a convenient solution until I found out that it's $50. Whoops. Though I guess I should've expected that on a comment thread about businesses , heh~

But... there's literally a "Purchase" link in the top menu bar. Should it have a big blinking box saying "IT AIN'T FREE"?

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#117

Post by beatthatflight »

oars wrote: post #50
beatthatflight wrote: post #39

https://beatthatflight.com.au/ Started 5 years ago next month. Flight/hotel/car rental search, plus deals that I find for Australians. Running it is actually fairly easy. It started as a deals site, then I added in some whitelabeled software, mailing list, fb page, and frankly it's a numbers game - more visitors = more ads/affiliate revenue. It's not huge, but it's been interesting at least, and very little in the wa…

Huge fan of your site. My wife is Australian, and moved here to be with her. I used your site when purchasing my one-way ticket!

You're very kind, thank you! Glad it was of help!

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#118

Post by kamphey »

replwoacause wrote: post #90
kamphey wrote: post #53

For the past 3 years I've been running https://bettersheets.co/ Originally as a side project while I tried to start and run SaaS. But people kept buying memberships (lifetime deals) and I just kept adding content to it. In the past year I've hired a ruby on rails developer to help me scale, on a part-time basis. And I've been making products within the Better Sheets umbrella myself in sheets. The developer is helping…

Thanks for sharing your revenue, I didn't see anybody else do that here.

Happy to share. Its a rough journey for everyone.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#119

Post by LoganDark »

msz-g-w wrote: post #116
LoganDark wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, the VirtualHere website does a really good job of hiding the fact that it's paid - I did all the research and was really excited about a convenient solution until I found out that it's $50. Whoops. Though I guess I should've expected that on a comment thread about businesses , heh~

But... there's literally a "Purchase" link in the top menu bar. Should it have a big blinking box saying "IT AIN'T FREE"?

> there's literally a "Purchase" link in the top menu bar

Yeah, that's... how I found out? It actually took me around a minute to find that once I started looking for some sort of download. Maybe I just scan websites differently than you do, but it was somehow difficult.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#120

Post by anyfactor »

lightning19 wrote: post #111
anyfactor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any tips on how to run a site on a 5 dollar vps? I built an MVP on a 5 dollar VPS. But I had to recently upgrade to a 12 dollar VPS as some of my analytics process were being stopped because of low memory. Aside from writing better code, I found out that using linux utils/app via system calls is the most effective solution as nothing I can write can ever be even remotely as performant as something like grep. I am fol…

I run a SaaS that makes between $1000-$2000/yr on a $5 VM. My operations are as follows: On the VM: - Nodejs + React SSR - Nginx - Certbot to manage my SSL cert - Integrated with Grafana's cloud service (free tier) Outside of the VM: - Managed MongoDB cluster - API health check's every 3 min with email alerts (I use multiple uptime services to check from different regions) - DB backup cron jobs, backups are stored in…

That is really awesome.

> nuke the VM once a year and re-provision otherwise you have to maintain the OS, do cleanup etc

That is really interesting. What are you using to re-setup your entire infrastructure after purging a VM? How do you manage the down time between one vm purge to setting up the next one.

I would love to know, going beyond the VPS what is your total infrastructure + maintenance cost.

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