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Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

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Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#121

Post by coopdog »

ksat wrote: post #69
WA wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a quick feedback from my side: It "feels" to me that this website is empty - that no people use it and that I'd have a hard time finding a developer. Maybe it's just me, but if other people feel the same, you might want to do something about it and give it more "life".

You mean as in a better design? This was designed by me and I am not that good designer. Will try to make it better

I think he means more people using it (classic network effect)

Maybe put out ads and have as free weekend or something? The idea is that everyone arrives there at the same time for a short period until there's enough people that it's always busy

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#122

Post by ktizo »

coderdude wrote: post #3

Beware of posts like this from what is basically a new account with only as much karma as this post has received. Sharks and all that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4017843 (Am I paranoid much?)

(Am I paranoid much?)

It isn't paranoid to try and develop good bullshit filters, bullshit abounds.

I reckon that at least ninety percent of what even the most rational and well informed people on the planet say, is probably bullshit, and the best trick for working out what bullshit other people might be talking that I have found, is to become aware of how much shit I talk myself, especially unintentionally, which is usually by repetition of something I heard that made sense at the time.

If something is truly important to you, triple check everything and test it against the real world in any way you can.

Take no-one's word on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter, purely on the basis that a story sounds reasonable. As a species we excel in storytelling.

That said, I am probably talking bullshit.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#123

Post by there »

joering2 wrote: post #118
there wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to work out accurate numbers because users can have such drastically different usage patterns. Some users have signed up with one device and have only received a few notifications, others have many devices registered and receive dozens of notifications daily from chat plugins. The API is free, though applications are limited to a reasonable number of messages per month. That was put into place out of fear t…

there: kudos to you for executing exact the idea I had as early as 2010! By any chance you could write an article on your experience with sells and marking? This is what most interests me! I am working on a project that will utilize Pushover so soon I will be a paid customer :) Also, about your revenue model. How did you calculate that $3.99 would be sufficient to make profit AND give service to users on "all you can…

I don't really have much experience in the way of sales and marketing, but my integration efforts so far have just been to setup Pushover applications with icons ahead of time and then e-mail admins with the API key and some explanation so they don't have to do much work. I did the Github integration and Adium plugin myself to increase visibility.

I went with $3.99 because Prowl is $2.99 and Notify My Android is $3.99. I'm not convinced that a yearly service is worth the overhead and I personally wouldn't pay to use a notification app that had a yearly fee.

The bandwidth and server overhead for running such a service are pretty low and iOS/Android push notifications are free, so I'm not really worried about monthly costs for normal users outweighing the revenue the app brings in. Right now Pushover is running on one of my servers that does other things, so it's not even really costing anything tangible. If costs start to go up, I can always increase the price of the apps to slow growth (or increase revenue if it doesn't slow growth).

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#124

Post by ksat »

coopdog wrote: post #121
ksat wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean as in a better design? This was designed by me and I am not that good designer. Will try to make it better

I think he means more people using it (classic network effect) Maybe put out ads and have as free weekend or something? The idea is that everyone arrives there at the same time for a short period until there's enough people that it's always busy

Got it! Thanks. Will try. May be eat my own dogfood and try and give it free for anyone who would solve a challenge :)

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#125

Post by Ark-kun »

oron wrote: post #17

I started a temporary email service called Air Mail which has processed over 2 million emails in the last 3 months and is already profitable. http://getairmail.com wish I had a cent for every email it processed ;-)

After briefly looking at your website, I think that mailinator.com looks to have superior features.

1) You don't even need to go to Mailinator to get an email address. You just know that any time you have any address you want on hand. 2) With Mailinator you just use any name when you register on some website. (generated names are suspicious) 3) Mailinator has different domains to avoid blacklisting (domain name doesn't matter. You just need to know the username to check your mail) 4) There are websites that try to you using Mailinator by trying to log is with the name of your e-mail. For these services you can use another generated name that can only be used for sending mail, not for logging in. 5) Mailinator does not retain your messages for long. Also everything is stored in memory (as far as I heard), so the messages cannot be stolen.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#126

Post by WA »

ksat wrote: post #69
WA wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a quick feedback from my side: It "feels" to me that this website is empty - that no people use it and that I'd have a hard time finding a developer. Maybe it's just me, but if other people feel the same, you might want to do something about it and give it more "life".

You mean as in a better design? This was designed by me and I am not that good designer. Will try to make it better

Yes, I mean both. You have a traditional chicken and egg problem. And the idea of giving a testing-weekend is very good.

But also the design is in my opinion slick and minimalistic, but a bit TOO minimalistic. The design itself does not suggest that people use this website. It looks like an API description or something like that. You put a lot of emphasis on the "how it works" but I, as a user, lack basically opportunities of using the website.

I guess if you put "top 5 recent projects" or something on the landing page, people would see instantly that there are other people using this website. Currently, when I visit the page, I feel very alone.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#127

Post by csomar »

I started a WordPress Plugin (http://wpadpress.com) and it's now generating a close to a 4 figures monthly income. I'm working on lots of improvements and will be joining hands with Theme authors for promotion, so it might turn to something serious in the future.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#128

Post by ivanhoe »

roel_v wrote: post #96
eaurouge wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nigeria is an English-speaking country, the other countries you listed are not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_speaking#List_of_Englis...

Well if we're going to play 'I'm right because Wikipedia says so' games, here's from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Nigeria : "English, however, remains an exclusive preserve of the country's urban elite, and is not widely spoken in rural areas. With approximately 75% of Nigeria's populace in the rural areas, the major languages of communication in the country remain national languages".

So you mean to say he's missing all these non-english speaking farmers from rural areas surfing the net looking for a hotel ?! C'mon, we all know what English speaking country means, it's official language there, just the same as in India (which also has a lot of other, local languages in use). People using Internet for sure know how to speak English, so this whole discussion is pointless.

Re: Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable?

#129

Post by c0balt279 »

mittermayr wrote: post #74

I created fruji.com, a simple Twitter Analytics service and offered $5 and $25 accounts. People just keep buying accounts! It's fascinating!!! This was a weekend project and it performs already way better (a few weeks in) than my 1.5 year startup (which is something completely different). That's some scary shit right there. Purely fascinating.

Did you do anything special to market it? (The site looks great, by the way)
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