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Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

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Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#11

Post by xjones »

the_bear wrote: post #6

A couple of years ago I started a food blog with my mom (www.theyummylife.com). She does all the writing, and I do programming, design, and monetization. I spent a lot of time setting it up originally, but now it only takes a few hours each week of my time. Right now we're making $5000-6000/month after expenses, and I get 40% of that. My main business (a bootstrapped SaaS startup) generates more than that, but the pr…

Great job on both of those! Very impressive.

I definitely think the SaaS startup is relevant here. I just used the same title as the last thread, but personally I'd like to hear about any sort of recurring revenue. And as someone who's developing their own SaaS product right now, I need all the motivation I can get from others' success stories.

I don't wish to pressure you about your metrics, but how long did it take you to get your SaaS startup to where it is now? And are you working on it solo?

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#12

Post by Symbol »

genwin wrote: post #8
hsmyers wrote: post #5

At the moment: 1. 1,108.00 --- VA Disability 2. 100.00 --- Client retainer 3. 934.00 --- Social Security (starting in October) Total: 2142.00 Analysis: It is good to like Ramen Noodles! --hsm

Not to downplay your pain: I would love to get $934/month for SS! I've maxed out contributions for many decades but will probably get less than $500.

I'm 31 and fully expect Social Security / other entitlement programs to be non-existent in 30+ years. At least I'm helping some of you collect something today. Enjoy!

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#14

Post by noirman »

the_bear wrote: post #6

A couple of years ago I started a food blog with my mom (www.theyummylife.com). She does all the writing, and I do programming, design, and monetization. I spent a lot of time setting it up originally, but now it only takes a few hours each week of my time. Right now we're making $5000-6000/month after expenses, and I get 40% of that. My main business (a bootstrapped SaaS startup) generates more than that, but the pr…

The food blog is awesome! http://www.theyummylife.com/Refrigerator_Oatmeal

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#15

Post by the_bear »

irunbackwards wrote: post #7
the_bear wrote: post #6

A couple of years ago I started a food blog with my mom (www.theyummylife.com). She does all the writing, and I do programming, design, and monetization. I spent a lot of time setting it up originally, but now it only takes a few hours each week of my time. Right now we're making $5000-6000/month after expenses, and I get 40% of that. My main business (a bootstrapped SaaS startup) generates more than that, but the pr…

That's awesome, congratulations! Do you manage the PPC and stuff too? SEO?

Thanks! Yes, I handle everything except writing the actual content. That includes PPC, SEO, and making it easy for my mom to promote posts via Pinterest and Facebook (Pinterest is responsible for our success by the way).

Most of the revenue comes from the Amazon Affiliate program, but recently we've been making a decent amount off of display ads from the BlogHer ad network. Google AdSense contributes a little bit as well.

As for SEO, I wrote the blogging software from scratch (I don't like Wordpress) so the SEO is entirely under my control. I'm no SEO expert though, so I'm sure there are many things I could be doing better.

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#16

Post by ComNik »

I learned web-development while making a little price-tracking/wishlist app: http://www.rankique.com/ (and a german version, pretty much for myself to use..: http://www.rankique.de/)

Together they make about 30-50€/month. I'm working on a couple of new features and I'm searching for a new name, but currently school takes up most of my time.

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#17

Post by suresk »

I make between $200 - $400 per month off my HTTP testing tool: http://www.uresk.net/httpclient/

Not very impressive (who knew selling a niche tool in an environment where $5 is considered "expensive" wasn't the road to instant riches?), but it has been fun to make and it is always cool to hear about how useful the tool has been to fellow developers.

Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

#18

Post by the_bear »

xjones wrote: post #11
the_bear wrote: post #6

A couple of years ago I started a food blog with my mom (www.theyummylife.com). She does all the writing, and I do programming, design, and monetization. I spent a lot of time setting it up originally, but now it only takes a few hours each week of my time. Right now we're making $5000-6000/month after expenses, and I get 40% of that. My main business (a bootstrapped SaaS startup) generates more than that, but the pr…

Great job on both of those! Very impressive. I definitely think the SaaS startup is relevant here. I just used the same title as the last thread, but personally I'd like to hear about any sort of recurring revenue. And as someone who's developing their own SaaS product right now, I need all the motivation I can get from others' success stories. I don't wish to pressure you about your metrics, but how long did it take…

There's an internal debate right now about whether or not it makes sense to release specific numbers, but if I have my way, there will be a post on HackerNews in the future explaining exactly how much money we're making, and how we got where we are.

For now, here are some things you might find interesting/motivational:

-My brother and I started the company about three years ago. We launched an MVP in January 2010.

-After 6 months we had about 10 paying users (at $10/user/month). After 12 we had 50, after 18 we had 200. Since then things have picked up and we're adding >100 paying users each month now. Both my mom's blog, and the SaaS business took a long time to ramp up, but both had their tipping points after about 1.5 years.

-About a year ago we hired our first employee to help out with customer service and other random things. We plan on adding four more over the next couple of years, two of whom have already started working part-time.

I hope that helps. There's nothing better than seeing thousands of people passionately using a product you created, so stick with it!

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