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Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

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Re: Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

#111

Post by capableweb »

trungdq88 wrote: post #50
gnicholas wrote: post #48

Aren't Show HNs supposed to link to the actual product for people to play with, not a blog post about making money? There's nothing wrong with sharing wins here, or new products. But it feels 'off' to me to see a Show HN next to a braggy blog title (I'm used to seeing plenty of either on their own, though!).

Sorry if I misused the Show HN. In this case, I want to show the journey and the story more than the product, and want to let people know I'm available for any questions like other Show HN posts. (I don't think the product itself is very interesting for the HN crowd)

On the "Show HN" page that shows all the Show HNs, there is a link in the top to the rules for Show HN, in case you've missed it. It's pointing to https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

TLDR is:

> Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread.

> Off topic: blog posts, sign-up pages, newsletters, lists, and other reading material. Those can't be tried out, so can't be Show HNs. Make a regular submission instead.

Re: Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

#112

Post by xuki »

trungdq88 wrote: post #87
xuki wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the breakdown of that? $600 is 20% of your revenue, and that’s a lot.

It's for EC2, RDS, and bandwidth, mostly evenly contributed. I‘m running the system at 70% spare capacity. I'm not worrying too much about the cost as of now because I have some free credits to spend. Also, it's more rewarding to double my revenue instead of halving my server cost.

> it's more rewarding to double my revenue instead of halving my server cost.

How about cutting that cost to 1/10 of what you’re paying AWS, for a much better server? Since you’re running EC2, I assume you’re able to manage a server. Get a Heztner server and run your db locally:

https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ax?count...

Run back up hourly if you need to. You do not need AWS, not for what you’re using them for.

Re: Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

#113

Post by globalise83 »

suigetsusake wrote: post #58
trungdq88 wrote: post #2

Hello HN, I see another post sharing their success micro startups today on HN so I thought I should share mine. I started working on this browser extension for Twitter 8 months ago. It took 3 months to reach $60/mo, 3 more to reach $400/mo, and 2 more to reach $3K/mo – where I am now. When I start, I had 0 followers on Twitter. When it reaches $400/mo, I quit my job. I now live freely from corporate drama and travel…

Being able to see a quick video of each feature in the pricing page is a genius idea ! How do you generate those and keep them up to date though ? Congrats for your success

Good question!! - there is definitely a market for a product for automatically capturing UI screenshots and demos on every UI release, with a permalink usable in documentation that will always show the latest image / video. Could be driven by an existing automated test framework. I know this as a web UI product owner with several years experience in enterprise software doing documentation updates after new features are added.

Re: Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

#114

Post by sdiepend »

trungdq88 wrote: post #104
Timwi wrote: post #100

Hate to be the party pooper, but the fact that you could talk about nothing but marketing and money and never spend a single word telling us what the software even does, speaks volumes on where your priorities lie. I am left with the impression that the software probably does nothing special, or even useful, and if I ever have any issues with it or suggestions for improvement, I will probably be completely ignored un…

Sorry that the post give you that impression. I do have some links in the post that link to the product, but yeah I agree the context is a bit vague for the HN crowd. I added a small notice to the post hopefully to fix it. FYI, I'm not trying to promote the product, it's the story I want to share. Cheers!

I really appreciate you taking your chances and building something for yourself and being able the live off of it is even better. I'd call it "hack your life" ;) and find Timwi's reaction overly negative.

I also share the feeling it could have been a Tell HN instead of a Show HN.

But let's be honest, of course you want to promote your product. It's not a bad thing to admit that.

Re: Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

#115

Post by d3vmax »

Great job. Love the value provided, design and landing page too. Also its great you made a mobile app as well.

I don't care what others tell you. All it takes is 1 more click to check out your whole product.

You are providing value to those who use twitter heavily and don't get enough data from twitter to take meaningful action.

Similarly I find Instagram to provide very basic analytics / data, do you want to collab on creating something similar for Instagram or snap?

Re: Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

#116

Post by vcool07 »

vsnf wrote: post #10

Something I’ve noticed in many of these threads showcasing successful products is that they all focus on marketing. Advertising software, analytics software, etc. I rarely (never?) see any one post about their successful non marketing solution.

Maybe a wild guess, but anything thats not related to ads/marketing/analytics etc., are too difficult to monetize by a solo founder ? Or maybe the other areas too difficult to get into not just in terms of software complexity, but in terms of support requirement , availability SLAs etc ?

Re: Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

#117

Post by gjs278 »

trungdq88 wrote: post #50
gnicholas wrote: post #48

Aren't Show HNs supposed to link to the actual product for people to play with, not a blog post about making money? There's nothing wrong with sharing wins here, or new products. But it feels 'off' to me to see a Show HN next to a braggy blog title (I'm used to seeing plenty of either on their own, though!).

Sorry if I misused the Show HN. In this case, I want to show the journey and the story more than the product, and want to let people know I'm available for any questions like other Show HN posts. (I don't think the product itself is very interesting for the HN crowd)

No post body was provided.

Re: Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

#118

Post by trungdq88 »

sdiepend wrote: post #114
trungdq88 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry that the post give you that impression. I do have some links in the post that link to the product, but yeah I agree the context is a bit vague for the HN crowd. I added a small notice to the post hopefully to fix it. FYI, I'm not trying to promote the product, it's the story I want to share. Cheers!

I really appreciate you taking your chances and building something for yourself and being able the live off of it is even better. I'd call it "hack your life" ;) and find Timwi's reaction overly negative. I also share the feeling it could have been a Tell HN instead of a Show HN. But let's be honest, of course you want to promote your product. It's not a bad thing to admit that.

Thanks, sdiepend! I definitely should have used “Tell HN”

Re: Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

#119

Post by trungdq88 »

d3vmax wrote: post #115

Great job. Love the value provided, design and landing page too. Also its great you made a mobile app as well. I don't care what others tell you. All it takes is 1 more click to check out your whole product. You are providing value to those who use twitter heavily and don't get enough data from twitter to take meaningful action. Similarly I find Instagram to provide very basic analytics / data, do you want to collab…

Thank you for the kind words! As of now I don't have enough capacity to take on another project, but let's keep in touch!

Re: Show HN: I make $3K/mo from a browser extension

#120

Post by trungdq88 »

xuki wrote: post #112
trungdq88 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's for EC2, RDS, and bandwidth, mostly evenly contributed. I‘m running the system at 70% spare capacity. I'm not worrying too much about the cost as of now because I have some free credits to spend. Also, it's more rewarding to double my revenue instead of halving my server cost.

> it's more rewarding to double my revenue instead of halving my server cost. How about cutting that cost to 1/10 of what you’re paying AWS, for a much better server? Since you’re running EC2, I assume you’re able to manage a server. Get a Heztner server and run your db locally: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-ax?count... Run back up hourly if you need to. You do not need AWS, not for what you’re…

I have expiring free credits and I really like RDS Performance Insights :)

I would probably move to somewhere else after the credits run out. Will check out Heyzner then. Thanks for recommending.

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