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Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping

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Re: Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping

#151
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there were a few. But I try to always keep the cost of failure small. This is how I try to be frugal. * I see a potential problem, see if I can solve it. See if it's already being solved, if not I pitch the idea to few people. If atleast 50% got excited. I pick this idea to build * I set a goal on day 1 on what the microstartup should achieve once its launched. * I try to take no more than 4 weeks to build it. *…

Indie hackers : IH? What's PH?

Ah, Product Hunt

Re: Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a partner that works in a UN run institution as a researcher I have seen first hand how bureaucratic and starved for funds that entity truly is. Getting funds for paperclips is a massive battle.

How are they passing around TPS reports without paperclips ?

From what I hear they used to just staple them together, what with the lack of paperclips.

But now the stapler seems to have gone missing.

Its quite the pickle.

Re: Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping

#153
post #101
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have first-hand contact with your potential users, and you don't know where they are, then you likely lack the empathy to build a great product for them.

For anyone scrolling by and getting sucker punched by halpert here, I'd like you to know that not being surrounded by people whose problems can be solved with software startups doesn't mean you 'lack empathy'.

I think boffinism's comment below hits it, but to also add -- its important to try and find a charitable interpretation of comments when possible. Here I think empathy was meant literally as understanding other people's needs and points of view. If you don't know people with some problem directly, and also don't know how to find them -- how sure are you that the problem you are solving is real and in need of a practical solution? You have to understand user needs very well to build a novel product that people want to use. Its not about software startups solving the worlds problems -- I think its just a very general point about solving problems you understand and not ones you don't have any experience with.

To give a more concrete example, I know of a successul life insurance company. It was started because the founders had a bad experience with purchasing life insurance. They then worked with (and as) life insurance agents to better understand the customer (and insurer's) needs. THEN they built a company, one solution at a time.

Re: Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping

#154
post #127
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, the OP means he spends 10% of his work time on this, not 10% of the 8760 hours in a year on it.

10 % of their work time is not a very well defined amount of time, though. If this is their only occupation, then it's 100 % of their work time. If they have a different primary occupation, then 10 % of that depends entirely on how much they spend on that!

You might be over thinking this, most people think of “work time” as 40 hours a week. So just think 10% of that, i.e. 4 hours.

Re: Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping

#156
post #81

You wrote elsewhere that you validate within the first four weeks. How exactly do you do that? What if you have no Twitter following or very little social media presence? How can you get people to listen to you and say yes/no? I’ve tried micro startups in the past. I build a landing page, get Google AdWords, maybe put out a post on Reddit or HN, and then…nothing. No signups, no comments. Maybe I’ve just picked the wr…

Not OP, but validating ideas is (relatively) easy. First, you figure out who will use your product. Then, you get a few of those people to use or discuss your product. You only need a few people, and they can be close acquaintances. After showing the product to a few people you imagine to use your product, you come to a determination of whether or not they liked your product. This part is a little subtle. You don't a…

> NONE of those people are excited enough about your business to share it with others, then what chance of success do you really have?

Thanks for writing this.

Re: Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping

#157

Any hints on how others can do this? I am on disability but if I can earn more with Microstartups it would be better.

I empathize with you. I applied for disability and am really limited in my ability to work. But I want to create income-generating businesses so I can have income that's not directly tied to my time and effort.

Depending on your disabilities it may be a tough road. The common wisdom is that most businesses fail — it takes a lot of skill, creativity, luck, and hard work to make a business that generates income, even for people without disabilities. I would say if money is your sole objective you might be better off doing light contracting work.

For generating business ideas, you might look at this post from IndieHackers creator Courtland Allen. He lists a lot of the pitfalls about business ideas he's seen when interviewing indie hackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-to-brainstorm-great-bu...

You might also want to limit your idea generation to businesses that will reliably generate income month-to-month (if that's important to you). And if you want it to be lucrative you might consider a business that solves problems for other businesses (since they tend to have money and are willing to spend it if your service is valuable — it can be hard for consumer apps to be very lucrative).

One thing I learned as someone with limited abilities is that it helps to be very clear about your own goals and spend some time thinking about a roadmap of what tasks (marketing, developing, etc) will help get you there. This is so you can minimize wasted time and effort, which is extra precious when you're limited.

I made https://extensionpay.com and it generates a couple hundred dollars a month with very little ongoing effort. It also helps other developers generate revenue from their browser extensions, so that gives me a good feeling.

Re: Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping

#158
post #147

If folks enjoy these types of posts, check out https://www.indiehackers.com/ , which is an entire community of folks like this.

Anyone have invite code? I would love to join. Email address in about.

Would love to get an invite code myself. Thank you, mine is also in the about.

Re: Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping

#159

There has been a few posts recently on HN where people tell us about their success with side projects/small products that actually make them a decent living. It's inspiring to say the least. What's most attractive to me is the claim that the creators now spend little to no time on maintaining or fixing the products, and it just sits there and makes money. Is this actually a realistic representation? If I just think a…

You need to distinguish between what _can_ be done and what _needs_ to be done. Let go of perfection and only do the necessary, then you can realize maintainance with very little time investment. This obviously does not work if you feel like all your code's libraries must always be on the newest version because simply keeping several projects' code running with the latest thing is quite a bit of work. I have a profit…

> You need to distinguish between what _can_ be done and what _needs_ to be done.

I think part of making this distinction comes down to whether the creator thinks the product will ever be 'done'. A lot of products are run with the assumption (implicit or explicit) that they'll keep getting updated as long as they remain viable as a business. Either approach is a valid but they're both choices. Though you may have to choose right from the start, as for some products only one of the two is viable.

Re: Tell HN: My Microstartups make $500/day while I'm sleeping

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a fortune off two web sites that sat there and basically did their thing. I essentially did about an hour's work a week for 5 years and took home about $150,000 a year. The first was a mortgage web site. I bought a domain for $6000 that matched a top mortgage search term. The front page of the site scraped the latest mortgage rates, and the rest of the site was well-written mortgage advice written by me and Fi…

> private TV torrent tracker Cool, I used to run a service where I break into peoples' homes, take everything I can carry and sell them on. With this business, I was able to make $35 million in 2014. Non-taxable income, obviously.

Great analogy! Oh wait, it's not and your comment offers nothing of substance to the conversation.
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