Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the site/app targeted towards educators or students?
What's the website called?
> I'm happy to answer any questions that don't give away what the site actually is.
Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
161–170 of 289 posts
Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
"May you come to the attention of powerful people." -- Old Chinese curse
It's not even that. Oftentimes many of the recurring services are easily replicable. So until a market leadership position is cemented (until you set up the moat) you don't want others to know that building XYZ service actually could be significantly profitable.
This is true, but also, competitors may find some of your strategies and numbers here. I know for a fact that people sign up for competitor services just to see what they are doing. I have live chat on my sales site and I have had competitors tell me they are ripping off my content, copy, etc...
Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
#163A 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 site looks awesome and appears to have great monetization with links to amazon and ads from the BlogHer network. I recommend you experiment with "Add To Cart" links and buttons instead of "View On Amazon" because the cookie with a link to Amazon only lasts 24 hours and if they come back later and then buy the item you will not receive credit. But if you use the "Add To Cart" button, the cookie lasts 90 days! This…
So that essentially gives you credit on their next purchase assuming they don't remove it from their cart immediately?
Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
#164$0, but hey I just launched. Asked again in a year. (For those interested, it's a security plugin for Wordpress: http://www.panic-press.com )
I recommend putting some sort of security seal or emblem instead of just "Protected." on the pricing page or and some other places... http://www.panic-press.com/pricing
Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your backup revenue plan in event of an adsense ban?
None, it would be disastrous. I would probably work with other ad networks, but that wouldn't be cost effective to monetize my long tail of smaller sites. It would lead to a significant, if not huge, drop in revenue. You do get in personal contact with people at Google starting at some level of revenue though. So if it ever happened, I guess I would see it coming in some way.
Why wouldn't other ad networks be as effective as Google Adsense?
What makes Adsense unique?
Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
#166I'm the proud Loser of the bunch, behold my magnificent FAILS. (The ironic thing is, I do UI/UX consulting. So I make time to optimize other people's sites but not my own) http://residentevilradio.com = -$10/month in shoutcast server hosting (will switch to HTML5/Flash jukebox soon) http://timeforzen.com = $0 no monetization or affiliate links yet http://tasck.com/2 (NOT finished, PRE-ALPHA) = $0 no monetization or a…
Here is the fail thread:
Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
#167Seems I commented on this last year, so what the heck: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month Sales are up by about 40% year-to-date over last year, owing to a combination of increased AdWords spend, organic growth in the business, and a successful redesign (and related conversion optimization) right before summer. Appointment Reminder is doing fairly decently -- monthly recurring revenues (on the publi…
I'd like to hear your thoughts about mobile. Everybody seems to be stampeding in that direction right now but you seem to have ignored it so far. Is this a deliberate decision or just a question of sticking to tools/platforms you're more familiar with?
I don't love the kingmaking economics of App Store distribution and don't know how to work them to my advantage. Price points for mobile apps are two to three orders of magnitude lower than software I routinely sell. The stores seem to be dominated by design, something that I am not good at. I prefer writing Rails to Java or Objective C. My consulting clients largely sell B2B software, and fairly little of that is currently mobile.
That said, there is literally infinite software that I personally will never write. That doesn't necessarily mean I would recommend against HNers looking at those projects either.
Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
#168I make about $5/month on Food Trucks Near Me [1] through ads. At least it's not losing money! [1] http://foodtrucksnearme.com
PUT MORE ADS! In between each row should be an ad unit! Contact all the Food Truck owners and get them to put up an ad on a monthly basis. Food Truck owners are relatively easy to sell to (I have experience here) because their business is small. Take that money and reinvest it back into generating traffic and build your own list of food truck customers and then charge for blasts etc...
Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
#169http://testplanmanagement.com = $2,000/month
http://courtdatereminder.com = ~$100/month
http://enigmatic.me = ~$200/month
http://jobs.consultutah.com = ~$30/month
http://rubytoolbox.com = ~$10/month
Re: Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
#170~10 bucks a month. http://hipsterorhomeless.com :|
Funny concept. Re-arrange the layout so that the ad units are on the left and right of the photos, not all the way down on the bottom. Also, allow for tagging so that the ads are more closely related. Also, after clicking the vote, it just takes me to the next page after quickly displaying the score, I want to know if the person is actually homeless or hipster? There are a few directions you can take this, and while I doubt it could ever be your main income source, you have potential to at least bring in a few hundred per month. ..