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Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

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Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#191

Post by patio11 »

meerkats1 wrote: post #124

Congrats on the success. Do you have concerns that posting details publicly, including showing internal financial numbers, for a business that has virtually no barrier to entry will invite competition? From the other comments I'm seeing here it looks as though people are already making their plans and running back of the envelope calculations. I would expect at least 5 new competitors to pop up as a result of this po…

Making plans and running back of the envelope calculations is easy and fun; businesses actually require violent execution. I spent almost 10 years doing an objectively easier business. I wrote a million words about it, including substantially all of the non-obvious secret sauce about e.g. our SEO strategy. I got a variant of your comment more than monthly: the competitors are coming, the competitors are coming! And the competitors did, in fact, come... with C grade execution that had minimal impact on me.

I will note that the conversion rate between "I will totes clone your business in a weekend" and actually cloning the business was far, far below 1%.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#192

Post by prawn »

chrischen wrote: post #25
csallen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a question! (Even though I could've just asked you this during the interview itself.) You say that you've automated most of the process of running the business: "I've gradually adapted the software over time to automate every process, and generally I only have to step in in rare instances of high-level disputes." How much time do you spend working nowadays? And on what? What's your typical day look like?

It's passive income in the sense that if I just dropped everything and played video games all day, the income would sustain itself. However that's far from what I actually do :). It simply means I can free myself up to work on new features or increase revenue. So I'm still working about on average 5-8 hours per day, 6-7 days a week. I like to travel a bit, and work while traveling. Since I have no employees, this mak…

Do you have a partner or children to account for when working while travelling?

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#193

Post by chrischen »

ska wrote: post #98
chrischen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's passive income in the sense that if I just dropped everything and played video games all day, the income would sustain itself. However that's far from what I actually do :). It simply means I can free myself up to work on new features or increase revenue. So I'm still working about on average 5-8 hours per day, 6-7 days a week. I like to travel a bit, and work while traveling. Since I have no employees, this mak…

So it is not passive. That's ok, almost all "passive income" isn't, and the term has been abused into near uselessness. Sounds like the term you are actually looking for is "lifestyle business" Nothing wrong than that, and it's a more sensible (i.e. well defined) goal that passive income.

It is passive. The revnue quoted is not sustained by the regular work. That I put into the service. As I stated, if I stopped working then that income would stay, and be considered passive.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#194

Post by chrischen »

antaviana wrote: post #97
chrischen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's passive income in the sense that if I just dropped everything and played video games all day, the income would sustain itself. However that's far from what I actually do :). It simply means I can free myself up to work on new features or increase revenue. So I'm still working about on average 5-8 hours per day, 6-7 days a week. I like to travel a bit, and work while traveling. Since I have no employees, this mak…

Do you ever take several days off? Like a two-three week vacation without being online at all. This is what I find most difficult to do for a 1-employee operation that offers a 24/7 service.

All the time. Customer service is handled by the sellers directly.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#195

Post by hilop »

angus-prune wrote: post #145
amenod wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that he already has the robot which can paint, wouldn't it be easy (well, doable at least :) to really paint the picture instead of printing it? There is no reason why this kind of painting should be any different from the manually produced.

There is a missing piece of automation here still. The robot can replicate recorded movements - brush angle, pressure, timing etc. An photoshop filter can shift pixels around to make a photo look like an oil painting. What nobody has come up with yet (and would likely be hard to develop, or at least costly) is a way to translate a photograph, or a photoshop filter into the set of movements required to render it in ph…

For copying a painting, you could fake it with a 3-D printer that reproduces a depth+scanned painting and a topcoat of paint

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#197

Post by ska »

chrischen wrote: post #193
ska wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is not passive. That's ok, almost all "passive income" isn't, and the term has been abused into near uselessness. Sounds like the term you are actually looking for is "lifestyle business" Nothing wrong than that, and it's a more sensible (i.e. well defined) goal that passive income.

It is passive. The revnue quoted is not sustained by the regular work. That I put into the service. As I stated, if I stopped working then that income would stay, and be considered passive.

Would it? Or would it slowly decrease? Nearly all businesses have some momentum, after all.

If you can walk away for say a year without touching it at all and the revenue remains basically steady, I'll agree it is passive.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter - it sounds like you are working at growing a business you enjoy and that's great.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#198

Post by robryan »

chrischen wrote: post #193
ska wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is not passive. That's ok, almost all "passive income" isn't, and the term has been abused into near uselessness. Sounds like the term you are actually looking for is "lifestyle business" Nothing wrong than that, and it's a more sensible (i.e. well defined) goal that passive income.

It is passive. The revnue quoted is not sustained by the regular work. That I put into the service. As I stated, if I stopped working then that income would stay, and be considered passive.

Presumably though, if you put full time hours in now and obtain a certain amount of revenue/ growth, cutting out those hours would likely see revenue fall off over time, at least from where you would be working full time.

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#199

Post by benlambert »

rockdiesel wrote: post #184
TheGRS wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you have agreed if it were a discount instead of an added charge? i.e. Yes is -$3?

Are you saying I either have to pay $3 to opt out or save $3 to opt in? Or are you saying the base price remains the same if I opt out, but I would get a $3 discount if I opt in? I would find scenario #2 a more suitable option. Meaning I'd happily pay the standard price in exchange for opting out, but people who choose to opt in receive a small discount in exchange for their willingness to be used as marketing collat…

Q. Price $120. Can we use this as a sample? (Yes: -$3)

A. Happy to pay the full price!

--

Q. Price $117. Can we use this as a sample? (No: +$3)

A. No fucking way I'm paying $3 NOT appear in your gallery of samples!

Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees

#200

Post by b2600 »

qwrusz wrote: post #147
chrischen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! Thanks for the comment! All I can say is that the reason I don't charge more is it'd just be lining my pockets since the artists set their prices at a pretty consistent rate. I don't get lower rates from the artists than my competitors, so I just undercut them in final retail price instead.

> the reason I don't charge more is it'd just be lining my pockets What's wrong with lining your pockets? This is a business no?

That's not how business works. Unless you want transitory success.
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