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Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

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Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#21

Post by blhack »

dpcan wrote: post #3

I'm not sure why you are using prgmr over Linode, Slicehost, or the Rackspace Cloud servers. The others have really simple backup tools.

I just looked at prgmr (I hate that name), and it looks like you can get a really really tiny VPS for $48 for a year. That's silly cheap.

I'm teaching a couple of the users on thingist python, and I've been wanting to give them accounts on a box so that they could have a real-world sandbox to play in...$48/yr lets me afford that pretty freaking easily.

prgmr sounds freakishly awesome. What was that site the other day? showoff.io or something? $5/mo for a VPS vs $5/mo for a dynamic DNS updater/NAT traversal mechanism.

(Just waiting for my instance to spin up now)

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#22

Post by stakent »

sp4rki wrote: post #10
patio11 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friendly reminder: test restoring from that, regularly. After your hard drive crashes is a bad time to learn that, e.g., zipping up a folder of MySQL files is not exactly backup best practice.

I'd expand this to actually take the time to implement (or make yourself) a system to automate said backups and maybe even testing them automagically. You'll probably end up using the same set of scripts for all your beginning projects and it'll be worth having.

Don't forget to check logs to make sure your automation actually works.

Periodically make full restore from bare metal or fresh VPS image using your backups and following written procedure.

Make corrections if something does not work as expected.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#23

Post by mootothemax »

misterbwong wrote: post #15
mootothemax wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, blog post author here. Over the last 18 months I've learned an incredible amount from the users here on Hacker News, and I figured that it's about time I started giving something back. None of my web apps make serious money, but they bring in enough to make a difference to life, and I'm hoping that my articles will help others get on the same path - if not somewhat more successfully! ;) Please feel free…

Thanks for writing this article. Looking at the timeline and the slowish traction really gives balance to the i-built-a-5000-a-day-app-in-three-days-in-my-PJs articles that tend to dominate the news. It's a good look at building an actual product that shows it's not all roses and hockey-stick adoptions.

Thanks for your thanks! :) That's why I wrote this - as I said, it's not a huge amount of money, but it's an enjoyable hobby, and great that it pays for a few meals out a month. The question on my mind is - can I do ten of these and make some real money? ;)

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#24

Post by mootothemax »

davidw wrote: post #16
mootothemax wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, blog post author here. Over the last 18 months I've learned an incredible amount from the users here on Hacker News, and I figured that it's about time I started giving something back. None of my web apps make serious money, but they bring in enough to make a difference to life, and I'm hoping that my articles will help others get on the same path - if not somewhat more successfully! ;) Please feel free…

Thanks for writing it up. I enjoy reading "success stories for the rest of us" sorts of things by people who aren't already famous, backed by VC's, etc... Rob Walling's book, "Start Small, Stay Small" has some pretty good advice for those of us in that boat: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YH9MMI?ie=UTF8&tag=...

I read that book by Rob Walling earlier on this year, excellent advice and, like you, I recommend it as well :)

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#26

Post by 2mur »

mootothemax wrote: post #8
patio11 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friendly reminder: test restoring from that, regularly. After your hard drive crashes is a bad time to learn that, e.g., zipping up a folder of MySQL files is not exactly backup best practice.

Thanks, great advice :) Right now I'm taking backups of dumps - slow, but a tiny bit easier to deal with. At some point I'm thinking about replicating to a slave somewhere, although to be honest I need to do some more reading about best practises.

Yes. Obviously, specifics will be dependent upon your exact situation, but it would be nice to have a small road-map for backups. I occasionally take my database dumps and fire up postgres on the home server and make sure I can restore the database. That's about as far as I take it usually. Probably not a robust failsafe, but it's what I do now.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#27

Post by nhangen »

misterbwong wrote: post #15
mootothemax wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, blog post author here. Over the last 18 months I've learned an incredible amount from the users here on Hacker News, and I figured that it's about time I started giving something back. None of my web apps make serious money, but they bring in enough to make a difference to life, and I'm hoping that my articles will help others get on the same path - if not somewhat more successfully! ;) Please feel free…

Thanks for writing this article. Looking at the timeline and the slowish traction really gives balance to the i-built-a-5000-a-day-app-in-three-days-in-my-PJs articles that tend to dominate the news. It's a good look at building an actual product that shows it's not all roses and hockey-stick adoptions.

I agree, and it's the dark hours that make the learning lessons explicit, rather than implicit or looking like luck.

Looking forward to the rest.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#28

Post by jimktrains2 »

rsoto wrote: post #17
mootothemax wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, blog post author here. Over the last 18 months I've learned an incredible amount from the users here on Hacker News, and I figured that it's about time I started giving something back. None of my web apps make serious money, but they bring in enough to make a difference to life, and I'm hoping that my articles will help others get on the same path - if not somewhat more successfully! ;) Please feel free…

please don't split your articles. however, it was a good read. thanks.

Splitting isn't a huge deal to me. It's hard to write sometimes, and getting a bit out there helps you get the rest out there.

Now, paginating articles (you know, it's not like there isn't infinite vertical space). That is a different story.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#29

Post by greyman »

mootothemax wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, blog post author here. Over the last 18 months I've learned an incredible amount from the users here on Hacker News, and I figured that it's about time I started giving something back. None of my web apps make serious money, but they bring in enough to make a difference to life, and I'm hoping that my articles will help others get on the same path - if not somewhat more successfully! ;) Please feel free…

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Btw, couldn't you earn more money by lowering the price? I personally find it too high.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#30

Post by mootothemax »

greyman wrote: post #29
mootothemax wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, blog post author here. Over the last 18 months I've learned an incredible amount from the users here on Hacker News, and I figured that it's about time I started giving something back. None of my web apps make serious money, but they bring in enough to make a difference to life, and I'm hoping that my articles will help others get on the same path - if not somewhat more successfully! ;) Please feel free…

Thank you for sharing your experience. Btw, couldn't you earn more money by lowering the price? I personally find it too high.

Btw, couldn't you earn more money by lowering the price? I personally find it too high.

I'll mention something about that in part II ;)

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