How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#211

Post by zorga » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

jamil7 wrote: post #175

zorga wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a millennial myself, I would like the need for income taken off the table In other words, I'd like someone else to pay for taking care of me, my shelter, my food. > so that I can find a recurring source of meaningful work. So that I can follow my desires rather than being forced to pay my own way. As a gen-x'er I just have say, you are not entitled to other people's labor, certainly not so you can avoid labor yo…

> Virtually everyone would prefer not "needing income", that's just another way of saying "be rich". Meaningful work is a luxury. If you honestly believe this you need to broaden your outlook. There are interesting people all over the world experimenting with different systems of living and working without a traditional means of income. It's not about wanting to "be rich".

Working == income. You need to stop being so pedantic that you actually think you're saying anything different than me, you're not.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#212

Post by calgoo » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

kbsletten wrote: post #208

devdas wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consent.

How can you consent to learn about something you don't know about? This is a very different idea to me and I'm trying to understand where you're coming from.

IMO, if i did not sign up for information regarding a product, its spam. If i want something, i will go look for it. I don't want random strangers trying to sell me something, especially when they have no idea what i need.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#213

Post by growt » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

matty22 wrote: post #210

growt wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I replied in another place here: It depends on what you define as bulk. My personal definition is what matters to me and everybody is free to have their own.

No, your personal definition doesn't matter. If you buy/scrape a list of email addresses, and send to ANY of those addresses, that's spam. I work for an email marketing software company. That's the definition used in the industry. >0 unrequested emails is spam. If you've never spoken to this person before, you have no business relationship with them, and they have not opted in to receive mail from you, you are an ema…

Working for an email marketing company you will aknowledge that something like "email marketing" exists. So there is a way to do this right. Maybe I haven't read TFA closely enough, but I didn't see him mentioning scraping or buying the emails. Maybe that was implied by the number IDK. Initially I just replied to a comment mentioning 4% signup rate and categorizing that as spam, while I thought that rate looks actually quite good. It kind of escalated from there :)

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#214

Post by sah2ed » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #197

sah2ed wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Datastreamer was the first company in the content indexing space and we were WAY ahead of everyone else. Meltwater.com is in the same space but is much older — it was founded in 2001. Their engineering team recently blogged [0] about their petabyte-size Elasticsearch cluster which still uses a much older version of ES (1.7.x). 0: Optimal Shard Placement in a Petabyte Scale Elasticsearch Cluster https://news.ycombin…

Actually, Meltwater was one of our first customers. We powered their blog data back in the day. They acquired a smaller company in the space and incorporated their stack and used us for about 5 years.

Good to know.

With respect to the acquisition, is the smaller company Wrapidity?

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#215

Post by drieddust » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

matty22 wrote: post #210

growt wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I replied in another place here: It depends on what you define as bulk. My personal definition is what matters to me and everybody is free to have their own.

No, your personal definition doesn't matter. If you buy/scrape a list of email addresses, and send to ANY of those addresses, that's spam. I work for an email marketing software company. That's the definition used in the industry. >0 unrequested emails is spam. If you've never spoken to this person before, you have no business relationship with them, and they have not opted in to receive mail from you, you are an ema…

Agreed but how do you establish the relationship in the first place?

Then only options I see is to a) hope google finds you interesting enough, b) paid advertising, or c) word of mouth.

What are the other methods ? I am asking because I can't think of anything else.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#216

Post by FiveSquared25 » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

calgoo wrote: post #212

kbsletten wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you consent to learn about something you don't know about? This is a very different idea to me and I'm trying to understand where you're coming from.

IMO, if i did not sign up for information regarding a product, its spam. If i want something, i will go look for it. I don't want random strangers trying to sell me something, especially when they have no idea what i need.

Then how you grow if the kings of Facebook, Twitter, and Google don’t want you to grow?

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#217

Post by unclebucknasty » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

zorga wrote: post #204

unclebucknasty wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether you pay for yourself, or others pay for you, is a binary choice. You're still speaking in terms of our current system being the product of some immutable natural law of the universe. What I am talking about is more fundamental. The very idea of someone "paying for you" is built on the premise that some group of people is entitled to own and control such vast quantities of the planet's resources that they en…

> You're still speaking in terms of our current system being the product of some immutable natural law of the universe. Because it is. Your entire response is so strikingly naive one has to wonder how old you are. > The very idea of someone "paying for you" is built on the premise that some group of people is entitled to own and control such vast quantities of the planet's resources that they enjoy access to many ord…

Strange: you painstakingly quoted me, then offered the same non-response to each quote. Essentially: "because that's the way it is and you're a child if you think it could be otherwise".

You can't seem to get past your programming. Carry on.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#218

Post by zorga » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

unclebucknasty wrote: post #217

zorga wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're still speaking in terms of our current system being the product of some immutable natural law of the universe. Because it is. Your entire response is so strikingly naive one has to wonder how old you are. > The very idea of someone "paying for you" is built on the premise that some group of people is entitled to own and control such vast quantities of the planet's resources that they enjoy access to many ord…

Strange: you painstakingly quoted me, then offered the same non-response to each quote. Essentially: "because that's the way it is and you're a child if you think it could be otherwise". You can't seem to get past your programming. Carry on.

It's not "my" programming, it's the reality of the world. You've haven't offered any alternative because there isn't one. I'm really trying to understand you here, but you're not offering anything, you're just saying my thinking is limited somehow without a valid reasons being presented. How about this, rather than critiquing my thinking, how about you present yours. You seem to think there's a magic step where raw resources become things you are entitled to without someone else having to labor to produce them.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#219

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

eruci wrote: post #53

holoduke wrote: post #13

I created a successful side project back in 2014. It is still running and making 20 times more than I would get with a normal job. But i was lucky. Lucky to be born in a rich country. Lucky because I was given a computer at the age of 5. Lucky because I had unlimited education opportunities. Lucky because I had a friend who gave me access to something I needed for my business. And many other lucks. I will never deny…

But it has to be more than just luck. Many kids get computers at the age of 5, have lots of educational opportunities, etc. Very few do what you did. I agree that a "guideline" like this is not worth much. It probably takes some luck and a lot of skill..

[deleted]

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#220

Post by klohto » Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

haihaibye wrote: post #169

500 emails for 20 signups = 96% off target. >> By May of 2015 I had sent over 30,000 sales and marketing emails .96 × 30,000 = You just annoyed ~28,800 people. It's only because this immense amount of time lost is borne by strangers that it's a viable business. Let's not glorify spammers.

"By May of 2015 I had sent over 30,000 sales and marketing emails so I knew how to get high response rates"

It's clear that the author meant he had experience with sending mail, not that he sent 30k mails about THIS product.