Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#251

Post by polysaturate » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 4:45 PM UTC

jayroh wrote: post #155

jasonkester wrote: post #67

I'm running two of the same ones from that list 3 years ago ( http://www.twiddla.com/ and https://www.s3stat.com/ ), and have just launched another one ( https://unwaffle.com/ ). Every year that passes makes it easier to get something like this off the ground, as the infrastructure becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, and the knowledge you need for the business side get better packaged into step-by-step guides. It's…

Hey s3stat looks AWESOME! I'm working on a product that's built on the back of S3 as well ( https://shubox.io ) so this might come in super handy for me and my customers. Do you have an affiliate program my any chance?

This is really cool. I don't have use for it at this very second, but may in a few months to offload some uploads out of my infrastructure.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#252

Post by sh87 » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 4:46 PM UTC

DanHulton wrote: post #215

novaleaf wrote: post #168

I run https://PhantomJsCloud.com I started it as a free MVP about 2 years ago while in Thailand, and given that I was attracting a slow but steady stream of users I decided to build out a commercial v1 from it. The freemium SaaS went live in March and it's growing monthly. If I still lived in Thailand I would consider it very successful, but I am in the Seattle area now so it's ramen profitable. The biggest surprise…

That is a neat idea, and a neat site. Can I offer just a tiny bit of design advice though? You really ought to have more vertical whitespace going on there. It feels very, very crowded, especially with your h1 rubbing up against your logo at the top there. Basically, anywhere there's a large block of stuff, you should double or more the whitespace around it. Though it may not be a winning strategy, good luck anyway!…

In addition to the vertical whitespace, also (I feel) there's too much text there. I would just put

"Headless Browser Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) that's free for light use, and cheap for heavy use."

in as big a font as I can without it being annoying and move everything else lower, visible when the page is scrolled. Add a diagram if you could that supports the core product offering. Don't add carousels (please.)

Little bits help in ways we could never measure.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#253

Post by chrishacken » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 4:47 PM UTC

client4 wrote: post #223

chrishacken wrote: post #109

I'm not sure if this qualifies as an "online business", but I started an ISP in November '15. It's also not entirely "one-person". I am the sole founder, but I do hire part-time help on occasion if I'm swamped. It started off as a WISP and has finally grown to the point where we are beginning to deploy fiber. The site is https://nepafiber.com I still work full-time as a systems engineer, but the business started brin…

Hey! I run a new ISP in Montana. We're actually about to head to China to source more affordable fiber and OSP materials. If you want to chat we have a slack channel called #ispschool that has a bunch of ISP owners in it. http://slack.tsi.io

Your link returns a 502 and ispschool.slack.com doesn't exist.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#254

Post by acoyfellow » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 4:47 PM UTC

DanHulton wrote: post #225

acoyfellow wrote: post #191

I've been running https://OptKit.com for about 3 years. Launched it to almost immediate ramen profitability, but haven't focused full time on it yet. Bills get paid through consulting. On schedule to re-launch within 1-2 months with a stricter focus, better defined use-cases, and stronger differentiation from competition.

I had to close a fake chat interface and a bottom overlay (with a semi-insulting "no I don't want my website to be amazing" style message) before I could see enough of your site to make sense of it and begin to read it. Then a full-page popover obscured literally the entire site. Not to sound too mean, but you lost me. I can't honestly be bothered to read sites that employ these tricks, and you flooded me with them.…

Thanks for checking it out -- and more importantly the great feedback :)

The page is definitely geared towards people who are already interested in this type of tool, so showcasing some of the functionality that they came for has improved conversions for me. It's also not a tool for every business to use.

A nearly cold-click (like yours was - you're in a thread about solo founders - not on the hunt for tools to help you improve website conversions) experience is something that can be drastically improved - it's just a matter of matching the expectations to the experience.

I've taken off the Drift automated message, which was overlaying and adding to confusion - sorry about that. I'm not sure what call-to-action close button got your goat, but I don't particularly like the snarky tones in popups myself, and they've never tested to improve conversions for me or clients. I'd be glad to work on the messaging if I knew which CTA you were talking about.

Seriously, thanks for taking your time to check it out and reply. Means a lot :)

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#255

Post by andysinclair » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 4:48 PM UTC

dgranda wrote: post #166

zlagen wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in this kind of projects I have a lot of experience working with scrapers. How do you earn money from them? via affiliate sales?

Yes, affiliate marketing is the main source of income. I am slightly introducing kind of business inteligence in order to sell reporting to merchants willing to know more.

I am interested in building something like this for Android phone comparison.

Can you give some indication of stats: visitors, income etc?

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#256

Post by nikon » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 4:50 PM UTC

novaleaf wrote: post #168

I run https://PhantomJsCloud.com I started it as a free MVP about 2 years ago while in Thailand, and given that I was attracting a slow but steady stream of users I decided to build out a commercial v1 from it. The freemium SaaS went live in March and it's growing monthly. If I still lived in Thailand I would consider it very successful, but I am in the Seattle area now so it's ramen profitable. The biggest surprise…

This looks cool, how do you handle ip rotation? I'm scraping around 1TB a month and currently manage my own proxies. If you could offer something to replace that it would certainly be something I'd be interested in.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#257

Post by bravura » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 4:50 PM UTC

mohoyt wrote: post #230

I've been running Bowtiful Ties ( http://www.bowtifulties.com ) as a side project for the last 4 or so years. Everything is vertically integrated and hand made by myself, from the bow ties, to the packaging, to the website and all processes. Bootstrapped from the start, it's pretty low volume, but nicely profitable.

Can you please offer Jackson style bowties? These look beautiful in so many settings, but are very hard to find.

Diamond are quite nice too.

Lastly, consider doing double-sided bowties, with different fabrics on each sides.

But, Jackson bowties would be something I'd order in a heartbeat.

http://jayaustinbowties.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/bow_t...

(My email is in my profile, reach out if you do start offering these.)

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#258

Post by 52-6F-62 » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 4:52 PM UTC

spiderfarmer wrote: post #6

I built a network of agricultural communities. Making a decent living from Adsense revenue. There's a substantial secondary revenue stream in the form of paid classified ads in niche marketplaces. I could make more money by going after advertisers myself, but I don't like the sales aspect. I am currently developing a turnkey website platform for companies in my niches, fully integrated with my other platforms, Twitte…

I come from a rural community and live in a large city now (in Canada). The rural/agricultural regions here are so vast and spread out between each other.

This is an absolutely fantastic idea! (Now that _some_ form of internet has made it most places.)

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#259

Post by lewsid » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 4:52 PM UTC

I run https://geopeeker.com

It's a free/subscription-based tool that views sites from a number of locations from around the world, sending back a screenshot and DNS information. Originally launched in 2013, it's been profitable since 2014 and requires very little care-and-feeding while it serves up around 225,000 queries a month.

I'm currently working on an overhaul which will dramatically improve its feature set and will, with any luck, engender even more interest among enterprise-level users.

Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

#260

Post by jajern » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 4:54 PM UTC

cookkkie wrote: post #64

Hi, here's mine: http://mee6bot.com :) . You can read a short article I wrote recently about it: https://medium.com/@anis.blk/the-mvp-that-got-to-480k-unique... . Transcript: Last March, in my little darky flat somewhere in the middle of France, I had this idea to launch a little chat bot in a platform called Discord. I was coding all day long to deliver a functional and satisfying version of what I had in mind. Thes…

Does your income come from donations or is there another revenue source? I ask because OP said that successful meant "provides the majority of the person's income" in this context. I'm curious if donations were enough to provide that or if I'm missing something.