Close Tools [1] is run by one person and they're currently at $40k MRR.
Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
51–60 of 285 posts
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mostly popular history. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18339067.Marian_Kechli... Everything so far has only been published in Czech, though.
I started writing a popular history book a few years ago and found it really tough once I actually dug into it! Kudos on publishing so many and with such good reviews. Can I ask if you have an academic background in history?
I do not. It is just my passion since I learnt to read.
Around the age of 35 I realized that there was a lot of interesting and weird stories to share with others and I started narrating them in an online magazine published by my friend. For example, life and death of Hernando de Soto, the unsuccessful conquistador. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto).
People liked the format and actually started to send micropayments. It still took several years before I actually tried to put together a book. I started a crowd-sourcing attempt which, to my (pleasant) surprise gathered over 300 per cent of the target sum.
Now I am hooked to the lifestyle :-)
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
#53Yes, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has been very lucrative
Basically its great because everything is client side so all you have to is make frontend websites for people to interact with, and even that isn't really necessary. You just need people, with wallets, to be able to interact with your smart contract easily.
The smart contract you deploy has to address a pain point for existing users, typically by consolidating multiple transactions they are doing into a single transaction.
Your smart contract can take a cut of the transactions that flow through it.
The ongoing overhead costs are practically non-existent. The initial costs to deploy your smart contracts can vary to be several hundred dollars at time of writing.
It doesn't really matter what people think is happening in the blockchain space, or their infinitely moving goal post to reinforce their view about a lack of use case. The reality is that there is a market and there are market needs, just like any other market. The distinctions in this space is that the payment system is built in and all the users bring their own connection to the nearest servers which store all your variables. It's not different than any other financial services, just way faster and permissionless to get a foothold in.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
#54I've run my own one-man[1] software business selling desktop software for Windows and Mac since 2005. Products with launch date: https://www.perfecttableplan.com (2005) https://www.hyperplan.com (2015) https://www.easydatatransform.com (2019) 2020 wasn't a great year due to the effect of COVID on PerfectTablePlan sales. But I've been profitable every year. [1] With a bit of help from my wife on the accounts and freel…
Really tiny comment, but I noticed on Perfect Table Plan you have an example seating plan for a lodge with peoples names? As a member myself I know there are quite a few people who prefer to remain anonymous, so not sure if they'd like that image to be up (albeit the risk is very very low that they'd be identified from a table planning app!).
Any names you see in seating plans on the PerfectTablePlan website are ficticious.
BTW the fact that the seating plan isn't stored on a third party server is a selling point for privacy minded users/organizations. Particularly when it comes to politicians/royalty/celebrities etc.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
#55I run BeeLine Reader, [1] which launched on HN years ago. [2] BeeLine makes reading on screen easier and faster. At first, most of the revenue came from B2C mobile apps and browser plugins, but in 2020 it hit a tipping point and most of the revenue now comes from B2B technology licensing. Blackboard recently adopted the BeeLine technology, and there are several other large education platforms that are planning to ado…
What makes licensing possible -- do you have a patent? Reimplementing by a competitor, at least at first blush, seems like it might be feasible?
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
#56Yes, Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has been very lucrative Basically its great because everything is client side so all you have to is make frontend websites for people to interact with, and even that isn't really necessary. You just need people, with wallets, to be able to interact with your smart contract easily. The smart contract you deploy has to address a pain point for existing users, typically by consolidating…
Is there a way I can contact you? Interested in learning more.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
#57I'll be starting a Youtube channel shortly about solo bootstrapping a tech business around a mobile app and everything that's involved, from idea validation to implementation, launch and marketing. Let me know if that's everything you're interested in
That sounds really interesting.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
#58I license a fully automated UV unwrapping tool at MinistryOfFlat.com . UV mapping is the task of unwrapping a 3D model to a flat surface in order to put textures on it. Ive been at it for about 3 years, and last year I made 7 figures. I do sell directly to 3D artists. You probably know some VFX companies and game companies that have licensed my tool. I make a good amount from people coming to the web site, but the ma…
That’s really cool.
Do you worry about licensees keeping the code and using it without you knowing if they cancel? Or an employee at a licensee walking off with the code / binary etc?
We’ve talked about some of these risks at my current job which ships code as our product so curious how other people navigate this.
Congrats on the success!
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
#59I run https://www.gnod.com
Wow!!, How much money you are making with this?
How long it took you to build this?
How you are marketing this?
Can you please give some advice on marketing.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses in 2021?
#60A great many people [including myself] have a successful online business flipping which is buying and selling of goods (more used than new). Buying is from local thrift shops, auctions, garage sales, Craiglist, Facebook Marketplace, etc and selling is at Amazon, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, etc. If interested follow the Reddit sub-reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Flipping/
Isn’t this almost a zero sum game?
Yes. It is a lot harder to do than people make it out to be.