Running a gift ideas site monetized through Amazon affiliate program. http://www.giftideasunder50.com
I like it. Simple and to the point!
Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
611–620 of 666 posts
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
so how would you describe it?
Well, considering that the biggest period of growth private schools experienced was during desegregation, I would wager that most private schools exist as an escape hatch for parents who find their school district undesirable for one reason or another. Also, most private school students in the US go to a religiously-affiliated institution so there is a strong element of religious indoctrination there. Stereotypically…
> Stereotypically, charter schools are the ones that are supposed to be better than public schools at a cheaper cost to the government (charter schools can be private or quasi-public).
I'd also question the extent to which reality bears this one out, but yes, that is the view.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#613Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://nepafiber.com/colocation
How much power do the cabinets get allocated? When (ages ago) talking to places about colo, it turns out places like HE would only allocate 7 amps for a full rack. Completely useless. ;)
Generally 30A for a full, 15A for a half, etc. Then $12/Amp for extra power.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#614Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of stats are you looking for ?
Hi, Things like, traffic to your site, conversion rate? Thanks!
It's been only 1 month so I don't have much numbers but here goes..
1. Traffic for the most part is from USA. 2. I am seeing about 200 unique visitors per day.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's easier to get the small provider on the phone. but i mean, this is simply what you believe to be true. in reality, it doesn't matter if it's true or not, because you believe it. that's what small companies fight against every day of their life.
I'm sure he runs a great business, but unless the man never sleeps or goes on vacation he can't always be available in minutes.
you don't actually understand what it takes to run a small technology business, because you're a guy who just has a normal job. you don't make a lot of money because there aren't a lot of expectations and obligations in your line of work.
1. yup. he doesn't take vacations.
2. if he's sleeping, he gets woken up, or he loses the business.
when you run a business there's nobody to pass the buck to. it's your problem, end of story. you're a big boy now, pull up those pants.
ask a line cook or sous chef how many vacations and how much sleep they get.
there are people who get blown up by bombs in the middle east, today. right now. those are real people. do you think not taking a vacation is some kind of huge sacrifice in the grand scheme of things, especially if you're trying to make a large amount of money?
these are the hard facts that people don't write fun blog posts about and that normal people with jobs find impossible to believe because they are not business owners and never will be.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you market this? Is it mostly SEO or ads as well? Must be expensive if you want to compete with Nike and Adidas for clicks...
At the beginning it was basically word of mouth and niche related forums on the internet. Then I started reading about SEO and advertising. Organic search more or less work but I got almost no traffic from a couple of banners on related pages during few months. I didn't try advertising networks like AdWords. I don't see big brands as my competition. I have partnered with some but I don't think they sell much on the i…
Very cool, I've been thinking of doing an affiliate website for a while. But it seems like it could take a lot of time and patience to get it profitable. Thanks for sharing!
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#617Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can you afford to be full-time on $2239/month? O.o
One year I decided I wanted to save as much as I could. I went for the greater part of the year on under 2k per month. Saved a ton load of money, like 80% of my take home earnings.
When I try to be even remotely frugal my girlfriend calls me cheap and annoying. It's quite annoying.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#618This barely counts, but I started a small premium handmade custom leather goods brand about 6 months ago: http://vulcancrafting.com . cash/card wallets, notebook/journal wallets, belts, etc... I didn't want to spend all my time after work sitting at a computer. I'm not in the positive yet; there's an equipment investment cost, I intentionally don't keep a huge order backlog, and I don't charge as much as I could for…
Have you ever considered using Etsy or similar sites to sell your products? I had thought of doing something similar (some handmade product, I mean, not leather) as a side biz, but then thought it would not scale as a solo person, so have put it at least on hold, if not dropped.
I have an Etsy store, but I don't push it and really need to just close it. Etsy had massive screwups with the first and only order I got from there (I immediately stopped trying to use it). It took like 6 days for customer's payment to validate, they never responded to my support tickets, and there was no way to confirm order cancellation while it was in that state.
I've got a Shopify site I keep meaning to launch, but I've stayed busy-ish with bespoke orders lately and haven't had the time/need for it.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#619I run a Canadian price comparison site: http://pricefu.com
As a Canadian that hates that all my all my online shopping is dominated by US ads, reviews and prices I really want to like this. It has some great features, especially the price history tracker, but lacks usability. I have no idea what the fu number is. Your FAQ says "which indicates how good is a particular price offer" but what is good, how is it measured? A much harder problem is the issue of the same device giv…
Thank you for the feedback.
Think of the "fu number" as a "DealRank"-type metric. Its full definition is rather complex and unpalatable for the average user, and I doubt that it would add much intuition besides the fact that greater value is better, which is very similar to how users think of PageRank.
I agree that the questions of whether the "price-fu" metric is the most relevant possible, or uses the most relevant inputs, or weights them appropriately, etc. are still open, and the current answer is "probably no", but is work in progress.
Regarding resellers trying to avoid price matching by using alternative product names/models, I must say that I haven't seen evidence of that yet. I might be naive, but I am more inclined to attribute this to the general low quality of the product data out there.
Nevertheless, you are right that the problem of determining whether product A and product B are comparable is hard, especially considering the great diversity in how manufacturers label their products. An additional problem is that many China-made gadgets don't even have a consistent naming scheme, or even a model number, making comparisons even harder.
Regarding finding lower prices on manufacturer's site, are you sure you did not compare USD and CAD prices? Many users seem to be confused by this.
Re: Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indie Hackers is great. Two comments/requests. It would be great to have some business and entrepreneurship books reviewed by the community. Some are worth reading, but many are not and Amazon type reviews are not reliable indicator or hype vs. value. Another great feature would be to have a small follow up with some of the showcased businesses. Especially the ones that just got started. Great work and good luck!
Have you seen this? - https://www.highlyreco.com/
You may want to disclose that this is your site before you post it in multiple places on the thread.