Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My solopreneur story

news.tonydinh.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–669 of 669 posts

Re: My solopreneur story

#661

Post by kossTKR »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #230
satvikpendem wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I know people in the "boring" industries, making software or running the marketing for plumbers, electricians, med spas, etc. They're at 6 or more figures a month doing that, and they're in industries most software engineers won't dare look.

Custom mobile apps for different companies in the industry is sooo under utilized that you can easily reach 10 million a year with 70-80% margins by just doing that.

Can you elaborate on this? You mean being good at creating basic IOS/Android apps and then selling them white label slightly modified to various companies?

Re: My solopreneur story

#662

Post by dakna »

robomartin wrote: post #660
robomartin wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What should I read, watch or listen to in order to catch up on today's approach to selling, do you have some recommendations? It really depends on where you are in this journey. Seth Godin Permission marketing Tribes: We need you to lead us All marketers are liars This is marketing Etc. Ries & Trout Positioning: The battle for your mind The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing Etc. Scientific Advertising - Claude Hopkins…

I should add this. Approximately ten years ago I took a course related to selling on Amazon. Online marketing was covered in detail. The course is no-longer available or I would recommend it. However, it did cost over $5K. Which is to say: Don't be afraid to spend money to educate yourself on sales and marketing. If you are an entrepreneur, it is well worth the money. Sure, there will be some courses here and there t…

Thank you for the response and taking the time to list recommendations, much appreciated.

Re: My solopreneur story

#663

Post by cj9 »

trungdq88 wrote: post #530
unsupp0rted wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not related to transparent backgrounds or drop shadows. After taking a rectangular screenshot that is longer in width but shorter in height (such as the dimensions of this HN comment input box on desktop)... then adding an annotation arrow, Xnapper suddenly cuts off the top n pixels, cutting off its own generated backdrop, and the arrow is placed not where the user selected, but n pixels below that point. I've g…

Ah got it. This is a known issue, usually I workaround this by first putting the arrow elsewhere in the middle of the pic and dragging it to where I want it later (not great, I know…). I haven't been putting a lot of time on Xnapper lately, sorry about that. I'll prioritize this and push out an update soon.

Still charging full price for it though aint ya

Re: My solopreneur story

#664

Post by didibus »

somsak2 wrote: post #290
didibus wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their hiatus on the whole greed thing appart, I think they meant the same as what you said? That there's no lessons to learn, because doing the same thing again wouldn't work. And if even the person who succeeded first hand would fail to reproduce their own success a second time, then those who are just reading about it have even less of a chance to be successful with that advice. I think that's interesting to explor…

>"how I achieved financial success", because it kinds of gives out this illusion to others that they can as well Why do you think this is unachievable for others?

I don't think it's unachievable by others, but it's probably not achievable exclusively from following a template or immitating a play book. This in turn means that articles, books, seminars that provide a template or a play book inadvertently pray on people desperately hoping to replicate financial success themselves.

Also, I believe, mathematically, since money is a finite resource, having an outsize amount of it, compared to the average, implies that not everyone can be in that situation. Which would mean most people cannot achieve it. This assumes financial success is defined as having above average money.

Re: My solopreneur story

#665

Post by terpimost »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #294
phgn wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use the tool for?

Making screenshots that I mark up with arrows, boxes and labels and then email. Xsnapper is far nicer-looking and far quicker (via numeric keyboard shortcuts for markup options) than macOS built-in utils for this.

How come you don’t use https://cleanshot.com/ ?

Re: My solopreneur story

#666

Post by bwiggstx »

terpimost wrote: post #665
unsupp0rted wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making screenshots that I mark up with arrows, boxes and labels and then email. Xsnapper is far nicer-looking and far quicker (via numeric keyboard shortcuts for markup options) than macOS built-in utils for this.

How come you don’t use https://cleanshot.com/ ?

This is a fantastic tool!

Re: My solopreneur story

#667

Post by the_only_law »

aogaili wrote: post #629
the_only_law wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“You’re just jealous” has for a while now been HN’s go to any unwelcome criticism, whether the criticism is valid or not. I suppose that’s what goes for “thoughtful and substantive” comments nowadays. In that spirit l, I suggest these people are just mentally underdeveloped, to the point where the best weapon they have are childish quips.

But what if they were really jealous? What makes you think the crowd here and yourself are above that universal and highly ubiquitous human emotion? Now, did you fix that Jira?

> What makes you think the crowd here and yourself are above that universal and highly ubiquitous human emotion?

Probably the same magical fairy power that allows you to deterministically read emotions without any context.

> Now, did you fix that Jira?

I don’t know, did you finish your schoolwork kid?

Re: My solopreneur story

#668

Post by [deleted] »

tamimio wrote: post #140

In reality the title should be: this is how I got lucky in my journey, I jumped into the AI hype just like thousands of other developers, but pure luck made it for me, and now I make X amount of money. I’m not the first to jump into it, I’m not the brightest since there are way smarter people than me who tried similar ideas, I didn’t build anything groundbreaking, and I didn’t invent anything new. I just got lucky. N…

[deleted]

Re: My solopreneur story

#669

Post by kyawzazaw »

dublinben wrote: post #99
Aurornis wrote: post #31

I always enjoy reading success stories of developers of small apps. At the same time, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re seeing only a cherry picked part of the picture. There is no mention of advertising spend or customer acquisition costs. The trend among indie hackers is to talk about MRR without mentioning a single expense, then to interleave it all with “follow me on Twitter” so you’re inspired to join their a…

Reading between the lines, building his Twitter and newsletter audience was key to growing these ‘businesses’. The real product he’s selling is hope to all the wantrepreneurs who yearn to escape their own corporate grind and find success selling their own useless nick-nacks. This is no different than real-estate investing, or drop-shipping, or any other get rich quick scheme from time immemorial.

How is he selling hopes when he has like 4 products that have revenue?
Post reply on HN