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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

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

#671

Post by temp_throw »

ymal wrote: post #645
temp_throw wrote: post #106

I have a UK based e-business, I've turned over between £750,000 and now £950,000 over the past four years (ex VAT). (~76% net profit margin) Its just me, I'm a developer, which meant I could bootstrap the whole thing for zero cost (time not included) but I've always felt I knew I had what it takes to make a small business successful. Its an online service, we have a web site and apps in the app stores. I'd rather not…

That is really impressive. Are you operating internationally or is this UK specific?

Yes, just UK at the moment.

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

#672

Post by playing_colours »

marionzualo wrote: post #665
WA wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sole proprietor / Einzelunternehmer. A GmbH works too. Cons: - more work to set it up - more paper work - unnecessary in some cases Pros: - cash flow for you as a founder is more stable / taxes can be calculated and predicted more easily (only relevant if you expect a good year and then a bad year) Neutral: - Your personal liability is supposedly limited. This is only partially true. There's still the liability…

> Get paying customers first, you can still incorporate a GmbH later. On the other hand: If nobody pays you money, you don't need a GmbH or be a sole proprietor. is it possible to sell the product first and then register as Einzelunternehmer later (within the same fiscal year)? Or you have to register before? After registering as Einzelunternehmer, if the business stops existing, does one have to "close activity" as…

You can only do some occasional work without registering yourself in any special form.

You can check, if you can start as a Freiberufler. It is a bit more lightweight than going with Einzelunternehmen. For example, I am a Freiberufler now working as a consultant / contractor in data engineering and management. I can also potentially sell my product, but I did not check the limitations.

You do not have to close you Einzelunternehmen afaik, if you do not make money, but you are still responsible for sending regular declarations to the Finanzamt.

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

#673

Post by wayoverthecloud »

pknerd wrote: post #356

Not sure it qualifies as a solo business but I run a tech blog that not only helped me to get my current job but also side gigs and contracts. Besides that I was contacted by tech companies to write paid guest posts for them. Recently a few companies offers me percentage of amount prompting their products via posts. One of them helping me to earn good referral amount. So far gave them 30+ customers in 2-3 months. The…

Very interesting and congratulations. Do you promote your posts via social media? I mean how do you get traffic? SEO?

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

#674

Post by kohanz »

temp_throw wrote: post #670
kohanz wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone running a business with some similar characteristics (solo, not a subscription, B2C branching into B2B), but at a much earlier stage, I would love to learn more from you, if you're willing. Feel free to reach out to me (e-mail in profile).

Hi, is the app you are building in your bio? Vidhug?

Thanks for responding. Yes and sorry, I didn't realize my e-mail wasn't visible. You can reach me at hello at that company domain.

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

#675

Post by bigboris »

mrunkel wrote: post #580
blunte wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretending to be a bigger company than you are is not fraud, it's perception management. Whether justified or not, many potential customers will choose a seemingly bigger company over a smaller one (especially a one-person company). Now if they were billing based on number of people working for a client, and they were charging for phantom people, that would be fraud. This guy just has an optimized workflow that he pr…

> Pretending to be a bigger company than you are is not fraud, it's perception management. That's some pretty fancy doublespeak right there. No. I'm sorry, but this is flat out lying. You can rationalize it all you like, but if you are lying and inventing people that don't exist, it's fraud. This isn't even lying by omission, but actively working to deceive. Sure, the customer may be getting full value for their mone…

Not really. Many companies do it with AI. Ziprecruiter is one...the emails you get are from "Phil" (phil@ziprecruiter.com) but Phil doesn't exist. Granted, if you reply to Phil you are explicitly told 1) Phil doesn't exist, it is AI, and 2) email replies to Phil are ignored. But making up people as a customer service interface is pretty common.

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

#676

Post by albogdano »

I develop and sell a Q&A platform since 2017 (https://scoold.com). It started off as Stack Overflow clone but now it has features which are quite niche and missing from SO like geolocation and spaces for teams. The project is open source but has a Pro version which generates around 4000€ per month. I spend around 30% of my work day on support and emails. The rest of the day I fix issues and develop new features. I'm a solo developer and work full time on the project. Accounting & legal is handled by an external company. I operate as a limited company within the EU.

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

#677

Post by pknerd »

wayoverthecloud wrote: post #673
pknerd wrote: post #356

Not sure it qualifies as a solo business but I run a tech blog that not only helped me to get my current job but also side gigs and contracts. Besides that I was contacted by tech companies to write paid guest posts for them. Recently a few companies offers me percentage of amount prompting their products via posts. One of them helping me to earn good referral amount. So far gave them 30+ customers in 2-3 months. The…

Very interesting and congratulations. Do you promote your posts via social media? I mean how do you get traffic? SEO?

Sorry for the late reply. Yes, I do promote occasionally via Social Media but 78% of my traffic is organic that is, people find me via Google.

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

#678

Post by tentam »

aacook wrote: post #524
tagawa wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very cool. Can I ask what marketing you do? Seems like it would be popular once people know about it, but that first step to building awareness must be tough.

Yes it is tough. It’s been mostly word-of-mouth growth. I’ve run lots of experiments and most of them don’t pan out. Like, recently I tried mailing a bunch of old school cassette walkmen with the above voicemails on them to the media along with a letter and sample photos (“just press play to hear it straight from happy recipients”). I sent 15 boxes and haven’t heard back on any. It feels like the kind of service that…

I love this idea with the walkmen

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

#679

Post by mellson »

holoduke wrote: post #363
codesternews wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. Which category your apps have? Do you think the current situation of appstores(google and apple) apps can earn money? Any advice for app developer who want to make and sell apps?

I am mainly in sports apps. I think it is still possible to have succes. It requires a lot of patience. Don't focus on the revenue part. And don't try to build a new hype. Very slim chance you build the next angry birds. Instead try to build a product that is based on an already successful specific category/ product. Very important is that you understand your customer and genuinely try to make a product that is bette…

great advise, thanks for sharing!

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

#680

Post by magduf »

jfoster wrote: post #116
phito wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My website is https://phito.be :) I ship in the EU and any other countries that have trade deals that allows plant transfer without requiring phytosanitary certificates (Switzerland for example)! Sadly after Brexit I don't know if I will still be able to ship over the UK :( Finding the growing space is hard, especially if your plants are big. Thankfully I focus mostly on the Drosera genus, which are mostly small plan…

Given that any competitors may also face the Brexit problem and it hasn't happened yet, why not start a subsidiary now and ship a bunch of product over before Brexit comes into effect?

From his posts here, it looks like this is just a small side business for him, and he still works a normal day job. If UK customers are already a small fraction of his total customer base, it's not going to make any economic sense to start a subsidiary of a small moonlighting one-person gig just to retain those customers.

There's a lot of small businesses out there that just don't have enough market demand to be turned into something as large as what you're suggesting.

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