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

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

#681

Post by magduf » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

phito wrote: post #584

b__d wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

consider moving to a .com domain and go with translating your content for new markets.

Thanks for the advice, translating is definitely a goal for next season (I have a lot of French customers as it's my main language, and they are often confused about the english website). What would moving to a .com domain do? Help with SEO?

I'm guessing the idea is that a .com looks more "official", but I think that's becoming less and less over time as alternative TLDs get more uptake. This probably depends on your customer base though.

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

#682

Post by magduf » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #610

phito wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This year I made around 6000€ in profit. I could make more but the limiting factor here is mostly time. My main goal is to cover my hobby's expenses, which are mostly the electricity bill and acquiring new species.

Would it be worth hiring someone at this stage? Actually that was what I was curious about reading the title of the question. If you are successful as a one person business, it makes sense to scale it past a one person business.

>If you are successful as a one person business, it makes sense to scale it past a one person business.

That's not necessarily true. A lot of businesses just don't have enough demand out there to justify scaling up. For instance, suppose you make a business selling a custom LED set for a particular mechanical keyboard (or come up with some other obscure niche product); just how many people out there do you think are willing to pay for that? Larger businesses need lots of customers to pay for all the overhead, which for a 1-person side gig is essentially free (they're working in their spare time): you need employees you have to pay by the hour, regardless of demand, year-round; you need a building/commercial space; etc. You can get away with a lot of things as a 1-person side gig that you can't when you take on employees, and those costs are significant.

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

#683

Post by sachinsmc » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 9:41 AM UTC

movedx wrote: post #499

huangc10 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just really hard. I think the hard part most people can get by. It's the luck part that a lot of us are missing. You have to be lucky enough to be that 1 person who catches the train at the right time. Imagine the odds of that. That's what gets me. It's not necessarily how hard you work. It's the window of opportunity that most people miss.

> You have to be lucky This is simply not true. It's a myth. And the only time it is true is when you're born into an underprivileged background (I was born into a working class family with little money) or environment (in a rough part of England.) Look, life is easy: we all have hopes and dreams, problems and pain points. We want to make the hopes and dreams come true whilst we resolve the problems and take away our…

Wow this is inspiring thanks for those words of wisdom.

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

#684

Post by xcubic » Fri, Nov 01, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

bekman wrote: post #129

I run a popular Quiz website. I make around $6,000 per month from Google adsense. I work between 2-3 hours a week usually posting quiz links on my Pinterest page. My only expense is hosting which is around $20 per month (Digital Ocean). I have never advertised my website and it gets all the traffic from Pinterest Organically. Compare to my salary, I'm an IT Administrator in my day job and make $400 per month. I live…

May I ask the theme out of curiosity? Geography? History?

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

#685

Post by tr33house » Wed, Nov 06, 2019, 10:31 AM UTC

nathan_f77 wrote: post #131

I'm working on FormAPI [1], which helps developers fill out PDF documents. I started working on this around 2 years ago. I was mostly working on it part-time, and I took a few breaks while I was doing freelance work to pay the bills. This year I raised some money from Earnest Capital [2], which has allowed me to go full-time and hire some contractors. I used to think that I wanted to build a one-person company and st…

I literally rebuilt almost everything you have for formAPI for my startup. Wish I'd known about this earlier and saved a ton of time