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Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

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Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#81

Post by jat850 »

blhack wrote: post #63
dholowiski wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An Amazon EC2 Micro instance is pretty close to that price, plus you don't have to pay for it while it's not running, and you get to learn AWS too.

An amazon EC2 micro instance is something like $60/mo. I know this because I tried to sign up for their "free" tier a few months ago, and got charged. Luckily amazon had my account information on file, so they went ahead and just charged me for the balance. (It took a few weeks/months to get my money refunded...and forever convinced me that amazon's customer support is completely worthless) I'm sure AWS works for som…

I feel as though you may have encountered the same problem as I did when starting my Amazon service.

The micro instance - the free tier - is actually free, and if you run more than one, additional ones cost roughly $15/month.

However, what most likely happened is that when spinning up your first instance, you started a "Small" instance instead of a micro. "Small" is the default server selected when adding a new instance through the AWS webpage, and I did the same thing without realizing right away that it was not the free tier.

Small instances cost roughly $67.50 per running month, so it would seem to me that this could have been what happened to you.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#82

Post by jeromec »

phlux wrote: post #80

Ok, maybe I'll be the loan dissenter - and a torn one at that. I really think this is a great article and I think this is information that should certainly be shared out... I have one nitpick with what the author states that bothers me greatly. Bare with this statement - I am not against what he did, but this is the biggest worry in hiring any outside dev to do any work for you, and thus has a clear and real issue fo…

phlux, didn't we have this argument before? ;)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2061369

To try and clarify further: ideas are not worthless, but they also don't have value. How can that be? Simple, unless an idea is coupled with execution its value is zero. This is what leads to the phrase 'ideas are worthless' which is misleading IMO when phrased that way.

> why arent the millions of developers constantly outdoing themselves with utterly amazing work

That statement is flawed on many levels. First, the percentage of the population with a high level understanding of technology is small, and the percentage of those who are developers is smaller, and the percentage of those that are great developers is smaller still. So saying "the millions of developers" like there really are that many working directly on tech innovation in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the US is questionable at best.

Now, if you're asking why don't the "great" proportion of developers do amazing work the answer is that they do. They are the reason you can view and post on Hacker News with a working OS, or listen to thousands of songs on a device as small as your hand, and on that same device check email, play games, download thousands of apps, and make phone calls, etc. In other words, great developers are busy building things. Many amazing things. Some developers build things for companies, and some venture out on their own to build new and innovative things like Twitter, Groupon, or Facebook, some of which work and many which don't. But there certainly are many amazing pieces of technology that have been built so far, and there are many more to come... These won't all come at the same time, but the tinkerers are out there... building, trying, failing, and trying again. They are doing the hard work of executing, and for a small fraction of them, it will pay off.

Edit: Let me put the idea challenge back on you, phlux. If your belief is "idea" people are certainly only held back from their $ millions in success by not being developers, why don't they borrow, sell, or mortgage $50K on their house etc. and just get the idea built and cash in? It's that easy, right?

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#84

Post by random42 »

phlux wrote: post #80

Ok, maybe I'll be the loan dissenter - and a torn one at that. I really think this is a great article and I think this is information that should certainly be shared out... I have one nitpick with what the author states that bothers me greatly. Bare with this statement - I am not against what he did, but this is the biggest worry in hiring any outside dev to do any work for you, and thus has a clear and real issue fo…

You are thinking in the line of,

A * Idea + B * Execution == N Units of success/value.

Most of the people here believe,

C * Idea * Execution == N units of success/value.

Ideas all alone ARE worthless. Only when coupled with decent execution, they generate some success/value. They are more of a multiplier factor, than having a worth of itself.

Let me give you some (admittedly) extravagant example of ideas (They are not my original ideas).

1. cars that can fly, just based on solar energy.

2. A machine, that lets you travel through time.

3. A medicine, that makes you live forever/ you dont grow old.

Do you believe, should I (Or the person who had these original ideas/fantasy) call for the share of money, when these ideas are implemented?

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#85

Post by nikcub »

Get around the blogger problem by generating a referral token for each blogger to use in linking to your site, and show them the token/link in their account page.

Make the rules so that a blog post referral only requires a single click - that way you can verify that the blog post is from who they say they are

Once you have that infrastructure, you can use it as a more generalized referral system for people that want to tweet out a link to your product, etc. For eg. every tweet referral signup gets you a free month

There are hordes of freelancers out there who do nothing but affiliate marketing. For those types, you want to send them 30-50% of revenue. There are entire products to do this for you - cj.com et al. Their referrals made up over 50% of new users on a product I worked on previously.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#86

Post by jpr »

phlux wrote: post #80

Ok, maybe I'll be the loan dissenter - and a torn one at that. I really think this is a great article and I think this is information that should certainly be shared out... I have one nitpick with what the author states that bothers me greatly. Bare with this statement - I am not against what he did, but this is the biggest worry in hiring any outside dev to do any work for you, and thus has a clear and real issue fo…

> will certainly wind up pissing people off/alienating people entirely

If someone else implementing a vaguely similar idea makes those people pissed off, well, it's certainly not the implementors fault.

I've had a zillion ideas only to find out that someone has already executed them. At first it somewhat pissed me off, like isn't there anything that hasn't been already done? Then I got over it and realized that you need a crapload of hard work, persuasion and elbow grease to make the ideas a product that people want to use badly enough that they pay you for it.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#87

Post by lsc »

dpcan wrote: post #3

I'm not sure why you are using prgmr over Linode, Slicehost, or the Rackspace Cloud servers. The others have really simple backup tools.

Is this the primary problem you see with my service? you think this is a bigger problem, for instance, than my provisioning delays? (e.g. it usually takes a day or so for a new customer to get set up.)

I'm actually working on a cheap low-performance storage service designed for backups (webdav and zfs snapshot accessible. I'm targeting 1/10th the price of s3 before bulk discounts, but I also am also targeting a lower level of redundancy and performance.) but I thought the primary demand would be people on other services or on their own servers wanting a backup, so it's interesting to hear if other people place a much higher priority on ease of setting up backups.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#88

Post by gcb »

rsoto wrote: post #17
mootothemax wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, blog post author here. Over the last 18 months I've learned an incredible amount from the users here on Hacker News, and I figured that it's about time I started giving something back. None of my web apps make serious money, but they bring in enough to make a difference to life, and I'm hoping that my articles will help others get on the same path - if not somewhat more successfully! ;) Please feel free…

please don't split your articles. however, it was a good read. thanks.

he did mention "part I"

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#89

Post by lsc »

nikcub wrote: post #85

Get around the blogger problem by generating a referral token for each blogger to use in linking to your site, and show them the token/link in their account page. Make the rules so that a blog post referral only requires a single click - that way you can verify that the blog post is from who they say they are Once you have that infrastructure, you can use it as a more generalized referral system for people that want…

>Get around the blogger problem by generating a referral token for each blogger to use in linking to your site, and show them the token/link in their account page.

this would solve the problem of people who don't produce clickthroughs getting paid, but it wouldn't solve the problem of looking scummy, and if you have a bunch of duplicated content all over the place, you look scummy, and the person who actually wrote the content is going to be cheesed.

Reputation management (which is to say, wanting to not look scummy) is the primary reason why I don't have a referral system. Well, that and I'm not willing to put that much cash in to customer acquisition. But it's primarily about reputation; It's hard enough presenting a consistent message when you have two or three employees.

Even if you only care about money, reputation is worth quite a lot.

I'm sure there are ways to do affiliate marketing without looking scummy, but it's not obvious or easy.

Re: Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part I

#90

Post by ahoyhere »

myearwood wrote: post #62

The fact that this article is so popular is sort of sad.That shows that a lot of people on HN are not making $500 a month from their web apps .We should have higher goals than this.

I agree, kinda.

I'm glad for the author's success so far (and, as another HNer said, that the word "lifestyle" has not yet reared its head in discussion).

On the other hand,back in October, about how my products had brought in $216,000 in revenue in 2010 to date (from $0 in 2008), and I got maybe 30 votes on HN, barely made it onto the front page:

http://unicornfree.com/2010/i-made-216668-from-products/

Which leads to me to wonder: Why is this $500/mo (after 1.5 yrs) essay so popular, but nobody was interested in mine?

For me, it's not just about getting the hits, but getting my message out there (I am all about making & SELLING paid products, not "startups"), so it's a question of effectiveness.

I've observed that HN seems most interested in rags-to-minimum-wage stories, and rags-to-riches stories, but not much in between (which is where I fall -- now). But there's probably also something else going on, whether it's me, my essay, or the audience.

If anyone has any ideas/pointers, I'd love to hear them.

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