
How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project - jaxsonkhan
https://campfirelabs.co/blog-1/2019/1/10/how-i-built-a-5000-per-month-side-project
======
burtonator
I actually did this too... I create Datastreamer
([http://www.datastreamer.io/](http://www.datastreamer.io/)) which (when I
created it) was an RSS syndication platform as a service.

You gave us RSS feeds and then we would index them and send you the output
without having to deal with the insanity of RSS feeds.

This was a decade ago though.

I've been running it since and now it's more of a massive search engine of
content - nearly a petabyte at this point.

We have an Elasticsearch API which our customers query. We also have a
streaming API if you just want to listen to the crawl data directly.

It's been a wild ride but here's my big takeaway - if your company is
profitable it actually might be because you're sitting on something MASSIVE
and don't realize it.

Datastreamer was the first company in the content indexing space and we were
WAY ahead of everyone else.

I was more focused on enjoying life, traveling, backpacking, etc.

In retrospect when you're sitting on a rocket it might make sense to buy more
gas and light up that bad boy.

I'm actually in the middle of a (mild) pivot of Datastreamer right now. We
think it might have significant value for the coming 'code war' we're in right
now with Russia.

With companies continually looking at social media as a way to manipulate
democratic societies these governments need tools (and data) to figure out
where they're being attacked and how their citizens are being manipulated.

~~~
yeldarb
> I was more focused on enjoying life, traveling, backpacking, etc.

> In retrospect when you're sitting on a rocket it might make sense to buy
> more gas and light up that bad boy.

I can identify with this. I started a Facebook game in early 2008 that picked
up a million users in its first year.

Back then all the stars were aligned and if I would have had a bigger vision
for it there’s no reason it couldn’t have turned into a massive company.

I remember reading the TechCrunch article about Zynga raising 100 million in
VC and laughing because “why would a Facebook game company need that much
money? I’m really profitable being completely bootstrapped!”

Don’t get me wrong, the lifestyle it has allowed me has been amazing. And it’s
still going strong 10 years later (we have users who have been paying $10/mo
for their premium subscription for that whole 10 years). But the opening to
grow it into something huge was only available for a short period of time. Now
users are too expensive, organic traffic is minimal, and most users on the
platform are locked into their existing games and resistant to trying new
ones.

Zynga rode that into becoming a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company.
“Think bigger” is a take-away I’ll definitely bring with me to my next venture
someday.

~~~
kbenson
The flip side of this is realizing where the path might have lead you. Were I
in your position, I suspect my regret might be tinged with relief. Zynga might
be an extremely profitable company, but they also epitomize some of what I
view as the most egregious offenses in manipulation human nature for monetary
gain.

So, were I presented with your prior circumstances and had I capitalized on
them, would my convictions have caused the company to fail, or steered it a
less profitable path, or possible have been compromised through a slow
erosion, greed, or a combination thereof?

For another take, if the Zuckerberg of 2004/2005 was presented with what
Facebook would be in 2019, extreme success, billions of dollars, social
problems, and increasing questions about what role it does and has played in
Democracy and an informed populace, how do we think he might have thought of
all that?

~~~
bryanrasmussen
considering known statements at the time I think probably Zuckerberg would
think it sounded ideal.

~~~
close04
Everything I have read about Zuckerberg's history makes him look like a
despicable and abject human being both on the surface and deep down. Of course
I have a superficial view based on movies, articles, word of mouth, etc. But
it feels backed by his actions.

~~~
Cthulhu_
He's not exactly going out of his way to disprove it; any public appearances
he makes look heavily scripted and rehearsed, and performed robotically.

And for good reasons; on the one side he's the CEO of one of the biggest
companies in the world, and any slip-up he makes will cost the company
billions in lost stockmarket value. On the other side he has a family who are
at constant risk of abduction and / or murder by people that want ransom or
who he or his company have pissed off.

------
haihaibye
500 emails for 20 signups = 96% off target.

>> By May of 2015 I had sent over 30,000 sales and marketing emails

.96 × 30,000 = You just annoyed ~28,800 people. It's only because this immense
amount of time lost is borne by strangers that it's a viable business.

Let's not glorify spammers.

~~~
growt
A 4% signup rate actually signifies really well targeted emails. Not everyone
who doesn't sign up is annoyed by the mail (or did even open or read it). I
think this is far from beeing spam, where you would see signup rates well
below 1%.

~~~
criddell
> A 4% signup rate actually signifies really well targeted emails.

You're spamming 25 people to get one sign up? That sounds terrible.

~~~
growt
Well if you send an email to 25 people and 1 one of them actually takes time
to read it, click and fill out a signup form, chances are pretty high that
more of the other 24 somewhat liked it. Most likely 20 of them didn't even
bother to open the email.

------
PhilWright
Goes into good details about the tactics used to come up with an idea and then
recruit the first few customers. After signing up $5k/month revenue it meant
he needed to generate 5,000 leads per month for those customers. That is the
hard bit, how did he do that on a side project? He says that the income was
passive, so how did he generate 5,000 targeted leads passively? That is the
magic, not the ability to recruit some customers.

~~~
kokokokoko
Based on when this product was created, I can almost guarantee they are just
manually scraping LinkedIn (plus a few other places - Facebook, twitter,
Bloomberg, maybe even Pitchbook). There are custom Google search portals you
can use to search LinkedIn via keyword that not everyone knows about. From
there one can use a bunch of services that will provide you (mostly)valid
emails at various companies.

I imagine he made a quick set of tutorials for his outsourced contractors and
had his virtual assistant he found on oDesk do the hiring and setting up of
those contractors.

This quote from the article is wild: "Customers have to train their team and
the billing is variable so your cost per lead ranges from $.50 to $5" You can
beat that number paying people $20/hr to do this stuff, let alone exploiting
people out in the Philippines on I'm sure the not livable wages he's paying
them(Aka the fallacy of low rent/cost of living in developing economies).

Sigh... you know we're at the end of the cycle when it's just a bunch of
outsourcers with marketing backgrounds.

~~~
hnzix
_> the fallacy of low rent/cost of living in developing economies_

Let's say a knowledge worker in a developing country could survive on $1 USD a
day, adjusting food and rent to local cost.

If a local white collar job paid them $5 a day, and a remote "exploiting" job
paid them $15 a day, but an American could earn $50 a day for the same task,
is this really a moral hazard?

~~~
hawkice
No, ya see, it's wrong to pay people in poorer countries less because now
you're talking to a poor person. If you hire an American, you never even spoke
to a poor person, so it isn't your fault.

If that sounds like a fever dream, you aren't alone, but it's my best guess at
understanding what's happening. Obviously, my complete lack of employing
people in central Africa is why they are all middle class Americans now, so
I'm doing my part.

~~~
kokokokoko
Or, maybe pay people a living wage no matter what country they are from?
Doesn't seem that unreasonable.

~~~
PinkMilkshake
It seems reasonable until you realize you could completely wreck their local
economy.

If you start paying people to compile lists for you at a higher rate than they
are paid performing important local services, then they will stop performing
important local services and start compiling lists for you.

What needs to happen is slower growth.

So foreign businesses outsource to the Philippines, paying them low wages.
Then other businesses see this as a good way to save and do the same, and then
more businesses and so on. Soon the people in the Philippines have options,
and their market starts to become competitive, and they start demanding more
pay (which is good). During this whole process they are spending that foreign
money into their local economy, allowing it to grow and keep up.

China is a good example.

~~~
nstart
That last part of "demanding more pay" almost never happens. The reality is,
service economies start a race to the bottom by taking advantage of the lower
starting cost of living and then the economy doesn't really improve. People
just live with lower starting costs of living and lower quality of life in
many cases.

Note that I use the term lower starting costs of living. There's a reason a
lot of people migrate if they can. It's because these countries (like Sri
Lanka which is where I live) have costs that suddenly spike the moment you
aspire to a better quality of life and the salaries don't keep up.

But I digress. The evidence of the local economies not necessarily improving
is there in many outsourced service economy based countries. India is a prime
example. And when outsourced jobs started moving away, there were articles
describing India's IT industry as a bloodbath (or something similar).

So no. Paying people better actually improves the economy of the country.
Especially if it's non local currency. Most countries benefit from inflows of
strong foreign currency. People start having less incentive to leave the
country so brain drain is less. People can reach higher quality life goals, so
purchasing and usage of local services increase (think food and beverage,
local tourism, clothing, and even other simple services like laundry).

The idea that US companies paying higher rates is going to wreck an economy of
a lower performing country is very unlikely. The reality is that if it somehow
became a norm, (unlikely since if rates are high globally, you'd keep the jobs
local as much as possible), people would just form new companies to service
that market.

Which is technically what is already happening in countries like India and Sri
Lanka.

So no. Please pay people better. It'll most likely help that country's
economy.

------
blakesterz
> As a millennial there are few things that rank as desirable as finding a
> recurring source of income that doesn’t take much work

That made me laugh! As someone much older I can honestly say that there are
few things that rank as desirable as finding a recurring source of income that
doesn’t take much work for me too.

~~~
Skunkleton
As a millennial myself, I would like the need for income taken off the table
so that I can find a recurring source of meaningful work.

~~~
zanny
This is such a modern problem too. No matter what anyone feels about it having
to farm crops to eat was definitely meaningful work a hundred years ago. Even
if you were being exploited in a factory suicide was common but mostly from
abuse and injury rather than the vacuousness of the job.

Its wholly contemporary to invent bullshit jobs and imagine complexity to keep
people at desks en masse, leaving them with such a feeling of their lives
being pointless.

~~~
Skunkleton
Truth. My job is "important", but at the same time I don't think anyone's life
would be measurably worse if I didn't do it (besides mine lol).

IMO it is kind of a problem with software in general. It is getting me down
honestly; I could use some advice.

~~~
JDiculous
I feel the same way. Pay is good, work can be interesting, work-life balance
and job security are relatively good, but being a developer never gave me any
sense of real fulfillment. I'm not making any serious difference in anyone's
life, and my six figure salary could be replaced with a team of eastern
Europeans who could probably get more done at a fraction of the cost. If I
were to die tomorrow, it wouldn't really make any difference aside from
friends/family. My company might be inconvenienced for a couple weeks, but
would easily find a replacement.

I can put up with unfulfilling work (at least for a little bit). What I can't
stand is the Kool-Aid culture surrounding it where you have to put this big
smile on your face at all times and pretend like gluing Javascript is your
life-calling, mentally stimulates you, and gives you a deep sense of
fulfillment. That CNBC article describing Facebook's work culture as "cult-
like" is basically every job and job interview I've ever partaken in in the
tech industry.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/facebook-culture-cult-
perfor...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/facebook-culture-cult-performance-
review-process-blamed.html)

The modern software engineer is a glorified factory worker, except instead of
making cars and computer parts we're making apps that help rich people get a
little richer or get people to buy sh*t they don't need.

I envy people with actually meaningful jobs - doctors who save lives,
journalists exposing the world's atrocities, politicians, anyone working on
the cutting edge of anything, etc.

~~~
unclebucknasty
The thing that amazes me is that so many people feel the same way, yet this
"way of life" is still the norm.

That is, why is there no way to innovate a new structure, given the degree of
intrinsic support that would seem to exist?

And, software engineers in particular would _seem_ well-suited to this task.
If software is eating the world and we write software, then...

~~~
a_imho
It is usually some form of entities with the means are not interested/enjoying
the current status quo.

------
wyldfire
> That was made possible when I took a couple friends (who are salespeople)
> out for drinks to tell them what I was working on. Afterwards they both said
> they would try to think of people to refer me to.

Thomas deserves all the credit for building and selling his business, but the
value of this point here is critical, in my mind. IMO key takeaways are (1)
knowing lots of people helps a lot, and (2) asking for help/daring to talk
about your project helps a lot.

------
wilsonnb3
> Most people in the tech industry are brainwashed by Silicon Valley group
> think. These people believe that every business must have a billion dollar
> opportunity.

If anything, I’d say that most people in the tech industry in Silicon Valley
are brainwashed into thinking that entrepreneurship is the One True Path to
salvation.

Much like whoever wrote this article. Who else would recommend that someone
follow the path that “led to depression, social isolation, and the hardest
time of my life” just because they got lucky in the end?

~~~
Swizec
> Who else would recommend that someone follow the path that “led to
> depression, social isolation, and the hardest time of my life” just because
> they got lucky in the end?

One of my favorite Ewan McGregor quotes from watching Long Way Round recently
was when he would say _”This is the part that really sucks right now and is
just so hard it makes you wanna cry, but it’s the part we remember most fondly
later”_

He said that on multiple occasions. It maps well to stuff I recently learned
in Thinking Fast and Slow about our experiencing self versus our remembering
self.

It turns out we cherish sucky experiences tht end well more dearly than we do
experiences that are great (or bad) throughout.

~~~
mcguire
What about sucky experiences that don't end well?

~~~
solveit
Fuck those. We wish we hadn't been so mindblowingly _stupid_ as to put
ourselves through those.

~~~
all2
Well, those can also be remembered fondly.

One that crops up in my memory with some frequency is lying face-down in three
inches of snow. My feet are going numb. My SAW is freezing my fingers. My
helmet keeps sliding down over my eyes. We've been out here on the perimeter
for almost two hours, just waiting for the word to move.

They told us to _embrace the suck_. It was fun. I've never felt so alive.

~~~
mcguire
Since you didn't die and (I assume) didn't lose all of your fingers and toes
to frostbite, that ended quite well.

------
holoduke
I created a successful side project back in 2014. It is still running and
making 20 times more than I would get with a normal job. But i was lucky.
Lucky to be born in a rich country. Lucky because I was given a computer at
the age of 5. Lucky because I had unlimited education opportunities. Lucky
because I had a friend who gave me access to something I needed for my
business. And many other lucks. I will never deny that fact. But reading these
stories makes me a bit angry, because it is just not that simple. It's always
easy to translate a successful story into a guideline. But that guideline
isn't worth anything when all those luck properties are different.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
I worked for a mom + pop Amazon seller (manufacture + ship from China to
America, stick packaging on it, send it in to Fulfillment by Amazon, collect a
check)

He's probably worth $50m as one of the top 250 sellers. Probably ~20 SKUs.
Tons of competitors trying to bring him down but his product has so many
reviews that it is just a money printer.

He was smart to be at the right place at the right time. He undercut the
bigdogs back in the day (~10 years ago maybe?) and gained momentum.

He refused to admit to me that he was lucky. He refused to admit that he had
the right idea at the right time. Was his execution great? You bet. Good
marketing/product advertising/images/pivoting/getting through hardships/blah
blah blah.

But like... he couldn't do again if he had to start from scratch in 2019.
Things are different. And he refused to acknowledge that. He wanted to believe
everything he did was perfect and he got his wealth purely from skill.

I think that's a bad trait :(

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
What is this new trend of belittling accomplishments down to luck? At the very
least, thousands of people had the same opportunity to do what your boss did.
And that's if we take your word that this is all he did, and he didn't
negotiate at all or spend any time researching what products to sell, or take
a loss in the beginning to provide good customer service for future gain. Even
seeing the opportunity is a skill itself, millions of people will happily stay
at their current job rather than take a risk.

>But like... he couldn't do again if he had to start from scratch in 2019.
Things are different.

This is a losing attitude, a quick search of almost any category on Amazon
will show more recent products that are China rebrands with thousands of
reviews.

Here is one: [https://www.amazon.com/JavaPresse-Grinder-Conical-Brushed-
St...](https://www.amazon.com/JavaPresse-Grinder-Conical-Brushed-
Stainless/dp/B013R3Q7B2/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1547173751&sr=8-2-spons&keywords=coffee+grinder&psc=1)

You can find exact copies on Aliexpress for $10.

You can't prove it's impossible to do what he did today. Others are actively
doing it.

>I think that's a bad trait :(

Being proud of your accomplishments is not a bad trait. Thousands of people
had the same opportunities as him, yet he came out on top (or top 250, in your
example).

~~~
throwaway218649
> You can't prove it's impossible to do what he did today. Others are actively
> doing it.

There is a whole genre of get-rich-quick scammers claiming that exact thing:

[https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-scam-lawsuit-bowser-
washing...](https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-scam-lawsuit-bowser-washington/)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/men-p...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/men-
peddling-secrets-getting-rich-amazon/578443/)

Just because something is possible does not mean it is common. Why didn't all
the hard-working software entrepreneurs from the 1980s end up like Bill Gates?
Discounting luck and good timing leads to the Horatio Alger fallacy.

------
yellowapple
I witnessed "Play #3" firsthand. The first startup for which I worked
(developing a peer-to-peer learning system that paired up students to learn
off one another, whether in person or via video chat) had an uphill battle
getting customers and investors because we had to convince them that the
problem our product solved was actually a problem they had. Our product
happened to chiefly operate by integrating with a different one (Khan
Academy), so much of our time "in the wild" pitching to potential customers
was spent giving KA free advertisement before we could even explain what our
product did.

There were multiple other factors behind why we ultimately didn't succeed and
ended up all going our separate ways (and I know I wasn't blameless there),
but in hindsight I think this was the central factor. We barely had the
resources - sapient or monetary - to sell our own product; trying to sell
other people's products upon which ours depended was doomed to fail.

I still think we had an excellent and valuable product, and I stand by the
code we wrote and the platform we built; we were just too far ahead of our
time :) One of these days, when things like Khan Academy are a bit more
mainstream in classrooms, I'd love to (with my old boss' permission, of
course) try restarting that particular project and giving it another go.

~~~
cosmie
> We barely had the resources - sapient or monetary - to sell our own product;
> trying to sell other people's products upon which ours depended was doomed
> to fail.

Just to know, this isn't a particularly uncommon problem. I spent quite a few
years working in the B2B lead generation space, and there are countless
companies built around the value proposition of being a complementary product
to another software platforms.

There are quite a few techniques you can use to suss out what software and
platforms companies are using internally, in order to better target your
prospecting. Or you can skip that step and go straight to purchasing a list of
companies that are known users of that platform. There are companies that
curate that type of information - similar to BuiltWith[1] or Wappalyzer[2],
but include internal-only technology and not just what's visible by crawling
their website. Or you can take it even further, and commission a custom
program from a B2B lead generation firm which includes a requirement that any
leads have self-reported that they use a specific platform and that they have
decision making authority over it[3]. There are also a ton of options in
between; feel free to reach out if you'd like to chat more (email in profile).

[1] [https://builtwith.com/](https://builtwith.com/)

[2] [https://www.wappalyzer.com/](https://www.wappalyzer.com/)

[3] These are a patently different class of lead generation program than what
the article references - both in quality and cost. You're looking at $20-$50
per lead vs. $1 per lead. But with a guarantee that they match your targeting
and pre-qualification criteria, even if that pre-qualification criteria was as
random as "she has confirmed they use Khan Academy internally, and that she's
in charge of it, and that <insert your complementary product's niche> is a
pain point for them".

------
blunte
This is great and educational. But I've noticed that many (most?) of the
successful side projects were started by people who had some sales and
marketing experience. Sales first, tech second (or third).

If you want other people to buy, rent, invest, etc., you have to be able to
find the right people and communicate with them in a way that will lead them
to become your customers/partners. Unfortunately, I doubt many of us with
CompSci degrees and years/decades of experience have those sales and marketing
skills.

So I guess there's a business just waiting (for someone who knows sales +
tech)! Teach nerds how to market. I might be a customer.

~~~
rchaud
> Unfortunately, I doubt many of us with CompSci degrees and years/decades of
> experience have those sales and marketing skills.

The history of enterprise tech is strewn with stories about that first big
deal happening before the tech was even ready. Bill Gates and Paul Allen's
meeting with IBM is probably the best known one. Hell, even Steve Jobs, with
all of Apple's power, publicly pitched a ghetto-rigged iPhone because a fully
working version wasn't ready at the time.

The 'best' sales people I've met always, always exaggerate the benefits of
something. In tech, the "Comp Sci" people are the ones building the product,
so they are especially mindful about not overstating what their product can
do. Psychologically, they are forever in a problem-solving mode, meaning that
when they talk about the product, they are primed to talk about current bugs,
or how far away it is from being 'feature complete'. Not the people you want
extolling your virtues in a sales meeting.

Salespeople aren't as closely embedded within the product development process,
which gives them the mental bandwidth to straight up lie about what the
product can do. I've seen it numerous times; sales exec closes a big deal,
then goes to the dev team and says "I need X, Y and Z to be added to this
sprint because customer H wants to launch in a month."

~~~
blunte
I think you've nailed it regarding problem-solving mentality and not
overstating capabilities. And yes, I've sat right next to a salesperson and
had to swallow my tongue while they told a customer that we could deliver
something that we absolutely could not.

Fortunately, some of the side projects I've seen that have become successful
don't appear to be overselling themselves based on their websites. So there
must be room for success just by learning a process of how to get noticed by
the right potential customers, and then plainly speaking what the product is.

------
systematical
The truth is, there is no 5-10 hour work week for 99% of people. Even if you
make something like this person did, if you don't continue investing a lot of
time into it, eventually competition will break you to pieces. Why? Because
your competitor is hungry and working a lot more than 5-10 hours a week.

I know this, because I've built two side income businesses, sat back and
collected money only to find competitors had taken me over. They weren't big
by any means but the $3,000 a month I made off one and the $1,000 a month off
another was quite nice. I could've quit my job and traveled, but instead I
paid down my mortgage and banked/invested the rest. This left me with a lot of
money (for me). I eventually sold both businesses when I saw the writing on
the wall with various competitors and industry changes.

I did end up traveling for a while though. I did that with a remote job. Sure
I had to work during the day, but that left plenty of time to explore whatever
city I was in at night and do bigger adventures on the weekend.

TLDR; 5-10 hour work week doesn't last.

------
csa
Only a tangent to the OP, but...

I find it hilarious that he calls Abercrombie & Fitch the “high end clothing
brand for middle schoolers”. A&F used to target “elite outdoorsmen” (not a
joke — think a high end LL Bean), and they made some really good stuff. Some
of that quality lasted until the 90s and early 00s after changing hands and
shifting towards targeting youth casual wear, but their clothing line is
almost all overpriced junk now. Such a sad loss.

~~~
iddqd
Not a fan of how they portray their brand, but in my experience A&F makes
really solid fits for althetic type build (think big thighs). This in my
experience is really hard to find on clothes of a somewhat modern cut.

~~~
csa
I hear ya. Even though I’m not their target demographic, I bought some of
their stuff for the same reason — great quality and great fit for athletic
builds.

Something happened in the late aughts. The fit is not as consistently good (my
body changed very little over that time), and the quality of the material and
stitching is much lower.

------
derekp7
If you don't mind me asking, I'd like some help laying out what my next steps
should be on one of my side projects. I had an idea for a side project, ran it
by a hand full of friends and associates, expecting to have a bunch of holes
poked into it (they have done that to me many times in the past). This time
they all think I have something.

Problem is I work full time, as a Linux systems engineer (30 years of Unix
experience), with a side passion for C programming, web technologies, and have
built a hand full of web apps that are getting a lot of use at work (btw I'm
not under any contract prohibiting side projects, and have cleared it with my
management).

Next problem: The project itself is relatively simple, has client-side pieces
that will be open source, and over all I prototyped it in about a weekend's
worth of work, but need probably a month or so to get it more polished and
robust. The upshot is that it can be easily replicated by anyone in a similar
space. There are similar products that try to solve the same problem, but in a
rather backwards and less secure method, but I'm really not sure why other
vendors haven't thought of this project first.

Third problem: I'm relatively new at modern advanced web apps, so things like
taking payments, handling customers, integrating to a customer's on-premise or
cloud based authentication (O365, Active Directory, etc) is something I'm not
too familiar with (for my projects I just used ldap bind for authentication
against a local AD server).

So for my next step, should I put a prototype / demo site online, and let
people create demo accounts that last for a couple weeks? Then if there is
sufficient interest, set up something like a Stripe account? Start off with
local user account authentication, then later on add the ability for customers
to set up users authenticating against their own AD domain or O365 account?

Or would I be better off finding a business partner that has been through all
this already?

~~~
illumin8
Honestly, as someone who has started a 5-6 figure monthly "side-hustle" in an
area where there are many other players, and which requires learning new
frontend skills, while I'm a crusty UNIX/Linux head, 30 years experience like
you, I would say: just do it!

Here is the thing I learned in 2018, in which I also generated >$700K of side
income working 10-12 hours a week (mornings, evenings, and weekends): If you
know how to learn new tech skills at a reasonable rate, you can learn anything
you need to do in a few hours. Obviously this doesn't apply to sophisticated
things, but how many of the things you need to do in tech are really that
hard? For example, my client needed to update a static website with data
stored in Airtable - I spent 2 hours finding some python code that was open
source on GitHub that scrapes Airtable every few minutes and puts the data in
a JSON file that his static website can now read. 2 hours of effort and I have
a client that I billed almost $1000 and he's completely happy with the
outcome. His static website is now dynamically updated from Airtable. Not only
that, I learned a new skill and I can repeat this for other clients without
the effort of learning. Multiply this over several hundred days over several
years and you have an amazingly strong side hustle.

Just do it, you can figure out the details as you go...

~~~
rchaud
You were able to charge $1000 for the Airtable gig? If you don't mind my
asking, was the client not aware of Upwork, Fiverr, etc, which I would imagine
would be perfect for these one-off, low-engagement gigs?

------
wyldfire
Stupid question, how could you possibly automate lead generation? For that
matter, how do you do it manually? Search for potential customers and read up
about their business?

~~~
infinii
I don't think he automated it. It looks like he outsourced it to cheaper
labour in the Philipines

------
herova
Next topics for Hackernews: "How to be a success spammer" "How to grow web
doorways network as side project" etc

------
nowarninglabel
"the first thing I did was hire a team in the Philipinnes to ensure I never
had to stay up until 1am building lists"

Is it possible for anyone to share how they found people to hire/outsource
building sales lists to?

~~~
illumin8
He says right in the article: odesk.

~~~
sah2ed
Right, but they now go by the name UpWork.

That the article uses the old name of oDesk from 4 years ago points to the
need to add “(2015)” to the thread title.

[https://www.upwork.com](https://www.upwork.com)

~~~
vonseel
actually, the article was posted yesterday. He’s writing about his experience
in 2015...

~~~
sah2ed
That the article was published recently may be true but the article’s contents
doesn’t really contain new info. Please see this comment up-thread [0] which
surfaced older incarnations of the same content.

0:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18880312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18880312)

------
bayesian_horse
To me this always sounds like "How I won the lottery..."

Maybe I am too pessimistic and jaded from studying statistics...

------
beezle
Left unsaid is what the bottom line margin is. 10%? 30%? More?

------
RyanShook
Good article, thanks! The business seemed to have been built on oDesk workers
but now that site it called Upwork. Are there any alternatives to upwork out
there?

------
ForHackernews
> found a virtual assistant on oDesk named Jonathan

Am I correct in thinking this "virtual" assistant is not a bot, but just a
human hired remotely?

~~~
molticrystal
Virtual indeed refers to their presence. While to you, you know they are
remote, for any outward facing function though, such as with customer
interaction, ideally they'll seem like they are no further then the next
office or department of your company.

------
willart4food
Nice. (commenting so that I can remember this post)

~~~
akavel
There's a "favorite" link you should click instead, located just below the
article's title on this very page — it'll add the article to your "favorites"
list at:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=willart4food](https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=willart4food)

------
person_of_color
Has anyone done this with a hardware product?

------
ttty2
So how did he got customers?

> As I mentioned, my first lead/opportunity came from an introduction. That
> was made possible when I took a couple friends (who are salespeople) out for
> drinks to tell them what I was working on. Afterwards they both said they
> would try to think of people to refer me to.

> My next two customers came from a less obvious channel. A friend told me
> about a service called Growth Geeks and suggested I create a profile for my
> service. I was hesitant at first because it seemed like a distraction, but I
> signed up nonetheless.

So basically he sent an email to the founder of that website like this
[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5706d181b09f95e331b21...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5706d181b09f95e331b219de/t/5c37799ff950b7bb44f11390/1547139502227/4+hour+post+img+3.png?format=1000w)
saying that the author (a bit confusing to figure out as both are called
Mike/Michael) can grow your sales with no marketing.

Then this happened:

> He responded that day and asked if I had time to speak on the phone.

> On the call I learned that he had a customer who needed 2,000 leads a month
> and they needed 2,000 leads a month for themselves. I used the same sales
> process as my first call and closed two deals in 30 minutes worth $3,000 /
> mo (25% of the $4,000 in revenue went to Growth Geeks). Suddenly I went from
> $1,000/mo to $4,000 / mo.

My question is now, how he manages to make 4k leads?!

> Later that week I decided it was time to double down on this side project. I
> spent a couple nights writing email templates and planning outbound email
> campaigns. By May of 2015 I had sent over 30,000 sales and marketing emails
> so I knew how to get high response rates (see play #1).

So now he says he sent over 30000 emails (I assume he has a mailing list of
30000 and sent an email, but that doesn't match what he says, he seems to have
sent multiple emails). So let's say he has 30000 email list and a click-
through rate of 13.3% (which I think is very very high, maximum I got was
around 3-4% and was only once) then he would make 4000 leads.

First thing I think is strange, is how he got 30000 emails? That's kind of the
most important part of the guide, without this he couldn't make any lead.

Then he says this:

> I sent emails to about 500 people over the course of a month which resulted
> in ~20 free trial sign-ups. Two of those free trials converted within the
> month and by the end of June, I had $5,000 in booked MRR.

Note that this is another customer acquisition source. So he has an additional
500 emails.

I mean how can a person reproduce this guide without these mailing lists?

So even if he says how he did it, you can't really do the same unless you
have:

\- Friends that can sign up for your product or refer other people \- Big
email lists \- Create leads from ???

I feel like all these missing points leads directly to his startup
[https://getsimpledata.com/](https://getsimpledata.com/) \- So I guess is more
about marketing.

Anyway, I think the post was interesting, but not too much I can do about it
because I probably know about:

\- Focus on a problem that already exists \- Work on your pain point \-
Outsource to a cheap country \- Positioning in the market

Some types for the author: Philipinnes

------
ensiferum
This article reads like total BS. Within 6 months to 30k income. Yeah right.

------
the_other_guy
shady and only tells what kind of person OP is

------
robpalumbo
Love it

