
Ask HN: who started something in 2012 which is already profitable? - withinthreshold
I think we are all interested in reading some inspirational success stories for summer 2012! 
I would really appreciate your responses, HN!
======
markchristian
I launched a Mac utility app called DragonDrop
(<https://shinyplasticbag.com/dragondrop/>) that got a lot of pretty good
press (including getting fireballed — here's the HN discussion
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3946404>).

~~~
johnroescher
I use DragonDrop 500 times per day. I love it! Thank you!

------
there
I created a push notification service called Pushover
(<https://pushover.net/>) and wrote its iOS and Android apps. I started the
project in January and launched it in March (<https://jcs.org/pushover>).

In contrast to some competing free apps/services, the Pushover mobile apps are
$3.99 which pays for the monthly hosting costs to keep the service running.
Both apps are highly rated on both app stores and so far the app sales have
paid for the domain name and other tangible development costs and are
continuing to generate profit. I just purchased a Blackberry phone for
development and plan to create a Blackberry app for the service.

~~~
eps
Have worked out the math behind one-time purchases supporting unlimited
perpetual service? I suspect it _is_ possible if a substantial amount of users
leave the service after the purchase, but I can't see how this is not a form
of pyramid scheme - new users effectively cover obligations made to eariler
users. How is this sustainable with a non-trivial volume? Or do you (plan to)
charge API users?

~~~
there
It's hard to work out accurate numbers because users can have such drastically
different usage patterns. Some users have signed up with one device and have
only received a few notifications, others have many devices registered and
receive dozens of notifications daily from chat plugins.

The API is free, though applications are limited to a reasonable number of
messages per month. That was put into place out of fear that a large company
would use the app/service as a dirt-cheap platform to send large amounts of
messages every day to its employees (like routing/dispatching directions,
etc.) and burden the service. And rightly so, since shortly after launching, I
got an e-mail from a large US company looking to use it in such a way (they
ultimately decided not to use it). If such customers do come along, their API
fees will cover them being on segmented servers.

~~~
joering2
there: kudos to you for executing exact the idea I had as early as 2010! By
any chance you could write an article on your experience with sells and
marking? This is what most interests me! I am working on a project that will
utilize Pushover so soon I will be a paid customer :)

Also, about your revenue model. How did you calculate that $3.99 would be
sufficient to make profit AND give service to users on "all you can eat"
terms? Wouldn't it be wiser to give one year for free (thats plenty of time to
see whether I need and like your service or not) and then charge $9.99 per
year after that? I mean, if this grows, I can easily see people eating up more
bandwidth than this one-time $3.99 payment can bring into your pocket. If your
TOS (sorry haven't checked) does not explicitly saying that in the future you
may charge more, I think you may found yourself walking on a thin ice.

~~~
there
I don't really have much experience in the way of sales and marketing, but my
integration efforts so far have just been to setup Pushover applications with
icons ahead of time and then e-mail admins with the API key and some
explanation so they don't have to do much work. I did the Github integration
and Adium plugin myself to increase visibility.

I went with $3.99 because Prowl is $2.99 and Notify My Android is $3.99. I'm
not convinced that a yearly service is worth the overhead and I personally
wouldn't pay to use a notification app that had a yearly fee.

The bandwidth and server overhead for running such a service are pretty low
and iOS/Android push notifications are free, so I'm not really worried about
monthly costs for normal users outweighing the revenue the app brings in.
Right now Pushover is running on one of my servers that does other things, so
it's not even really costing anything tangible. If costs start to go up, I can
always increase the price of the apps to slow growth (or increase revenue if
it doesn't slow growth).

------
einaregilsson
I created a few javascript card games, most of them in late 2011, but they
really started earning this year. So far have made Spades, Hearts, Go Fish,
Crazy Eights, Shithead and a couple of solitaires. Revenue has been steadily
rising, and is a nice little side income now. [http://www.spades-
cardgame.com](http://www.spades-cardgame.com) is one, the rest are linked from
there.

~~~
danneu
I didn't see any ads after I paused Adblock or any other call to action.

~~~
einaregilsson
Well that's weird. There are two AdSense skyscrapers, one on each side of the
table. How wide is your screen?

------
coderdude
Beware of posts like this from what is basically a new account with only as
much karma as this post has received.

Sharks and all that: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4017843>

(Am I paranoid much?)

~~~
withinthreshold
I think your point is valid, but what can i do - i am new here and i am
interested to read some success stories.

------
mittermayr
I created fruji.com, a simple Twitter Analytics service and offered $5 and $25
accounts. People just keep buying accounts! It's fascinating!!!

This was a weekend project and it performs already way better (a few weeks in)
than my 1.5 year startup (which is something completely different).

That's some scary shit right there. Purely fascinating.

~~~
c0balt279
Did you do anything special to market it? (The site looks great, by the way)

~~~
mittermayr
Not really, the past few days, I've tried a few things. Wanted to see whether
any ads (Google or Facebook) would allow me to calculate a solid sign-up /
purchase ratio. But neither helped promoting the site at a
sustainable/affordable rate, I stopped both since more people arrived at the
site through pure searching on Google, friends of friends or reading about it
on Twitter or a blog.

Also, I used Bootstrap as the foundation, it just helps a lot with getting
things off the ground for weekend projects.

~~~
timhaines
I thought you'd done a good job on Fruiji - I like the YAS factor.

Are you TwentyPeople? It give the impression you have a bunch of staff, but in
fact it's just one person?

------
jazzychad
I created ExportMyPosts after the Posterous acquisition so people could export
and backup their blogs' data - <http://exportmyposts.com/> \- it has made more
revenue than it costs for the hosting and servers, but not enough to pay a
salary or anything. There are a few promo codes left, use HACKERNEWS at
checkout.

I also made StepStats - <http://StepStats.com/> \- for better FitBit data
visualization; it's free, but enough people have donated money that it has
covered all costs involved.

~~~
sebg
would love to know the distribution of money donated. is it a bunch of "1 beer
donations" or is it more of a power law?

------
martin_rusev
I launched a paid version (<http://amon.cx/plus> ) of my server and web app
monitoring toolkit - Amon ( <http://amon.cx> ) back in February and have made
something like $3000. It took me 2 months working full time to build it.

------
oron
I started a temporary email service called Air Mail which has processed over 2
million emails in the last 3 months and is already profitable.

<http://getairmail.com>

wish I had a cent for every email it processed ;-)

~~~
Ark-kun
After briefly looking at your website, I think that mailinator.com looks to
have superior features.

1) You don't even need to go to Mailinator to get an email address. You just
know that any time you have any address you want on hand. 2) With Mailinator
you just use any name when you register on some website. (generated names are
suspicious) 3) Mailinator has different domains to avoid blacklisting (domain
name doesn't matter. You just need to know the username to check your mail) 4)
There are websites that try to you using Mailinator by trying to log is with
the name of your e-mail. For these services you can use another generated name
that can only be used for sending mail, not for logging in. 5) Mailinator does
not retain your messages for long. Also everything is stored in memory (as far
as I heard), so the messages cannot be stolen.

~~~
oron
Mailinator has an interesting approach to solving the problem , to my taste
it's not as simple to use as Air Mail but 1 and 2 are a big plus i must admit.
I will see how to add these.

Number 4 I didn't understand what you meant.

------
ksat
Launched <http://cull.io> 20 days ago. Revenue made till now $150. Spent:
appengine $10, musicbakery: $47. (I don't really know how to cost my time,
it's around three weeks to build).

~~~
WA
Just a quick feedback from my side: It "feels" to me that this website is
empty - that no people use it and that I'd have a hard time finding a
developer. Maybe it's just me, but if other people feel the same, you might
want to do something about it and give it more "life".

~~~
ksat
You mean as in a better design? This was designed by me and I am not that good
designer. Will try to make it better

~~~
coopdog
I think he means more people using it (classic network effect)

Maybe put out ads and have as free weekend or something? The idea is that
everyone arrives there at the same time for a short period until there's
enough people that it's always busy

~~~
ksat
Got it! Thanks. Will try. May be eat my own dogfood and try and give it free
for anyone who would solve a challenge :)

------
HarrietJones
I created a simple website alert-if-down service (<http://pingdipong.com>),
and it's just started paying for its own hosting. I wouldn't call it
profitable. It's not paying anybodies wage. It's not covering the cost of
advertising. It's been an interesting and turbulent couple of months. I went
into it thinking there was only big name players in the market (pingdom, etc),
that it would be an easy market to break into and found out much later that
there are a host of similar products out there. And it's really, really hard
to sell simple / boring stuff to people.

It's utterly true that the development is only a small fraction of the
process. People told me before, but I didn't listen. It's also true that the
funnel between getting a clickthrough and getting a payment narrows
frighteningly quickly. It seems to cost me a fortune to get a paying customer.

I wanted to make something useful that wasn't built on VC money, and although
it's possible, I'm not sure that there's much success to be had for small
players in the web development arena. It's heartening to hear other peoples
stories though. Another reason to keep trying. :-)

I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that website development is coming to the
end of its homebrew phase (much like games and desktop software previously),
and it's becoming almost impossible for tiny teams to make anything useful.
There still seems to be some space in the mobile market, but that appears to
be being swallowed by larger development teams with VC money.

And yes, I'm obviously making this post with the intention of _also_ plugging
my own service. I hope I've added something extra to the conversation though.

~~~
lrobb
I agree somewhat... I tried to launch an app in a space that was attracting
single digit MM investment rounds. A bit disheartening to see a company get
5mm and all of a sudden they hire a dozen developers and have prime ad space
on all the big websites for your vertical.

Not that it can't be done, but it sure feels like spitting into the wind.

------
johnroescher
I partnered up with 4 other talented whizzes and started a user experience
production agency.

<http://hnd.sm> is sincerely 'coming soon' (next week) but you can see how
much work we've already done on our Dribbble here >
<http://dribbble.com/handsomemade>

It's been a blast working with startups and existing brands creating new
products, marketing them, and generally creating success through precise user
experience.

Very profitable already and showing impressive growth.

Not a "web app" or socially networked, real time diet planner but we're a
business and we're profitable!

Started in Jan of this year.

------
bdunn
Launched <https://planscope.io> late February. Netting about $1100/mo profit
after server costs.

~~~
lesigh
What language was this built with?

~~~
bdunn
Rails on the backend, Backbone on the front

------
chaseideas
This year has been an exciting one from the very start!

I've had several successful (read: awesomely profitable) new ventures this
year, such as an ad network that I established and sold to a private party for
a solid 5 figure amount within a month.

On one of my more established networks, I was able to grow the unique
impressions by over 100k a day within 2 weeks of focusing on it. I also
established a domain parking system that already has over 500+ domains parked
on it and growing quickly.

During a random latenight coding session, I created a unique new channel/model
of selling category related emails to advertisers bidding on a CPM basis real-
time, and lining up another venture to integrate with this platform.

These are but a few of the cool things currently being worked on by myself and
my growing staff. Hoping to be hiring on more talent on soon and probably
getting a swanky office in La Jolla, CA soon.

Have some pretty exciting plans for the year!

------
process
Developed an iOS photo editor (<http://proc.es>) which keeps me from starving.
Though, come to think of it I am a little hungry.

~~~
creativityhurts
It's hard not to be hungry with a 10 bucks app that has a landing page that
says nothing about it and competes with Instagram, Camera+, Hipsmatic and
such.

~~~
Danieru
After your comment I was expecting a homepage with irrelevant information.
Maybe some's blog.

I will not spoil the surprise for others but I will say that I did not expect
what I did not see.

------
demat
Hi, I've launched a website in January to find all your bills in one place
sponsored by big french brands and it became profitable in may
<http://greenbureau.fr>

~~~
creativityhurts
That's really neat! So those big companies pay to be on your service? How did
you get them to do that?

~~~
withinthreshold
I would be interested in your story of dealing with large companies too. How
did you get them on board?

~~~
demat
First of all it's a long process! There are three fundamental points to get
them on board. First, we offer their customers something they can't build
themselves : in a competitive ecosystem, a phone company can't get another
phone company send it its customer bills. Second, you have to proove that your
solution won't require heavy IT costs. And last, you have to prove it won't
cause traffic decline on their website (this is the toughest part). For the
second point, our solution requires no IT costs for the companies to start the
business. And if they want to go further in IT integration, it's their choice
to develop an API. For the last point: An average customer visits its
provider's website less than once a month (especially if you are speaking of
utilities - water, energy, and so on...), whereas he will return 6 or 7 times
a month on our website (and even more on our app). This is a new communication
channel for brands to speak to their customer.

------
spiredigital
Great thread! I love seeing actual projects people are working on.

I wrote a 55-page eBook on starting a profitable drop shipping business which
has been downloaded over 500 times in less than a month
(<http://www.ecommercefuel.com/profitable-ecommerce-ebook/>). I started
writing in late April and released it May 15th.

Since I'm giving the eBook away and my monetization goals are mostly long
term, revenues have been very minimal - less than $100 in affiliate
commissions so far. But in 2.5 months since I launched the blog, I've received
nearly 10,000 visits and almost 600 subscribers which I've been really happy
about...

~~~
ra
I just read your ebook; you write very well and it's definitely an interesting
topic.

------
cheez
I started a new social network for people who like weird socks.

~~~
mikecsh
Can you post a link?! :D

------
markessien
I started hotels.com.ng feb this year I think and it's already mildly
profitable.

~~~
withinthreshold
Very nice! So your target is an english-speaking person going for a (business)
trip to Nigeria?

~~~
markessien
Target is actually nigerians who need a hotel at some location elsewhere
within the country. Internet growth in Africa is off the charts atm...

~~~
prezjordan
Glad there are people out there taking advantage of this. How tough was it to
acquire that domain?

------
arohner
Not quite 2012, but I started work on CircleCI (<https://circleci.com>) in
September 2011 and it's a real business now.

------
waterside81
We (littleheroes.com) launched an iPad app to read kids books purchased on our
site. We were fortunate in that we already had a customer base to market to.

------
Zaheer
I launched a service recently that sends people a new technical interview
question every other day (www.InterTechTion.com). Subscribers are slowly
growing daily and people seem to really like the service. I'm a first-year
college student (so I'm new to this stuff) and am trying to figure out how to
get advertisers to sign up. Any advice?

------
chrishaum
I launched the Pest Management Roundtable (<http://pestroundtable.com>) in
February. After several months of good ol' fashioned hustling (mostly email
marketing + telephone interviews and sales), I'm up to nearly $500 in monthly
recurring revenue. It's not quite "ramen profitable" yet, but I've been
picking up customers quickly the last 2 weeks, so at this rate I'll get it
there within the month. A recent milestone was that last week I interviewed
the owner of the 10th largest pest control company in the US (Joe Clark, of
Clark Pest Control in California). He joined the Roundtable immediately
following the interview.

------
scottmotte
I started <http://boxysign.com> 2 months ago. It is a way to share and sign
documents with just a link! It's been profitable from the start - ableit still
on a very small scale.

~~~
cpeterso
This is a very interesting, focused service. I like how you quietly create a
phantom account so users don't need to login to start working.

btw, I think I broke your site when trying to upload two test PDFs. The first
worked correctly, but second never finished processing and now every page says
"Application Error". The Done button on BoxySign's Account Settings dialog
does not seem to work (but the X button does).

Also, the sharable URLs seemed disconcertingly short for documents that may
contain private information.

~~~
scottmotte
Thanks for the feedback. It's encouraging.

Yes, that is a bug I need to fix. Thanks for catching it.

Indeed, and that is by design right now. I chose to focus on the clearest
solution to the end user to start, but do have plans for longer/harder-to-
guess urls. I'm considering moving that list further up my todos though.
(working on .doc support right now)

------
bharani_m
I started Resumonk.com last month and it has already started generating some
revenue.

~~~
Xcelerate
Great work! I have one suggestion though. Let users immediately start filling
in information and THEN let them create an account. I wanted to try it out,
but then realized I needed to put my email in and select a password. Not a bad
thing, but you'll get a lower bounce rate if you save the account creation for
later.

(Also, this sort of thing would work great with Facebook connect -- you could
pull name, education, work history, and phone numbers automatically. Maybe
LinkedIn has an API to?)

~~~
bharani_m
Thanks. I'll try to remove the upfront signup process. I will also try to
integrate Twitter/FB connect.

There is a LinkedIn import, but it is one of the PRO features. More about that
here - <http://www.resumonk.com/pro>

------
maxjaderberg
Launched <http://www.TrickedOutTimeline.com> on HN in february (see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3522255>) and have made ~$2500 on around
$100 costs from advertising and hosting on google app engine. Nothing huge,
but good for a weekends work with a friend!

~~~
notJim
I remember your post when you guys launched. I went to your site and spent
about 5 minutes trying to figure out what the hell it was. I see now that
you've greatly improved this, and added several clear examples that show it.
Great work!

Do you mind answering a couple of question? I'm curious how you guys have
advertised this product, and where your users come from.

~~~
maxjaderberg
yeah no problem - shoot me an email if you want. we took a lot of feedback on
board from that HN post and really changed the layout since the initial
launch. Most of our traffic comes from blogs and StumbleUpon! We are also now
on the first page of Google for some relevant search terms

------
ctek
I created <https://www.pageblox.com>, a layout tool for web designers. I've
been getting between 1500-2000 uniques a month, so when I turn on the paid
version, I should be making at least a few hundred a month depending on how
the conversion rate turns out...

------
frankdenbow
I started Startup Threads Monthly (<https://StartupThreadsMonthly.com>), a
subscription service for startup swag, at the beginning of the year and is
profitable. Have 200+ subscribers, thanks in part to HN! Will do a breakdown
soon.

------
iuguy
My second company (Sense/Net) ran it's second ever event this year, 44Café. It
was a one day event alongside the UK's biggest infosec exhibition. We didn't
make any money from it (in fact it cost us about $5,000 all in) but we did the
event to raise awareness of the main conference[1] we're organising for
September, which I hope will bring a return in (although the olympics are
doing their best to make anything in London ludicrously expensive).

I'm also working on something for our first external event (i.e. an event
organised on behalf of someone else), which will be really cool if it goes
ahead.

[1] - <http://www.44con.com/>

------
epaga
Wrote and launched <http://app.net/emptyinbox> with my wife as a spare time
project over the course of a few months. It's an inbox zero assistant for
Gmail on iPhone. I am my own app's biggest fan, I use it almost daily and love
it to death. :)

Unfortunately a crash bug was in the first version for people running the
iphone app on an ipad, which wasn't discovered until after an AppAdvice review
came out which drove tons of downloads...so that led to a bunch of 1-star
reviews. But reviews since the fixed version have been very positive.

------
10dpd
Define profitable, it's extremely easy to build something that generates
revenue.

The difficult part is to build something that provides enough revenue to
support 1+ employees, office space, etc

~~~
rfrey
"it's extremely easy to build something that generates revenue."

For some definition of "easy", I guess.

~~~
bmelton
If you assume costs as follows: \- $1 a month for domain \- $20 a month for
hosting

I'd say it shouldn't be terribly difficult to find audience enough to generate
enough revenue to cover costs with even just ad revenue on even mediocre
projects.

Though I should also point out that the word 'revenue' doesn't necessarily
equal profit.

Are you having a hard time generating even the first penny? What's the niche?
Who's the audience? What are the revenue strategies tried?

~~~
lucaspiller
I've launched a few web apps and a mobile app but have yet to make a single
penny. I've a few more as well 'in development', which I may get around to
releasing some day...

Basically everything I have built is because I found it interesting rather
than trying to make money, so I'm not too bothered. However if it is so easy,
where are all the "Hello World" tutorials for bringing in revenue?

------
EarlofGrey
I started building <http://www.splatsearch.com> A comparison engine with big
plans to compare everything in the world. One online marketer and 2 developers
building it. Currently the live version is a very different snapshop from the
dev version which we roll out soon and just has 14 million sample products. We
bootstrapped it and it probably just about profitable even though its barely
live.

~~~
withinthreshold
Wow, i think the most difficult part is the parsing, isn't it? Are you using
any open-source solutions or is everything custom-built?

~~~
EarlofGrey
Everything is custom built. The parsing is the easy bit. The architecture is
what i find the hardest.

------
jhuckestein
Over the last couple of weeks I created <http://hipdial.com> with a friend.
You can buy your own, dedicated, PIN-free phone conference line from us.

We've opened doors to the public teo weeks ago and are already paying for the
servers. Press launch following next week. It's all very exciting :) Once
things relax a bit we'll definitely share our experience on some kind of blog.

Would love some feedback if you have a minute, too.

Edit: typo in URL, oops

------
zsherman
Started a curated ecommerce site for vinyl lovers that's been profitable since
day 1: <http://vinylloop.com/>

~~~
withinthreshold
Great site! How do you think vinyl lovers are different from other niches? Do
they spend more money?

------
mleonhard
I launched <https://www.rootredirect.com/> in April and it's paying its bills.
It provides high-availability root domain redirection for websites that use
CNAME-based services like EC2+ELB, S3/CloudFront, and Google App Engine. Plus
other features not offered by your DNS provider, such as cacheable 301
responses and page redirects.

------
mzarate06
I started TimePanel (<http://timepanel.net>) this year. I've always had the
desire to build a product, and wanted a time tracking and invoicing solution
that was extremely fast and simple. TimePanel is the culmination of that.

Number of users is slowly growing, and I just released its 3rd beta update;
looking to formally launch very soon.

------
bks
I released a service called <http://www.formactivate.com> where I convert form
fills and web based leads to phone calls. It decreased the time between
initial lead submission to when a you can get the prospect on the phone.

We started to get a ton of activity after I integrated with Wufoo.com via the
webhook API.

~~~
bks
We are looking for CRM or Form vendors to integrate with. We will be
announcing a few more integrations in the next few weeks.

------
csomar
I started a WordPress Plugin (<http://wpadpress.com>) and it's now generating
a close to a 4 figures monthly income. I'm working on lots of improvements and
will be joining hands with Theme authors for promotion, so it might turn to
something serious in the future.

~~~
kkreamer
By the way, I'm seeing lots of broken images on your homepage. Just FYI.

~~~
tertius
Ditto.

------
gfosco
I started a business text-messaging service, and succeeded in my first two
sales calls with local businesses. It was instantly profitable and is growing.
Currently I am not ready to sell it nationally, as I am refining and adding
some new features for a new client, or I would link it.

------
Lukeas14
I created "I Want An App That" (<http://www.iwaat.com>), a web app discovery
engine. No real business model has been implemented but so far affiliate
revenue has been paying for hosting costs and other services.

------
kolinko
I've built <http://AppCod.es> \- a tool for App Store SEO. It was launched
around february 2012, in march we got covered by Techcrunch (instant break
even) and our sales were increasing month by month since then.

------
matvoz
I launched a web site about alternative fuel LPG, mostly about fuel stations
in Europe (<http://www.mylpg.eu>). At first it was a test to feel the market,
but now I found out it has potential.

~~~
withinthreshold
Wow, does it take a lot of (crowdsourced) manpower to keep the database up-to-
date?

------
alex3t
Wedding planning app for Mac - Weddinglan(<http://weddinglan.com>) About $800
per month, but hope for more profit after next version which will include also
iPad version

~~~
withinthreshold
Looks great and i'm sure enjoy using it aswell! How did you came up with
Weddinplan? Do you come from the industry or was it just brainstorming?

------
marcomassaro
Launched <http://Pumpups.com> in under 3 weeks. Have paying customers and work
directly with brands.

------
ryangilbert
I recently started www.Polls.io. Haven't made any money yet since there aren't
any ads up but the costs are only $5/month so it's not bad.

~~~
hariis
where are you hosting that the cost is only $5/month?

------
njx
Launched a free service but already started selling the self hosted version
during the private beta

------
simplyhire
I recently started <http://simplyhire.in/> . I started working on this about
month back ( may starting ). Couple of local startup has started using it.
This looks good.

But right now unable to push beyond these local startup, lack of networking
etc. Let me know if guys can help.

~~~
jvanderwal
A friendly fyi: simplyhired.com might make a case that you're infringing on
their trademark.

~~~
simplyhire
Yeah got to realize that, will be changing the domain name soon.

------
ww520
I launched <https://boxuptext.com/> couple days ago and have yet to turned a
profit. :)

~~~
RutZap
I like it!! I wonder how many people will use it though! Anyway... how do you
encrypt the text? sha or some other algorithm?

~~~
ww520
Not many people using it since I haven't publicized it. For encryption, it's
using the high grade AES algorithm, which is a standard cipher approved by the
NSA for top secret information.

