
Building an $80k/month business with a software testing community - rosiesherry
https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/ministry-of-testing
======
luckystrike
@rosiesherry - Congratulations for building up a good business along with what
I assume a very hectic personal life (4 kids!). :-)

You've discontinued testing services, but I think there is a big market out
there. We've been looking for a platform where we can list our website & its
high level use cases, and then 1 or more testers can test it out thoroughly.
We've tried sites like MyCrowd in the past, but didn't get a great result from
them. Most testers just submitted cosmetic bugs and weren't as detail oriented
as we'd like.

I'm sure there would be other startups who have similar needs for getting
their sites/apps tested and can easily pay for such a service.

Are you (or anyone else here on HN) aware of any good testing services out
there or a place where we can find good freelance testers?

~~~
rosiesherry
@luckystrike - yeah, I felt sad to stop the testing services. I think we will
go back to it once we have a bit more headspace (and/or money).

Testing is funny because there's not really the same kind of freelancers out
there for testing as you get in the designer/programming/tech world. Most
testers are either full time employed or work on full time contracts. There
are freelancers, but there should be more.

Asfaik - there isn't a place to find good testing freelancers. We have a job
board on our website, or sometimes I try to recommend people.

~~~
luckystrike
May be you can think about building a platform where clients can submit their
gigs and testers can work on those short projects. You already have a
community, and some of them might like to earn additional income but can't
find such opportunities easily.

From a client's perspective, we are looking 'vetted' testers who are detail
oriented and can be relied upon for a thorough job.

My email address is in the HN profile. Feel free to contact me in case you'd
like to discuss this further.

Wish you a lot more success in the future!

~~~
rosiesherry
Yes, thanks. Have thought about many of these things. Need to see if I can
find the time/energy/resources to do some of them.

------
quirkafleeg
Interesting post, but I would suggest coming up with an original logo, rather
than using another company's world famous logo and slapping a ninja icon on
it.

Ministry of Sound logo:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/27/Ministry-
of-s...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/27/Ministry-of-sound-
logo.png)

The logo this company (Ministry of Testing) is using:

[https://www.indiehackers.com/images/business-
icons/ministry-...](https://www.indiehackers.com/images/business-
icons/ministry-of-testing-920a568a864c438b6509a722e80062.png)

~~~
coderholic
You're right, it's definitely a bit of a rip-off, but

1) The Ministry of Sound logo is imitation of an official government ministry
logo anyway, eg [https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/the-office-of-
th...](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/the-office-of-the-leader-
of-the-house-of-commons) or
[https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations)

2) The Ministry of Sound changed their logo:
[http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo...](http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_for_ministry_of_sound_by_spin.php)

~~~
quirkafleeg
1\. They used the same state emblems to create a completely different design.

2\. Doesn't mean other people can use their "old" logo (which they're
currently still using).

FWIW, I'm no fan of MOS (one of the reasons I posted is because they're
notoriously litigious, even suing Spotify over the order of user playlists),
but I'm also no fan of design work being so blatantly ripped off, particularly
by companies that can easily afford to hand work to a real designer.

------
mperham
Congrats, Rosie, always nice to hear about these 6 year "overnight success"
stories.

------
ryandrake
$80K/month in revenue, not profit. Didn't see any mention of costs, so it's
hard to tell if this is a success or not. Can't criticize though, nice story.

~~~
lultimouomo
Also, the maximum yearly revenue they've seen is £600k, which is definitely
not £80k/month. It's misleading to report the revenue of a peak month - say
today I send an invoice for a consulting gig that lasted two months and
amounts to $15k, do I make $15k a day or $7.5k a month?

That said, they seem to have good growth and the project is nice.

~~~
rosiesherry
Yes, because we've been growing alot, I took the $80k as an average from the
past 6 months. I didn't feel like the article was the right place to go into
further detail of finances. We are profitable.

------
drawnwren
Wasn't indehackers the domain that posted about the domain squatters who made
'$xxx in a month' just the other day? Is this a real site that people go to or
a thinly veiled marketing service?

~~~
csallen
Creator of Indie Hackers here. And yes, it's a real site people go to!

For readers (particularly developers interested in starting their own
business), it's a source of inspiration, motivation, and community. There
aren't many (any?) other places you can go online and read this many founder
stories, complete with revenue stats, for smaller non-unicorn businesses.

For the people who agree to be interviewed, it's definitely free marketing for
their businesses. It's also a chance to share their story, their successes,
and their advice with the world. When you've been toiling away for years
(likely in obscurity), sharing feels _great_.

So it's a win-win, really.

~~~
pc86
For what it's worth I love reading about businesses with realistic revenue
numbers. You can read about $10M/month businesses in any financial
publication. It's hard to find a lot of material about businesses comparable
to mine (I own a non-tech business in the $25k/mo range and am a programmer so
am constantly looking for ways to push that business into the tech space).

------
obihill
@rosiesherry Thanks for this, and congrats on the business. I wish you all the
best going forward in your industry (which I had never heard much of before
now).

It's incredible looking at the revenue breakdown just how much 'training
courses and events' were bringing in compared to the actual 'testing
services'.

I'm launching 2 free and open-source toolkits for Web designers/developers
next month and your revenue breakdown has convinced me that my initial plan of
monetizing on training is probably the way to go.

Do you have any specific tips on how you built up that initial community
(besides setting up the forum)? What were some of the specific tactics you
used to draw those initial users in?

~~~
rosiesherry
I'd be happy to chat in detail 'offline'. Mostly I just try to be human and
genuinely helpful.

I try to find ways that help testers and I keep doing it consistently (even if
it gets really tedious).

One example is me maintaining a feed for testing related blogs. Testers can
either submit or if I find a new one I add it to our feed. The feed gets
shared publicly, but then I also socially share some of the blog posts. People
often explain their spike in traffic as the 'sherry' effect :)

I ask for nothing in return, I do it as a way to try to grow and bring the
community together.

------
sfbay
Awesome, inspiring story. Congrats.

------
Zelmor
Are there any remote testing job sites? There are so many for developers, but
I scarcely see any remote posts that would look for dedicated application
testers. I suppose this is due to startups cutting costs and leaving
developers to test the product. In my experience, such structures are not good
either for the developers, nor the company's products.

~~~
kowdermeister
One example: [https://www.usertesting.com/be-a-user-
tester](https://www.usertesting.com/be-a-user-tester)

but you can look for alternatives of course.

~~~
Zelmor
Thank you, but I did not mean UAT. More along the lines of regression, smoke,
load, etc. Ya know, things where ISTQB knowledge, familiarity with linux, bash
and python is a requirement or at least desired.

~~~
kowdermeister
Ah, that kind. No idea, you should definitely message the owner ( @rosiesherry
) if you haven't already.

------
abysmallyideal
Didn't SV and Redmond outsource all these jobs to Indian houses? Microsoft
basically killed their STE workforce and just use Indian shops.

------
mdotk
Nice story, what's the actual cashflow though?

------
NicoJuicy
What would they all do for marketing ?

------
sjclemmy
Nice to see someone use the word 'interwebs'

------
ilaksh
If you are making 80k per month then your developer should get a real salary
and benefits.

~~~
rosiesherry
Not sure where it says I don't pay a real salary? My husband leads the tech
along with a part time freelance developer.

------
hackits
Nice article, couldn't really bring myself to reading it all. Just wish it was
a bit more shorter and concise, was more of a marketing spill.

Update: For the down votes are you serious?

~~~
mseebach
> Update: For the down votes are you serious?

Yes. A comment that proudly states that you haven't read the article and then
goes on to offer derogatory drive-by criticism is pretty much the anti-thesis
of a valuable contribution to the community.

~~~
hackits
None of my comment was derogatory of the above article. My comment pointed out
the article was too long and didn't captivate me as a reader. I tend to read
lengthy post but tend to ignore article's just like the one posted.

Now I even shoved it into smmry to get the general gist of the article and
even smmry after condensing the article down to 14 to 20 sentences didnt even
look very appealing (to me the reader).

Congratulations are in order for what she achieved and with a small family it
is even more remarkable.

The problem I mostly have about the article after coming back here was I got
more knowledge about her as a person and the company than the damn article she
wrote. Though I will never know because the whole thing just read like a
marketing blog post.

The `serious` is more in line of `you got to be joking me` that some people
take things way too seriously.

