
Show HN: My 4-hour project, already profitable - guynamedloren
http://snowday2011.com
======
guynamedloren
I know this is not the norm for projects here on Hacker News and I realize
that it may be seen as rather exploitive, so here's a very very brief
background and my thought process:

\- Idea was conceived around 2am this morning. Saw a few events on facebook
picking up speed (hundreds of thousands of attendees) so decided to leverage
that instant-market

\- Wasn't sure whether or not it would work, but I didn't have too much to
lose ($8 url and a few hours) so I went for it and started hacking away

\- Around 10am the project was launched, complete with a website, domain name,
and orignal t-shirt design, all done by me

\- 4 minutes later the first orders came in, thus paying for the domain name
and becoming profitable (minus my time value)

\- Since then the site has gone slightly viral, with several thousand hits,
hundreds of "likes" and a bunch of tweets (not to mention t-shirt sales)

\- Became the "official t-shirt" and event photo for the Snowpocalypse 2011
facebook event with 300,000 attendees. That's a nice little market to
advertise to, no?

This is really just a social + eCommerce experiment with a taste of vitality.
While I have designed t-shirts and sold them online before, I have never done
anything quite like this, ie "hopping on the bandwagon" and riding out a live-
fast-die-fast trend. I have also never experimented with any sort of viral
platforms. I hope to implement some potentially viral features in my current
startup/project, so I figured it would be worth it to test the waters with
this mini-project. It was indeed. I learned a lot, and hope to do a case study
with detailed steps and statistics in the near future.

~~~
unshift
i wouldn't call it exploitive, rather i would say it's very savvy. even if
it's a one-time shot, it's real money and you're not doing anything shady to
earn it. that's how people build wealth -- seizing opportunity. congrats on
the success.

~~~
patio11
Total agreement. There is no rule, law, or moral stricture against earning
money efficiently. (Some people seem to accept that a lawyer can bill $4,000
in a day of work but an engineer who does the same thing must be cheating
somehow. I've never understood this.)

~~~
noonespecial
A great many people also think that what the lawyer does is exploitative. It
has just become an accepted social fiction that law is an exploitative
profession and its to be expected of them.

"Well sure _lawyers_ do it, but engineers?! Come on, they're supposed to be
the good guys!"

------
soamv
_These costs are already factored into the price of the shirts, so you don't
have to pay any additional costs for shipping_

Nice touch -- both for including the shipping price in the advertised price
and for not calling it "free".

I also thought it's a good idea that you de-emphasized the "2011" in the
design, so the shirt remains mostly relevant if there's another
"snowpocalypse" sometime :)

------
bigiain
You might want to keep an eye on that Pay Pal account - the "pay me now and
I'll send you $stuff in a few weeks" pattern is exactly the sort of thing that
trips their "might be fraud, lock the account and keep all the money for 6
months" response.

~~~
qeorge
That's a great point, bigian. FWIW that's not a PayPal-specific policy - Visa
and MasterCard's TOS explicitly state that you cannot bill the credit card
until the merchandise has shipped.

~~~
bigiain
True, but I don't hear nearly so many horror stories about Visa/MasterCard
choosing to keep all the money people think they have given you for 180 days
(exactly as you agreed they could when you signed up) while they
"investigate".

I also hear regular reports of businesses which perhaps should have chosen
their payment processor more carefully given the nature of their business, who
clearly have a product which doesn't get "shipped" in any way that could
comply with that policy - I think a European Ruby conference was the most
recent one I've seen discussed here, how should a conference organizer manage
their bookings to comply with this sort of policy? He'll, even Burningman got
burnt by their ticket seller a year or two back "we're just gonna hang on to a
few million dollars worth of ticket sales money, because your annual event
that's been running successfully for ~20 years now with ~50,000 people a year
recently - it might all be a big fraud!"... Unfortunately, choosing to sign up
with PayPal means explicitly agreeing to allow them to do exactly that with
very little recourse - and it's not necessarily _wrong_ - PayPals business is
basically built on betting they can do a better job of fraud prevention than e
banks/credit card companies are doing, and offer payment services to more
people than the banks will and earn money from people the banks consider "too
high risk". This allows then to provide a service that let's people like the
OP go from idea to fully functional ecommerce website in 4 hours, but it also
means you're giving them rights to retain "your" money to cover any fraud risk
they might consider you to expose them too.

Its not a wrong/bad policy of PayPals, but it's a policy that I've seen many
people not realize they were signing up for.

------
guynamedloren
For what it's worth, I just remembered two somewhat interesting points:

1) There were several copycat shirts that came out on Cafepress/Zazzle shortly
after mine started gaining traction. The shirt concept itself is not
completely unique as we've all seen "I SURVIVED ..." shirts before, but the
copycat shirts used the same font, word placement, and everything. Am I upset?
Absolutely not. Those just validate my idea. And I wasn't too worried about
losing sales as the copycats were way overpriced ($24+s/h vs $16) with lower
quality and far inferior presentation. I would be surprised if they sold any
at all, really.

2) The copycat shirts went as far as using very similar descriptions for the
shirts. Not only does this show a complete lack of creativity, it shows that I
may have been onto something with the humorous/witty/questionable description
that has been mentioned here a few times. Is it offensive? Possibly. But I
think it did more good than harm (in terms of measurable things like sales and
hits).

Just thought I'd throw those thoughts out there for pondering.

~~~
lessthanideal
I think you would be very surprised as to what does and doesn't sell on
CafePress. Are they doing as well as you are, I doubt they are, but are they
doing anywhere near the work you are, no way in hell. They are likely
targeting an entirely different market than you are. You're going with viral
marketing centered around Facebook. CafePress is largely populated by middle
aged women. I would guess the cross over for those two groups isn't that
large.

------
komlenic
Wow on the idea, wow on the execution, and wow on the design! Out of
curiosity:

Domain Name: SNOWDAY2012.COM Created Date: 03-Feb-2011 Expiry Date:
03-Feb-2012 Registrant Name: Paul Jefferiesr

~~~
guynamedloren
Thank you for the kind words. I guess that means the years of hardwork are
paying off, even if the direct time investment was a few hours.

HA! I can't believe somebody registered that domain name. Too funny, it didn't
even cross my mind. Snowday2011.com was my backup - I really wanted
snowpocalypse.com!

~~~
komlenic
The site design alone really is a superb lesson in simple effective good-
looking usability. As someone else pointed out: one click ordering,
brilliantly-worded concise text, good design, immediately understandable
purpose and call to action. These things all instill confidence, and are no
accident. Anyone who's ever tried should know how difficult it is to make
something "simple"... so yes I'd say your years of hard work have paid off.

------
mmaunder
What would be cool, and a nice courtesy gesture since HN gave you so much
traffic, is if you shared actual numbers with us. Data we can use. I'd like to
see:

Cost price of your tshirts, how many you sold over X time, conversion rate on
the site, main sources of traffic, highest conversion source, lowest
conversion source, fraud levels if known yet. Thanks.

~~~
jmtame
if I understand this model, he has to get a certain number of orders (say 100)
before he can actually print. the price of each shirt depends on a bulk amount
and if he doesn't hit that, he can't ship the shirts. for these shirts I'd
suspect it costs about $10 each (silkscreen printing), plus whatever shipping
and handling. maybe $3-$4 profit each shirt x 100 = $300-$400

~~~
guynamedloren
I've mentioned this several times, but I'll bring it up again because I'm
legitimately surprised at how expensive many seem to think these shirts are.
Screen printing should absolutely not cost $10/ea for a 2-color print,
especially for anything over 36 shirts. If you're paying this, then you're
being robbed. End of story. I have had many shirts printed before so I know
where to look, but it's really not that difficult to find a decent printer
with fair prices. Right now my costs are below $6/ea, and that's for medium-
grade, fashion fitted tees. If I went with cheapy Gildan tees, I would be at
less than $5/ea, but I'd rather not sacrifice the quality to squeeze out a
tiny more profit. I want people to be pleased with what they're buying. I'm
thinking of myself in their shoes.

~~~
endlessvoid94
Which printer are you using?

------
kmfrk

        > Shipping & Handling
        >
        > These costs are already factored into the price of the shirts, so you don't have to pay any additional costs for shipping. All shirts will be shipped via USPS First-Class Mail. Shirts will only be shipped within US/Canada/Mexico.
    

I can't emphasize how brilliant this is. It really is a privilege to only
worry about people on in three countries.

You've really done a great job of refining a website - one that was made in
four hours to boot!

------
genieyclo
I would love a blog post describing the steps you used to get to a MVP; how
you got the shirts en masse to be printed and shipped, platforms you used to
quickly iterate, etc. Really inspiring.

------
djahng
Where are the shirts being made? Are they made to order and drop-shipped like
Cafe Press/Zazzle? Or are you building up inventory?

~~~
chrisaycock
He answered that in another thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2173482>

~~~
djahng
Yeah I saw that. I also asked this question before endlessvoid94 did.

------
danielhfrank
I suppose I'll be in the minority on a site run by a VC, but I'm pretty
disappointed that a get-"rich"-quick story like this can outpace technical
articles here - no doubt the word "profitable" in the title helped. I
certainly don't think there's anything "wrong" with what you did, it's just
not what I come here to read. I'd always kind of held the belief that this was
a site for lots of really smart folks talking about current technical issues,
but maybe I've been fooling myself a bit.

Credit where it's due though, the site appears to have been coded up pretty
well

------
joelmichael
Nice work, your good site design is a big part of why it works. Maybe you can
turn this into a brand that makes more ironic t-shirts about overblown current
events?

~~~
namityadav
My first reaction to this comment was: Why would you want to have a business
model that relies so much on overblown current events? And then I thought of
all the news channels, and suddenly it doesn't sound like a bad model.

------
anonymouslambda
Congrats. I suggest a "Snowmageddon" t-shirt as well.

------
raganwald
<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pet_Rock>

~~~
guynamedloren
I wish!

------
mrchess
What if your orders go viral. How can you possibly fulfill them?

~~~
citricsquid
Looking at the way he states there will be a 2 week delay I _assume_ he'll
wait for the peak and then go ahead and contact his printer (I assume he's got
contacts to make it easier) and get the amount he needs printed, that way he
keeps costs down (ordering in bulk). If he got to the point where he couldn't
handle the orders himself I'm pretty sure he'd be in the revenue areas that
allowed him to contract multiple printers to do the work, printing t-shirts in
bulk is cheap.

------
hartror
Could you post a follow up statistics in a week or so? As this is a one shot
sort of deal I wouldn't imagine you feel the need to keep the numbers under
wraps.

~~~
guynamedloren
Yep, planning on it. Keep an eye out on <http://madebyloren.com> \- my future
blog for my startups/projects. I'll certainly make a post here on HN as well.

~~~
mattparcher
I would suggest publishing an RSS feed for your posts, because I probably
won’t remember to check your website again. Either way, please keep submitting
updates to HN.

Looking at your site, you seem to be using a custom blog engine. Any details
on your setup and how it came to be?

~~~
guynamedloren
I wrote the blog engine from scratch with Ruby on Rails. I wanted something
really lightweight and suited for my needs, plus I figured it would be a good
exercise. It's not finished yet, however. Sidetracked with instantly
gratifying opportunities :)

------
aith
Created an account just to upvote this. Brilliant. There's nothing stopping
you (or one of us) from doing it for every significant event in every
country...

------
Tycho
What did you use to build the page, if you don't mind me asking?

I've been wondering for ages if pages like that share some common
tool/template, or it it's just that the 'full width' idea makes them look cut
from the same cloth.

~~~
guynamedloren
No templates or tools, unless you count Illustrator. This, along with all of
my other projects, came straight from my crazy little mind, everything from
design to code. I am a big fan of the "full width" style, and it definitely
works well here.

Re templates: I'm sure they exist (especially on wordpress theme sites), but I
really just prefer to create things on my own. Even coded my blog from scratch
=]

------
xtacy
Nice! This reminds me of a similar sieze-the-moment kind of situation: When
pluto was no more recognised as a planet, someone printed a shirt that said,
"Pluto is still a planet!" (and several variations)...

------
jcromartie
Snowpocalypse?

Did we already forget about the blizzard last year?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DCA_Blizzard_02_2010_9127....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DCA_Blizzard_02_2010_9127.JPG)

~~~
chops
Snowpocalypse 2011

------
kalpeshjoshi
I love online shirt designs / prints / creativity. I'm a regular fan of shirt
woot, threadless, design by humans, etc. etc. Great job capitalizing on a fast
trend, you can use the income to reinvest into other ideas and fast trend
products.

------
parkq
It might be a sensitive question for you. If you use PayPal as a payment
platform, do they charge you income tax or will you have to claim income tax
by yourself?

~~~
guynamedloren
When you're setting up the "buy now" links/buttons, you can choose to add
sales tax.

As for income tax, every man for himself I believe. That's not Paypal's
business.

------
cpeterso
This success story reminds me of the just-in-time fashion design companies.
They track the big runway shows and can quickly turn-out copy-cat fashions.

------
happyrichpinoy
it's only a matter of time until someone will try to capitalize on what's
happening right now in Egypt...something like "I survived Mubarak"

------
ramanujam
Are you taking care of the shipping (after printing the T-shirts locally) or
is the wholesaler taking care of everything? Congrats!

~~~
guynamedloren
I'm doing everything aside from printing. Good experience and more profit that
way - cant go wrong there, right?

------
icandoitbetter
You found the opportunity and owned it. I can't see how that deserves any
criticism. How much did you make so far?

------
andresmh
how are you dealing with shipping to Mexico without paying for importation
costs?

------
random42
This looks very polished for a 4 hour effort. Congrats on being profitable. :)

------
naithemilkman
what stack did you build it on?

Really impressive from conceptual to live site in 8 hours. Your profile says
you're currently learning RoR. Is that the stack you built on?

~~~
guynamedloren
Nope, this one was just straight up css and html. Nothing fancy here - no
reason to, its only a single page :) oh and its hosted on whatever my cheap
web hosting is. Is it sad that I don't even know the tech specs? Maybe that's
s reason for the success - only focusing on what matters.. now there's a good
takeaway point

~~~
naithemilkman
So when someone orders a shirt, where does that data go? via email?

~~~
guynamedloren
Paypal takes care of everything. They send an email when an order goes through
and also have all order details available in the Paypal account dashboard.
Doesn't get much simpler than that. I've always used paypal, but for once in
my life I actually feel that the paypal fees are worth it. Good value and good
service for a fair price. No complaints (yet).

------
joelrunyon
any word on revenue figures for this? kudos.

------
lurchpop
keep us appraised of your sales, dude!

------
HackrNwsDesignr
how much are you making?

------
pitdesi
I would suggest a shirt that says "SNOW MY GOD!!!"

~~~
chr15
snOMG

------
u48998
So are we expected to wear these T-Shirts in summer in Chicago? Nice idea at
the right time but I am not sure why people would buy such things. But then
again, you'd know better.

~~~
gnosis
_"So are we expected to wear these T-Shirts in summer in Chicago?"_

You're thinking way too far ahead compared to the people who are ordering
these shirts.

This product is clearly meant to be an impulse buy, in the same category as a
mountain of junk sold on street corners, at festivals, and in souvenir shops.

If the prospective buyer thought about it for a couple of seconds, they'd
probably realize that they really didn't need this, and might never even use
it. But at the time it looks funny, or cute, or otherwise "brilliant". And
they really feel like buying something, almost anything.

And that's how someone winds up walking out having bought a baseball cap with
antlers on it, a singing fish, dancing Santa, or Snowpocalypse t-shirt.

The OP was just lucky enough to latch on to a trend before it died out.

------
zoowar
When you earn enough to eat, let us know.

~~~
guynamedloren
In 8 hours I earned enough to pay for 3 months rent. How's that?

~~~
DTrejo
You should write a book and call it

    
    
        4 Hour Work-Month

~~~
joelrunyon
Alternate title: The 4 Hour Blizzard of Cash.

