
Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?  - thunga
I have read some small product, single founder success stories on HN over the last few years. Can you share some stories/links even though it has been shared before on an unrelated thread?<p>On HN, patio11, edw519, peldi &#38; jacques have all shared success stories before. I am interested to know more.<p>EDIT : By success, I mean happiness in life &#38; financial independence to do interesting things in life.
======
bignoggins
I'm the single founder of Bignoggins Productions. I do sports apps for mobile
devices. My apps have been pretty successful, reaching as high as #32 overall
paid on iPhone and #60 overall paid on iPad. Been full time for about 9 months
now. Made 75K last year, and on track for 250K+ this year. Almost all profit
as my overhead is insanely low. Currently traveling the world with my wife
while working on apps (our travel blog is <http://www.shenventure.com>). In
fact, I'm writing this from an airbnb in Venice right now and headed to Milan
tommorrow.

~~~
philipDS
You're living the dream man. Awesome.

~~~
z92
Only thing not in the equation is children.

~~~
bauchidgw
well, i'm goingt to travel southamerica (i'm from europe) with girlfriend,
kid, mac (and a thrieving consulting business) for 8 months - starting in two
months. so it's possible, i's just that you have to be extra tough (this and
no drinking, as your child wakes up too soon)

~~~
jgamman
Was that a misspelled ,r, or ,e,? :-)

------
garrettdimon
I'm a solo founder and have been working on Sifter (<http://sifterapp.com>)
for going on 4 years now. It's been live for about 3 of those years, and I've
been full-time for a little over a year. My salary is about 80% of what I was
making working full-time elsewhere, maybe a little lower when you factor in
health insurance, but the work is exponentially more fulfilling. I do my best
to share my thoughts on the ups and downs on my blog.
(<http://garrettdimon.com>)

I technically have what some people might consider a co-founder, but he's more
of an investor/advisor as I've been the only person that's involved day-to-
day.

I also created a presentation recently that summarized what the experience has
been like and what we've done right or wrong for our situation.
(<http://bootstrapping.sifterapp.com>)

Finally, I'd also recommend Maciej Ceglowski of Pinboard as a good source. He
discusses a little bit of his experience on the Pinboard blog.
(<http://blog.pinboard.in/>)

~~~
k00k
Really enjoyed the bootstrapping deck, Garrett. Thanks for that. Would love to
hear about your dev and technology stack evolution.

------
brockf
I am the single founder of Electric Function, Inc.
(<http://www.electricfunction.com>). We have a few software products: Hero
(<http://www.heroframework.com> \- an open source PHP CMS and web app
framework built on CodeIgniter), OpenGateway (PHP billing engine for many
gateways), Membrr (subscription billing plugin for ExpressionEngine), and EE
Donations (donation plugin for ExpressionEngine).

I wrote the code, designed the websites, wrote the documentation, and _once_
supported all of the products myself. Some took weeks, others took years
(Hero, formerly Caribou CMS), but I'm very happy with where they are at now.
We have our niche - e-commerce and recurring billing for small business - and
it's been growing well.

I humbly consider it a success because, at 23 years old, I've been able to
delegate the everyday stuff to a hired developer/support tech, take a nice
salary, and do my PhD in Cognitive Psychology!

~~~
bo_Olean
Good to hear a new name in the CI CMS list, will try it. It's a good thing
that after all these works you continued your study too.

------
acabal
I'm the sole founder, developer, marketer, and everything-else-guy for
<http://www.scribophile.com> and <http://writerfolio.com>.

They've funded my travels across the world for the past few years. Right now
I'm living in Germany with my German girlfriend whom I met in Australia.

Scribophile has since become one of the largest writers communities online,
and we're about to have our 100,000th critique written (sometime in the next 5
days if usage numbers stay average). There's been over 35.2 million words of
critique written on the site.

I'm not making a million bucks and companies aren't knocking down the door in
a rush to buy me out, but so far I've managed to pay off my student loans,
save a little cash, and not worry too much about where my next rent payment
will come from.

~~~
glimcat
Scribophile sounded interesting, but I left when I found out that I need an
account to actually see anything. You even have a free user tier, so WTF?

You don't have to take my word for this either. Some basic (free) analytics
can give you a ballpark estimate of how often this is happening. It's probably
a non-negligible ratio of your incoming new viewers.

~~~
acabal
Turns out that most writers who post their work in public are horribly scared
of it being stolen. There's also a myth about something called 'first
publishing rights' that persists despite my best efforts to eradicate. Long
story short, the site is completely hidden from the general public because the
writers who use it prefer their work to be visible only to other members.

FWIW, it used to be visible to the public for a long time, and I would
constantly get complaints from my members.

~~~
glimcat
I continually forget that customer service is 80% dealing with crazy people.

------
sheff
Some previous "Ask HN" threads which have details of single founder businesses
include :

Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487>

Ask HN: Anyone making a living from just 1 app?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772199>

Ask HN: Inspirational money making web apps made by hackers.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764682>

------
dangrossman
I'm a solo founder, spend most of my time running <http://www.w3counter.com>
and <http://www.w3roi.com>. I also have a number of other sites I don't
routinely talk about because they're competition-sensitive, and some past
products that have been successful and sold, like "WP Review Site", a
WordPress plugin that earned me over a quarter million in the year and a half
I sold it. I started building webapps/services for a living in earnest in 2004
as a college freshman to pay my way through two degrees, finished that last
year and bought myself a new car and a new house this year. It's going well,
though the poor economy has hurt some of my customers and me by proxy.

~~~
kposehn
WPReviewSite is responsible for about 1/2 my income in the first year I became
a full-time affiliate. Thanks for making that :)

~~~
dangrossman
Really? That's great. A shame the new owner didn't maintain the affiliate
program, he's throwing away money.

~~~
kposehn
Yeah, but some people can just be dumb all they like. I used the software for
my own sites for a while before making my own ruby/rack CMS but I wasn't an
affiliate.

I ended up going that route to stop trying to frankenstein WordPress into
doing things it wasn't meant to do. WPReviewSite did help me get started
though :)

------
Loic
I am a single founder and running Indefero <http://www.indefero.net> (code
hosting, project managemnt) I consider it a success. Maybe not a million user
success, but at my level a success as together with my consulting business, I
pay myself a good salary since 2008 and enjoy what I am doing.

The real question is: what would be a success for you? If you want to do
something, when would be the point where you could say: Success! If you can
really answer this question, the path to reach this point is not that
complicated, but the question is hard to answer and you will change your mind
quite often (at least, this was/is my case).

------
demione
I was one of the first appstore millionaires via my app Trism... I wrote it in
my offhours before the appstore launched. Story here -> <http://bit.ly/psyMBf>

Lots to say on the subject. Press is disorienting. Friends do change. Noone
can tell you what the value of your idea is. Best thing you can do with your
time in the spotlight is make good connections and learn the importance of
good relationships.

~~~
rokhayakebe
_I was one of the first appstore millionaires_

Oh, man. It must feel good to say it.

~~~
tsunamifury
I remember writing about you back in the Industry Standard days. You inspired
me to step away from journalism and start developing my own apps (and probably
zillions of others).

~~~
demione
Awesome man! Congrats on finding your path.

------
chops
I'm the solo founder of an MMO guild hosting company (5 years and counting as
of this past May), which _was_ doing quite well years ago ($90k+/year), but is
now much less busy. The site: <http://www.dkpsystem.com>.

Honestly, I blame the fact that I've had almost the opposite mentality as the
37 Signals guys, where I've added most of the features my customers ask for,
thus making the system more complicated than it should be. But then again, I
feel guilty taking some of those features away were I to do such.

That said, it still provides a meager living for limited work (10 hours a
month or so) while I work on my up-and-coming projects: Sports league
management websites (<http://www.BracketPal.com>). I'm targeting bar-league
volleyball initially. As an avid beach volleyball player, this is my new
calling. And it's giving me the ability to work with businesses who won't balk
at higher figures (unlike my MMO customers who will balk at anything above
$10/mo), and cold-calling, though I still get a little bit of the "sweats"
before each call, I end up enjoying the conversation.

My results so far are looking very positive for this upcoming spring.

~~~
shiftpgdn
How have your cold calls been going? I'm curious about targeting some niche
industries but feel I'd be wasting my time with cold calls.

~~~
chops
Cold calling has been surprisingly fruitful. I'm getting about a 70% success
rate for setting up an in-person meeting. Granted, all have been in the
Milwaukee area, so setting up a meeting is more "personal" than the next
logical step, which will be trying to set up remote meetings with a screen-cap
demo. That might be much more difficult. For now, when I start calling places
about 50-100 miles away, I'll give them the option to do a tele-meeting,
otherwise, I'll gladly drive down there.

~~~
chops
Followup (since I thought I had already posted this and it's too late to
edit):

Feel free to toss me an email at gumm@sigma-star.com or something. I'm curious
how it goes with your project and the cold-calling.

------
sreitshamer
I'm a single founder (Haystack Software). I wrote/write Arq (online backup to
S3). I consider it a success because it pays my bills. A huge side benefit is
it gets me into conversations with folks who tell me their business pain. I'm
working on products to solve those pains as well.

I was (and still am) hugely inspired by DHH's presentation at Startup School
08 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY>

~~~
GFischer
Having those conversations with the folks with the business pains is golden.

I want to switch my current development job, among other things, because I
don't get to interact with the customers having the business problems, and I
want to solve them (not to mention it's where the money is, but I honestly
like solving business problems too).

Being empowered to solve them should be gratifying too.

Thanks for sharing.

------
kariatx
I started Blogthings.com (a personality quiz site) in 2004 by myself, and I've
never had a job while working in it. It makes enough money for both my husband
and I to live off of, and we split the work on it, which ends up just being a
few hours a week (no more than 10). I spend my free time working on my
programming / math and figuring out what's next.

~~~
aasdfsf
I ran a similar quiz-site for a while before flipping it a couple of years
ago. It had heavy integration with facebook, and well was rather spammy (I
know I might go to hell).

I just visited your website, I was wondering whether you manually create all
the quizzes, or whether you have started outsourcing it seeing that you have
been at it since the beginning of time?

Also, I am assuming that all your revenue at this point is from the ads on the
website?

Kudos to both of you!

~~~
kariatx
Thanks! I write them all myself, but I use a lot self-written software at this
point to streamline the writing process. And yes, 100% ad based. Adsense
actually probably pays us the most we could get for our traffic with the least
amount of intrusion.

------
swalberg
About 3 years ago I wrote an online payroll system (<http://smallpayroll.ca>)
for people that hire a nanny. I have 3 young kids, there was a year where we
couldn't get any childcare, and I realized there was a big problem with having
to pay the nanny in a compliant manner that I could solve with a web app.

The application didn't bring in a whole bunch of money but it caught the eye
of some other companies. I recently sold my company to another startup and am
working on it full time.

"Financial independence" no, but I'm 35, mortgage free, and am working from
home at a job that I love. And if things go well there's a bunch more money in
it for me.

------
kayhi
Single Founder of P212121 (<http://store.p212121.com/>) bringing together
great priced scientific research and supplies.

Background story: I was a full time PhD student in chemistry and unfortunately
our group was running out of funding. I ended up spending weeks searching for
deals on the supplies we needed. This process took a long time since there are
hundreds companies and literally millions of chemicals. The result was a
disturbingly huge spreadsheet comparing all the prices (lucky the process has
evolved since).

The word spread to other labs and soon had people asking me for the best
prices on products they used. This led to the next step of creating a site
where people could just buy them based on the list. The sales increased and
resulted in being able to attain discounts from manufactures based on volume.

------
jonathanmoore
I'll throw my hat into the ring. After a decade of working in the digital
agency world, I left a well paying job at an agency in Los Angeles to start my
own studio in early 2009. Because I was fortunate enough to have amazing
connections I managed to land large projects with UFC, Picnik (now Google),
Microsoft, Volcom and others. I was running the studio solo and operating as
the creative director while I outsourced various roles. The business was off
to a great start financially, but the time required was insane. It was full of
100+ hour weeks and frequent "I know it's Friday, but can you have something
ready to show us on Monday?" emails.

During a gap in between two client projects in May 2010 I got an email from a
designer at Tumblr asking if I would be interested in selling premium themes
on their platform. As an experiment I took a few weeks to design, develop and
launch a theme. Instantly I realized this would be a great supplement to the
client work. After launching the third theme, it hit me that with just a bit
more work it could replace all the income from all the client accounts I had.
By October 2010 I officially stopped taking on clients and the theme sales
revenue surpassed the client services revenue.

Officially I opened up shop as Style Hatch - <http://stylehatch.co>. Earlier
this year I was able to hire my first full-time employee as a director of
customer experience, and now I'm looking to hire a designer and developer. As
of right now we still only have Tumblr themes for sale, but we're working on a
few new platforms to launch for in the next few month.

For the first time I was able to truly control the amount of time that I
wanted to put into the business, as opposed to being controlled by client
schedules. With two young kids I have taken advantage of the success by taking
plenty of half-days off to go to swim lessons, head to the beach, or just
being there. This summer was also the first time that I was able to take a two
week vacation and completely unplug from email and work.

------
kposehn
I've been a successful duo-founder (my wife is my business partner) for 3.5
years now. We started in affiliate marketing and have slowly added agency
services and now software (we founded a newer company for that with a few
business partners).

I've been working for myself full-time ever since we started and income is
great. The last two years have been well in to the six figures and growth is
excellent, allowing us to live comfortably here in San Diego with a great
house. However, there are a few pitfalls to the marketing business...

Primarily, we found that affiliate marketing, while high-margin in theory, is
so extremely competitive and dirty that your entire livelihood hangs by a
thread. Google can slap your site, search algorithm changes can sandbox you
and unscrupulous affiliates can and will copy your entire site wholesale and
use it to compete directly with you. Google, the affiliate networks they use
and ISP's will do absolutely nothing (one of the reasons for my ire with all
of them as far as SEO/PPC goes) which made us resort to retaining legal
counsel to slam people as soon as it crops up.

Our entire growth on the affiliate side has been Facebook and Mobile where our
margins are often 300-400% as opposed to the slimmer 60-100% margins on
AdWords. However, being in such a competitive and bleeding-edge field has
meant that our agency clients get the benefit of that experience. We can often
muscle a new client into highly a competitive segment and get them profiting
quickly; we live the mindset of "if it doesn't make money, don't do it".

We ended up making our newer software company with a few co-founders because
our overall growth there is better, margins are great, security is better and
we have _assets_. You can't easily sell an affiliate web site, but you can
build a software company that is very appealing to sell.

It has been a hell of an experience and I'm considering writing a series about
it once we release our new app. Hopefully can bring the benefit of our
blood/sweat/tears-and-such to the rest of HN :)

~~~
jhancock
Would you mind posting some links to your marketing and product companies?

------
dangrover
I did Etude by myself, which was recently acquired:
[http://steinway.com/news/press-releases/steinway-sons-
debuts...](http://steinway.com/news/press-releases/steinway-sons-debuts-
etude-20-ipad-app-for-learning-and-playing-piano/)

~~~
bignoggins
nice app. can I ask what the price range of the acquisition was? Always
wondered what apps go for when they are sold.

~~~
charlesdm
Would love to know as well! Was looking for this exact information a few days
ago.

------
iconfinder
I'm a single founder who have run Iconfinder.com alone from 2007 until 2011,
where I got a new business partner. The site reached 1,7 M monthly visits and
gives me almost a full income. I won't define it as success since I haven't
reached my goal yet, but I guess it shows you can build a large website alone.

~~~
yawn
How do you make your income on iconfinder? When I search for icons, the ads
display below the results--I won't see them if the icon I'm looking for is in
the top few rows. What percentage of income comes from merch?

~~~
iconfinder
All income are from ads - so far :-) I have some plans to get other revenue
streams.

I hate ads my self, so I try to minimize the screen real estate used for them.

------
WillyF
I am the single founder of One Day, One Job <http://www.onedayonejob.com/> I'm
not quite ready to consider it a success, but it is profitable enough to cover
my living expenses. I recently hired some part-timers to help me grow it into
something bigger.

I did an interview with The Startup Foundry a few months ago that is way too
long but does a good job of telling my story:
[http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/02/one-day-one-job-
how-...](http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/02/one-day-one-job-how-a-pissed-
off-ceo-became-a-startups-biggest-revenue-stream/)

~~~
xpose2000
Nice job with your success so far. How did you manage to grab and interview
with thestartupfoundry?

~~~
WillyF
I met a guy at a startup related meet up here in Chicago. I shared my story,
and he liked it. It turned out that he was doing some writing for The Startup
Foundry, and he said that he'd love to interview me (I had pitched TSF before
and received no response).

E-mail is great, but face to face interaction has always been way more
effective for me.

~~~
xpose2000
Thanks a lot for the reply. Tips like this go a long way obviously. :)

------
flyosity
I don't know if apps count in your mind, but Matt Rix's huge success with
Trainyard (<http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-far/>) and Andreas Illiger's
mega-hit iPhone game Tiny Wings are both good examples of one person doing a
soup-to-nuts app (graphics, audio, programming, marketing) and hitting the
jackpot with it.

------
sahillavingia
Not a founder, just a dude. But I've built Dayta, Color Stream, Gumroad, and
more by myself. Dayta has a few hundred thousand downloads (many paid), as
does Color Stream. I made enough in around six months to sustain me for the
next 2-3 years. I'm now going full-time with Gumroad.

~~~
acangiano
Awesome job. Regarding Color Stream, is this intentional?

> NOTICE: This domain name expired on 08/13/2011 and is pending renewal or
> deletion.

~~~
sahillavingia
It got acquired by Colourlovers.

------
Mizza
Single "founder" - just a kid who writes apps, but I've written enough Android
apps that I don't have to work a real job as they pay the bills. I could be
making a lot more but spend most of my time working on non-profit projects.

I'm working on a web 'startup' now that launched about a month ago, but it's
not profitable yet, although I'm still moving it past MVP and I've received
some good feedback.

You should do it. Think of something that you would love to use and make the
hell out of it. Passive income _rules_.

~~~
rosariom
I am curious to know how well you are doing with your Android sales as I am
looking to release an Android app soon. Is Android as hard to monetize as
people say? Did you dual launch your apps on iPhone and Android? Are your apps
paid or ad supported or both? How are you marketing your apps? Thanks in
advance

~~~
Mizza
I've never had any trouble monetizing Android, but I've never known anything
else. I only do Android, not iPhone. Although I did just get a mac..

My apps are paid, ranging from 2.99 to 4.99. Some hits, some misses. I don't
do any marketing whatsoever.

~~~
rosariom
Thanks Mizza this helps

------
wmat
You should check out The Micropreneur Academy: <http://www.micropreneur.com/>
Many, many single founders there.

------
bluekite2000
People in Vietnam pay everything by cash. And they love US products. So I
integrated my online bookstore w/ Amazon, enabling the Vietnamese to search
and buy any book on Amazon in VND (aka the Dong). It is not a lot of money but
its very fulfilling seeing my Amazon account and the books people order. Plus
it enables me to travel. I m in NYC now but will go to Vietnam in winter. Surf
is up in that part of the world :)

~~~
HowardRoark
I have been brainstorming something similar for a different country and
vertical, and I am seeking for some ideas. Do do have an email?

~~~
bluekite2000
you can contact me at nguyenhdat at gmail dot com

------
maxklein
There are very many such stories, but most of the people are not very fond of
writing (the examples above are people with a lot of written output).

If you get to know some of the people personally you will find a lot of
successes.

------
fleaflicker
Built, sold, and just reacquired fleaflicker alone. Have ambitious plans to
grow. If you're an NYC hacker and want to build and scale a fantasy sports
application to take on ESPN, Yahoo, and the NFL, contact me!

~~~
xpose2000
We should talk. I am going to head over to fleaflicker and try to find a
contact email. :)

~~~
fleaflicker
Awesome, Ori at fleaflicker, contact me directly.

------
oppositionradio
My friend Angie created some great products and new life for herself when she
started <http://www.byrdandbelle.com> after being laid off in the last
economic bump. I agree with Loic - what is your definition of "success"
though? Angie and I disscussed that exact topic over lunch this week.

------
jitbit
A bit late to the party, but... I'm the single founder behind Jitbit Software
(website: <http://www.jitbit.com/>) tho, I'm in the process of bringing in a
co-founder, since it's really getting out of control, I can't live like that
any more.

I do both web-based apps (bestselling one is "Jitbit Helpdesk") and
traditional apps for Windows (bestselling is Macro Recorder), just look at the
web-site.

I started almost 6 years ago and WORKED REALLY FREAKING HARD, no secret here.
I literally had no sleep for weeks. After 3 years I quit my job and went full
time. Last year (2010) was $210k in profits. Also, 2010 was the first year I
brought in more remote devs and support people since it was getting really
hard...

We have kids so no continuous travelling for us (every kid needs a home, with
his own room, his own bed + teddybear)... But we can choose to live in any
place we want (we chose London).

------
zerostar07
I 've been living off facebook apps since 2008. Upside: life free of
commitments. Downside: Too much free time. Right now, i 'm doing a PhD course.

~~~
no_gravity
Interesting. Are you making money off your own facebook apps or by writing
facebook apps for others?

~~~
zerostar07
Own. Given the speed with which you can test new ideas on the platform, i
don't see why anyone would want to work on the cheap making apps for others.

~~~
nateberkopec
What kind of apps? Games, mostly?

~~~
zerostar07
Games. Nothing else sells on facebook. Seriously, don't even try it :)

------
xpose2000
I am a single founder of <http://www.fantasysp.com> , a fantasy sports news
aggregator. Shows real-time player trends and allows you to sync and manage
multiple fantasy teams from ESPN,CBSSports,Yahoo! etc. It is completely
bootstrapped with zero outside funding. Relies on advertisements and user
subscriptions for money.

I cannot live off FantasySP completely, though it certainly more than pays for
itself to the tune of a few thousand per month. I currently do have a day job
for a startup company. However, this month my site got more pageviews than my
day job.

So successful? Yes, to some degree but not like the other folks here. There
are still mountains to climb.

------
speleding
I'm the single founder of <http://www.supersaas.com>, an appointment
scheduling system. Made enough money last year to add an extra floor to my
house as an office, so I can still say I work from home. Kids are downstairs
with a nanny, so I get to see them whenever I go for coffee. Loving every
minute of it. Growth is still exponential, I now have representatives in 6
countries. It's a plain vanilla rails+MySql app, and I had not programmed
anything for over a decade before starting on it (I was a CS major in the
eighties), investment was just my time since expenses are still negligible.

------
ztay
I'm the solo founder of PrintFriendly.com

Two years ago I applied to YC, and was turned down in the interview process.
They asked, "how is PrintFriendly going to make a billion dollars"? I'm still
trying to answer that (or at least a more modest version of the question).

Today PrintFriendly revenue is about $10k/mo, 1.2M visits/mo, and slow but
steady growth.

I'm happy with the results, delighted actually. However, I'm not travelling
the world, or working from a beach. I work hard everyday and reinveste the
capital, to try and build a stable/strong/significant organization.

~~~
mtoddh
Cool idea and it looks really useful for printing out online tutorials/guides
without all the ads/cruft - saw on your webpage that it's free so what's your
revenue model?

~~~
glimcat
If you poke around a bit more:

* The display is ad-free, but there are ads added at print time. (There are numerous competitors out there which will do this without the ads.)

* There's a $6/mo subscription for sites who want to do a "clean print" button with branding and no ads.

------
Lucadg
I am a single founder and from 2001 to 2009 I lived and traveled the world 11
months a year thanks to an online accommodation reservation business. Now some
20 people joined me and we are building a new version called
<http://www.adormo.com/> which should let them work online and travel too. I
never made big money but I consider it a huge success: my aim was to see the
world and I did. If I can help other people do the same it will be a double
success :)

------
clementyu
I am a founder of <http://pipi818.com> \-- a real-time web picture digging
engine -- an entertainment website to help people find out what's the current
hottest or controversial pictures/topics within China's "big intranet world".
(syn to Chinese twitter - weibo). Selling advertisement seems to be the only
profit way(business model). Don't know if anyone has any experience about how
to expand the income for this kind of web app

------
jackkinsella
I'm the sole founder of Oxbridge Notes, <http://www.oxbridgenotes.co.uk>. I
describe my job as "hacker, founder and janitor". I do it all - graphic
design, programming, server administration, customer service, seo and online
marketing. As someone who doesn't mind working alone and loves learning new
disciplines, I couldn't be happier taking on all these roles.

I set up the site a year and a half ago out of desperation after a previous
project had failed. I asked myself "what do I have that I could sell n
times?". The answer: my old notes (revision notes compiled by myself, not
lecture handouts) and essays from Oxford law school. I combined my knowledge
of law with my knowledge of programming and found a suitable niche. There were
many competitors but none of them had the overlap of skills I had, and so I
had a huge advantage.

Last year the project made ~$25k profit, and this year I hope to reach $50k,
with an investment of about five hours per week. (The initial time investment
was huge, but it is in maintenance mode now.)

I recently began offering notes in other subjects. If you happend to have
typed-up revision guides from college, I can offer you a chunky commission on
every sale: <http://www.oxbridgenotes.co.uk/sell_notes>

For anyone familiar with real time strategy games like Command and Conquer or
Starcraft, Oxbridge Notes is the turret guarding my base. It gives me the
minimal income I need to survive, giving me the chance to leverage my time by
taking on riskier but potentially more rewarding ventures.

------
dchuk
I founded and ran <http://serpIQ.com> by myself up until about last month,
when I added a business partner from previous projects to the company to
handle customer service and marketing efforts. It's an SEO Competition
Analysis tool built on Rails, it's been a fun project :)

Project has been live for about 4 months, and provides me with full time
comfortable income and him a decent secondary income for now (he's not full
time yet).

------
DMcQ
I'd phrase it more like "single founder evolving towards success" with my own
application, <http://www.simplediagrams.com>, which is earning about 2K a
month.

Like many of you I designed, developed and marketed the app myself. (Although
I've just recently hired some help for coding.) Biggest challenge is just to
find more time to work on it, since I have other work that takes precedence.

Peldi and Rob Walling are big inspirations.

------
braindead_in
I'm a solo founder at Scribie.com. My first venture was a embedded startup
which failed and we closed it down in 2008. I decided to go it solo and
released a free Skype recording app called CallGraph. It was based on some of
the work I had done in my failed startup. The idea was follow the Freemium
model and make money off paid services. One of the services was audio
transcription and that took off. In that process I discovered transcription
was a big pain and decided to develop a system which takes out as much pain as
possible out of it and works reliably. The result is Scribie.com.

I've been living off Scribie for the past two years and it's been fun. It pays
my bills and I've learnt a hell lot--didn't know anything about web
development when I started--and I consider it a success. There's a lot to do
still and I hope I'll be able to grow it into a big business some day.

~~~
nphrk
Very nice idea! I have one technical question - do you also use some speech-
to-text software, or is it 100% human labor? I believe the utilization of such
software (even if it gives crude results) can be of great use to a service
like yours.

~~~
braindead_in
Right now it's all done manually. I experimented with CMU Sphinx II when I
started but results were poor. The main problem was actually the recording
quality, eg. background noises, people talking over each other etc. I plan to
revisit it once again and try. Maybe things have improved.

------
senith
I run a tutoring service <http://graduatetutor.com/> and am loving it. It aint
software or apps so Ive got to manage it more actively. One issue I must admit
in a service business is that it is not as easily salable as software or apps.

------
j45
I don't have anything to add as an example but I want to say I really found
this thread inspiring.

------
kayoone
i met the guy who wrote the AroundMe iphone app last week. Top 15 overall
downloaded app and i think over 30M searches a month. Hes running it all on
his own since 2008, just his wife doing support stuff. Very humble and cool
guy aswell!

~~~
senko
Was that on HackFWD build07 event in Berlin? He did a presentation there last
Saturday.

I think he mentioned 30M _installations_. Also, 15% conversion rate from ad-
supported free to ad-free premium version of the app. Also, Apple featured him
in a TV commercial.

Also, very humble guy. People basically had to pull the conv. rate info and
the fact that Apple featured his app out of him. Massive respect.

~~~
kayoone
yep that was at the HackFWD event in Berlin ;) I think it was 30M
installations and 35M searches per month, very impressive.

------
davidandgoliath
I'm the sole founder of <http://www.fused.com> \-- a hosting provider based
out of Toronto. Up until recently I managed 100% of my company while on
persistent road trips & traveling :)

We host ~5,000+ sites at last count, and are quickly working our way towards
$1mm per annum. We hit $1mm earned total as of a few months ago.

My most recent feat was the birt of my first adorable little gal, and the wife
& I are extremely happy to settle down for a few years until she's at a ripe
age to show the world. In the meantime we'll make sure we settle somewhere
warm :)

------
Brajeshwar
Not mine, but a friend of mine, whom I share a similar passion for Photography
besides technology, is very happy in life with decent income from his humble
solution to backup Flickr Photos.

He lives here in Bangalore, India and his monthly income from the sales of his
software is very very good. The software itself sells on its own, do not need
much maintenance and it just works.

Bulkr - <http://clipyourphotos.com/bulkr/>

Disclaimer: I'm helping him spread more awareness about his awesome software
and if you ever felt the need to buy, it sells for 50% through my website.

------
cheald
I'm a single founder of <http://mmo-mumble.com>, a voice chat hosting service
aimed at MMO gamers. I've been running the service for 2.5 years, and I'm up
to about 900 paying customers. It's not a full-time job yet, but it's kept me
afloat through other revenue problems, so I consider it a resounding success.

------
resdirector
I recently got a very positive review for my new take on to-do:

[http://lifehacker.com/5835720/folderboy-is-a-simple-
folder+b...](http://lifehacker.com/5835720/folderboy-is-a-simple-folder+based-
to+do-manager)

Not quite success yet, but we (aka "I") have traction. And have built
something that people want :).

------
freshfey
I'd suggest keynotopia.com. I just re-read the article in the Hacker News
Monthly magazine (Startup Stories, which is for free I think). According to
the founder it makes him around $5000 - $10000 per month.

------
damoncali
One year in, <http://trackjumper.com> is doing well. The only downside is that
working alone has reduced the speed with which I can improve the project.

------
DavidTO1
I've created 3 apps for the Mac App Store. I'm not too sure if its a success
since I'm making about 5k/month in sales and I'm still keeping my day job. I
guess its just more disposable income.

~~~
rosariom
What apps did you build if you do not mind me asking?

------
md1515
my co-founder in my current startup has one. he is an australian and was
making 150k/year out of college, but hated it. moved to eastern europe, made a
staff management system and makes 1k/month now (like 6-8 months into it), but
that is enough to live and travel all around europe and the U.S with a few
hours a month of work.

------
megablast
iPhone developer, writing travel guides, starting to branch out into android.
Managed to quit my job last year, traveling the world this year.
<http://phlogy.com>.

------
pghimire
Founded of StartUpLift[<http://startuplift.com>] at the beginning of this
year. Has been growing slowly but steadily. Revenue around $2k/mo. Recently
introduced "Recurring Buzz/Feedback" subscription model that lets companies
get featured, introduce their service/product to others and get feedback on a
monthly basis. Also planning on adding "Startup/Small Business Deals" so that
startups can offer deals to each other.

------
abcd_f
Vanity fair galore... a very interesting at that though :)

------
gopi
I am a single founder, made around $10 million in pure profits in the last 8
years from relatively few internet projects/products. The interesting thing is
i am not even a professional developer (but can write simple scripts and
understand technology)

~~~
freemarketteddy
I'm betting its a consultancy that fills up IT positions in big
companies.....the hiring business is one of the easiest ways to make money!

~~~
gopi
Hmm, people downvote me because i don't want to share the details?

~~~
chops
The whole point of this thread is to share the details. Coming in and saying
"oh yeah, I also make a ton of money, but I can't tell you how" doesn't really
do anything for the conversation. Even if it's minor details like the fantasy
sports guy that uses the Yahoo API, that's contributing to the conversation.

~~~
gopi
Okay, Let me try to be a bit more specific :)

In the start it was mostly SEO mini sites then its more PPC arbitrage and then
when search marketing got tough i started creating sites that depend on word
of mouth/viral traffic. At my peak i was making $400k per month!

BTB, Most people with my kind of track record start to develop their personal
brand and become a "Make money online Guru" and start sellimg systems and
ebooks. But that life is not for me :)

~~~
freemarketteddy
Is mobile search a good platform to target now or would you stick to desktop
pcs?

~~~
gopi
I don't have much experience with mobile, so i am not qualified to answer this

