
Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? - mdoliwa
This question was asked 3 years ago (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7367243) by kweball, and I&#x27;m curious what it looks nowadays.<p>&gt; How many people on hacker news are running successful online businesses on their own? What is your business and how did you get started?<p>&gt; Defining successful as a profitable business which provides the majority of the owners income.
======
csallen
Back in August I launched
[https://IndieHackers.com](https://IndieHackers.com), a site where the
founders of profitable online businesses share their stories and revenue
transparently. I actually got the idea after reading lots of threads like this
one on HN :D

Indie Hackers is my full-time job now. Is it "successful"? I think so! I've
done over 90 interviews, and they've been read over one million times in the
past 5 months, largely by you guys! I also made $2239 in December and hope to
grow revenue another 50% in January. (As I do every month, I just blogged
about that here:
[https://IndieHackers.com/blog](https://IndieHackers.com/blog))

I'm working on a podcast as well that I'm really excited about, as I've found
it's a bit easier to get famous founders to agree to that format and to speak
transparently about behind the scenes details.

~~~
Swizec
How can you afford to be full-time on $2239/month? O.o

~~~
csallen
I saved up money contracting before I took the plunge. This definitely
wouldn't have been possible otherwise! But also, if you don't have a family,
serious debt, or health issues, it's pretty easy to be resourceful and live
cheaply, even in an expensive city like San Francisco.

~~~
Swizec
Ah that makes sense! You sound better at living affordably than I am ... doing
very similarly with the sidehustle and still pretty far from going full time.

------
gottebp
My grandfather has Parkinson's disease and the hand tremors that go with. This
makes using a mouse nearly impossible because the cursor flies all over the
place.

I created free software called SteadyMouse[1] back in 2005 to remove this
tremor while letting normal mouse motion through. It eventually moved up near
the top of Google's search results. At the same time, the free version began
to show its age with compatibility issues. I spent the last two years on a
massive rewrite for a commercial version and formed a single member LLC to
carry it back in July 2016.

Revenue is not enough to quit my day job writing automotive firmware, however
it's still a nice bit of allowance on the side. I enjoy the stories from users
mostly as well as trying to automate the repetitive tasks so I can focus on
coding.

[1] [https://www.steadymouse.com](https://www.steadymouse.com)

~~~
ac2u
Do you think it's possible to combine with this prototype that was recently
produced as part of a BBC TV programme?

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38208814](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38208814)

~~~
gottebp
A tremor disruptor! Very cool idea. It might work well together with
SteadyMouse with the bracelet disrupting the tremor from "getting going" and
SteadyMouse taking out the remainder.

------
novaleaf
I run [https://PhantomJsCloud.com](https://PhantomJsCloud.com)

I started it as a free MVP about 2 years ago while in Thailand, and given that
I was attracting a slow but steady stream of users I decided to build out a
commercial v1 from it.

The freemium SaaS went live in March and it's growing monthly. If I still
lived in Thailand I would consider it very successful, but I am in the Seattle
area now so it's ramen profitable.

The biggest surprise I got was how slow organic growth takes. Every month I
gain more users + MRR but discovery seems to be the biggest problem. I tried
Google Adwords in June but Google decided to cost me upwards of $5/click for
basic keyword targeting so gave that up. I tried Adwords again in November and
now google thinks I'm more relevant, so I pay starting at $0.20/click for the
same keywords that cost $5/click 6 months previous. I am currently doing
experiments to see if the acquisition cost justifies that spend.

From a effort perspective, the SaaS api+backend itself was about 50% of the
effort. The subscription service + user dashboard was another 50%.

From a skills perspective, I think doing a SaaS as a solo founder is only
practical if you have extremely broad skillsets: Business management, UX,
full-stack webdev, devops, sales, marketing, support. Thankfully I have some
experience in all those (except sales) so I was able to either do or fake
everything required. If you don't have all those skills, you are going to be
increasingly reliant on luck, which isn't a winning strategy.

~~~
nikon
This looks cool, how do you handle ip rotation? I'm scraping around 1TB a
month and currently manage my own proxies. If you could offer something to
replace that it would certainly be something I'd be interested in.

~~~
IanCal
I've used crawlera for a few years, but not at the same scale. Might be worth
checking out, anyway:
[https://scrapinghub.com/crawlera/](https://scrapinghub.com/crawlera/)

------
chrishacken
I'm not sure if this qualifies as an "online business", but I started an ISP
in November '15\. It's also not entirely "one-person". I am the sole founder,
but I do hire part-time help on occasion if I'm swamped. It started off as a
WISP and has finally grown to the point where we are beginning to deploy
fiber.

The site is [https://nepafiber.com](https://nepafiber.com)

I still work full-time as a systems engineer, but the business started
bringing in more money than my job does around 3 months ago. I'm only still at
my job so that I can expand more rapidly; running fiber isn't cheap.

~~~
Dragonai
I never would've imagined an ISP being run almost entirely by one person. This
is super dope - best of luck in the continual expansion of your business! :)

~~~
jason_slack
I am currently starting a small ISP to bring internet to our lake community.
Fiber from Level3 and Ubiquiti wireless gear (and other hardware, routing,
packet shaping, firewalling, AV, e-mail, voucher system, etc). About 110
houses around the lake spanning about 1.5 miles long and .40 miles wide.

e-mail in profile if you want to chat.

------
HoboHammocks
I started Hobo Hammocks a year and a half ago (www.hobohammocks.com)

I got the idea when a buddy of mine and myself decided to live out of our cars
and sleep in hammocks on the backstop of an abandoned softball field. Doing so
made me more aware of the homeless and what they are going through, and I
wanted to do something to help them.

I started the company and donate a meal to the homeless with every hammock I
sell. Profits have been amazing, and I've been able to donate over 5500 meals
to the homeless.

I'm actually working on a new project now. It's part of the same company, but
it's a kickstarter campaign launched yesterday for a sleeping bag called the
Yak Sak. It's got a couple cool design tweaks which you can read about here:

[http://kck.st/2iEBiEf](http://kck.st/2iEBiEf)

With every sleeping bag I sell, I donate one to the homeless as well so I can
keep giving back.

It's kind of like the TOMS business model. I'm still out to make a profit, but
I want to do some good along the way. I hope this answers your question
without being too spammy of a post!

~~~
snorberhuis
I looked at your kickstarter and you rate your sleeping bag at 20 degrees. 20
degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit? If Celsius I am interested.

~~~
DamnYuppie
Do you mean Fahrenheit? 20 degrees Celsius (68F) wouldn't even qualify as
insulation in a sleeping bag, may as well use a garbage bag and newspapers. 20
degrees Fahrenheit would make for a good 3 season bag though.

~~~
diminoten
I bet you could get 4 seasons out of it in the south, don't you think? I don't
know much about sleeping bags, though.

~~~
xanderstrike
It's a good idea to think of the temperature rating of sleeping bags as
"survivable" rather than "comfortable."

I camp year round in CA. I use a 20 degree bag for late spring/summer/early
fall and a 0 degree bag for the rest.

------
adrianh
I run [https://www.soundslice.com/](https://www.soundslice.com/) with one
other full-time person. We're self-funded and make a profit at this point.

Soundslice is interactive sheet music synced with audio/video recordings — the
Internet's best software for learning pieces of music.

We make money by licensing the technology, taking a cut of lessons in a video-
lesson marketplace, plus charging $20/month for a "pro" version (Soundslice
For Teachers).

We're happily bootstrapped and located comfortably far from the La La Land of
Silicon Valley. (I moved from Chicago to Amsterdam a year ago, and my partner
is in Chicago.)

In fact, being able to tell potential customers/partners that we're _not_ a
"conventional" startup (one that just wants to sell out to give its investors
a return) has been an unexpected benefit. The story resonates with people, and
it's good for building trust.

~~~
knicholes
That and you're a Django/Python legend! I love that your combined passions in
life have brought such an incredible tool to the world while also bringing you
a profit.

------
bemmu
I've been running [https://www.candyjapan.com](https://www.candyjapan.com) for
about five years. It has (just barely) made enough to support my life in
Japan. I'm currently writing a "year in review", will probably post it next
week.

~~~
xiaoma
Do you think you've saturated your market? I.e., are you looking to put it on
the back burner and build something else or are you still focused on scaling
candyjapan?

~~~
bemmu
I feel like I probably _should_ be focusing on something else, but some nice
discounts would kick in if I can reach 1000 subscribers. That's still a bit
far, but seems possible, so I'm obsessing about reaching that level.

------
jasonkester
I'm running two of the same ones from that list 3 years ago
([http://www.twiddla.com/](http://www.twiddla.com/) and
[https://www.s3stat.com/](https://www.s3stat.com/)), and have just launched
another one ([https://unwaffle.com/](https://unwaffle.com/)).

Every year that passes makes it easier to get something like this off the
ground, as the infrastructure becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, and the
knowledge you need for the business side get better packaged into step-by-step
guides.

It's definitely work, but once you're up and running, it's a lot nicer than
having a day job.

~~~
napoleond
How are you promoting your products? I am part marketer and part developer,
but I am finding it difficult to market to developers :)

I recently launched [http://www.smsinbox.net](http://www.smsinbox.net) for
Twilio devs, and am _slowly_ gaining some users, but finding it very difficult
to reach the target audience, and/or get visitor/user feedback.

~~~
jastr
The landing page looks a bit too sparse (and unprofessional), which would turn
me away. [1] Consider filling it out a bit more with: screenshots, pricing, a
privacy policy, etc.

Take a look at s3stat.com above for a good example, it's much more polished
without much more content.

[1] I send a few thousand SMS a month via Twilio for thesimplepostcard.com

~~~
dabernathy89
Agreed, screenshots are the first thing I looked for and should definitely be
there.

------
coderholic
I launched [http://ipinfo.io](http://ipinfo.io) a few years ago. The API gets
over 250 million requests a day, and is profitable. I left my job at CTO of
calm.com at the end of last year to focus on it fulltime. There's more of the
backstory here: [https://getputpost.co/from-side-project-to-250-million-
daily...](https://getputpost.co/from-side-project-to-250-million-daily-
requests-909b9e373d94)

~~~
jrnichols
Ahhhh... Geo IP stuff. That's the reason that I can't get a lot of the local
channels on streaming apps. :-P

I'm actually n hour north of Dallas, but pretty much all of the Geo IP
products show me as being out in east Texas, usually Mount Pleasant or
Longview. That's 150 miles from where I am.

As a result, I get streams coming from Shreveport, LA instead of Dallas, TX.

Not sure if there's a way to fix this.

~~~
trinkit
This sounds like the same issue addressed in the Reply all podcast about
mislocated stolen phones ([https://gimletmedia.com/episode/53-in-the-
desert/](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/53-in-the-desert/)), they do a small
update in the recent Past, Present, Future 2 episode
([https://soundcloud.com/replyall/84-past-present-
future-2#t=2...](https://soundcloud.com/replyall/84-past-present-
future-2#t=24:35)).

------
unoti
I created an online game called Mossms
([http://mossms.com](http://mossms.com)). It's a game where you breed
critters, you raise the babies, and put them to work building little towns
where they learn and work and play. Think The Sims plus Tamagachi. Their AI is
fun and mesmerizing to watch, and our secret sauce is in reminding people
about things they've forgotten about how wonderful it is to be a kid. It's
something pretty much everyone can connect with, even if they have trouble
identifying exactly why they're entranced. Our biggest customers are actually
micro business owners that run their own farms and auction off their wares. I
built tools for creating new content and handed this business off to my
partner who still grows and maintains the business today. She doesn't know how
to code, but she knows how to build and maintain communities.

How I got started: when I started my first game I thought the hardest part was
coming up with a good idea. Then I built and launched something amazing, I
realized that the real hard part is figuring out how to reach the people that
would want to buy it. So when I started the next venture, I started with
identifying how I was going to market it, and building relationships with the
right communities even as I was starting the code. That product launched
successfully, then I learned that I can't wait till the end to figure out a
business model that works for myself and the customers both. It took me
several different products over several years to get a mix of product,
marketing, and business model that worked well.

The hardest part is knowing when you're building something that just isn't
right yet, vs when you're fooling yourself and failing and just not admitting
it yet. I still don't know how to tell the difference.

------
cookkkie
Hi, here's mine: [http://mee6bot.com](http://mee6bot.com) :) . You can read a
short article I wrote recently about it: [https://medium.com/@anis.blk/the-
mvp-that-got-to-480k-unique...](https://medium.com/@anis.blk/the-mvp-that-got-
to-480k-unique-users-0-dc179c8b4c3d#.sxrsvgm7j) .

Transcript:

Last March, in my little darky flat somewhere in the middle of France, I had
this idea to launch a little chat bot in a platform called Discord. I was
coding all day long to deliver a functional and satisfying version of what I
had in mind. These were the most profitable 3 days of my life…

Discord is a slack-like application. The main difference between slack and
discord is that discord is made for gamers. It’s free, easy to use and has
gamers oriented features like a great and reliable voice communication
feature. The platform was crowed with a lot of chat bots. But those were very
rigide, and kind of complex to setup. They were generally made from a
programmer perspective. The user experience was meh…

My goal was to make the ultimate bot. I wanted to bundle all the popular
functionalities that people use. Instead of using 10 bots in your team, you’ll
just have to use mine. But for that to work, I also had to make the bot fully
customizable. So that you could enable/disable any feature easily.

And the coding started… After 3 days of hard work, It was time for me to find
users. The first thing I did to gain some traction was to go to some big Teams
and convince the owners to use the bot. I spammed a dozen of big team owners.
The kick worked, the engine started and never stopped since.

~~~
jajern
Does your income come from donations or is there another revenue source? I ask
because OP said that successful meant "provides the majority of the person's
income" in this context. I'm curious if donations were enough to provide that
or if I'm missing something.

~~~
cookkkie
yep :)

------
spiderfarmer
I built a network of agricultural communities. Making a decent living from
Adsense revenue. There's a substantial secondary revenue stream in the form of
paid classified ads in niche marketplaces. I could make more money by going
after advertisers myself, but I don't like the sales aspect. I am currently
developing a turnkey website platform for companies in my niches, fully
integrated with my other platforms, Twitter and Facebook. I will hire a sales
person when that's finished. Right now I work from home so that I can take
care of the kids when my wife is at her job.

Because the revenue stream is mostly passive I still take some consultancy
projects, but that's not quite necessary.

~~~
fiatjaf
Please, share a link.

~~~
spiderfarmer
There are 45 in total, my biggest communities are Dutch. Hope it's not against
HN guidelines to post these links:

[https://www.tractorfan.nl/](https://www.tractorfan.nl/) (mechanisation)

[https://www.prikkebord.nl/](https://www.prikkebord.nl/) (dairy farming)

[https://www.truckfan.nl/](https://www.truckfan.nl/) (transportation)

[https://www.vastgereden.nl/](https://www.vastgereden.nl/) (bloopers! good for
the views)

[https://www.boeren.nu](https://www.boeren.nu) (combination of the above)

[http://quotum.nu/fosfaatrechten/](http://quotum.nu/fosfaatrechten/) (niche
market, covers the trade in phosphor quota licenses)

~~~
appleiigs
With so many websites, would it be better combining them all into one parent
website, like Reddit and their sub-reddits?

I see you have links to your other sites, but maybe Google rank for a parent
site would be more prominent since the one parent address would have a lot of
traffic.

Maybe have a parent site that lists/links out your 45 (or just the a group of
related sites) and maintain the individual addresses. Then have a link back to
your parent.

I guess this is more of a branding idea. Google Parent Alphabet, with Google
Mail, Google Drive. Also, honda.com

(You obviously know what you are doing, so take this is just a question, not a
suggestion)

~~~
spiderfarmer
I kinda have that in boeren.nu. But my reasoning was that you can't be
everything to everybody. A farmer might enjoy reading about tractors and cows,
whereas a mechanic couldn't care less about the cows. I could make it easy to
add interest to your profile, but only 20% of my visitors are logged in.

Also, while I certainly think of Google when I build things, I think of my
visitors quite a bit longer. I always look at Google as the company that tried
to replace me with their silly Google+ communities, as well as the company
that sends me 40% of my traffic.

------
malux85
I'm running [https://SignalBox.ai](https://SignalBox.ai) alone, I wrote all of
the software and am working on partnering and sales right now.

Previously I have 2 other startups, one was media monitoring and one was
forex.

The media monitoring is B2B only. The forex trading is automated and run from
my home research cluster.

Both are generating enough revenue to live off (media monitoring 120k forex,
60-80k)

I guess they fit the definition of solo founder and online, but they have no
public facing websites (except SignalBox)

EDIT: I also run a slack group for Solo Founders, If you would like an invite,
please email me

~~~
pouta
Add me to slack please! moura (at oko.ai).

~~~
malux85
invite sent!

------
bluelightspcl
I run a non-tech based business www.texadmissions.com while traveling the
world full-time. I help students apply to college specializing in admission to
UT-Austin. I am a former admissions counselor for UT. I founded my business in
April 2015 and it is my only revenue stream. I work 99% by e-mail, though
occasionally I skype or receive calls via international sim card.

I am a lead moderator on www.reddit.com/r/applyingtocollege and I produce
content through a blog and a popular Youtube channel. My traffic is completely
organic - I don't pay for advertising. My only competitor is the university
itself. They are notoriously bad about getting information out to the public.
I supply that demand and live off consulting fees. In a way, I can reach many
hundreds and thousands more people outside of an institution than I could
physically visiting high schools in my previous role.

My revenues more than allow me to explore the world. In the early days, I
could adjust my runway by simply traveling slow and staying longer in less
costly places. I don't make enough money right now to live a conventional life
in an American city, but I can live comfortably elsewhere. I charge a lot less
than my competitors while, I believe, providing a higher quality service. I am
currently transitioning into products.

I fly to Barbados next week to begin my fourth year abroad.

~~~
appleiigs
Why do you only focus on UT-Austin? Could you expand to different universities
or colleges?

------
adpoe
I run an ecommerce store from Shopify which fulfills the orders by drop-
shipping through AliExpress.

This is definitely doable for one person, and it isn't technically challenging
for a software developer--but the hardest part (at least for me) is marketing,
creating content, advertising, and so on.

Actually running a Shopify store and fulfilling by drop-shipping is simple. I
would definitely recommend that as a good place to start, one person can do
it.

~~~
gthtjtkt
How do you deal with the insane delivery times? Do you tell customers up front
that it might be weeks until they receive the product?

Most sellers I've seen on AliExpress estimate 15-30+ days for delivery. In the
age of ubiquitous 1 and 2-day shipping, I just can't see customers going for
that.

Seems like there'd be tons of people who change their mind after a week or two
and then start demanding a refund or pestering you about their items.

~~~
jblok
How many sellers have delivery times like that? Do any have 1-3 day shipping?

Is it because all products are coming from the far east?

I'm looking into making a dropshipping app, but for my niche anything more
than 1-3 days would be a non-starter.

~~~
ericabiz
You can get AliExpress suppliers to ship DHL or UPS Express, which takes 3-5
days. It varies a bit due to customs. The problem is that it's massively
expensive, and doesn't make sense for a single small item.

We have established suppliers now, many of which we originally found through
Alibaba/Aliexpress, and we order hundreds or thousands of items at a time (I
run a small chain of cell phone repair shops), but even then shipping on a
couple medium-sized boxes can run $80 and up.

------
robinwarren
I started work on [https://getcorrello.com](https://getcorrello.com) (a
dashboard for Scrum and Kanban teams using Trello) 2 years ago. It has covered
household costs since the middle of last year. I am still a solo founder,
looking to grow the business to do more than just cover costs and probably
make a hire or two this year.

I've read these posts for a while on HN, it's nice to be able to reply to one
finally :)

~~~
agotterer
congrats in your success! The project management space is incredibly crowded.
I'm curious to hear how you marketed and differentiated yourself?

~~~
robinwarren
Thanks :)

Luckily when I started out the plugins-for-trello space was very uncluttered.
It was mostly abandonware and github projects created by developers over a
weekend. So since Corrello is exclusively aimed at Trello teams and was one of
the only tools being built fulltime just for that I have been able to piggy
back on their success without a lot of serious competition. There is some
competition and I expect more will come as others realise the Trello platform
is a viable place to build a business but I think that can only be a good
thing really.

------
mohoyt
I've been running Bowtiful Ties
([http://www.bowtifulties.com](http://www.bowtifulties.com)) as a side project
for the last 4 or so years.

Everything is vertically integrated and hand made by myself, from the bow
ties, to the packaging, to the website and all processes. Bootstrapped from
the start, it's pretty low volume, but nicely profitable.

~~~
bravura
Can you please offer Jackson style bowties? These look beautiful in so many
settings, but are very hard to find.

Diamond are quite nice too.

Lastly, consider doing double-sided bowties, with different fabrics on each
sides.

But, Jackson bowties would be something I'd order in a heartbeat.

[http://jayaustinbowties.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/02/bow_t...](http://jayaustinbowties.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/02/bow_tie_shapes_f_1_49_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_2_1_1_1_1_1_1.jpg)

(My email is in my profile, reach out if you do start offering these.)

~~~
mohoyt
Absolutely - some of the earlier ties are more Jackson style rather than
Windsor, but as most ties are made to order, I can made up any tie in a
Jackson style should you wish :)

Most of the ties available at the moment are double sided, with completely
different patterns either side (e.g.
[https://www.instagram.com/p/72rT_CmzYZ/](https://www.instagram.com/p/72rT_CmzYZ/))

------
IngoBlechschmid
Tarsnap, online backups for the truly paranoid (mentioned on HN quite often):
[https://www.tarsnap.com/](https://www.tarsnap.com/)

------
sairamkunala
[https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/)

Here is a good list of 1 or 2 people software SaaS/websites along with
interviews

~~~
chebum
Why people share their revenues? Every product can be copied. If you know
revenue, you know what product you should copy.

~~~
blakes
Because transparency is good.

Also competition is good, stop being afraid of competition or people
"stealing" ideas.

~~~
chebum
Good for customers but not for business. Competition tends to minimize margins
and profits. While main business goal is to make money, competition is against
business goals.

~~~
laumars
Competition can also grow a sector, bringing in many new customers that may
have otherwise dismissed an idea or might not have even heard of the idea
without the exposure driven by the competition.

~~~
greglindahl
If a big chunk of the public moves from "should I buy an electric car?" to
"which electric car should I buy?", then all electric car producers win.

------
dangrossman
I run two SaaS analytics services on my own,
[https://www.improvely.com](https://www.improvely.com) and
[https://www.w3counter.com](https://www.w3counter.com). Improvely is 4 years
old, W3Counter is 12 years old, and together they earn $45-50K/month.

~~~
nthState
Please tell me you have a write up of your history/journey somewhere?. You get
a +1 from me!

~~~
chudi
Check his comments history, the story was already told multiple times

------
adambedford
I launched JobTrack ([https://jobtrack.io](https://jobtrack.io)), a CRM for
job seekers, about three months ago and have been seeing decent growth since
then. I've predominantly relied on word of mouth and organic social media
marketing but also launched a paid marketing campaign on Facebook a few days
ago.

The overall premise for the product is that when searching for a job, the job
seeker will likely make a spreadsheet or notebook of the jobs they're
interested in and applying to, along with some notes and key dates. JobTrack
replaces spreadsheets with a straightforward app to track that information,
and more, in a structured manner that is also available from mobile (and
Chrome extension coming soon). JobTrack also has analytics to show how the job
search is progressing.

I'm hoping to go full time in 2017 and raise investment. At that point I'll
likely try to bring on a co-founder and perhaps an employee or two.

~~~
vram22
Nice idea, and congrats.

I think this can be a category of apps - automating the tracking of info of
various kinds that people want to track.

Had thought of another one but in a different domain. Not done yet. But when I
mentioned it to a friend they said it could be useful.

~~~
adambedford
Thank you. I agree. JobTrack serves as a CRM for the job search but I think
there is definitely space for CRM-like functionality for a lot of aspects of
everyday life.

~~~
vram22
Cool. I signed up for JobTrack. Don't have a need for it right now, but wanted
to try it out. Will give you any feedback I may have. So far I've signed up
and created two dummy jobs. Looked at the analytics page briefly too.

------
idlewords
I run Pinboard, $257K in gross revenue for 2016. A ton of money for one
person, not quite enough for two people.

~~~
nthState
Hi, I'm guesstimating 25'000 paying users? - Do you have a writeup on your
marketing?

~~~
idlewords
My marketing is, I spend all my time talking smack on Twitter.

------
nateberkopec
I made an almost-full-time income off programming content in 2016 (through my
Rails performance course at
[https://www.railsspeed.com](https://www.railsspeed.com)).

I'm writing up a big blog about how I did it right now, but the gist is:

1\. Treat blog posts like miniature products - opportunities to test, measure,
learn.

2\. Have a unique voice and viewpoint.

3\. Write about a growing or mature field. (early to late majority)

4\. Main distribution channels are email newsletter and social media.

5\. Create an information product (book, course, videos, whatever) and convert
newsletter signups into sales.

~~~
umen
This is great site! i want to do the same concept but with

java + spring mvc and angular Question how did you market your site ?

------
MattBearman
I run BugMuncher ([https://www.bugmuncher.com](https://www.bugmuncher.com)),
it started as a side-project 5 years ago, then in September 2015 I packed in
freelancing to focus on BugMuncher full time.

As of November 2016 BugMuncher reached profitability - ie: it's my sole source
of income, and covers all of my living expenses.

~~~
GordonS
My first thought when I read the name was that it only needs the 1st letter
changed to take on a whole new meaning as a heterosexist slur. Then I saw you
were in the UK too, and wondered if you've also noticed this or it's just me?!

~~~
MattBearman
You're not the first to notice that, and it's one of many reasons I'm planning
to change the name.

~~~
GordonS
It's a tricky one that - you don't want to lose the identity you've built up,
but recognise the name may have issues.

I'm actually in a similar situation; I chose a company name 15 years ago that
I now regret because it's difficult to spell and pronounce (and I couldn't get
the '.com', which I mistakenly thought wouldn't matter at the time). I've
always been too scared to change it!

------
dgrigg
I have been running [https://pageproofer.com](https://pageproofer.com) for 3
years. It allows web designers and developers to easily leave feedback and
track issues directly on websites (like digital sticky notes). It has been
profitable from year 1 and continues to grow month over month.

The growth is slow and steady but not at a point where I'm doing it full time.
I don't think 'successful' needs to be determined as 'majority of owners
income'. For me it's a lucrative side project that requires little attention
day to day. It doesn't need to provide the majority of my income since it
doesn't take the majority of my time.

~~~
thepredestrian
I've always wondered - what kind of tech stack is required to run a service
like this? Would you classify it as a webapp?

~~~
dgrigg
I would classify it more as a widget or add-on in that it's use lies in being
added to an existing website (much like Google Analytics). The entire
admin/dashboard area for managing sites, adding users, integrations etc is
like a typical webapp though. The stack is a pretty vanilla LEMP stack on the
backend, with some extra bits for handling queues. The trickiest piece is the
widget that gets embedded on sites, it needs to be bullet proof across
browsers and devices since it's used for feedback and testing. It needs to
work on pretty much everything that people visit websites with.

------
nickjj
In 2016 I took content creation somewhat seriously and the end result was
enough income to sustain living in NY.

Not sure if it's worth blogging about yet. Are other developers interested to
see how to potentially make software engineer-tier salaries without having to
work for another company?

(Note: I also started with nothing. No mentors, no following, no existing
profile, no paid advertising, etc.).

 _Edit_ : If you're interested, my site is
[https://nickjanetakis.com](https://nickjanetakis.com).

If you sign up anywhere on the site, you'll get notified when I release
content related to starting your own business / building up your brand as a
software developer.

I recommend filling out the form at [https://nickjanetakis.com/learn-
in/2017](https://nickjanetakis.com/learn-in/2017), because you can include
what you want to learn most about which helps me figure out what I should
start writing about first.

~~~
charlieflowers
Of _course_ other developers are interested in that. That's such a leading
question that you risk tripping some people's BS meter.

But still ... yes, definitely interested.

~~~
DeanWormer
Yeah my BS meter has tripped. Most of his submissions are links to his own
site and his comments here are "would anyone be interested in ____" and "let
me tell you a secret" self promotional spam.

~~~
nickjj
I only post comments like that when it makes sense.

If you asked me, "hey I just downloaded Sublime Text, what are some good
packages for a Rails developer?". Why wouldn't I link you to a blog post that
lays it all out so you can consume it quickly?

"Let me tell you a secret" is a line I used twice. As a software developer I
like testing things and analyzing the results. So when I reply to people, I
tend to make note of the wording and phrases I use, and then see how it does.

Nothing wrong with that IMO.

You could choose to ignore the link too, but I'll leave you with this. None of
my paid training material has anything to do with "selling the dream". It's
all tech courses related to web frameworks and how to deploy them to
production. In other words, concrete knowledge that has guaranteed results.

~~~
Helmet
After inspecting your website, I realized that I had purchased your Build a
SaaS App course once, on Udemy. I ended up asking for my money back after
discovering that you don't actually build anything, the code is already
written and the video lectures quickly breeze through explaining it.

A few people mentioned this in the Udemy comments on your course, and you
retorted with snarky replies.

Not a fan of your marketing or your attitude towards customers who were
offering legitimate criticism.

~~~
nickjj
Hi,

Sorry you didn't like the course. I don't recall any snarky replies, but
you're right. There were a few people who would have preferred a "code
everything from a blank page" approach.

The problem is, how do you code up a 4,000+ line Python application with
dozens of files and thousands of lines of HTML/CSS/JS together 1 character at
a time?

It would take 100+ hours of video and you would want to punch me in the face
after hearing me say "ok now type D I V close bracket" for the 400th time in a
row.

A vast majority of people (as seen by the reviews) really enjoy the way it's
presented and like seeing it get built up in 12+ stages. It's impossible to
make everyone on the internet happy. The best I can do is listen to the
feedback of everyone and continue tinkering with future content.

~~~
biot
You're being highly disingenuous with your reply, to the point that I agree
with the other comment that it is snarky. Assuming your audience already knows
HTML and Python is perfectly acceptable if the focus is on building the
application, not on teaching how to type HTML and Python from scratch one
character at a time. A video could then say "Now we enter in this page of HTML
[cut from blank editor to already typed in text]. Note the following sections:
[brief explanation of important parts with highlights]" etc. which the
audience can follow along via section-by-section downloads. This is a very
standard style, and that you seem unaware makes you appear ill-suited for
teaching anybody.

~~~
nickjj
Hey,

The course does mention you should have a basic understanding of HTML and
Python before starting it. It's meant to teach you about Flask.

There's about 60 HTML templates in total. Rather than put the burden of
copy/pasting each one onto the student, I decided to break the entire project
up into 20 stages (separated by folders and git commits).

You get to see the application at 20 stages of development (to see how it gets
built up). It starts with a single app.py file and finishes with the end
result.

Basically I go over each line of code, and explain why it's written and what
it does.

This style of teaching was a choice I made based on the direct feedback of
hundreds of students in previous courses.

Most of them like the fast paced style where I talk over the code. There's
also many hours of code challenges built into the course to get your hands
dirty. The refund rate is currently less than 1%.

------
dgranda
I run [https://www.fortsu.es](https://www.fortsu.es) (also
[https://www.fortsu.co.uk](https://www.fortsu.co.uk),
[https://www.fortsu.de](https://www.fortsu.de) and
[https://www.fortsu.com](https://www.fortsu.com)) a price comparison website
for running shoes. Original one is focused on spanish market while expanding
into interesting ones.

It started as side project some years ago when I wanted to buy running shoes
online and it has been improved over the time. To-Do list never ends ;)

~~~
tuffer
Very nice! Couple of questions if you could answer please. How do you host
your site? How do you compare the similar products and aggregate them within
your database? Unique identifies etc.

~~~
dgranda
Thanks!

> How do you host your site?

TL;DR: entry level Virtual Private Server (VPS) per country.

Based on some SEO articles, I decided to go for Top Level Domains depending on
target market (.es for Spain, .de for Germany, etc.) so I needed properly
geolocated IP addresses for each country. Each server is around 10 USD/month
making this approach affordable. I do all operations.

> How do you compare the similar products and aggregate them within your
> database? Unique identifies etc.

Each product is manually added (using self made web based template) into
database basically because of custom description, picture and specifications.
Similar products are linked based first on category and then using properties
like weight and drop.

~~~
cylinder
This is good advice. I'm going to be building a site and replicating across
TLD and IPs like this across countries. My only question is, if you are using
the same content (ie, you write content on the blog for SEO) across each site
do you run into trouble with Google for copying existing content?

~~~
dgranda
I am sorry I can't provide a reliable answer to this because my english based
sites need more traction, but Google (GWT) does not complain as long as
hreflang attributes are properly set.

------
jdc0589
This barely counts, but I started a small premium handmade custom leather
goods brand about 6 months ago:
[http://vulcancrafting.com](http://vulcancrafting.com). cash/card wallets,
notebook/journal wallets, belts, etc... I didn't want to spend all my time
after work sitting at a computer.

I'm not in the positive yet; there's an equipment investment cost, I
intentionally don't keep a huge order backlog, and I don't charge as much as I
could for some stuff. But, it more than pays for the hobby at this point, and
I should recoup costs and start turning a profit in a couple months.

~~~
kerryfalk
A friend of mine has been doing this for many years. I have bought a lot from
him, and he's not cheap. I know he could make a lot more if he worked on his
marketing a little bit, but I'm not sure he wants to.

[https://www.instagram.com/madeinzaidasbasement/](https://www.instagram.com/madeinzaidasbasement/)

Anyway, I love that there are more people doing this kind of stuff. Good luck!

~~~
jdc0589
he's got some good looking bags! Still strategizing on if I want to move in to
any larger stuff like that.

------
ikeboy
I'll refer to my recent comment at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13267536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13267536)

It's not quite single person, I have two remote virtual assistants handling
various tasks like ordering, sourcing, etc, but you only really need that
above a certain scale.

Most of the business currently is drop shipping from US retailers to Amazon
and eBay. I got started reselling a year ago with a specific stacking deal
(discover had 10% cashback on Apple pay purchases for a few months, staples
had ipads on sale, I bought around 25k worth, broke even on the ipads, made
money on the cashback). Then I started reading everything I could about
reselling, followed lots of blogs, tried different things, eventually found
some great items and models that worked.

~~~
dbancajas
I read your post so you basically arbitrage from US retailers to amazon/ebay?
It seems you are doing retail arbitrage? Like when there is a sale on Toy R
Us, you list that same item on Amazon/Ebay. But don't you need to keep the
stock you buy at some place first? How do you deal when AMZ just price matches
it?

I am currently reselling alibaba stuff but after amazon PPC and shipping, it
seems it's just break even, not including my effort. It's mostly PL so I can
control my price but there is a lot of competition because I don't have patent
on my product. It's a white label basically.

In your post history, you said 300K sales. That's all from drop shipping?

~~~
ikeboy
> you basically arbitrage from US retailers to amazon/ebay?

Yes.

>It seems you are doing retail arbitrage?

Retail arbitrage has a technical meaning in the industry, it refers to
physically going into stores to buy inventory. What I'm doing is referred to
as drop shipping or "online arbitrage" (where you buy inventory online then
take possession and sell it).

>Like when there is a sale on Toy R Us, you list that same item on
Amazon/Ebay. But don't you need to keep the stock you buy at some place first?
How do you deal when AMZ just price matches it?

First of all, it's not all sales. Many of the items I sell are a regular price
at the source, amazon just doesn't have stock or charges more. Items where
Amazon isn't on the listing are much better.

For drop shipping, the point is that you have the retailer ship directly to
the customer, so I don't need to keep the stock. There are some things I do
buy, have it sent to amazon warehouses for fulfilment.

>In your post history, you said 300K sales. That's all from drop shipping?

Around half drop shipping, around half either FBA or MF but with shipping it
myself (or a warehouse). Did over 100k in November, and 50k in December. I'm
hoping to build up to 250k a month or so over the next year.

I've never done PL so I can't help too much there.

~~~
dbancajas
Can i get your email so I can ask you some stuff if that's fine..

~~~
ikeboy
In my profile.

------
tylerhall
I started selling macOS (and now iOS) software on my own website back in 2007.
[https://clickontyler.com](https://clickontyler.com) My original goal was to
earn enough money to refinish the hardwood floors in my house. Since then,
however, it's taken on a life of its own and become a suite of three main
products. It enables me to live comfortably in the Nashville suburbs.

All that said, I've been doing this for ten years now and am burnt out. If
anyone would like to buy me out and take over the business, I'm open to
offers.

~~~
dr_win
Nice job. You've been an inspiration. Best luck looking for someone to take
over.

We've tried to do a similar thing, I was burnt out and we found another dev to
take over: [https://blog.binaryage.com/meet-steve-the-new-
lead](https://blog.binaryage.com/meet-steve-the-new-lead)

It didn't work out in the end. But at least I got 10 months of "recovery time"
out of it. And that seems helped a lot. Maybe you just need a break for 6+
months and then you could return with recharged batteries. The challenge is
how to "park" your business in capable hands. Product maintenance/support is a
serious burden.

~~~
jly
I thought I recognized that link...I've been a user of TotalSpaces for years.
Great products.

------
jessegrosjean
I've been doing Hog Bay Software mostly as (just me) since 2004. Tried
expanding with 3 others around 2010-2013, but I'm a developer, not manager.
Also the whole app marking seemed to be having troubles. Back to just me again
last few years. Main focus and income right now is:

\- [https://www.taskpaper.com](https://www.taskpaper.com)

The business is building Mac productivity apps for individual users... i.e.
not focused on selling to businesses. I started because this is the kind of
software that's always interested me. Tools to help you think and work better.
I started part time for a few years while I had another job, then moved to
Maine (where living is cheep) in 2004.

~~~
0898
I do my best writing in WriteRoom – thanks for making it.

------
soheil
I started [https://netin.co](https://netin.co) about 9 months ago and now we
have several customers including a government client. I live in SF so that's
to say I need additional sources of income. I have another website which is
pretty much an archive of a radio program that has been going for 10 years and
that is a pretty good compliment to my income.

The growth curve for NetIn is rather smooth, I did the usual marketing for it,
including creating a Chrome Ext, posting to LinkedIn, FB, Twitter, etc. I'd
say the biggest difference came when I manually submitted a sitemap to Google
with near 30 million URLs. Also after getting a lot of angry emails from
people decided to remove all public info until a time when I can address the
privacy concerns in a better way.

It's Stripe with monthly subscriptions, I tried calling prospects but soon
realized I'm not a sales person, so now it's fully automated, it's free trial
and then you pay if still interested in using it, no sales calls, no sales
emails.

~~~
bbayer
How do you collect information?

------
dr_win
Selling macOS apps at [https://www.binaryage.com](https://www.binaryage.com).

TotalFinder.app sales is what allowed me to work on my own projects full time.
This is what I personally define as a success. I own 100% of my time and stuff
I create.

Since introduction of macOS system integrity protection sales have been poor.
But luckily I made enough in previous years so I have pretty long runway to
build something new.

If you are interested how it got started you might want to read my blog posts
from 2009 - 2011: [https://blog.binaryage.com](https://blog.binaryage.com)

Have been investing heavily into Clojure(Script) tools and libraries over last
2 years:

    
    
      https://github.com/binaryage/dirac
      https://github.com/binaryage/cljs-devtools
      https://github.com/binaryage/chromex
      https://github.com/binaryage/cljs-oops
      https://github.com/binaryage/env-config
      https://github.com/darwin/plastic

~~~
jawn-
totalspaces2 is terrific! thank you for that.

------
hahamrfunnyguy
I'll toss this out there. I am a software guy who manufactures a simple
electronic device on the side

The product cost around $30k to develop plus around eight months of full-time
development effort. We currently make about $15k-20k a year in profits. I've
been doing this for six years now, and we make small incremental improvements
every release that don't cost a lot to do. I mostly focus on overseeing
manufacturing, QA and maintaining a dealer network who will sell the product.

I am embarrassed to say I haven't spent a lot of time on growing the
operation, but on the flipside the return is pretty good for the amount of
work that I put in to it.

~~~
nthState
I've been interested in making a hardware device too, is it a custom PCB? -
Did you prototype with Arduino?

~~~
hahamrfunnyguy
Yes, it's a custom PCB with a machined enclosure. We didn't prototype with
Arduino, but we used other development boards. I set a target unit cost, then
we selected parts based on cost, performance and availability.

Once we had a MCU in mind, we ordered a development kits and built an initial
prototype using the dev board. After that, we did all future prototypes using
custom PCBs from a contract manufacturer.

------
wessorh
One of my best friends helped me found and run the company (support-
intelligence.com) for the first couple of years. I've run it for the last
eight years on my organic farm in the East Bay (of the san francisco bay area)

I split my time between farming and writing code. Support Intelligence is a
boutique cyber security company. We have F100 customers and I really enjoy
living in two worlds.

The choice for me was simple, I greatly dislike what silicon valley does to
entrepreneurs. I don't think many folks understand how VCs destroy lives.

So I'm happy with not being rich and having two jobs that keep me engaged in
life, technology and politics.

~~~
BoomBoomRoom
This is fantastic. I admire this lifestyle. I want to be doing something
similar in ten years. Living off the land and building digital products.

------
jaxn
I am running a niche SaaS for franchisees of several buy/sell/trade retail
stores. Http://ResaleAI.com

I built the entire thing myself, handled partnerships, support, sales, etc.
All while still running three of these stores.

While I did all of the development, I do have a full-time executive assistant
who helps me with a ton of things (email, scheduling, errands, etc).

Now I am building a team because there is no way I would be able to maximize
this opportunity by myself.

------
benmorris
I run a network of online vinyl lettering design sites I have written over a
period of 5 years. I started with the custom cart platform on asp.net MVC and
just one website. It is a multi tenant platform with end to end web to print
capability. The designers are built in Knockout in a modular way so bits and
pieces can be tweaked depending on the use. The Racing site is written in
Durandal so not all of the code has been rewritten. I now have 4 websites on
the platform. I also wrote a stand alone cloud based service to handle the
image generation ([http://ionapi.com](http://ionapi.com)) and outputting
vector files for production. It was originally intended to be open but I have
gotten so swamped handling production it hasn't materialized. Most of the nuts
and bolts of it are there, but no documentation. I do have it setup behind
HAproxy and load balanced on several servers.

I farm out most of the production process but handle customer service. I
originally got into all of this to be a side income to supplement web
consulting. I have since concluded I hate all of the baggage that comes along
with dealing with small town local businesses. I have been fortunate enough to
be able to move into a bigger facility for production now and intend to do
some work in house now along with hiring an employee or two rather than farm
out.

A few of my sites:

Image Generation API - [https://ionapi.com](https://ionapi.com) Boat Decals -
[https://boatdecals.biz](https://boatdecals.biz) Race Graphics -
[https://racegraphics.com](https://racegraphics.com)

------
donmatito
I founded Smooz ([https://www.smooz.io](https://www.smooz.io)), a Slack app to
connect teams through shared channels. It was initially a small hack "for
fun", but when Slack opened their Directory end of 2015 it was an opportunity
to turn it into a "real app".

After launching in January last year, I saw a relatively significant level of
interest from early users (relatively significant = much more than I had in
all my previous side projects). 10-20 active early users are very good for the
ego when you are usually met with polite indifference. I can't thank them
enough.

After a bit from traction fro Product Hunt, I started monetize in May. After a
few months, I have about 20 customers, for about 300€ /month revenue. I
changed pricing in November (cheaper, but without free plan), and I start to
see some promising growth.

Smooz being a side project, and the first one I take from idea to shipping to
scaling issues, and from early users to actual customers, is an incredible
success for me in itself, if only for the learning. Success on the financial
side will be when I reach 1000€ / month (recurring, passive) with it.

------
fbelzile
I started Cold Turkey about 5 years ago and it's just recently started to
generate enough income that I can work on it full time.

Cold Turkey temporarily blocks websites and applications to help you focus on
your work: [https://getcoldturkey.com](https://getcoldturkey.com)

~~~
devgutt
How do you make money? I didn't find any pricing page or premium plan.

~~~
fbelzile
There's a link at the top:
[https://getcoldturkey.com/pricing/](https://getcoldturkey.com/pricing/)

~~~
devgutt
This is what I see on mobile (Android):
[https://postimg.org/image/hmixjrbop/](https://postimg.org/image/hmixjrbop/)

------
samuraicode
Last year I went full time on my side project
[https://dropevent.com](https://dropevent.com), a group photo sharing site.
I've doubled revenue but it is still far from matching my previous software
developer salary.

Growth has all been pretty organic with just a few forays into adwords and
facebook marketing. Growth is really the keyword for 2017 and what I will be
focusing on.

~~~
dabernathy89
That's a very cool product!

My first thought on the pricing - if I am planning a one-off event like a
wedding (which I assume would be a major niche for y'all), I would be scared
off by the monthly pricing scheme. I would be more interested in paying $X for
a single event to be ad-free for the duration of the event and for a short-
time afterward. (I know that's technically how it would work if they signed up
for a month and then cancelled, but there's a big difference in upfront
perception).

It's also a little confusing what 'Upgrade a single event' means on the
pricing page. Makes it sound like that plan is only for existing events.

------
whiplashoo
I run [https://mapchart.net](https://mapchart.net) .

It is a simple tool that lets you create custom maps of the World, USA,
Europe, UK, France and more. I treat is as a side-project, but I am constantly
adding new maps or expanding some features.

The biggest advantage is that it costs almost nothing to maintain it, as it is
completely client-side, so the only cost is the basic hosting plan. I launched
it almost 2 years ago and right now it is the no.1 search result for queries
related to creating maps and gets an occasional boost from Reddit posts or
other blogs.

~~~
thetrumanshow
I saw your work on Reddit earlier today[1], nice.

I was thinking of building a mobile app to track movement and show this same
data. Can't decide if its a passing fancy or not, so, maybe just a free idea
for you. :)

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/5m5tj9/cou...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/5m5tj9/counties_i_have_visited_oc/?st=ixkogg4x&sh=aea13a83)

~~~
whiplashoo
I don't have any experience with mobile app development, so feel free to try
something similar there!

------
mox1
I'm the solo founder of [http://taveo.net/](http://taveo.net/) (Click Tracking
and URL management / analytics). Been running it for the past 2 years now.
Recently got more serious about the marketing side of things and it's shown.

At the current trajectory I will be able to quit my day job at some point in
2017 here.

~~~
ciokan
Curious why with bitly and others as main competitors. I looked at your
project and doesn't seem to pack anything more than bitly for example and
their free plan is somewhat ridiculous.

~~~
mox1
Sure , 2 main differences.

1\. Bit.ly (and goo.gl) make their statistics public by default. Some people
want private statistics. Our stats are always private.

2\. We allow you to use your domain with our platform. You don't need an
exclusive domain, you can use any domain you control. We just require a
directory prefix (ex: youdomain.com/x can be a base for all Taveo links).

We have other features: conversion tracking, link routing (A/B testing,
geoloc, etc.) a good API, ability to download raw data, etc) but 1. and 2. are
big selling points. Bit.ly's free plan also only offers basic analytics, we
have the full package.

~~~
ciokan
Oh...never knew they are making the stats public. That's a good point yes.

------
andegre
I started the website [http://www.wrestlestat.com](http://www.wrestlestat.com)
3 years ago. It is a college wrestling website where the main feature of the
website was to be able to view common opponents between 2 wrestlers. There's
no other product out there for this, so it's 100% unique. In addition to that,
it provides, rosters, schedules, results, statistics, rankings, as well as 2
different fantasy platforms.

Now, is this successful? To me, yes. When I started it originally, it was just
a "fun" side project, the first website that I developed once I got into web
programming (10 years on client server architecture prior to). It's a 100%
free site, but I monetize through AdSense. Taking out my hosting costs, it
doesn't make very much money, but it IS profitable. No way I'd be able to make
a living off of it though.

So in my eyes, yes it's successful, in terms of HN folks, probably not so
much. But I'm having fun with it!

------
lewsid
I run [https://geopeeker.com](https://geopeeker.com)

It's a free/subscription-based tool that views sites from a number of
locations from around the world, sending back a screenshot and DNS
information. Originally launched in 2013, it's been profitable since 2014 and
requires very little care-and-feeding while it serves up around 225,000
queries a month.

I'm currently working on an overhaul which will dramatically improve its
feature set and will, with any luck, engender even more interest among
enterprise-level users.

~~~
stanley
This is a cool product. The screenshots w/ uptime monitoring is useful on its
own, but I esp. like that you provide a way to specify resolutions and
locations.

After looking at the features and pricing, what's still not clear to me is if
this is intended to be used for monitoring only one destination URL, or if
it's possible to add multiple ones.

------
DizzyDoo
I got started writing video games at University in England, when there was a
thriving marketplace for games written in Flash, and websites would buy
licenses (sometimes exclusive ones) to have your game on their site, this is
back in '09\. From a student's perspective some would pay really well, a few
thousand dollars for a project that would take a few months.

Seven years later I find myself running a business making video games in the
more traditional pay-to-download format, like this one, called The Cat Machine
-
[http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900](http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900).
I'm sure compared to other online businesses, or even other indie game
developers, comprised of one person it's not mind-blowingly successful, but my
games have paid my modest (single guy) living costs while I work on my next
project.

My games are multi-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) and I sell on my website,
Steam, Humble Bundle, the Apple Mac Store and a few other places, and they
write me cheques every month. Every project has a long tail with regards to
revenue, and occasionally there are spikes, like the Steam Holiday sale a few
days ago, and just this morning I woke up to The Cat Machine being on the main
page of Apple's Mac Store in a 'Popular Puzzlers' section. Each of these bump
my budget for my next projects up another month or so. The initial sales spike
when a game is released is bit crazy, suddenly having your salary for the next
one and a half years dropped into your bank account all in one go.

The reason I can do this as a one-man band is that I can program, but I also
have some artistic skill, so I can draw and digital paint and animate. To
speed up development as much as I can, I write within the Unity engine with
C#, which has a great pipeline for art assets, which I create in Photoshop and
Spine for 2D characters and textures, and The Foundry's excellent Modo
software for 3D assets. The only things I don't do for my games are the music,
I have an excellent composer friend who works for TV and Film, and I'd be
silly not to contract him to do that. But apart from that, I do all the
design, writing, programming, marketing, etc, which is part of the fun,
wearing lots of different hats.

If you're _really_ interested in how I work, I actually do a series of high-
level development videos on my current project:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsg018B0PK60ZoaNqw_in...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsg018B0PK60ZoaNqw_inBLedtfktOSeP)

Also happy to answer any questions, within reason, about making a living
making games about cats riding around on trains.

~~~
RUG3Y
Thanks for sharing so much information about your business, your work is very
cool and this is a fabulous post. I'm just getting into game development as a
hobby. I'm really interested in indie stuff, simpler games that can be made by
one person.

~~~
DizzyDoo
Thanks! Yeah, it's easier than ever to get started, and easier than ever to
sell your work online, so now's a great time to get involved.

~~~
RUG3Y
Thanks for the encouragement. Money isn't the end-goal, I'm genuinely
interested in the work, but it's at the back of my mind - I know there are a
lot of opportunities out there. My problem is that I'm er, multi-talented and
easily distracted...

~~~
DizzyDoo
Sure, I totally understand that! My advice is just to work on a really, really
small project. Something that you could finish in a couple weeks, then you can
bounce to the next thing with no guilt.

~~~
RUG3Y
Great advice, thanks!

------
acekings
I started working on [http://pcappstore.net](http://pcappstore.net),
[http://techbeasts.com](http://techbeasts.com),
[http://techhammer.net](http://techhammer.net),
[http://apkdna.com](http://apkdna.com).
[http://phoneappsforpc.net](http://phoneappsforpc.net),
[http://onlineappsofrpc.com](http://onlineappsofrpc.com),
[http://appspcfree.com](http://appspcfree.com) and we are focusing on spanish
market while expanding into interesting ones.

------
eappleby
Similar question was asked last year
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12065355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12065355)).
Here was my answer then, which is about the same now, but the business has
continued to grow:

I started [https://www.pubexchange.com](https://www.pubexchange.com) in 2013
and have been running it solo ever since. PubExchange is a platform that helps
publishers establish traffic exchanges with other sites (similar to a social
network) so that they can promote one another via widgets, social, and in-
article links. It's been profitable since 2014 and I work with over 600 sites,
including HuffPo, Refinery29, and POPSUGAR.

------
downandout
It can be done. Probably the most interesting story I know of is that of a
friend of mine that now makes ~$200k/mo from viral content websites in
specific verticals. Back in 2007, before I knew him, he was desperate for
money and became a minor cog in what turned out to be a large real estate
straw buyer conspiracy. He claims to not have not known it was illegal.
Regardless, in 2013, as the statute of limitations on the case began running
out and most of the people that actually ran and profited from the scheme were
serving federal prison sentences, his name came up, and one of the states
involved decided to press charges. He was arrested and posted bail.

He was eventually offered a plea agreement for a prison sentence of three
years and more than $600,000 in restitution that he had no way of paying.
Facing financial and personal ruin, he ran while on bail, hoping to buy some
time to make enough money to offer restitution in leiu of prison time. This
article [1] about the success of viral content websites inspired him to give
the concept a shot himself, figuring he had nothing to lose. He launched a
series of websites with viral content for highly specific verticals.

He now has a handful of virtual assistants in low-wage countries that
rewrite/locate content and post it, but was making more than $100k/mo before
he brought in a single other person. The business has generated a Facebook fan
page network with more than 10 million likes, monthly income exceeding $200k,
and he has turned down multi-million dollar offers to buy his company. He was
also able to able to resolve his criminal case by simply handing the court a
$700k cashier's check for restitution/fines and a accepting few years of
informal probation without spending a day in jail - even though he ran while
on bail, which courts frown upon. As Eric Schmidt likes to say, _" revenue
solves all known problems"_ [2].

So yes, it is certainly possible to run a highly successful online business by
yourself, and you don't even have to be all that technically proficient. I can
program circles around my friend, but he makes more than most of the brightest
engineers at world class companies do - where he could never get an interview,
much less a job. He did all of this starting with nothing more than PHP for
Dummies, the inspration from the ViperChill article, and a serious
disincentive for failure (prison, in this case).

[1] [http://www.viperchill.com/100k-one-
week/](http://www.viperchill.com/100k-one-week/)

[2]
[https://mobile.twitter.com/ericschmidt/status/50721935824690...](https://mobile.twitter.com/ericschmidt/status/507219358246903809)

------
brooksyd2
I have been running [https://www.awesomify.co.uk](https://www.awesomify.co.uk)
by myself for nearly two years, and have only recently taken on a business
partner. We are still in early growth, but have been quite successful so far.

What we do is aim to provide small local business with enterprise grade
software and tools in order to leverage this power to grow their businesses.

------
mihohl
[https://parkplatzsuche.at/](https://parkplatzsuche.at/)

Local small advert pages for parking spots and garages in the cities of
Austria. More or less a online portal for parking, similar to traditional
online rental websites.

~~~
jlis
Nice! Had the same idea for the german market some years ago. Can you lie from
this or create any revenue at all?

------
nicky0
Developer of Mac apps, selling via the Mac App Store. Started several years
ago as a "let's see if I can make this work" project.

~~~
jventura
I am always curious about people having succesful businesses with desktop
apps. There is even a thread that I started some months ago asking if there's
anyone making a living out of desktop apps [0].

Can I ask you what kind of apps are you doing, and what are your prospects
about the future of Mac development? I'm asking this mostly because I would
really like to get back to desktop application development, but now I'm not
really sure that I should target Mac natively, mostly because of all the buzz
with Apple's bad decisions, etc..

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11658873](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11658873)

~~~
nicky0
I have apps in the Productivity and Utilities categories, all with retail
prices of $15 or less.

I've no idea about the prospects for the future, but I'm not seeing any
significant changes in the market at the moment. However, I am concerned with
Apple's current actions (or lack of) regarding the Mac.

~~~
jventura
Thanks for your reply! Just another question, hope you can reply: are you
targeting a specific subset of users (like developers, for instance), or you
are implementing productivity and utility apps for the "generic" user?

~~~
nicky0
For the generic user. I think "specialist" apps have to be much more expensive
because of the much smaller market.

------
Tarlen
I built [https://resend.io/](https://resend.io/) over the past 9 months.
Launched paid version a couple of weeks ago and it's looking good so far

~~~
rainboiboi
That's nice, care to share some stats?

------
bglusman
Gabe Weinberg started DuckDuckGo solo, as well as his previous businesses... I
think it was several years before he brought on anyone else, and while other
early stage investors talked about preferring to fund a small team of at least
two, he talked about how he was willing to fund individual founders :-)

~~~
jason_slack
Technically, I think he goes by Gabriel Weinberg.
[http://ye.gg/](http://ye.gg/)

Not to be confused with: [http://gabeweinberg.com/](http://gabeweinberg.com/)

------
andr3w321
Not exactly online only but I run a small ATM Business out of Seattle
[http://effortlessatms.com](http://effortlessatms.com) It pays all my bills

------
up_and_up
Indie Hackers has some great solo-founder stories:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses?numFounders=Solo%20F...](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses?numFounders=Solo%20Founder)

------
rsoto
I'm running my invoice reception service
([https://www.boxfactura.com/](https://www.boxfactura.com/)) officially since
July 2015. One year after that it became ramen sustainable and since it has
grown at an acceptable pace for the last few months.

I don't think I'll ever quit my day job as it is my own marketing agency in
CDMX, but I'm quite pleased with it.

~~~
GordonS
I don't understand what an 'invoice reception service' is - could you explain
a bit please?

~~~
rsoto
Sure thing!

Here in Mexico, the tax law requires you to receive and store your digital
invoices. These are in XML format. Theoretically you would receive them in
your email and you're good to go, right? I thought so to, I was wrong.

The XML has information, which as you understand, it can be (and will be)
tampered, so you have to go to one government site and literally type the IDs
you got from the invoice (I found one video, it's not as clear, but it gives
the idea:
[https://youtu.be/pmafqaTcE5w?t=36](https://youtu.be/pmafqaTcE5w?t=36)) to
check if it is genuine. If you receive 10 or so each month, you can do it no
problem (although it's a repetitive chore), but if you receive 100+ you waste
a lot of time.

That's where Box Factura shines, it is an email service that validates your
invoices automatically, and not only that, stores the information in a
database so you can search and filter (something that you can't do with the
XML file from an email), and download it in a zip file including an Excel
sheet (the accountants love that) so you can file your taxes easily.

It's not easy to explain for an outsider—even being from Mexico, it's
confusing. And that's a big opportunity for business of all sizes.

------
jamesash
I run a site that teaches organic chemistry online. Started in 2010. 7 million
visits last year. Most content is free, but has some "cheat sheets" and other
study guides that are for sale. I have some contractors for various tasks but
am the only employee.
[http://www.masterorganicchemistry.com/blog](http://www.masterorganicchemistry.com/blog)

~~~
dbancajas
Hi, I am really curious about doing this for a separate space? Like computer
science? How did you get your initial customers? Just hanging out in forums? I
guess I want to know how you determined that there is a market for it? What's
the business model? I see you are basically doing freemium model of free-
content then selling study guides for 18$ each. Is that it? Are you worried
about piracy?

Congrats on the 7Million visits. Also, I see your tech stack as WP? Really
really cool.

------
ronreiter
Learnpython.org and other interactive tutorials - passive income that gets me
a full high tech salary.

Got started when I realized there was a need for an interactive tutorial
(before CodeAcademy went live). Wrote it, and that's about it :)

~~~
mharrison
Cool. What is the monitization strategy? Affiliate from Datacamp?

~~~
ronreiter
Yes, although this is very new. I always had ad revenue from the websites.

I must admit that it is hard to build a "side project" that aims for organic
traffic. I think I got very lucky there.

------
saiki
I have built an online whiteboard for software development teams,
[https://sketchboard.io](https://sketchboard.io). It has passed break-even and
working only with it.

~~~
spraak
That's awesome! It looks quite complicated to have made. I really like the
colors you chose for the marketing site

------
casperb
[https://nomadlist.com/](https://nomadlist.com/) is doing very well and is
built by Pieter Levels

He is also mentioned on IndieHackers:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/nomad-
list](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/nomad-list)

------
jdwyah
[https://forcerank.it](https://forcerank.it) has been going for about two
years now and is a steady producer of beer-money. (Well wine actually, but I
digress)

It's been a great project and was unbelievably useful to go through the
challenge of really getting how marketing works. It's astonishing how you can
build software for companies for years, but making that first $5/month
subscription revenue feels so awesome.

Almost all my traffic is organic, then viral from the initial person that
signs up. SEO is amazing. A slow slow trickle but over time it really works. I
would reiterate what everybody else says. I've spent 70% of time on marketing.
30 on coding. The nice thing about organic is that you can ignore it for
months though and jump back in anytime with a good blog post.

~~~
jdwyah
Forgot to add that I am super pumped about my next project here. Feature flags
and rate limits. Would love to hear from anybody interested in spending less
money on something like MixPanel by clever rate limiting.

------
256cats
I run [https://gimmeproxy.com/](https://gimmeproxy.com/)

It's rotating proxy api. I built it from scratch to learn something new and
was surprised when people started using it.

So far it gets me some beer money. All the traffic is organic.

------
RomanPushkin
Just started [http://libretaxi.org](http://libretaxi.org) \- uber alternative
for communities and remote regions.

Not earning anything at the moment, but got 400+ users.

------
drewlarsen
I built and run SugarWOD
([https://www.sugarwod.com](https://www.sugarwod.com)). SugarWOD is a workout
solution for CrossFit gyms including apps (iOS/Android), website, plug-ins,
and TV support. Was a solo, free service for the first 3 years. Converted to a
paid model 1.5 yrs ago, and as of a few months ago have part-time contractors
helping with tech/ops, mktg, and support.

I agree with novaleaf that a very broad skill set is needed, though I'd add
that it might be enough to at least be interested in all the areas mentioned.
You can learn a lot along the way, which is a big part of the fun. If you're
focussed on making a great Product (capitalized product = the entire customer
experience including everything from web copy, onboarding, support,
performance, features, etc.) all of it is important.

As an aside, I think it is this breadth that allows someone to be a "10x
problem solver", which to me is 10x more interesting than being a "10x
developer". Code is a means to an end.

"Success" is a malleable and personal term, but by typical SaaS metrics
SugarWOD is a success. Millions of workouts logged, paying customers,
profitable, growing quickly.

More importantly, I get huge satisfaction working on something I feel
passionate about, and I really love running the entire business from a laptop
anywhere in the world (though I'm usually not far from Colorado :)

~~~
thisisnotanexit
I use SugarWOD every day, it powers the crossfit gym I go to. Gotta say you
did a great job, I can't imagine such a community built around the gym without
it.The fistbumps are a really great feature!

------
talles
IIRC pinboard.in is an example.

------
chrischen
I run [https://www.instapainting.com](https://www.instapainting.com) by myself
amd it started as a single page with a stripe checkout form.

~~~
nthState
Your IndieHackers article was ace! Thanks

------
samtho
I have a small Node.js hosting platform that gives you an SQLite DB for free
(enough to run a ghost blog on). It's currently in private beta but a company
is already paying me for the service and it gets me some beer money.

I'm working on polishing it up and eventually releasing it. Built on AWS and
autoscales as demand requires, free tier and some paid upsells - Basically,
all the standard PaaS stuff.

------
rtfs
We've bootstrapped
[https://www.klimmzugstangen.de/xt/](https://www.klimmzugstangen.de/xt/) years
ago.

It's a one person business, but we actually split it among three people, cause
no one of us had all the needed abilities to run it alone.

Since the very start, it serves a niche market for fitness products and pays
an average annual income.

------
beeker87
My previous SaaS product, Navilytics, I built from scratch and ran completely
on my own (minus a couple of blog posts from a friend). It very well could
have been successful, but I made the mistake of thinking the product would
sell itself and never did any real promotion leading up to launch. I paid for
this as another competitor, who had the same idea I had at the same time and
built their own version of the product, starting marketing it before it was
even in beta. They're doing > $1 mil per year now in revenue.

Previous one before that was an affiliate network I ran with a buddy of mine,
so just two people. We did very well with this one (but only mildly when
compared to other large affiliate networks at the time).

My new project, I'm working with a buddy of mine who's good at the things I'm
not so good at. While I think it's 100% possible to be a sole founder and do
very well, having a solid team makes the entire process a lot easier. Plus,
having people to bounce ideas off of usually leads to making better decisions.

------
karl11
Stratechery is an example of this. If you get the FEI newsletters, many of the
businesses they are brokering for sale are one person efforts.

~~~
mcbetz
I have not heard of the FEI newsletters yet and cannot find them via Google.
Would you mind sharing the link?

~~~
patio11
[http://feinternational.com/](http://feinternational.com/) is a brokerage of
Internet-based businesses; presumably the newsletter is something that goes
out to folks who've expressed some level of interest in attempting to buy one
via the website. (I've sold two businesses through FEI.)

~~~
mcbetz
Thanks! What was your experience with selling over FEI? Both selling and
buying seems to be professional. I wonder how many interested people it
brought you and how smoothly the whole deal went and how much effort you had
to put into it.

~~~
patio11
Covered here:
[https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/selling_s...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/selling_software_business)
in a bit of detail and here: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/12/30/kalzumeus-
software-year-...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/12/30/kalzumeus-software-
year-in-review-2016/) in briefer detail under the Appointment Reminder part.
Short version: would absolutely use them again; they richly earned their fee
both times by de-risking the process and getting me probably a better
valuation than I would have gotten if I had just tried to ad hoc find a buyer
through my own devices.

------
ethans1992
I am running [https://fandemic.co](https://fandemic.co) for a couple months
now. We essentially create beauty kits for social media influencers. It was
spawned by the Kylie Jenner Lip Kit popularity and we decided to make a
builder for influencers to create their own.

~~~
nthState
Hi, Have you got any public stats? - Thanks!

------
known
A bank in Germany has just one employee [http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-
show/slide-show-1-a-ban...](http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-
show-1-a-bank-in-germany-has-just-one-employee/20130215.htm)

------
toisanji
I started [http://somatic.io](http://somatic.io) by myself, it has been
growing steadily and now have a small team. I think of it as an image
processing research company and it is my passion so I plan to work on it as
long as a I can.

------
realtarget
Well, it's not successful right now but it could be in some months:

Two years ago i've started working on an algorithm to find the perfect time
for social media posts on facebook & twitter to improve user interactions &
engangement. Right now it works so good for me that i've decided to extend the
project by building an (invitation-only) SaaS Startup to get a proof of
concept: [https://realtarget.com](https://realtarget.com)

Because it's just a project beside my main job my girlfriend (project manager)
and best friend (senior full stack developer) support me to lighten the
workload.

If you like, i'll post a note on HN when the alpha version is ready.

------
gargarplex
Does a consulting business count?

~~~
fiatjaf
No.

------
chris1993
I launched [http://gardenate.com](http://gardenate.com) back in 2007 initially
just for Australia/New Zealand and mainly for my own use (Perl with Amazon SES
for sending out about 70,000 subscriber emails/month). Since then I've grown
it to include UK/USA/CAN/ZA, and I wrote some related mobile apps for iOS
(Objective-C) and Android. Brings in several hundred $$ per month in adwords
and app sales. It used to bring in a lot more app revenue until a couple of
years ago our national broadcaster (ABC) released a competing free app and ate
our niche!

~~~
arrmn
How did you get the data for your plants, just manually looked it up?

~~~
chris1993
Lots of research and some algothmic stuff for cross-season planting.

------
NicoJuicy
Buildwith.com was a 1 person businesses I guess.

~~~
rghose
i think that's [https://builtwith.com/](https://builtwith.com/)

~~~
jelled
HN discussion from October 2015:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10316060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10316060)

------
switchstance
We're a two person startup that is doing/growing very well. This was no
overnight success... we've been at it for years now.

[https://motionarray.com](https://motionarray.com)

------
lightedman
I run three businesses - minerals acquisitions, physical network installation,
and lighting design.

I got started because I got tired of everyone else I worked with not having a
clue. So I picked businesses which I could run single-handedly.

Almost all of my work/income comes from Craigslist posting, saving me the need
to run any sort of online site, all I need is e-mail and phone. Loads of
people need experienced network installers, lighting installers/designers, and
in SoCal, loads of people like pretty pretty rocks wrapped up in nice copper,
silver, or gold wire.

------
christudor
I run an online education website called MASSOLIT (www.massolit.io) by myself.
We make short educational videos!

Unlike lots of other ed-tech companies (e.g. Khan Academy, edX, etc.) the main
focus is on the liberal arts, so there's lots of stuff on literature, history,
philosophy, etc.

We mainly sell to high schools, who pay a (small) annual fee to access the
vids, with teachers using the vids in class as basis for class discussion or
setting them as homework as part of a 'flipped classroom' model.

Not making a huge amount of money at the moment, but growth is pretty good...

------
shutton
I started Gaggle Mail ([https://gaggle.email](https://gaggle.email)) just over
a year ago, it's making around $400 per month and growing nicely.

I've really enjoyed the experience watching something I have sole
responsibility over grow and be appreciated by the people who use it.

I set out to build something I could be proud of and other people would find
useful - in those terms it has been successful. And with another year or so of
growth it could provide the majority of my income.

~~~
kovacs
You have some dupe text on your about page....

"When starting a new group with a diverse membership you don’t ask for
everyones Twitter handle or Snapchat name, you ask for their email addresses.
Done.. When starting a new group with a diverse membership you don’t ask for
everyones Twitter handle or Snapchat name, you ask for their email addresses.
Done."

------
zinxq
Running [http://www.clickrouter.com](http://www.clickrouter.com) \- worked out
well because I needed it for my other projects and it was an instant revenue
win for those use cases alone.

Spruced it up (could use more I know) and opened it to others thereafter. Free
money for users.

(It's a service that captures outbound clicks from your site - apart from
giving fancy graphs about those, it then affiliatizes the links across all
your affiliate accounts - skimlinks, viglinks, cj, etc)

------
docsapp_io
Two years ago I learnt new language (Scala) and wanted to find real problems
to work on. So I built DocsApp[1] as real-world project as well as trying
build profitable SaaS.

Few months ago I plan to sell off DocsApp, but I got low ball offer because
low revenue. Then I decided to refocus DocsApp and continue to build it.

I wouldn't say DocsApp very successful, but it is getting successful now.

[1]: [https://www.docsapp.io/](https://www.docsapp.io/)

~~~
rpeden
Thanks for sharing! Your product looks quite useful, but it looks like perhaps
English isn't your first language? The grammar is a bit awkward in several
places, and some things are pluralized when they shouldn't be. It doesn't
bother me, but it might turn some potential customers away.

If it would help, I'd be happy to go through the site and provide some
suggestions about slight changes you could make. I'd do it for free, of course
- it wouldn't take much of my time, and I'd love to help a fellow HN member be
successful.

~~~
docsapp_io
Thanks for the feedback! English is not my first language and I definitely
need improve my English!

You can give suggestions and I will update accordingly. You can email hi at
docsapp.io to request life time free plan from me :)

~~~
rpeden
Your English is very understandable! I only mentioned it because potential
users will often just assume that a few small errors on your marketing site
mean that your app isn't worth trying.

I'm busy with work at the moment, but later today or possibly tomorrow, I'll
send an e-mail with a few suggestions.

------
kd22
I recently built a Yoga Subscription Box service with my girlfriend called
[https://www.namaslaybox.com/](https://www.namaslaybox.com/)

We are both programmers and she always wanted to do something like this so
gave it a shot..It's been successful so far and we are starting to see a rise
in orders.

Like a lot of people here, we started from scratch. No mentors, no prior
experience. Worked on it weeknights and weekends.

~~~
nthState
Hi, do you have any public stats?

~~~
kd22
What kind of stats are you looking for ?

~~~
nthState
Hi, Things like, traffic to your site, conversion rate? Thanks!

~~~
kd22
It's been only 1 month so I don't have much numbers but here goes..

1\. Traffic for the most part is from USA. 2\. I am seeing about 200 unique
visitors per day.

------
maxsavin
I've turned an OS development tool project into a business. It all happened by
accident.

[http://meteor.toys](http://meteor.toys)

------
jayfk
I'm currently running [https://pyup.io](https://pyup.io)

I wouldn't call it a success yet, but it is growing :)

------
acoyfellow
I've been running [https://OptKit.com](https://OptKit.com) for about 3 years.

Launched it to almost immediate ramen profitability, but haven't focused full
time on it yet. Bills get paid through consulting. On schedule to re-launch
within 1-2 months with a stricter focus, better defined use-cases, and
stronger differentiation from competition.

~~~
DanHulton
I had to close a fake chat interface and a bottom overlay (with a semi-
insulting "no I don't want my website to be amazing" style message) before I
could see enough of your site to make sense of it and begin to read it. Then a
full-page popover obscured literally the entire site.

Not to sound too mean, but you lost me. I can't honestly be bothered to read
sites that employ these tricks, and you _flooded_ me with them. I had to fight
my way past them just to read your core value proposition. And on reading
further, it looks like all those popups... _are_ your core value proposition?

Your tech may be wonderful, but I feel like you don't understand its influence
on people's browsing behaviour - these tricks drive people away, not towards.

(Also, you have a spelling error in your hero section: "Call-To-Action's" does
not require the apostrophe, as it is not possessive.)

~~~
acoyfellow
Thanks for checking it out -- and more importantly the great feedback :)

The page is definitely geared towards people who are already interested in
this type of tool, so showcasing some of the functionality that they came for
has improved conversions for me. It's also not a tool for every business to
use.

A nearly cold-click (like yours was - you're in a thread about solo founders -
not on the hunt for tools to help you improve website conversions) experience
is something that can be drastically improved - it's just a matter of matching
the expectations to the experience.

I've taken off the Drift automated message, which was overlaying and adding to
confusion - sorry about that. I'm not sure what call-to-action close button
got your goat, but I don't particularly like the snarky tones in popups
myself, and they've never tested to improve conversions for me or clients. I'd
be glad to work on the messaging if I knew which CTA you were talking about.

Seriously, thanks for taking your time to check it out and reply. Means a lot
:)

------
dvko
I built a plugin to connect WordPress with MailChimp
([https://mc4wp.com](https://mc4wp.com)) while hospitalised in Vietnam a few
years ago and it has been selling well enough to support me in my travels &
now back home in The Netherlands from day 1 (right after I started offering a
paid version, that is).

~~~
arrmn
I'm also thinking about developing my first product and wanted to start with
wordpress, I think a Saas would be too ambitious, how did you start promoting
it?

~~~
dvko
Starting out with WordPress has made a lot of things, especially when it comes
to marketing, very easy for me. There's a free version that is used on over
700.000 sites right now and it got there mostly organically.

That said, if your plugin does anything visual, be ready for a lot of beginner
questions. Some of your non-paying users will be the hardest to please,
especially in WordPress land where you as a (real) developer will be severely
underappreciated.

~~~
coreymaass
As stated, make sure you create a free version first and put it in the
WordPress plugin directory. Most of your traffic will come from there. Make
frequent updates, include good keywords, and if there's a need for it, people
will find it. It's also a great way to start testing for premium features.

~~~
arrmn
What was the initial marketing for the free app, just posting it there and
waiting?

~~~
coreymaass
Talking about it in as many places as possible - AWP on Facebook, Post Status,
etc. But past that, a little optimization and if people are looking for it in
the repo, they'll find it.

------
mrcabada
My business still growing and in the beta phase, it's a one-person businesses
but haven't launched. Hope it becomes a succesful one-person business anytime
soon. Here it is how it looks right now:
[https://talkbot.io](https://talkbot.io) Let's see how it looks in a fee
months.

------
neophy7e
Craiglist and plenty of fish stayed a long time a one person online business
while being incredibly successfull

------
chenster
How do you quantify "success"?

~~~
swalsh
This is a much better question then it seems on the surface :D

Success is defined uniquely for every individual. For some success is finding
a way to "earn enough", others success is defined by "having some noticeable
change in the world", and then some it is "making a million dollars".

Success is accomplishing a long term goal you've defined for yourself.

------
navalsaini
I am a solo founder for www.halfchess.com - I launched it in 2017, so its not
successful as of now. However, I did appreciate if I get a few users and
upvotes in the 'show HN! new' post of halfchess. It has Android, iOS and web
versions.

------
rbur0425
I think theres a bunch that start as one person type businesses and then grow
from there

Examples: ConvertKit.Com with Nathan Barry, PaperlessPipeline.Com Dane
Maxwell, MailParser.Com is only 2 people i believe

------
wordpressdev
Running a gift ideas site monetized through Amazon affiliate program.
[http://www.giftideasunder50.com](http://www.giftideasunder50.com)

~~~
tdburn
Great idea! What kind of traffic does this type of idea create?

------
ivanpashenko
Just launched [http://ineedicons.com](http://ineedicons.com) –– custom made
outline icons. Will see soon if it has legs.

------
kofejnik
I run a small dev shop (python backends and mobile apps), not sure if this
counts as an online business though

Got started by a post on linkedin

------
udev
I run a Canadian price comparison site:
[http://pricefu.com](http://pricefu.com)

~~~
theobon
As a Canadian that hates that all my all my online shopping is dominated by US
ads, reviews and prices I really want to like this. It has some great
features, especially the price history tracker, but lacks usability.

I have no idea what the fu number is. Your FAQ says "which indicates how good
is a particular price offer" but what is good, how is it measured?

A much harder problem is the issue of the same device given different names at
different resellers to avoid price matching. For the few laptops and TVs I
tested there were multiple listings on your site for the same model and for
all but one the manufacture website had a lower price than the lowest you
listed.

~~~
udev
Thank you for the feedback.

Think of the "fu number" as a "DealRank"-type metric. Its full definition is
rather complex and unpalatable for the average user, and I doubt that it would
add much intuition besides the fact that greater value is better, which is
very similar to how users think of PageRank.

I agree that the questions of whether the "price-fu" metric is the most
relevant possible, or uses the most relevant inputs, or weights them
appropriately, etc. are still open, and the current answer is "probably no",
but is work in progress.

Regarding resellers trying to avoid price matching by using alternative
product names/models, I must say that I haven't seen evidence of that yet. I
might be naive, but I am more inclined to attribute this to the general low
quality of the product data out there.

Nevertheless, you are right that the problem of determining whether product A
and product B are comparable is hard, especially considering the great
diversity in how manufacturers label their products. An additional problem is
that many China-made gadgets don't even have a consistent naming scheme, or
even a model number, making comparisons even harder.

Regarding finding lower prices on manufacturer's site, are you sure you did
not compare USD and CAD prices? Many users seem to be confused by this.

------
scottndecker
I'm launching mine next week. Hope to be a success story on a thread like this
a year or two from now!

------
jonathan-kosgei
+1 Please add me to the slack group too jonathan [AT] saharacluster [DOT] com

------
molecule
I think that Ryan McGeary fits this description:

 _> Ryan owns McGeary Consulting Group and is the founder of BusyConf and
ChargeStack._

[http://ryan.mcgeary.org/business/](http://ryan.mcgeary.org/business/)

------
SN76477
Performance Marketing

------
nnn1234
Indiehackers

------
tajen
I, alone, publish an add-on on the Atlassian Marketplace. I have several add-
ons for diversification, but 1-2 of them is 99% of my income. Server sales are
one-off (but 80% of my income) and Cloud sales are recurrent (better if you
hope to hire).

Define successful: I 100% live off it ($50k/yr before taxes). Biggest new add-
ons are often agencies who can afford to sponsor their development because
it's a customer funnel for them; I'm one of the rare new who built a business
from scratch and lives off it.

The Atlassian APIs could be difficult[1], but the reward is great: Being a
vendor introduces you to the biggest corporates without having to be
referenced or pass the Purchase Order process, so you can _very easily_ sell
to companies similar to Samsung, HSBC, Defense actors or Ubisoft.

My advice: Build a real product with your add-on, not just a tweak to
Atlassian's products. Tweaks = SQL reader, theme, formatting of mathematical
expressions, ... Products = Balsamiq, Gliffy, time management solutions,
architecture/CAD solutions, requirement management, accounting, aeronautical
check-lists, etc. Be a bit ambitious and you'll be the reason why people
switch to Atlassian and money will pour onto you.

[1] Difficult = They're scattered between Server and Cloud apis, and
architecture is widely different bw JIRA and BitBucket, but it's still
possible to start quite fast with
[https://connect.atlassian.com](https://connect.atlassian.com) .

~~~
LauraAtlas
Hi Tajen! Thanks so much for your input. The Atlassian Ecosystem was built by
developers like you who saw the power of extending our platform and have built
profitable businesses by selling add-ons on our Marketplace. We now have over
10,000 developers in our community and have paid out over $150M to developers
selling on our Marketplace. In fact, 15+ developers have generated more than
$1 million in direct sales each!

We recently revamped our developer site (developer.atlassian.com) to help
folks find the right resources and start building with ease and scale. We're
always open to feedback on how we can improve the development process and ways
to help developers like you grow their business. Give us a shout on our new
service desk and let us know what we can do better
([https://ecosystem.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/...](https://ecosystem.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/9))

Keep up the great work and a big thanks from our team!

~~~
tajen
> 15+ developers who generated $1m each

Ahem. Are they one-man companies? Are they newcomers? Or is it a very
misleading number in that context?

~~~
LauraAtlas
Hi Tajen, most of these developers started off as one-person-shops then hired
more folks as their sales scaled. TechCrunch did an overview of our success
stories a while back. Check it out:
[https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/15/atlassians-marketplace-
for...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/15/atlassians-marketplace-for-third-
party-devs-hits-over-120m-in-sales/)

------
rednivs
Unlike the majority here I have zero coding skills.

Currently monetizing www.hashtaginvesting.com, a Slack chat for stock traders
and investors to discuss in real-time.

~~~
alinalex
Do you consider learning how to code?

------
UK-AL
I think it's getting harder, now the world is getting more developers and more
fully funded startups.

~~~
patio11
A developer isn't a software company in the same sense that a kid good with
numbers isn't a bookkeeping firm. Software companies don't compete with
developers; they hire their services.

Small software shops don't meaningfully compete with funded startups, because
funded startups have to have some plausible path to growing massive, and the
types of things small software shops ship just have to have a plausible path
to generating $1k to $25k MRR. "A spreadsheet software better than MS Excel"
is a fundable startup; a single program better than a single Excel spreadsheet
is, very plausibly, a piece of software that can be sold in a manner
successful for a small shop.

I'm personally and professionally involved in the small-software-shop
community, and my anecdotal impression is that it's the best time ever. The
same sources of leverage which make starting a startup attractive help out
small shops, too. You can achieve global distribution on the App Store,
Google, Facebook, etc. You can charge businesses tens of thousands of dollars
on the SaaS model for software which is plausibly within the reach of a single
developer. You can take advantage of infrastructure like AWS, Heroku, etc to
get your product to market at a fraction of the complexity and expense of
doing a print run of 1,000 CDs. You can take advantage of frameworks which
make producing business value far, far easier than it was with more archaic
tools. Your customers are disproportionately likely to consume software
already (a plus!), including software which you can integrate with or expand,
giving you a built-in market with levered upside to your own coding efforts.

~~~
adamqureshi
small software shop too. Damn straight. I have a TINY software shop in NYC. It
pays the bills and food for me and my nuclear family. I can't complain. I have
friends who make 2X as me , who work in a box within a bigger box on a grid.
They have NO time todo JACK and SHIT. Wealth is discretionary time. You can
ALWAYS make anotha dolla, but you'll NEVA make anotha min.

~~~
swalsh
Curious, how do you acquire customers? I've been thinking about doing
something similar.

~~~
adamqureshi
referral. I did rinky-Dink websites back in the day then gradually those rink-
dink customers become bigger. I think about the 4th sale first. Business is
about building relationships. Also i got very lucky. I hit up everyone i know
and their motha / fatha's brotha etc.. then i ask for the roladex of my
current customers and see if they can use some work. If they don't have the
money for a MVP / Wep app / prototype i pivot to a discovery gig. Then i also
work on my own IP building stuff. Also always networking at meetups in NYC
there is always somebody who knows somebody and a bunch of ad companies who
now get software work , need to sub-contract it out. They were sub-contracting
to third world BUT that shit is drying up so i got lucky with a few who wanted
the work be done here. I hired this girl todo content marketing too. Then im
always on to the next sale.

------
sagish
I recently quit my (great) job to work on my online business which was once my
side project. I'm not solo - I have a partner (@dmtintner). > Our business is
a newsletter, blog & podcast called Hacking UI -
[http://HackingUI.com](http://HackingUI.com) (for designers, developers and
creative entrepreneurs like ourselves)

> I wrote ALL about how we started, and also how we scaled it to the point
> where we could leave our jobs [http://hackingui.com/product-hacking/side-
> projects/](http://hackingui.com/product-hacking/side-projects/)

> We were so overwhelmed that we pulled this off that we actually also opened
> an online course to teach others EVERYTHING we know and all our workflows:
> [https://sideprojectaccelerator.com/](https://sideprojectaccelerator.com/)

Actually - my partner David is going to talk about that live in an hour here:
[https://www.crowdcast.io/e/talks-david-
tintner](https://www.crowdcast.io/e/talks-david-tintner) :)

~~~
wmeredith
So... not a successful one-person online business?

