
Ask HN: Solo content businesses that are profitable? - AlchemistCamp
Hi HN,<p>Who&#x27;s had any success building building a profitable content business as a solo founder or side project?<p>I&#x27;m asking this because I just saw a similar thread here about SaaS and wanted to contribute but my project is a content site.[1]<p>I&#x27;ve had modest success and would love to learn from some of those of you who are a bit further along!<p>[1] I did write the CMS for the site myself, though... for better or for worse though.
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Veen
I'm a freelance content writer who writes web copy, articles, ebooks, and
ghost-written content for CEOs and other executives, mostly in the SaaS and
cloud space. I also edit content from tech executives, developers and the like
to turn it into something people would actually want to read. And I create
content marketing strategies for the same types of business. It's profitable
in the sense that I make a good living doing it.

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return1
Does user-contributed content count as well? I run
[https://opensimworld.com/](https://opensimworld.com/) as a profitable
freemium community while nursing some other projects too (listed here:
[https://projectilo.com/user/igniweb](https://projectilo.com/user/igniweb))

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ksahin
I run
[https://www.javawebscrapinghandbook.com](https://www.javawebscrapinghandbook.com)
which is a book/sandbox website to learn web scraping and browser automation
with Java. I launched in August 2018, it's averaging $500 / month.

The most challenging part was marketing. I also run a blog about this subject
and 90% of my traffic is from the blog.

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jklepatch
Nice!

Can you give more details about your marketing? Do you just point to your
sales page from your blog? Any email capture form / mailing list / automated
sequence?

Also, is there Any advantage of using java for webscraping instead of python?
(Which is often used by web scrapers)

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ksahin
I just point to my sales page from the blog. I have an automated email
sequence but this isn't driving many sales, something like ~1 sale per
month...!

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RepressedEmu
I run www.ColonyContent.com and we actually write premium content for SaaS
businesses and content sites. We are really lucky to work with some really
amazing startups and websites that are changing the world and have been
profitable since day one. Only in the second month of business but are over
$1k MRR and we have had a lot of great feedback.

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jklepatch
I run EatTheBlocks, a screencast for ethereum dapps / solidity smart contract
devs.

I started a YT channel 1.5 years ago, and a paid membership website a few
month ago.

Its not paying my rent yet, but its making in the a few 100’s USD MRR. Looking
to reach 1000 usd MRR at the end of the year. Seems like the growth has been
accelerating, so maybe that I will revise up my target.

For me the rule is pretty simple: more content = more paid subs. My big
problem is the cost of production: producing video tutorials takes me a
massive amount of time, and at the moment is not profitable at all when you
take into consideration the time spent. Also what worries me is that I dont
really see a way to scale this up, as hiring other devs to produce content is
almost impossible: Need a very rare combination of tech skills, and
presentation/ teaching skills.

The only solution I see to this problem is to break down the process of
producing content (generate idea, coding, recording...), delegate some parts,
and do the integration myself

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rajacombinator
I think the way to monetize something like this is to treat it as a funnel to
establishing your personal brand and getting consulting gigs.

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AlchemistCamp
I'll start! My project is called Alchemist Camp
([https://alchemist.camp](https://alchemist.camp)). I believe I've made more
free screencasts for learning the Elixir language than anyone else online, but
I also put some behind a paywall. It's a side project that I spend around 10
hours a week on.

I started putting screencasts on YouTube at the end of 2017 and started
charging last summer. My revenue is somewhat erratic since a large percentage
of my customers sign up on an annual plan, but it's been covering my rent
since the end of last year. My goal is to hit a baseline $2k MRR within the
next 6 months.

The biggest challenge right now is that I started a lot later than my main
competitors did. As a result, my site simply isn't on a lot of the lists, many
of which include badly out-dated resources that don't compile with current
versions of Elixir. There are always ways to improve the product, but I've
probably underperformed more on the marketing side.

Longer-term, the popularity of the Elixir language itself is also a major
consideration.

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albydarned
Very nice! I posted on the other thread about pigeonsms.com. It’s built 100%
in Elixir with Phoenix framework.

If you’re ever looking for a collab or another content creator for elixir
courses it’s something I’ve been thinking of getting in to. HMU if you want to
do something like that.

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AlchemistCamp
My email is on my Indie Hackers profile. Would definitely be interested in
chatting!

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albydarned
Nice. I’ll send you a message.

