
How I built a profitable bootstrapped side project - squiggy22
https://www.getdeckchair.com/blog/how-i-built-a-profitable-bootstrapped-side-project/
======
seibelj
I made my side project profitable quickly with a relentless focus on costs.
The only fees I have are to Apple (dev license) and Delaware (for the LLC).
Any service I wanted, I found an open source project and figured it out. I use
the free tier at red hat open shift for hosting. If you let yourself get
nickel and dimed by layering on SaaS products, you won't get anywhere.

Of course, I'm talking about building a profitable, low-touch side business,
not a mega company.

~~~
brianwawok
So let's say you built app A and spent 80 extra hours hunting for free SAAS
products.

Similar app B saved 80 hours using more popular SAAS apps but has a SAAS bill
of $100 a month. But he had a full 2 week headstart in development.

You don't think app B could end up getting more money?

That doesn't mean you should spend $600 hosting on Heroku. But swearing off
all costs may be a bit much...

~~~
seibelj
My interpretation of a business is a repeatable mechanism for generating
profit. Starting a business takes lots of effort and time. Once you have it
running, a good software side business should take very little time. You put
the time in at the beginning. Once it's working, you should be able to make
money without trying.

By using pay-for SaaS companies, you might save time, but as a one-man
developer, I'm not in a race for success. I want to build something that lasts
ideally for years if not decades that sends cash directly into my bank
account. If you rely on an SaaS product, you will be paying them money for
decades. And if they go out of business, you need to put more effort into
finding a replacement.

By building everything myself, I pay nobody anything, and the only risk is
that I go out of business. And if I build more side businesses, I can reuse my
existing infrastructure and reduce their costs as well.

~~~
billmalarky
Why not use SAAS to launch faster, then replace SAAS with in-house after
you've built market share?

~~~
seibelj
For many things building it yourself doesn't take that much longer than doing
an integration with a SaaS product. Usually I need 1 or 2 features that are a
small piece of a much larger product.

~~~
brianwawok
Do you have concrete examples? Maybe this is getting too complex to use
abstracts for.

~~~
seibelj
server monitoring to ensure that it responds and is running. I solved it with
a cron job. Lots of other server monitoring software with bells and whistles,
didn't need it

~~~
billmalarky
New relic sever monitoring my friend. It's _free_ (emphasis because I was
shocked when I looked up pricing) and takes all of 5 minutes to setup (no
exaggeration, it uses yum for 99% of setup).

[https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/servers/new-relic-servers-
lin...](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/servers/new-relic-servers-
linux/installation-configuration/servers-installation-redhat-centos)

~~~
brianwawok
How is it free when it says it is 10 cents per hour per host? There is a LITE
plan but it seems like no alerting?

~~~
billmalarky
Hmm, it looks like they have changed their pricing strategy. When I first
signed up it was no strings attached free as a loss-leader to move you towards
using their application monitoring products.

[https://blog.newrelic.com/2011/11/08/server-monitoring-is-
he...](https://blog.newrelic.com/2011/11/08/server-monitoring-is-here/)

So far I appear to still be grandfathered into the the free server plan?

Anyways, I guess you can disregard my original comment.

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javiercr
Wow! We built an open source app for holiday management [1] (with a very close
UI to this one) and I always thought it would make sense to sell it as a SaaS.
I'm glad to see someone actually did it!

[1] [https://github.com/diacode/holidays](https://github.com/diacode/holidays)

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ryanmarsh
> If a soldier deployed in Iraq has the time to code...

LOL. True. I was running night raids in 2004 and coding during the day on an
app for a commercial real estate company. If anything it was a way to cope,
but hey I found the time.

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amelius
I always wonder why it is so difficult to find good markets. Sometimes, it
seems that coming up with a good product-idea is harder than building the
actual product. Why does it work that way? Is this a flaw in how the free
market works? Or is this just me - a developer - not knowing what other people
need from me.

~~~
extrapickles
The market itself doesn't know what it actually wants.

Generally its a case of throwing ideas out there and watching what people
nibble on, or stumbling across something that everyone has trouble with that
you can easily solve.

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shadeless
Nice post. Can you clarify what you mean by proftiable, I'm assuming you're
covering all costs and also paying yourself a decent salary?

If so, congrats!

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dempseye
I hope he hosted the blog on its own server.

~~~
yawgmoth
Unfortunately: [https://getdeckchair.com/](https://getdeckchair.com/)

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kentt
Congratulation on shipping. I'd love to hear about what you mean by
'profitable'. I don't want to be too nosey, but people mean all sorts of
things from covering your hosting with a bit of beer money, to quitting your
job and working an hour per week.

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bringking
We hugged it to death

~~~
wwwdonohue
_I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say if you are relying on Product
Hunt and Hacker News to send you all your traffic, you are still screwed._

Heh.

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andrei_says_
I'm trying to see how this particular service improves on having a shared
outlook calendar where everyone reflects their vacation. Can someone point out
the benefits? (This is not a criticism, I am trying to understand the service)

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gwintrob
Congrats on the cool SaaS business! Quick suggestion. The logo at the top of
the blog should link back to your homepage, instead of the blog index.

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JokoX
Site down, read here:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160530160943/https://www.getde...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160530160943/https://www.getdeckchair.com/blog/how-
i-built-a-profitable-bootstrapped-side-project/)

~~~
mohsinr
I hit F5 to refresh and it came back.

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yitchelle
I noticed that he put the following at the bottom of his landing page. There
is on link to see the actual reviews.

"Rated 4.2/5 based on 144 reviews"

Anyone has any metric that something like this helps?

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tuna-piano
As of writing this, the main site is down, and the blog has missing image
links.

Why do people host static sites on anything besides s3 (or similiar)? It's
dirt cheap, (almost) always works, and can handle any traffic spike you can
hope to receive.

Instead, simple static sites seem to crash and burn when receiving spikes in
traffic. I do not understand it.

~~~
yoo1I
Because not everything needs to be on amazon. Also, the blog at least is
wordpress, not "static".

