
Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? - pyeu
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>Defining successful as a profitable business which provides the majority of the owners income.
======
filipm
Here's a couple of links you might like, although not all of them are exactly
what you're looking for:

\- [https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/) (of course)

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

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

\- [https://failory.com/](https://failory.com/)

\- Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? (Jan 5, 2017):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13326535](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13326535)
(thanks @jbonniwell)

\- Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? (Mar 9, 2014):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7367243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7367243)

\- Ask HN: Sideprojects/passive income businesses with little or no own
coding?:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15806208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15806208)

\- Pieter Levels - Turning Side Projects into Profitable Startups (1h
presentation):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6reLWfFNer0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6reLWfFNer0)

~~~
sixQuarks
I would say that these sites chronicle just the tip of the iceberg. I run a
successful solo online business and would never agree to be profiled as I
don't want to invite competition.

~~~
overcast
In my opinion, those site are just advertising for your business.

~~~
goodJobWalrus
Which means it only makes sense being profiled if the readers of those sites
are your potential customers.

~~~
sixQuarks
Agreed. I would only do it if I was targeting entrepreneurs

~~~
dceddia
"Entrepreneur" is only one label for the people who read Indie Hackers,
though. They are software developers, designers, creatives, fitness
enthusiasts, etc. All the people who currently work a day job and are hoping
to do their own thing. Entrepreneurship may bring them together, but it's not
necessarily their only (or even their primary) identity.

~~~
bildung
Yeah, but that still is a _tiny_ part of the overall economy. If you don't
target those small niches, it makes no economic sense to get profiled on Indie
Hackers et.al.

------
fecak
For the past 20 years I've been a recruiter, and a few years back I started a
resume writing and career consulting business called Resume Raiders
([http://resumeraiders.com](http://resumeraiders.com)). It's a literal mom &
pop operation and I do 99% of the projects myself.

I started the business because I've always loved writing, am good at
navigating tricky job search and career situations (I've seen it all after 20
yrs in recruiting), and I enjoy it more than recruiting. I also noticed most
resume writers didn't really have a background in hiring, but rather were just
trained writers that probably had a hard time making it in journalism or other
areas.

I'd been writing resumes for my recruiting candidates for many years, and many
of those candidates would rely on me for career advice as well. It was odd to
provide career advice as a third-party recruiter, as there were times when I
might have some financial interest in what a person does. As an example, if
someone approached me and said "Should I leave my job?", a recruiter might say
"yes" with the thought that if this person leaves I might get a placement fee
if I help them find work.

Resume Raiders is now my primary focus and has been quite profitable since it
started. There is very little overhead. I live in a pretty expensive area, but
my clients come from all over the world. I also offer a discount to HN'ers
(see my profile page).

~~~
bredren
I worked with Dave, too! While I didn’t get the gig I was after at the time, I
was super happy with the help I got from him. Not surprised, but glad to hear
the biz is working.

~~~
fecak
Thanks for the kind words! Biz has been great. I was in a 'test mode' for a
bit, as I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do this full-time and earn enough to
maintain my lifestyle (wife, 2 kids, relatively expensive place to live), but
it's been very successful and incredibly fulfilling on a personal level as
well.

------
iovrthoughtthis
Pieter Levels is the creator of:

    
    
      - https://nomadlist.com/
      - https://remoteok.io/
      - https://hoodmaps.com/
    

And he just broke €50,000/m a few days ago:
[https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/96802754410347315...](https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/968027544103473152)

~~~
superasn
Yes, this guy is truly an inspiration. If you're a one person business, you
will find this tweet very useful:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/93870716650815488...](https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/938707166508154880?lang=en)

(aka stop running after shiny new things and just do it!)

~~~
jgh
No offense but Pieter Levels seems like a bit of a bastard, and you can see it
in that thread. I don't pay much attention to him, but when I do come across
his social media posts they're pretty off-putting. He's pretty successful yes,
but €50k/mo is not exactly f-you money.

~~~
adbachman
He's already his own boss, the whole point of f-you money is being able to
tell your boss, "f you!"

That means you can either go for the lump sum or the annuity, either one gets
you out from under The Man.

~~~
pieterhg
Yes exactly. Also why would anyone need more than $50k/m? Even if you have a
family?

~~~
protopeer
is that revenue or take-home profit?

~~~
pieterhg
Costs and tax goes off but my profit margins is somewhere from 80% to 90%.
Mostly server, mail and map costs.

------
acabal
I run Scribophile, one of the largest writing communities online, as a one-
person business, though I have a ton of help from our volunteer forums
moderators.

The story is pretty unimpressive... I had the idea back in the days when web
2.0 was the new hotness, so I decided to make it happen and use it as an
excuse to learn web 2.0 technologies. It was a freemium model from day 1,
though I didn't expect many people to buy the paid upgrade.

People seemed to like it, paid upgrades were getting sold, and after a while
of it being a hobby I realized I could live off the earnings and decided to
make it full time.

It allowed me to spend many years being a digital nomad back when that sort of
thing wasn't quite popular yet. I traveled to a lot of places and met a lot of
fascinating people. Now I'm settled at home but those years of my life were
priceless.

These days we're one of the largest and most respected writing communities
online, at least 3 of our members have been in Writers of the Future awards
ceremonies, and our members regularly go on to be published by major
publishers and smaller outfits.

I should also emphasize that having one's own business doesn't mean you're a
millionare, like many assume. I make a comfortable living but much less than
you'd think if you pictured a "business owner guy". I still very much consider
myself a success, because I get to do what I love, and on my own schedule.
(For example I took a little time off to start a new hobby,
standardebooks.org, which produces high-quality, modern ebook editions of
public domain literature, and releases them free of cost and via CC0.)

~~~
vram22
Just checked out standardebooks.org a bit. Seems like a great idea. Will check
it out more and share it with others via my social media channels.

~~~
vram22
I checked out a couple of books there. Neither had PDF as an available format.
Why is this? Is PDF not considered an ebook format?

------
cperciva
Tarsnap. I have an employee now, but I ran the company myself for the first
ten years and from ~2011 onwards Tarsnap has been the vast majority of my
income.

I got started by... well, sitting down and scratching my itch. I wanted good
backups, and it turned out that other people wanted them too.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Can you give a simple explanation why a Tarsnap backup is superior to
competitors, but for someone who isn't going to understand the research paper?

Does it backup my website like S3, or does it back up my personal files like
Dropbox?

~~~
cperciva
_Does it backup my website like S3, or does it back up my personal files like
Dropbox?_

No. It backs up your files like tar. (Except with deduplication and encryption
and cryptographic signing and off-site storage.)

------
vshabanov
I'm running BazQux [https://bazqux.com](https://bazqux.com) paid feed reader.
It's my only source of revenue.

I wanted to read comments in feed reader (there were few forums with very
interesting discussions) and Google Reader only allowed to read blog posts. So
I've started developing my own feed reader.

I believed that comments reading feature is killer and thought that Internet
is big and many people will like it and I will be rich soon ;) I saved some
money and quit my job to focus completely on my product.

Guess what? After initial release nobody purchased my product. I was quite
disappointed and started asking people what they didn't liked (turned out to
be the most important thing to do). And I've started to add features they've
missed, asked again, improved again. And got first purchase few months later
and second purchase few more months later.

Few times I thought to abandon project. But then Google announced it will
discontinue Google Reader. By that time I had more or less usable product and
got a lot of new clients and a lot of feedback (which is very important).
Worked like crazy for a few months and after Google Reader was closed I've had
enough clients to pay the bills.

It's still in active development with a huge TODO list.

Can't say that it is success. I would make more if I go to day job (and won't
worry as much about what to do next to have income in the future) but I'm
working on my own project, talking with my own clients, using technologies
selected by me and can work on my own schedule (although after being burned
out and birth of baby I returned to working 5 days a week in office -- my own
office indeed, with piano ;)

Having one-person online business is definitely possible but it's not as
romantic/easy as it sometimes shown. "Wow, this guy could work on the beach"
is actually "damn, I must work even on the beach".

~~~
odonnellryan
> "Wow, this guy could work on the beach" is actually "damn, I must work even
> on the beach".

This is a fantastic way to put it.

------
scyclow
I've only made about $5.00 on it so far (certainly not enough to retire on),
but my latest endeavor is looking quite promising:
[http://fastcashmoneyplus.biz](http://fastcashmoneyplus.biz)

~~~
subpar
Love this. Any interest in a merger with the cash machine that is
[http://subpar.biz/](http://subpar.biz/)

~~~
scyclow
I talked to the board, and they say that we're not taking merger requests at
the moment, but would be open to a licensing agreement :P

------
amrrs
Not sure if you've checked
[https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/) before, it's
full of such stories and those are amazing and inspirational. Because those
are not your Googles or Amazons, it's just solo business that are very
practically approachable.

~~~
iovrthoughtthis
csallen is the best. Love indie hackers so much.

------
WalterGR
I created and run The Online Slang Dictionary -
[http://onlineslangdictionary.com/](http://onlineslangdictionary.com/) . It's
the eldest slang dictionary on the web.

I started it in 1997 when I was in highschool. I found it interesting that
slang terms frequently heard just the year before were already passe. I
thought it was something that was worth capturing.

It affords me a modest salary in a fairly high-priced area, on around 2.1
million visitors a month. I estimate that it would get 2.5x - 3x the traffic
(and hence the earnings) if google weren't up to strange shenanigans with the
site's rankings.

~~~
et-al
That's amazing! I've definitely stumbled upon your site while searching some
phrases.

How has UrbanDictionary affected your traffic?

~~~
WalterGR
Nice! I'm always happy when people have come across it.

Urban Doctionary gets around 30x the traffic. So it definitely gets the lion's
share of slang dictionary traffic.

The Online Slang Dictionary was always a side project from when I started it
in 1996 until 2007, when I started working on it full-time. It wasn't until
2007 that people could put content on the site without my manual intervention.
So it's easy to see why Urban Dictionary overtook my site in the long past.
Since 2011 though, Urban Dictionary's traffic has been artificially propped up
due to an ongoing manual penalty against my site, which I've had no success in
resolving.

So if anyone works at Google or knows anyone who works at Google - I can be
reached at waltergr@gmail.com or editor@<my site's domain>. :)

------
MattBearman
I run BugMuncher on my own
([https://www.bugmuncher.com](https://www.bugmuncher.com)), I've been working
on it full time since October 2015, and it's been profitable since November
2016, providing all of my income.

If you're interested I've been documenting the entire process of taking
BugMuncher from a side project to my full-time job on my blog starting here -
[https://www.bugmuncher.com/blog/from-side-project-to-
profita...](https://www.bugmuncher.com/blog/from-side-project-to-profitable-
start-up-part-1)

~~~
jandem
I get a certificate error on Firefox Nightly. This is likely caused by
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/Upcoming_Distrust_Actions](https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/Upcoming_Distrust_Actions)

~~~
MattBearman
Thanks for letting me know! I'll get that sorted

------
mittermayr
I built a fully automated self-service Instagram publishing system, no private
API hacks or such, but instead, by completely automating lots of Android
phones (OCR, pattern recognition, etc.). Mainly offered this to small
businesses and friends. Took off due to Instagram’s popularity and made six
figures after a while. Now contemplating to shut down, as Instagram has opened
up publishing access to hand-picked partners.

A second business focused solely on Twitter analytics. Was about to shut that
down years ago when Twitter suddenly offered free analytics, but it barely
changed sign-up rates, so I kept it going.

On good days, I answer one or two emails, that’s it. The occasional one-week-
of-hell when things go sideways mixed in every few months, of course.

Now looking for the next project.

------
stevesearer
I run [https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com) which
highlights office design projects from around the world.

I guess I don't technically qualify for these posts anymore since I've hired a
couple employees, but it was a one-person business for 9 years before doing
so.

The basic origin was seeing photos of Google's offices and looking for a
website that showed photos of other offices. There wasn't one so I made it.

~~~
msaharia
Do you get the snapshots from the companies themselves or your employees
collect them? What's the incentive?

~~~
stevesearer
We receive the project photography from architecture and design firms
responsible for designing the offices. The incentive is to promote their work
for others to see.

~~~
msaharia
Thank you.

------
lmcnish14
Sidekiq is a one person business. The creator, Mike Perham, gave an interview
about what it was like building his business:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/sidekiq-6e71309457](https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/sidekiq-6e71309457)

~~~
mperham
AMA!

~~~
mindhash
Most of my worry with one person business is what happens when you are not
well or need to take personal vacation. How to arrange an ongoing support ?

~~~
mperham
My business is based on OSS; people are used to no support. I've tried to
guide my customers to open issues and stackoverflow questions to get a
response from the community. This makes for a nice historical archive that
others can search and find similar questions and answers.

I explicitly state in my support policy that emailed questions can take 48
business hours to answer. I take my laptop with me on vacation to answer
support questions every morning. The rest of the day is free.

You could also contract out support for a week if you really want to avoid the
laptop. Pay a contractor friend $$$ to answer your support emails for a week.

My main issue is that collecting money takes as much time/email as support.
~30% of my customers have some need for a manual touch during their annual
renewal: forgot password, change email, billing question, etc. My first hire
is likely to be an AR person who can handle that administration.

------
niko001
I run IdeaCheck, which validates startup ideas by running a survey within the
idea's target audience. Started in early 2017 and it can now sustain me full-
time.

[https://ideacheck.io](https://ideacheck.io)

~~~
zweicoder
This is interesting. How did you actually find people to respond to the
surveys?

------
JamesLeonis
Paging patio11[1].

Patrick McKenzie is a HN celebrity that, in a previous life, blogged about his
small consultancy and SaaS products[2]. His insights about A/B testing and
automated sales emails are worth their word-count in gold.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11)

[2]: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-
hits/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/)

------
dvko
I have been running a very unsexy business selling WordPress plugins for the
last 5 years, averaging about $30K in revenue a month.

Only expense is my time spent and a $5 Linode VPS that hosts my shop & update
server.

~~~
illegalsmile
Are these your wordpress plugins or is it an affiliate site? Any advertising?

~~~
dvko
My own plugins, all with a free version that's hosted on WordPress.org. The
free version of my most popular product has hundreds of thousands of users and
is what brings in the bulk of my customers.

No paid advertising. I tried but it never really got to a point where it was
worth it.

Sorry for being a little vague, I'd rather not state my revenue and product
together. And sine I've already mentioned my revenue, I won't mention the
product. ;)

------
lemming
I develop Cursive ([https://cursive-ide.com](https://cursive-ide.com)), an IDE
for Clojure code based on IntelliJ. Strictly speaking it's just a plugin right
now, but that's how most of my users use it.

I worked on it for about 2 years, mostly in open beta, and started selling it
in December 2015. It's been the only thing I work on and has provided all my
income since then.

~~~
joeevans1000
And what a wonderful tool it is! Thank you so much for Cursive. For all of you
folks wanting to try Clojure, this is a great way to go.

~~~
lemming
Thanks! I'm glad it's working well for you, that's always great to hear.

If anyone _is_ planning to try out Clojure, Cursive is free for non-commercial
use (OSS, personal hacking, student work) so it's easy to give it a try. I
make my money principally from companies buying licences for their devs.

------
lettergram
Not quite at the majority yet, but at the current rate it should be by end of
year. I run two websites:

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

I launched that in January, but the investment advice I've used for years
(when it was a couple python scripts). It's regularly making 100% yoy returns
for me, so I'm happy. Kind of different than most startups / businesses
though. In late January I launched the paid version, and I'm getting a few
trickling in every day. We offer one month free, every month you provide
feedback (meaning I get feedback more than money ATM)

My other business is [https://easy-a.net](https://easy-a.net) \- it makes me a
lesser amount of money, but enough to keep both projects running without me
paying for infrastructure.

Those are combined under my C Corp, so I look at it as a single online
business. Utilizing same tech stacks, methods, etc.

------
mrskitch
I've started one after listening to a lot of indiehackers podcast's. Mine is
[https://browserless.io](https://browserless.io), which is IaaS, and I just
hist ~$1k/mo at about the 3 month mark.

Still not providing the majority of my income, however it's growing to the
point where it will in a year or so, depending how things go. If anything else
it's been a wickedly fun ride, and I've learned quite a bit in doing it.

~~~
newusertoday
you already provide docker image in github, how do you make money ? by running
the customer's script in your infrastructure?

~~~
mrskitch
Apologies on not replying, I seemed to have missed your comment. Money comes
in two ways: hosted plans on browserless.io and via commercial licensing.
Happy to answer any more questions you have

------
mezod
Here's an awesome list of resources for indie makers :P
[https://github.com/mezod/awesome-indie](https://github.com/mezod/awesome-
indie)

------
0xmohit
Coderpad [1], an interviewing platform, is run by Vincent Woo [2].

[1] [https://coderpad.io](https://coderpad.io)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=akanet](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=akanet)

~~~
pbalau
Only 1 person? Wow, we use it in our interview process

~~~
Jefro118
I think they have 4 people [1], still pretty impressive though and Vincent
started it solo.

[1]
[https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/coderpad-c95d5d0dd9](https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/coderpad-c95d5d0dd9)

------
ikeboy
I sell random stuff on Amazon, buying wholesale. Current run rate is
~200k/month, more in Q4, figure profit somewhere between 5-20%.

Started 2 years ago buying from stores etc, shifted to wholesale a year ago.

~~~
blunte
If you're referring to the "Amazon drop-ship" business, I think that space is
probably already overcrowded. Those who got in and figured it out - and got a
head start, probably still have an advantage. But you must realize that Amazon
can, at their whim, change anything at any moment and kill that business.

Plus you have unscrupulous competitors who will throw a little money in to buy
a bunch of your products as soon as they appear (if your products compete with
theirs), and then leave negative reviews. I suspect that eventually the only
way to be a winner is to be a cheater. Surely you don't do that.

~~~
ikeboy
I got out of drop-ship and pivoted to wholesale a year ago.

Agree with you on saturation, margins are tiny but some people are making
serious bank, I know a couple 8 figure (gross) accounts

------
napolux
So today is the day of the week I feel stupid for not being rich (yet) thanks
to my skills in coding.

Thank you, @pyeu ;-)

~~~
imhoguy
Foremost you need soft skills to change that.

------
debeers
I run one-man security consulting business. Pays well enough to live
comfortably and provides enough free time to work on side-projects.

Six months ago I started transitioning from service to product oriented
approach with online vulnerability scanning service
[https://getroot.sh](https://getroot.sh) aimed at network administrators and
webmasters.

I have another product targeted at penetration testers in works, to be
released in couple of months.

~~~
Covzire
How long did it take to get your first client and do you have any advice for
someone who would want to become a security consultant without having a large
network of business contacts?

~~~
debeers
Initially I advertised among friends and former co-workers that I knew needed
this kind of service for their own infrastructure. They became my first
customers pretty much right away, but my first organic users came couple
months later. I marketed primarily by writing articles on LinkedIn.

For the second part of the question - I'd say do some original research and
publish it. Hang out where other security people are. Still, the easiest way
is to build street cred and professional network while you work for someone
else.

------
owenwil
I built a daily technology briefing + community because I got pretty tired of
the way technology sites work (just a vomit of news stories) and make about
$2,200/month at this point, so I recently gave up my job to work on it. It's
growing fairly steadily, because people really value not being advertised to,
and that's been fantastic.

I'm also pulling together a bunch of disparate services to make it a great
experience, including SSO to the community, paywalled content and a custom
emailer that integrates deeply with the CMS. So far, so good, and I basically
slammed it all together until it worked over the space of a year -- but the
real work was three years of sending a weekly newsletter as well to build up
an audience before I even launched this thing.

At some point I'm planning to sell the application I wrote that powers it,
because there's a distinct lack of 'community in a box' platforms that can
solve this problem. First I have to finish it, but that's kinda the end goal.

[https://char.gd/recharged](https://char.gd/recharged) if you'd like to try
it! The code best-friends gives 25% off for three months.

~~~
sixfoot3
What are some of the key things you've learned along the way? E.g. More
community interaction helped grow the newsletter, etc.

I would be curious to know what your roadmap for the "additional features."
What are the advantages you've found "slamming together" the system vs. having
a custom system built?

~~~
owenwil
Hey! Great questions, thanks! Well, so far:

1) Focus on the community, then the content. I thought the content would be
some sort of mish-mash of opinion and really more long form stuff, but people
prefer compact, quick takes, in 3-4 paragraphs. Makes sense, but hard to see
as a maker!

2) Additional features is a great question! I plan a few different things:

\- Community integration with the newsletter

\- Integration with 'real-time chat services' like Discord, as I do think they
serve a purpose

\- Web push for notifying of "big" news outside of the band of the slow
newsletters for those that want it

\- Alternate delivery mechanisms for the newsletters (perhaps as simple, short
FB Messenger pieces)

\- Calendar subscription for events in the industry

\- A bunch more I've forgotten already :).

3) Technically the system is custom built, I guess I'm referring to how it
feels to have done that myself. I tried to hack it all together via existing
stuff at first, but it was clearly not going to work, so I built a deep Craft
CMS integration with my app to get where we are now. It's a great way to work
because it's all built on top of relational content!

------
csallen
Working on a new view for Indie Hackers that will allow you to filter more
powerfully. For example, revenue-generating businesses with a solo technical
founder and no employees:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/products?employeeCount=0&founde...](https://www.indiehackers.com/products?employeeCount=0&founderCount=1&techSkills=code)

------
nickjj
I do freelance development work and sell video courses focused on building and
deploying web apps.

I started by thinking to myself "what would happen if I tried to make training
videos?", slept on it and dove right into it the next day without knowing
anything about creating videos.

Hosting fees and a hell of a lot of time are my only expenses.

------
kome
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=idlewords](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=idlewords)
's pinboard.

~~~
majewsky
That's [https://pinboard.in](https://pinboard.in)

~~~
icebraining
And now [https://del.icio.us/](https://del.icio.us/) too :D

------
SirLJ
Stock trading robots, everything on autopilot, makes much more money than my
"real job" as technical team lead for big corp.

Truly lifestyle business running from the cloud and not looking for investor,
customers or employees...

One day will leave to my kids to run...

~~~
malchow
What do you trade and how? No need for reproducible details, but useful to
know something.

I have been writing options scripts (short puts) for a couple years and have
had a lot of fun solving puzzles there.

~~~
SirLJ
Highly liquid US equities, using discount broker API to find, initiate,
monitor and exit trades - everything written in Python and hosted on few VPS
around the world (for redundancy) ...

Options are to complicated for me :-)

~~~
nhylated
What books/blogs/forums/libraries/frameworks would you recommend to get
started?

~~~
SirLJ
I cannot recommend anything concrete, all authors are selling either ideas
that do not work anymore or just selling the dream...

No one will publish a working trading strategy and even someone crazy enough
to do it, it will be arbitraged pretty quickly...

The best way is to buy stock market data and start testing ideas until you
find your edge...

All that said, here are the books I usually recommend, more for motivation and
inspiration:

The Asian Saga by James Clavell, reading as a kid on how to rule your life,
business and create a dynasty...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asian_Saga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asian_Saga)

More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite by Sebastian
Mallaby - on how to rule the world :-)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God)

A Man For All Markets by Edward O. Thorp - basically the father of
quant/systematic trading and one of the greatest minds of our time...

[http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all-
markets/](http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all-markets/)

------
osrec
I do employ a few people now, but in the beginning, it was just me for about 4
years:

OSREC - [https://osrec.co.uk](https://osrec.co.uk) Bx -
[https://usebx.com](https://usebx.com)

Got started with OSREC because I could see a gap for a good suite of tools
that could automate mundane data tasks in banks and hedge funds. Also, I did
not enjoy my investment banking job.

Got started with Bx because many people complained to me about
Quickbooks/Sage/Xero and I thought I could do better :)

~~~
umen
this look great what is more profitable the online Batch processor or the
accounting app? can you explain the technical side of things ?

~~~
osrec
Both are fairly profitable, however the bulk of our income is via HeavyMETL as
we can get customers that are willing to commit to big contracts (>$1MM/year).
Bx was a labour of love, because I too did not like the existing bookkeeping
packages.

We're going to be releasing an improved version of Bx with some additional
project management and task management functionality, so stay tuned! It's
going to be a pretty awesome addition to the basic project management stuff on
there already, so be sure to check back in a month or two :)

------
mattbgates
I specialize in creating useful apps that help me, first and foremost, and
then share them with the world.

I have released these two products:
[https://callmeprivate.com](https://callmeprivate.com)
[https://textmeprivate.com](https://textmeprivate.com)

Working on some apps that I haven't released yet dealing with some telecom
API, I got the idea of having a phone number without having a phone number to
stop scam callers from calling me. But that evolved, of course... I started a
virtual number service that privatizes your phone number with many added
options -- basically your phone number can become a very useful piece of
software.

I released Call Me Private about 3 months ago on Hacker News (
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15905375](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15905375)
) and just started marketing it a lot the past few weeks.. so far, I've got
about 12 customers or so. Since I've released it ... I've also had a few
organizations contact me for some minor customization requests, which I was
able to make happen. My early customers are definitely helping the product to
evolve more to suit their needs... and what they are asking for.. I usually
weigh whether it would be beneficial to that one person ... or many. If its
able to help many, I spend more time on it. If just that one person.. I might
or might not, depending on the usefulness of the feature.

------
jacob_rezi
This is my story

I started a resume company focused strictly on ATS optimization immediately
after college with my best friend after we noticed how many peers were
woefully underemployed.

A year later, after mild adoption and the co-founder deciding to focus on his
career, I moved to South Korea to localize the company which the goal of
supporting Korean universities & to escape the competitive pressures of the
US.

Things are going well these days.

[https://rezi.io/](https://rezi.io/)

------
rbucks
Currently doing ~$20K combined from
[https://www.toofr.com](https://www.toofr.com) and
[https://www.inlistio.com](https://www.inlistio.com).

Also have these in the hopper -
[https://www.thinboxapp.com](https://www.thinboxapp.com),
[https://www.enps.co](https://www.enps.co),
[http://www.glist.io](http://www.glist.io),
[https://www.voxloca.com](https://www.voxloca.com)

Idea is I'd love to cycle through them, sell whatever's working after a couple
years. It takes time to find the right business at the right time so I
advocate 'incubating' a project in the background, building SEO, seeing if it
catches. It just takes time.

I'm polishing off a book about it now --
[http://www.parallelentrepreneurship.com](http://www.parallelentrepreneurship.com).
It incorporates a lot of the wisdom in the comments here. (And I'm taking
notes on the stuff I missed.)

------
nhorob67
I ran a one man side gig for a couple years (farm management software). Got it
to $200k and growing after 6 months in the market but I needed to bring the
development in-house.

Could've used outsourced talent for all dev and customer support but
interestingly enough the reason why I hired was "what happens to all of our
customers if I die?". I felt like I owed it to them to put a team in place,
albeit a small one.

~~~
tomascot
How do you get in a market like that? We tried but failed because the owners
didnt like the fact that we where from "the city".

~~~
nhorob67
I was doing consulting work in the space, saw a need, and built the product. I
came into it knowing the traits of farmer, the lingo, etc. That and a good
product have helped us gain trust

------
ca98am79
Hi, I started and run park.io by myself. It is a place to backorder expiring
domain names. I started it for fun and it grew into a business. You can read
or listen to an interview I did on Indiehackers here:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/034-mike-carson-of-
park...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/034-mike-carson-of-park-io)

------
coollector
Coollector Movie Database:

[https://www.coollector.com/](https://www.coollector.com/)

Small income, but profitable.

~~~
rypskar
Looks great, will check it out in the weekend. Do you have any plans for an
Android app which can read bar-codes to register DVDs? Have planned to make
that for years but never got around to actually do it. Have tested several
before but all have had major problems

~~~
coollector
I can't wait to start working on the Android app, but as a single-person shop,
maintaining the desktop app is already taking most of my time. When you're
alone, everything takes longer :(

~~~
rypskar
I understand that, is the same reason why my version is still at the planning
stage

------
brandfountain
[https://brandfountain.com](https://brandfountain.com)

I have curated a stellar portfolio of brandable domains geared to startup
community, allows me to dev other projects without raising seed. I succeed by
being flexible/sympathetic with early stage companies, expect to reach six
digit sales on almost autopilot.

~~~
mailjenil
How often your domains are sold? Are those all inbound inquiries?

~~~
brandfountain
I rely on word of mouth and random visitors for sales. With very little time,
interest or expertise (in marketing) my approach is quite basic - offer
domains that I would buy for my own projects and be humane with pricing. The
extent of my customer strategy can be summed up in: if a customer has a good
experience they will tell a friend. If they have a bad experience they will
tell 10. I'm not trying to build an empire with Brandfountain, small is
perfect for me as I am very busy with another project.

~~~
Jack000
how do you price them? eg. I'm not sure how you would price cookry.com at 7k
vs chefgram.com at 3k etc

~~~
brandfountain
Not 100% science but typically: length of name and number of words are biggest
factors. Category can matter as well - eg 'crypto' names are very hot at the
moment.

------
pradeepchhetri
I think [https://apex.sh](https://apex.sh) is run solely by TJ Holowaychuk.

~~~
mikekchar
I didn't actually realise he started a company. The funny thing about this one
is that you have to think, "Hmm... I'll start a company just like TJ. Now, all
I have to do is be as good and prolific a programmer as TJ..." It's a pretty
high bar ;-)

------
hprotagonist
i am not he, but i believe that macej is the only person behind pinboard.in
(which i love to pieces and pay for gladly)

~~~
idlewords
That is correct (and thank you!)

~~~
hprotagonist
you enable me to be even more annoying in conversations by emailing links to
people on the spot!

i don’t know if this helps you sleep better or worse at night but it’s been
really nice for me.

------
graystevens
Breach Insider is a one person bootstrapped company:
[https://breachinsider.com](https://breachinsider.com)

Been live for a few months now and enjoyed finding the balance between sales
and producing new features.

------
jbonniwell
Additional discussion of one person businesses from about a year ago here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13326535](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13326535)

------
mylh
(Un)successfull one-person business is
[https://botproxy.net](https://botproxy.net) (rotating proxy) Started couple
of months ago as I needed such a service for my other project and I thought
why not to make it as Saas. Now I have a dozen of active subscriptions and
balancing around 0 in monthly profit while having to do a lot of work to keep
things going. If I knew in advance all the stuff I know now would never start
anything like this but now I feel sorry for the effort spent to just quit.
literally everything went not as expected. So I warned you.

~~~
thenaturalist
Care to elaborate on what exactly you didn't anticipate? Unsustainable unit
economics? I guess bootstrapping anything alone is a stressful to get the
wheels rolling. What keeps you from a) shutting down or b) experimenting with
prices etc.?

~~~
mylh
Every part of the project went not as planned. Most bright example is billing.
I was initially implemented everything using PayPal preauthorized payments API
and only going live it appeared that this API only available to merchants with
personal account manager, and to get one you need to already accepting more
than 2500$/mo in paypal. So I have to re-implement it. And not only billing as
subscription management also depends on billing. Then getting many IP
addresses for outgoing proxies appeared to be much more problematic than I was
expecting. Answering the second part of the question. I use it for my other
project where I need to pull data from many websites on a daily basis. And I
use it in my browser to change IP location and avoid country level blocks. I
hope that eventually I can convert it into more or less profitable project,
but the main lesson I learned from this is that when something looks simple it
doesn't mean it simple in reality.

------
vinrob92
$50k/month with my current business: Manypixels
([https://www.manypixels.co](https://www.manypixels.co)) I do work with many
freelancers though.

~~~
jonathan-kosgei
Hey vinrob, big fan!

------
ktta
[https://stratechery.com/](https://stratechery.com/)

Not exactly a conventional business, but I believe he does pretty well for
himself.

~~~
kevin_indig
Love that site! Do you know of any other ones who are doing that?

~~~
ktta
Not really.

Anything remotely close that comes to mind is phoronix, but that is in an
different class entirely.

------
bonestamp2
Think about a product/solution/service that scales revenue without scaling
directly with your own time. For example, tutoring would suck because the
revenue is tied directly to how much time you spend. However, a tutoring
portal where you connect tutors with students can scale in revenue beyond the
number of hours you can put into it. In other words, you want something that
makes money while you sleep.

------
techaddict009
10beasts.com Amazon Product Review site it was run by guy named Lukhman Khan
and recently it got sold for some 600-700K USD.

------
jonathan-kosgei
I'm running [https://ipdata.co](https://ipdata.co) which is an IP Geolocation
API. It's been 5 months so far with 20M API calls served last month. The
project is not yet providing the majority of my income however there's been
tremendous and very promising growth!

------
turrini
Shameless plug: Revela Preço, an app to do price surveys (brazilian market)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=br.com.revelap...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=br.com.revelapreco)

Well, not profitable yet, but promising :D

------
zeckalpha
Newsblur and Overcast come to mind.

------
mariushop
I freelance in building Web Apps for companies so I can build free Web Apps in
my free time. ' Guess I love building stuff. Last finished:
[https://eddtor.com](https://eddtor.com)

------
julienmarie
most impressive, builtwith.com, 2M / month

------
busymichael
I run [https://dndemail.com](https://dndemail.com) \-- do not disturb for your
gmail.

I launched in 2016 and have solid growth. It is the 3rd web business I have
launched. My first was in 1998.

------
wellboy
4chan as well

------
maxxxxx
PlentyOfFish was run by a single guy for a long time AFAIK.

~~~
coolso
And it makes sense. Why would you want to continue running an online dating
site after entering into a relationship? Not only would I think the motivation
would mostly disappear, or at least drop off precipitously; but also, you have
to think your significant other would always be kind of suspicious, and
rightfully so.

~~~
maxxxxx
He was single in the sense of the single person to work on.the site. I don't
know what his relationship status was. His main motivation was probably
financial, not finding a partner.

~~~
pcthrowaway
I can't tell if coolso was being serious or not. I imagined it was a clever
pun and got a good chuckle out of it, but it did drag on a bit, so it could go
either way.

------
heyhey123t
i just launched [http://startmydomain.com](http://startmydomain.com) as I want
to quit the 9 to five grind.

The premise of the site is that you can create a coming soon website without
any coding or even hosting

would love to get some feed back

------
mi100hael
IMO these two are mutually exclusive:

> successful profitable business

> provides the majority of the owner's income

Building a business takes a lot of time & dedication. It's going to be very
challenging to reach long-term stability and profitability if you go into it
with your sights so low that you think "this will be successful and I can
coast if it makes $100k per year."

Play to win.

~~~
kerbalspacepro
They're not mutually exclusive. It depends on how much the owner values their
income/free time. If you really value income, then its obviously nothing
great. Go and get a job at GAAF. But if you value your free time, a $100k/yr
business can get you a life of free time in ~5 years.

------
anotheryou
Any unsuccessful one-person online businesses?

How did it fail?

(I'm asking to dent out the survivors bias a bit)

------
ksaitor
Heya! Depends what's your definition of "successful", of course, but would
like to plug in CJL - job board for blockchain companies.

\- [https://cryptojobslist.com](https://cryptojobslist.com)

\- current progress
[https://twitter.com/ksaitor/status/968690695031500800](https://twitter.com/ksaitor/status/968690695031500800)

\- will share revenue figures shortly, but TL;DR — it's ramen profitable

Been running it solo and launched in October 2017. Previously did a few other
consumer+saas startups with a team, funding, etc — and this simple job board
seems to be having way more traction and revenue than other funded projects
with fancy apps that I've built before. AMA :)

------
umen
what about solo game makers like: Slither.io

------
JuliaChernykh
This article can be useful for you: [https://roobykon.com/blog/posts/86-what-
is-a-marketplace-bri...](https://roobykon.com/blog/posts/86-what-is-a-
marketplace-briefly-about-the-popular-topic)

------
xstartup
1\. Ad scraping business. We scrap ads and expose the bad guys.

Let me tell you there are many bad guys injecting bad just because the ad
exchanges do not care. Most of them do it because "no one would know". So, we
just scrap ads and put them on display.

2\. We sell a subscription to our service where we charge $200-400 month for
access to this data. Many malware researchers, ad agencies, regulators are
subscribed to our data set.

3\. It's a private business, high 5 figure revenue. Scraping cost per customer
is $10

~~~
anonyx69
I'm interested as a potential customer. Where can I get more information?

------
imaginenore
SmartPassiveIncome podcast had tons of stories about successful one-person
startups.

