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Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

594 points by pyeu ↗ HN
How many people on hacker news are running successful online businesses on their own? What is your business and how did you get started?

Defining successful as a profitable business which provides the majority of the owners income.

274 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 293 ms ] thread
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.
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amrrs
Not sure if you've checked 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
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...
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...

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

_xzxj
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.
matte_black
It is far easier to become a bastard when running a one man business than if you had a team. With a team no one person can take all the credit.
faitswulff
I think you underestimate the human capacity for opportunism/narcissism :p
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.
chadwilken
Not to mention he could probably have f-you money if he accepted an acquisition. So I would say that he is double smart for not doing that and continuing to build.
tuananh
i dont think VC would be interested.
pieterhg
Not sure where I’m being a “bastard”? I answer most replies, many of them odd questions about tech stack when the whole point of the original tweet is that tech stack is irrelevant here.
jonmb
You weren't being a bastard at all. That tweet shows several people telling you that you're doing it "wrong", and your responses were concise and kind. If anything, I think some of those people were being a little rude.

Can't argue with results. I don't personally care if you have one file with 4500 lines or 100 files with 45 lines. You have a successful and helpful business. Good job!

jgh
After re-reading that thread I can see why you were frustrated with the people arguing over minutiae. So I apologize for that.
pieterhg
Thanks!
jamiegreen
I don't know what makes HN so civilised but it is great. An oasis of peace in the cesspit of the internet :)

Just had to add that...

pieterhg
Haha I agree, this happens nowhere else.
pc86
When it's $50k/mo revenue from business you built and do not need to needle with day in and day out, it absolutely is. Can you sit back and live off dividends from that? No of course not. You don't have Hollywood money or VC money but you sure as shit don't need to spend an afternoon polishing your resume for a day job.

If unemployed and broke is at one end of the spectrum and living off investment dividends is the other, this is 95% of the way there.

stagbeetle
On more levels than just one. Take a look at the bottom right hand corner of one of his projects[0]. No publicity is bad publicity, but I'm certain that violates proper attribution for Open Maps. If it were Google Maps instead, I'm sure he'd have gotten a very suggestive letter by now.

[0]https://hoodmaps.com/ithaca

jimmy1
50k a month isn't f-you money? What???? What in the world is wrong with this place? My wife and I are combined pulling 10k a month. I can only imagine that I would need to come up with creative ways to actually burn through the other 40k.
gtsteve
It's certainly impressive for a one person company. Is that 50k a month profit though? I co-own a company that turns over a similar amount but you wouldn't be jealous of my bank balance.
ezekg
I think he said in his recent announcement that his profit margin is ~90% before taxes, so definitely good.
nojvek
50k a month is 600k

With a 90% profit margin and 30% taxes, 378k per year in bank.

Almost 1k/day

Not fuck you money, but that’s pretty solid. I remember getting paid 1k/month as my first Job.

Axsuul
You can also expense a lot more stuff as a business.
blocked_again
He doesn't employ anyone, doesn't spend money on advertising and runs the entire thing in a PHP digital ocean server. Now you do the math.
joelrunyon
So he's a 1) bastard 2) off-putting and 3) not as successful as you want him to be.

C'mon dude. At least be consistent with your line of reasoning.

jgh
Yes I was wrong in that comment. I re-read the twitter thread and apologized for it in a different reply chain to Pieter.
gkya
Frankly all the messages he has to put up with are plain stupid, so if he's being a bit of a bastard, rightly so. I just found about his websites, bookmarked nomadlist.com already. It's funny, to say the least, how people exaggerate taking some data from a database and spitting it out as HTML. The important bit here is the data and the presentation, nothing else.

WRT $50k/mo, for any sane person that's two times more-than-enough. If I could stably do $5k/mo from an app or website I'd be happy.

jgh
So I'm going to reply here because I think this is a good one (of the replies I've gotten) to express my thoughts a little bit more clearly:

1) I was wrong about what was going on in that thread. I sort of scanned it at first and saw that snarky "this is why I build companies and you do contracts" post and it rubbed me the wrong way.

2) The $50k (or €50k, im not sure which it is now) number is a lot, but given the way I originally interpreted the thread my initial reaction was more of one like "who does this guy think he is?"

3) I later went back over the thread and saw that people were being needlessly critical of a tiny webapp.

All that being said, I do agree with the replies that are being critical of my thinking here -- I just can't go back and edit it on HN!

gkya
Yeah, that sometimes happens, totally understandable. You can't edit after 2 hours, and I think that's too short of a window. After posting the comment you replied to, I saw you made similar clarifications elsewhere, where if you could edit you could've added a little "whoops" message under your original one.

I think it's the word you chose that brought it all on you though. Yet empathising with the way you interpreted the thing, I could've made a similar rant too, frankly.

jgh
Yeah I definitely used unnecessarily harsh language. Lesson learned: read thoroughly before being a jerk ;)
RikNieu
Where do you live? I always find it fascinating how the same amount of money can be valued so differently by people. €50k/mo would absolutely be f-you money in my world.

Hell, €5k that's just about passive income(like Levels business are close to being) would set me free and change my life in ways I cannot describe.

quickthrower2
> €50k/mo is not exactly f-you money.

I f-you money is saying f-you to your boss, then yes it is. Even in the most expensive cities in the world. Hong Kong, SF

squarefoot
$50k/month may seem not much to you but a lot of us earn much less. I would sign now to get 10 times less that figure for life. Besides, that amount is well above the necessary "critical mass" of money needed to make it grow by itself if carefully used: just resist the temptation to waste them immediately in new cars, luxury homes etc. That's the mistake most "rich quick" people (mainly sport players, top chart artists etc.) make when they believe that money will flow forever (it won't).
dharma1
I think that's right. But there's a limit to what kind of business you can create with a single php file in 2018, and typically those spaces are pretty competitive.

Pieter's approach of what lead him to land on Nomadlist is I think where the value is - scratch your own itch, and do a lot of business experiments - don't spend more than a month or two on a business idea if it hasn't gained traction, move to the next one. Again, only works for some type of businesses.

agopaul
And also, the main takeaway from his story (like so many other similar stories) is: build a community.

Really, his projects are interesting and all but "just ship it" is not enough, it has never been.

charlesdm
Just ship it works great if you have a unique mailing list with 100.000+ interested users. He had a hit with NL and kept building it from there; most of these businesses share the same target audience. Good for him!
dharma1
Here's a recent talk by Pieter - https://youtu.be/6reLWfFNer0

I think it's really good. Probably the best startup talk I've seen in a while.

In my opinion, there are benefits to doing things alone, but you have to be able to learn a lot of things quick, have a lot of available time with few distractions, and be very focused and persistent.

Cons: it's not as fun, and will probably take longer than working with people with specific talents.

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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.

philbarr
what kinds of things do you sell?

how do you advertise?

do you have a marketing campaign? how do you know people will want to buy what you have?

ikeboy
1. Random, electronics/toys/health/office supplies

2. Not much advertising, just checked and YTD spend is $600, most on a single product. Most traffic is organic

3. Mostly sell existing items that already have a lot of sales and we just get a share of those. That's what I'm paying Amazon enormous commissions for - to bring the eyeballs

prabuw
How do you figure out what items have a lot of sales?
ikeboy
Rank, reviews, guessing, other tricks
HatchedLake721
200k revenue or profit?
ikeboy
Revenue
prklmn
That’s great! Do you ever physically handle any product?
ikeboy
Rarely. Returns are a bother to handle, I put it off then go through a bunch of boxes every so often.
prklmn
That's interesting. I just heard about a guy who is in the returns auction business where he'll take all your returns and then get rid of them without you ever having to get involved, then you get a cut after he sells the product.
ikeboy
I know a couple services like that but aren't using them for various reasons
sreyaNotfilc
Wow! That's pretty amazing!

I have a course on how to do that. It seems pretty easy, but for some reason I never go out and just try it.

I have another business idea that I've been working on for some time. So, maybe that's the reason for not starting this one. But, why not have multiple source of income than rely one thing that may be BIG.

I guess I'm saying I'm throwing my hat into the ring today. Gosh, business is scary and exciting at the same time.

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

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/ (of course)

- https://www.starterstory.com/

- https://www.authorityhacker.com/undercover/

- https://failory.com/

- Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? (Jan 5, 2017): 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

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

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

[dead] ataturk
These examples are "meta" though--like the people who write books about how to get rich quick when in fact it is the act of producing the book.

Here's the truth: You aren't going to get far in a business unless you are the type of person who can go out and make . connections with actual people.

What matters is who you know first and foremost and if you're talking startups, it all runs on bs just like YC does--VC money and massive unreality when it comes to actual profits. Most startups fail losing lots of money and impoverishing the founders.

Didn't mean to sound so negative, it's great that people are thinking about being entrepreneurs. It's just that you have to understand that the tech part is the easy part and that there's a metric crap ton of bs out there.

ABCLAW
Responses like this really show the best side of HN. I'm not the OP, but I appreciate the work in pulling together these resources.
filipm
Thanks and you're welcome :)
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.
dvko
Agreed, this is why I'm shunning an interview with IndieHackers too.
csallen
That's one of the big reasons people share for sure. Another reason that can't be underestimated is that, sometimes, it just feels good to talk about something you've been pouring your heart into in obscurity for years.

Also, the interviews are just one part of the site. Arguably the most useful part of Indie Hackers is the forum where people share what they're working on with the goal of getting feedback and advice from other founders.

rbucks
Wholeheartedly agree with this. The hardest thing about being a solo founder is the loneliness. In times of joy, in times of grief, it's just you. Sharing your successes and your failures with a group of supportive entrepreneurs as you plod along is the next best thing (or maybe even better) to having a co-founder.
WA
I have my doubts about this. The interviews made IH take off when the forums had maybe one Post per day or less.

I bet the interviews get way more traffic than the forums.

For lurkers, it’s the interviews for sure.

csallen
The forum and the discussions there get 3x the pageviews the interviews do, and that gap is widening every day.
Jack000
I sure hope so, it's literally the front page :]

I think you're doing a great job growing the community, it has a different vibe from HN and r/startups and I personally do get a lot of value from it, although I'm still mostly interested in the interviews.

[dead] fetus
If that's honestly your attitude, good luck! Its only a matter of time before your customers realize you aren't adding any value.
charlesdm
You're not wrong. They are a great source for inspiration.
gkya
You also invite competition by selling/advertising your product. For any product, it's most probably one of the customers that'll go "I can make something better than this!" Also, if your income depends on absence of competition, that means that your product needs a bit of improving and that your business is fragile.
sixQuarks
You completely misunderstood the point. What would invite competition is the realization of how much revenue can be made with that product.
eurticket
So you could say that by not advertising it, for risk of competition, you're missing out on potential revenue too?
jjeaff
I may be wrong, but my assumption is that you are assuming putting your story on something like indie hackers is a lost marketing opportunity.

But I'd say a large percentage of successful small saas products are very niche and would not benefit in the least from talking about it in a public forum.

In my case, none of my customers would be reading anything like indie hackers so I have no reason to get the word out through those channels. It would just invite competition without returns.

sixQuarks
If your product does not target entrepreneurs, then you're not really missing much, other than stroking your ego.
Jack000
I think the main benefit for those businesses would be the seo value. Relevant, high PA links are hard to come by these days...
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
hackerman12345
Find a cofounder who can talk comfortably with the country folk*.
WalterGR
I created and run The Online Slang Dictionary - 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.

filipm
Do you only monetize it with Google Adsense?
WalterGR
A small amount of Google AdSense (<$100 monthly.) Sortable makes up the vast majority - https://sortable.com/ . Switching from only-AdSense to almost-entirely-Sortable is what made me able to afford to live off the site's revenue: my earnings doubled overnight.
filipm
Thanks, very interesting!
anonyx69
I suggest you look into Header Bidding, you're leaving tons of cash on the table by going all in on just one demand partner.
WalterGR
Sortable does header bidding.

What are your recommendations for other firms?

anonyx69
I believe they do header bidding for their own demand, but you can squeeze more revenue out of your traffic if you learn to manage your own headerbidding stack. Take a look at prebid.org and checkout the r/adops reddit. You might find some inspiration there.
WalterGR
Thanks, I'll check those out.
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>. :)

julienmarie
most impressive, builtwith.com, 2M / month
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.
lawlorino
I doubt he's single any more.
jxub
He definitely had his pick of fish.
ikeboy
It's in my first comment
MattBearman
I run BugMuncher on my own (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...

Danielalonso91
Just checked out your website - great stuff, and super professional also.
MattBearman
Thanks! It's been a long journey, but totally worth it :)
pradeepchhetri
I think 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 ;-)
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chrishn
Not many expenses, though.
matte_black
Then why not just list the profit?

Typically when I see revenues posted it means the profit must only be a fraction of that amount.

filipm
I guess it's mostly his living expenses and some hosting fees.
pieterhg
Yep. I spend about $1,500/month to live. Then there's Mapbox ~$500/month, SendGrid ~$500/month, and Linode $300/month. One part-time moderator as contractor $1,000/month, and part-time server guy as contractor $1,500/month.
mikekchar
I don't know anything about the person in question, but any "profit" number is going to have to be fictitious anyway. Ideally, you make as little profit as possible so that you avoid paying taxes. You want your money working for you rather than going to the government (or sitting in a bank account). This is one of the nice aspects of taxes and tax avoidance -- it provides incentives for companies to continue investing. Anyway, the point is the person could give an impressive sounding number (indicating that they are bad at managing money) or they could give a tiny (or even negative) number. It's kind of lose-lose.

But I agree with you -- anybody posting "I'm making $X/month doing something that seems easy" is usually trying to sell you a book/workshop/seminar (which is where they make their real money).

pieterhg
I agree and observe the same. I honesty do it because I want to show you can build a business without venture capital funding, and do it as an indie (and in my case solo) maker with a strong disregard for hip tech stacks and frameworks.

I sell a book but that’s less than 5% of my income. 95% is business.

matte_black
It is certainly possible to make it as an indie and solo maker. This has never been in much doubt.

The question is for how long?

What does an an indie maker who has "made it" do next? What do the next decades of their life look like?

Will you ever team up with someone?

pieterhg
In terms of money, if you just save enough and have low costs, it means potential financial independence.

I think the most joy I get is from making, so I will continue that. Money was the goal in terms of me having to pay my bills, but the second goal was always that I just like to make things.

Before websites, I made music and visual graphic art. Making makes me happy.

pieterhg
Good point and I agree! I posted revenue first because it’s easier to collect the data.

I’ll be importing costs from several sources (like PayPal, bank etc) in the next few days and adding it to my open revenue dashboard:

http://nomadlist.com/open

Rough calculations is that it’s somewhere from 80% to 90% profit margin pre tax.

pc86
Let's use a car as an example. Say Peter's biz buys a car and he uses it. Is that an expense? Does the biz make less profit because of that car payment? Or is he just spending profit on it since it's mainly/entirely personal use? Not trying to get into a tax discussion but my point is profit can be massaged and is entirely subjective. Revenue is not. The money came in, or it didn't. Even in the US for single-job W2 employees, tax rates vary even by locality for folks at the same pay rate in the same company. So with identical pay, benefits, retirement savings, state and federal taxes, my personal take home pay is different than the guy next to me because we live in different townships. Same with business. Revenue is the easy number, profit is pretty subjective.

And by definition profit is a fraction of revenue. It can't exactly be more than 100% can it?

matte_black
Bwaha, revenue can be massaged even worse. There are companies making BILLIONS in revenue, and it all sounds very impressive until you see they are actually burning more money than they are even making. Profit can’t be more than revenue, but it can certainly be negative.
pc86
Making billions but spending more is not "massaging revenue." It's being shitty at turning a profit.

Please explain the scenario in which you can take the same balance sheet and use it to show two different revenue figures. You can't. You can easily do the same thing with profit.

matte_black
You could add in deferred revenue from previous quarters.
pc86
Is that what Pieter Levels is doing? Stop moving the goal posts.
zeckalpha
Newsblur and Overcast come to mind.
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.
gkya
I know me some languages (human ones) and some programming. I can read from people's faces that they think I'm a nutcase when they learn about that and then I tell them I want to become a comparative literature researcher instead of becoming rich.
[dead] ataturk
A lot of sites like this one are geared to do just that so don't fall for it. Indie Hackers is another one. "You suck because you're not rich yet."

Most small businesses fail. Some do well for a short time, then fail. There are a lot of completely miserable people out there. Your #1 job is to NOT be completely miserable. If you can succeed with a small business (or even a large one) that's great! But like I said in my other post, there's a ton of bs out there.

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/

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 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.