Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?
The last thread by the same name got a lot of attention, but seeing as it's over a year old it would be interesting to hear from new people and also get updates from some people who posted in the previous thread.
Previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487
288 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 306 ms ] threadWhat I would recommend is reading up about different ways to make money, looking at things that other people have done in the past, then find ways to think up what niche you could fill.
After that its about getting it done.
Look up Patio11 and read his comments, that's a great start.
-- Old Chinese curse
Oftentimes many of the recurring services are easily replicable. So until a market leadership position is cemented (until you set up the moat) you don't want others to know that building XYZ service actually could be significantly profitable.
Even though the site has been up & running (and stable) for almost a decade now, they don't want to make the jump unless there are OTHER entire school districts already on board that they can talk to.
I'm not quite sure how to solve this chicken/egg problem yet. And since it's a side project, I'm not even sure I want to solve it right now -- that would sabotage my primary work, unless I could rapidly find someone capable to help with it.
But posting obviously-non-corporate-level sales numbers just a google away really doesn't seem like it would help things; ESPECIALLY because those same numbers will still be just a google away 5 years from now, even if the actual numbers are an order of magnitude higher by then.
This generates between $60-$90 per month, depending on... well, I honestly have no idea what it depends on. Pizza money. And bragging rights.
This app is basically in maintenance mode though I have a lot of things I want to do with it. Android programming is so difficult, though (difficult documentation, impossible for me to figure out how to do anything gui-related) that it's been hard for me to really make big enhancements.
In fact, since going to Google IO this year, I'm no longer a VM customer! Might buy a cheap VM account to do maintenance on this app, which would still be profitable for me.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jaygoel.vi...
[2] https://github.com/poundifdef/VirginMobileMinutesChecker
They have a feature called AdWhirl, which automatically displays ads from different providers depending on who will pay you the most at a given time. I have not tried this. If you do, let me know how it goes!
I have no idea what I'm talking about. But there's a lot of interesting tests to run.
Also - and the AdMob guys told me the same thing when I talked to them at google io - my app only has about 30k active users. This is hardly enough (because click-through rates are so low) to be able to find meaningful trends and test them, because the data is so inconsistent and I'm probably not getting high-quality expensive ads anyway.
If any of the above is wrong, then let me know! I'd love know how this stuff actually works, especially as it applies to small-potatoes devs like me.
I bought an el-cheapo Android phone from Virgin Mobile and was annoyed that I couldn't check to see how many minutes I have left. I searched on the internet, and others had the same problem, and would post about it (eg, howardforums.com)
So I wrote the app and then posted to those message boards: "Hey, check this out, I created a free app. It's crappy but it works."
(This inspired me to hunt down that forum post. Here: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1686978-Intercept...)
It started catching on from there, and it also shows up when you type "virgin mobile" into the android market store.
So besides plugging it on the internet (a few forums, on HN, telling friends) I haven't done that much.
I recently moved to Manhattan, and was in a radio shack buying a top-up card. I was chatting with the cashier, who was also a VM customer, and asked her if she'd ever used my app. I showed it to her, she liked it, and said she would recommend that all of her customers download that app when they buy VM phones. I have no way to know how many sales that generated, but it was a cool feeling!
Why is this? Do you have much experience programming in Java? The Android Developer [1] website is a fantastic resource for learning about both the design and development standards on the platform. The User Interface Guide [2] is particularly exceptional at explaining how to implement different UI components on a technical level.
[1] http://developer.android.com/ [2] http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/overview.html
I'm really really proficient in Java. I used to teach it in school, I've done it professionally, etc. So I had no trouble at all writing the actual "guts" of the app, or even the android-specific APIs. And while I'm not great at swing/awt, I can make it work if I need to.
But it really breaks down when I get to the Android gui+os-specific things. I find myself having to memorize (and reference, and re-reference) words like Activity, Intent, Bundle, View, etc. You have many kinds of menus and dialogs - options menus, preferences menus, etc.
Of course, all of the information is there, and perhaps it's worth reading all of it, one page at a time, in order become a proficient android programmer. But it's so specific to that one platform, and has has such a new set of vocabulary which isn't common anywhere else in computing, that I personally have found it really difficult.
It looks like the documentation has gotten much, much better over the past couple of years, so maybe you've inspired me to give it a fair shake. But I really wanted to "jump in and build" and that has a much larger learning curve than I would have liked.
1. 1,108.00 --- VA Disability 2. 100.00 --- Client retainer 3. 934.00 --- Social Security (starting in October)
Total: 2142.00
Analysis: It is good to like Ramen Noodles!
--hsm
About €1600 EURO, £1250 GBP.
How many are you supporting on this income?
My main business (a bootstrapped SaaS startup) generates more than that, but the profits are mostly being reinvested back into the company, so I don't think it qualifies as passive income.
Most of the revenue comes from the Amazon Affiliate program, but recently we've been making a decent amount off of display ads from the BlogHer ad network. Google AdSense contributes a little bit as well.
As for SEO, I wrote the blogging software from scratch (I don't like Wordpress) so the SEO is entirely under my control. I'm no SEO expert though, so I'm sure there are many things I could be doing better.
I definitely think the SaaS startup is relevant here. I just used the same title as the last thread, but personally I'd like to hear about any sort of recurring revenue. And as someone who's developing their own SaaS product right now, I need all the motivation I can get from others' success stories.
I don't wish to pressure you about your metrics, but how long did it take you to get your SaaS startup to where it is now? And are you working on it solo?
For now, here are some things you might find interesting/motivational:
-My brother and I started the company about three years ago. We launched an MVP in January 2010.
-After 6 months we had about 10 paying users (at $10/user/month). After 12 we had 50, after 18 we had 200. Since then things have picked up and we're adding >100 paying users each month now. Both my mom's blog, and the SaaS business took a long time to ramp up, but both had their tipping points after about 1.5 years.
-About a year ago we hired our first employee to help out with customer service and other random things. We plan on adding four more over the next couple of years, two of whom have already started working part-time.
I hope that helps. There's nothing better than seeing thousands of people passionately using a product you created, so stick with it!
Over 100 new paying customers per month is incredible in my opinion. Especially for what I would guess is one of the most competitive SaaS markets out there. If I can reach that many total customers on my cheapest plan I will be ecstatic.
If you don't mind me asking, what user acquisition channels have you found most effective for selling to small businesses?
When we started we spent ~$3,000/month on AdWords to get our initial customer base. Once we had enough users, we stopped advertising and word of mouth took over. We basically don't do any marketing right now, but that we're going to change that soon.
I have a few questions:
* Are you building on top of a blog platform, or is this mostly custom? (The BuiltWith page makes this site appear full of tech [1]).
* What % of the revenue comes from Amazon referral links?
* Are there other revenue sources?
* Can you discuss your visitor distribution (first time vs. repeat), and traffic sources?
1: http://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fwww.theyummylife.com%2fRe...
Until recently, Amazon made up almost all of our revenue. Now that we're doing slightly better with advertising, Amazon makes up about 60-70%. We also sell a $1 eBook, but we only sell about one per day, so that revenue isn't significant. This information isn't up-to-date, but you can read a blog post about our monetization: http://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/articles/259/How_I_monetized_...
Visitor information:
-65% new, 35% returning
-1.7 pages per visit
-1.2 million page views last month
-Most traffic comes from Pinterest or direct. We get ~3000 visitors from search each day. My mom (understandably) hates link building, so we don't have many inbound links meaning there's not much referral traffic, and we also have weak SEO relative to other blogs our size.
-Almost all traffic comes from the U.S.
Top-notch design.
One of her friends is a professional photographer and gave her some pointers when she first started which helped a lot. Even still, if you look at her older posts, you can tell that the photos weren't nearly as good back then as they are now. Practice makes perfect I guess.
This little known tip can net you a lot more money, it has worked for me... https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/t2/a...
Also, I'm curious about the platform your site is built on, the affiliate links are cool because they seem to all be related to the recipe; I'm curious how you handle the organization.
Thanks for the feedback.
Together they make about 30-50€/month. I'm working on a couple of new features and I'm searching for a new name, but currently school takes up most of my time.
Not very impressive (who knew selling a niche tool in an environment where $5 is considered "expensive" wasn't the road to instant riches?), but it has been fun to make and it is always cool to hear about how useful the tool has been to fellow developers.
If I were trying to make a full-time living off something like this, then there are a bunch of things I'd do differently - such as what you suggest.
"Sell to the boss" is one of those little revelations I've had lately and, like any Damascene conversion, I'm being a bit of loudmouth about it.
Edit: I see 'from what' is also the question; I have a bunch of entertainment related sites.
1. How long did it take to reach this level of income?
2. What is the total monthly traffic that generates 122k?
3. How much time does it take to manage the whole thing in its present state?
2) 8 million monthly uniques
3) Hard to say. I can take a month off and it'll probably go fine. If it crashes, I'm on it 24/7 (if I care for my wallet). I do work on it full time, but that's working on growth as well as managing the present state. I try to outsource as many chores and secondary tasks as possible, leaving the multi-disciplinary work for me.
I would probably work with other ad networks, but that wouldn't be cost effective to monetize my long tail of smaller sites. It would lead to a significant, if not huge, drop in revenue.
You do get in personal contact with people at Google starting at some level of revenue though. So if it ever happened, I guess I would see it coming in some way.
Or the market you were operating in?
I can't imagine that a publisher doing 25 million of revenue per year couldn't get in touch with anyone at Google.
What makes Adsense unique?
Surely, there are methods to squeeze more revenue out of Adsense, or any display ad for that matter, but you'll risk being banned. So that's not worth it, especially when you get bigger.
I do recommend trying out different ad networks and having them compete with each other and with adsense in an ad server such as OpenX or DFP.
- Are all your websites revolving around the same niche?
- How many do you deploy for particular keyword and its long-tail keyword?
- How many years/months you spent on keyword research? I mean when did you eventually ended up on this niche?
- All your income is just Adsense? or Affiliate marketing too?
- All yours websites are ranked #1 on SERP or few just somehwere on page #1?
- Is your traffic source completely organic?
- How much of black hat SEO involved?
2) Yes.
3) How many what? Links?
4) I started out in the niche without knowing any SEO at all. Started building a product and built a lot of links for traffic. The authority and product I built then were the fundament for everything else. Not annoying my users, and building a strong site were always very important, as opposed to doing short-term black hat stuff while forgetting about content. I continually do keyword research; always keep my eyes open.
5) Not just Adsense, some other ad networks as well. All display ads though.
6) Depends. There are many keywords, some rank #1, some page #1, some don't rank at all. Depends on the quality of the content as well, I continually work on that.
7) For this project, yes. I've done PPC on other projects, but it doesn't seem to be profitable so far for this one.
8) Depends on what you call black hat. I've never spammed anything. Have bought a link here and there in the past, but I do have a huge amount of natural links as well. I guess that for industry standards, I'm pretty clean.
You've got nothing to lose :) but I can guarantee gain.
I'm looking for a developer that can help take the site to the next level if anyone's interested email is in my profile.
a) Got a job at a major software company for very high comp. b) Spent an extra 5-10 hours a week working intelligently at my full time job; got promoted. c) Invested the salary, bonus, and stock from my high comp. corporate job in real-estate and tech-heavy index funds, and reap the (literal) dividends passively.
b) is optional; even without the promotion, I would still make enough money to generate almost all of my passive income via investments. Not bad for zero hours per week.
A stable income has allowed me to buy a house at the bottom of the housing market, which will appreciate at about 1% over inflation; my other investments typically do 2-8% over inflation (especially retirement funds, which grow tax-deferred). All in all, at least $1K per month, spiking to much more. At the rate I'm continuing to invest, I'll likely double that monthly return within 18 months.
Sure, this is all pretty volatile, but no more volatile than entrepreneurship, and with much better worse and average case scenarios.
Best of all, these investments will, in the long term, outpace inflation, which is more than can be said for selling software or tech stuff, which tends to depreciate in price over time (after all, the marginal cost of software is zero, which depresses prices due to competitive dynamics).
In a past life, I read many books on investing, primarily Jack Schwager's Market Wizards and my personal favorite, Reminisces of a Stock Operator. There's a lot of interesting stuff about the markets--game theory, behavioral finance--but unless you're going to spend a lot of time on it, the markets can be approximated as casinos for which you do not have an edge. Best to put your money in small and mid-cap index funds.
Similarly, most consumer real estate investments take a lot of time to manage (rental properties), so I've focused on my home, something which I would have to maintain anyway. In this climate you can get a loan so cheap you're best off putting as little down as possible and investing the rest. But you may want to buy a house within the next year or so as a hedge against inflation and to take advantage of the unholy combination of low interest rates and a relatively cheap housing market. If the Euro cracks or the Fed ends up printing money, we may find ourselves in an inflationary environment. If you have a fixed rate loan, you're golden--your income will rise with inflation, but your monthly payments will not, cheapening your debts.
Overall, my advice is to focus on setting up some compounding investments very early in life. Many people dabble in all kinds of things, like entrepreneurship, as a youth because they're fun. It's important to have hobbies, but for things that really matter, you can't afford to fool around. For example, I could join Y Combinator straight out of school and spend two years at a startup eating Ramen, or I could join Google and eat Ramen. If I did the latter, I'd have $50K in my 401Ks and up to $150K in other investments. Invested wisely, proceeds from those two years will give you $4M of today's dollars at retirement, even if you don't invest another penny--a nice safety net which will allow you to do riskier things later on in life. Entrepreneurship is a lottery ticket which is likely to fail. There are only so many good businesses (born of confluences of macro trends) out there, and it's hard to be in the right place at the right time. You could try to get lucky and end up scratching a living out of hardscrabbble, or you could use your talent to rise within the few companies which are actually printing money, and then let your dollars work for you.
I tried creating/selling other things to businesses. This time, it's mostly you and me's, paying it out of their own wallets. Never expected this to work so well.
* Bootstrapped
* Raised my consulting rates to free up more time for products (= same amount of consulting income)
* Most new customers come via referrals from existing users and organic traffic (via targeted blog posts)
* Wrote a complementary book targeting people who aren't necessarily looking for PM software (http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com), and upselling Planscope through that. Extremely successful so far.
I did my own design, but there are plenty of themes out there that could incorporate the above formula and do just as well (or better).
These are the sort of success stories from you regular joes that are more common than the typical "1 billion dollar acquisition" startup.
A couple of questions if you don't mind:
a) What technology stack are you using/did you use to develop planscope?
b) How did you deal with scalability?
c) Are you doing everything by yourself? Support, Development, Marketing, etc.
Thanks in advance!
b) I really don't have any scaling issues. I have about 120 paid customers, and on a given workday half of them login at some point. It probably takes quite some time for the average B2B product to run into scaling issues (unless you're doing some sort of extreme number crunching or something)
c) I do everything. 20% of my product time is spent coding, the rest is marketing. Support whenever I need to (usually less than 30 mins response time if I'm awake)
Feel free to drop me a line with any other questions, I'm pretty much an open book :-) brennan at planscope.io
Again, congrats on your product and hope it gets better in the near future.
I really like publicly journaling how my products are evolving over time, especially since it seems to be either helping or inspiring some people. And plus, I know I've received direct or indirect customers from doing this.
* I don't have a CC paywall, but people I trust who convert much higher than I do recommend it, so I'll probably A/B test a paywall soon enough.
* Nope. There is no such thing as a singular product launch. If you launch, and no one shows up, figure out what went wrong and repeat. Persistence is everything.
How are you driving folks to the site?
Then I had $50 of Facebook credit and that turned into like 20-30 users.
Just don't know what to do at this point. Don't want to spend more time adding features if it is not going to lead to anything.
Was thinking of making it like $10 a year or something and trying to get paid users instead of ad users. Just not sure if anyone would even pay $10.
My site posts a timeline post when a user creates a new round (unless you have turned that off). So it is kind of a free impression so I prefer facebook sign-ups. Maybe that is a project for the winter make it mobile (jquery mobile?) and implement some sort of payment system. $10/year seems fair to me. Just have to figure out an amount that will cover my hosting + adwords spend on a typical month.
The developer has a really good blog describing his micro ISV experiences, but it hasn't been updated recently.
* General design needs rework especially the blog.
* Can you make an app to allow quick data entry.
* Most importantly why not try and build a social aspect? Forum / Leaderboard functionality. Is that too 2009?
To the best of my knowledge, every registered club golfer is allocated a Golflink number, and the result of each competition round is recorded for calculation handicaps. I don't recall what detailed information is recorded - it might be nothing other than the round result - but for many people this would be 'enough'. I had thought about developing such a system too, but thought that without creating an 'official' relationship with Golflink my semi-parallel system would (in Australia at least) go nowhere. However, I still think it is a very good idea, as many golfers really love to track all sorts of stats and info.
If this had a mobile app I could carry around a golf course and map my every shot, I would pay plenty of cash for that. Automated stats that would help me focus on the shortcomings of my games and let me understand the trends of my shots.
In fact, I may have given myself an idea...
Currently I am planing a SaaS Newsletter Mailer.
I'd still prefer it over SaaS Mail because I don't have re-occuring costs every month and I like being in control of my own email lists and the iframe embedded email newsletter signup is awesome. I wouldn't have it any other way.
I'm the one that asked you about how to check the database to see if a user had already signed up for a specific category newsletter before adding them to it again. That's another thing you should fix.
3 little flaws but the rest of the script is just sooooo perfect. It's sold over 1800+ times because designers/developers like us HATE SaaS newsletter mailers. We like your script.
Royalties: passive income 1.0.
[1] http://egypt.urnash.com/tarot/
What is the general purpose of the app?
I'm in business since 2008, and this is my second business, first one was hosted PBX service.
Improvely is a monthly subscription with a free trial period, W3Counter is freemium, and DialShield is pay-as-you-go. They are all bootstrapped and profitable.
Of all the SaaS entrepreneurs I've found, you seem to be the one who's closest to exactly where I want to be eventually (running a suite of SaaS products).
Do you have any general tips for people following the same path? Anything you'd do differently?