For Buffer, the first $10k came from approximately our first 1,000 paying customers. That said, we've changed our pricing a few times so the number may not be exact.
The great part about getting $10k from recurring payments is that it can grow beyond $10k pretty quickly (now $100k+/mo).
As for the real "how", I think the key is to first find out something you can solve which is truly a problem for some number of people, and then to provide it and market to people the fact it exists.
My first company (a sales force automation product, back in 2002) made 10k in its second month of existence by selling integration services to two customers. We were only able to make 10k of RECURRING revenue (by selling product licenses) YEARS later, however (and the consulting/integration side, although lucrative, doesn't scale that well and was VERY time-consuming).
As for a "consumer" product, myguestmap.org (2005 - about to go defunct in a couple of weeks due to changes on google maps' licensing) made 10k in donation revenue in its first year (it paid VERY handsomely for a product that took me a day to make, both in donations and in ads). It never generated enough revenue to sustain itself, though, but was a very fun ride (most donations came along with a great story on why they were using the service - and that included all sorts of groups, from cancer patients to sheep farmers trying to connect with fellow strangers).
This is actually something I've been toying with for some time. I have a pretty decent poker bot I've built from scratch, but I need a way of interacting with "real" poker clients, and configuring screen scrapers is BORING.
Do you recommend any other methods besides scraping? I've heard of people injecting DLLs into the process of the casino app, but I have no idea how to go about doing that.
I haven't been following the scene for a few years now, so can't tell if DLL injection and similar methods are detected by casino clients more easily and thus being riskier todo.
I know what you mean. We did DLL injection, network protocol analysis, reverse engineering, etc. and almost always went with screen scraping in the end due to its easiness and universality.
If you are lucky tho, the client might produce logs real-time and you can get events simply by polling the log file.
I made a 3D animation using 3D Studio for the Thomas J Watson Research Center. I was subcontracted - and very young, and I'm pretty sure the people that sub-contracted me made a LOT more than I did.
About.com paid out $800, a few small companies paid $100, but Northrop Grumman took the prize for paying out $9300
Although not explicitly stated, I think there was a minimum requirement of $100 to get a payout from a given company. Checks were issued from each company individually, so you literally had to make $100 from a given company to get that payout.
It's scalable for the partners at Skadden (and similar service firms) to trade time for money because the time they trade is that of other people (viz., associates, and/or analysts at investment banks) who put in prodigious hours in the hope of becoming partners themselves someday in the distant future.
Sure. That's how you scale a professional services organization.
Later
You fleshed this comment out, which is great, but I want to be careful to say I'm not endorsing the business model of wringing hours out of people's speculative hope that they'll reach the top of the pyramid. We don't have "work 60 hours a week and make partner" model, for instance.
But the general principle of developing and refining skills to the point where they enable you to ramp up new people and deploy all your people more effectively is a good one that works in a variety of different cases.
Tech is myopic (extremely) about professional services; many of the largest firms in our economy are effectively scaled-up professional services companies.
Agree that tech is myopic... or perhaps it's just a segment of tech - there are a lot of tech people working happily for those large PS firms you mention.
I'm in public accounting. We just arbitrarily raise our rates. At the end of the day it depends on what the partners are selling. Audit work has kind of stopped growing. Consulting could grow but all these public accounting firms are fairly risk averse as well.
I made my first $1000 by doing a project for someone while in college which was a javascript based Basketball scoreboard back in 2003. No fancy jquery. Plain old boilerplate javascript and DOM manipulations. It was fun. The guy sold it to high schools for thousands more while my cut was $1000. It was intense and took a while to get it right but it taught me a lot. Since then, haven't done anything like that and just a consultant now!!
First $10k was made almost 14+ yrs ago when we were asked to build a website for a music artist. We had never built a web site before nor had we any knowledge on the backend. But we spoke well and seemed to know what we were doing. We spent the first 2 weeks learning how to make it and luckily it turned out decent. That led to about 5 years of consistent work from the same client and launched our new web dev business.
The first $10k I made were from ads on websites (pay per view, pay per click, affiliate marketing). In the meantime I sold one of them and then moved to domain names (catching dropped domain names and then parking/reselling them; still own most of them). Then I've built the biggest tattoo community in Poland with over 500k fans on Facebook (currently only making revenue through ads; next month we'll release our first t-shirt). Now I'm concentrating on building an easier and more secure authentication solution for the web (using mobile phone based cryptography instead of passwords).
A one time thing a while ago. Consultation job that evolved into a developer gig (when he quit) and that turned into a designer gig (he quit too) and I ended up doing all three.
But I have no complaints though. That company hired some very talented and loyal people who're still together to this day long after I left.
Was asked at university who would like to write code for the summer (no other details). I said yes as i had nothing else to do. It turned out to be a project working for a large company which paid the equivalent of $900 a week for 16 weeks. Went a nice way towards our mortgage deposit.
1. I made money high school doing web sites and tech support for individuals and small businesses around my neighborhood. Most of this work either came through friends & family or people I'd met while working in a student job helping people use the computers at the local library branch.
2. I made more in college by making up a paid job with the student affairs department (one that did need to be done, not make-work), related to my role with the student government, and then doing it. Is that entrepreneurial?
3. After I dropped out of college I worked doing odd jobs / handyman work, and as a contractors apprentice, doing home renovations. Once I learned the ropes, I went out on my own and worked for myself doing that.
4. After I finished college I went back to doing freelance web development, again working for myself.
While I learned things at all of these, any of them could have been my first $10k if none of the previous had happened.
In between, I worked non-entrepreneurially at a series of non-profits / not-for-profits -- a summer camp, my university, a hiking club. I now work for a growth stage company, and it definitely has its advantages in stability and ability to focus on the parts of the job you like. No doubt I will work for myself, and for other non-profits, again in the future.
Answered a tweet asking for help setting up an open source web service, ended up landing monthly $1K fee for "maintenance". Worked a total of four hours in one year for $12K, then the contract ended. I quit my real job soon after
Paper route. I went through a couple rear axles on my bicycle because the papers were so heavy. At one point it just snapped right in the middle. I guess I'm dating myself now, you kids don't remember what an actual newspaper looks like.
Using a bicycle? When I was a lad we had to carry them by hand, up-hill, down-hill, come rain or shine.
I'd have loved to have had a bicycle on my round(s). (Sunday mornings were the killer day, here in the UK the Sunday editions of newpapers are 2-5x the size of normal editions.)
I made a library application for Epic Games. Looking back, I think I severely undersold myself (closer to $1k than $10k). Then sold it to another studio. I'm thinking about converting it to a SaaS app, but I don't know how I'd gauge further interest (I made a barebones landing page but apparently google won't let you advertise those).
The one lesson that is extremely clear: networking is paramount. I only got the job initially because my name was thrown around by a friend and was only able to sell to the other studio because of a connection I made while doing the project.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadThe great part about getting $10k from recurring payments is that it can grow beyond $10k pretty quickly (now $100k+/mo).
As for the real "how", I think the key is to first find out something you can solve which is truly a problem for some number of people, and then to provide it and market to people the fact it exists.
As for a "consumer" product, myguestmap.org (2005 - about to go defunct in a couple of weeks due to changes on google maps' licensing) made 10k in donation revenue in its first year (it paid VERY handsomely for a product that took me a day to make, both in donations and in ads). It never generated enough revenue to sustain itself, though, but was a very fun ride (most donations came along with a great story on why they were using the service - and that included all sorts of groups, from cancer patients to sheep farmers trying to connect with fellow strangers).
Do you recommend any other methods besides scraping? I've heard of people injecting DLLs into the process of the casino app, but I have no idea how to go about doing that.
I know what you mean. We did DLL injection, network protocol analysis, reverse engineering, etc. and almost always went with screen scraping in the end due to its easiness and universality.
If you are lucky tho, the client might produce logs real-time and you can get events simply by polling the log file.
Back when I was in middle school (on AOL)
I think I earned $100 or so but was never paid.
Although not explicitly stated, I think there was a minimum requirement of $100 to get a payout from a given company. Checks were issued from each company individually, so you literally had to make $100 from a given company to get that payout.
Later
You fleshed this comment out, which is great, but I want to be careful to say I'm not endorsing the business model of wringing hours out of people's speculative hope that they'll reach the top of the pyramid. We don't have "work 60 hours a week and make partner" model, for instance.
But the general principle of developing and refining skills to the point where they enable you to ramp up new people and deploy all your people more effectively is a good one that works in a variety of different cases.
Tech is myopic (extremely) about professional services; many of the largest firms in our economy are effectively scaled-up professional services companies.
But I have no complaints though. That company hired some very talented and loyal people who're still together to this day long after I left.
Worked surprisingly well as a strategy. Recommended, and gives a great start in life.
2. I made more in college by making up a paid job with the student affairs department (one that did need to be done, not make-work), related to my role with the student government, and then doing it. Is that entrepreneurial?
3. After I dropped out of college I worked doing odd jobs / handyman work, and as a contractors apprentice, doing home renovations. Once I learned the ropes, I went out on my own and worked for myself doing that.
4. After I finished college I went back to doing freelance web development, again working for myself.
While I learned things at all of these, any of them could have been my first $10k if none of the previous had happened.
In between, I worked non-entrepreneurially at a series of non-profits / not-for-profits -- a summer camp, my university, a hiking club. I now work for a growth stage company, and it definitely has its advantages in stability and ability to focus on the parts of the job you like. No doubt I will work for myself, and for other non-profits, again in the future.
The weight of his papers is quite staggering. I sometimes think it weighs more than he does. :)
I'd have loved to have had a bicycle on my round(s). (Sunday mornings were the killer day, here in the UK the Sunday editions of newpapers are 2-5x the size of normal editions.)
The one lesson that is extremely clear: networking is paramount. I only got the job initially because my name was thrown around by a friend and was only able to sell to the other studio because of a connection I made while doing the project.