HN Explorer

Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

351 points by kewball ↗ 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.

293 comments

[ 964 ms ] story [ 1767 ms ] thread
dm2
I do consulting and software development and am technically a small business.

I'm down to a single client (much easier to manage than multiple clients) so I can pretty much pick my projects, work at my own pace, and get paid fairly decently.

I don't make millions, but I make enough and am happy.

Below isn't really business but was a brilliant idea by someone. It isn't my site but maybe it'll inspire someone to do something similar: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

IndieDevClub
I remember that website. In college my friend and I called it the Pet Rock of the internet. Still can't believe that idea made $1 million.

btw - I'm making a club for people to discuss/show their side projects and startups with other devs, check my profile for the link.

paul_f
Isn't working for a single client called a "job"?
collyw
I remember the million dollar homepage when it appeared. I thought it was a terrible idea, but it got enough attention on the tech sites that it worked.

Then came a whole load of copycat sites. As far as I know most of those failed.

ivan_ah
I run a small one-man-show publishing house: http://minireference.com. I produce math/physics textbooks for adults. I'm the author, business person, marketing person, and strategic partnerships person. Revenues are not stellar, but they keep me off the streets...

The value I provide is synthesis of a lot of educational material that exists out there into a coherent package (a book). In many ways, my work is similar to what linux distro package managers do: ensuing prerequisites are covered before the main package is installed.

I remember hearing one of the early Internet/www inventors saying the Internet will allow people to "live from the fruits of their intellectual labour." Does anyone know who this was??? With eBooks and print-on-demand this is finally possible now. I would encourage everyone with deep domain knowledge about a subject to start writing about it and publish a small book. I think "information distillation" is of great value for readers. Feel free to email me if you need help/advice with the publishing stuff.

tictac232434
I read the preview to your book and it looks fantastic. Just what has been missing in school. I'm an engineering student and like many other will greatly benefit from this text. Have you considered writing more on math and physics? I would surely buy even more advanced topic like electricity, magnetism, and discrete math (Sets, proofs, induction etc.)
ivan_ah
Hi tictac, and thank you for the kind words.

I actually have a draft on E&M which is 70% done, but I've now learned that it takes me about 1 year to get a book into good shape so I won't try to finish it just yet and instead spend the next six months working on the business side of things: scaling distribution and sales.

Two other topics which I feel competent enough to write about are probability and vector calculus so by 2015 I'll get to these topics too. I don't feel I have enough experience teaching more advanced topics to write about them---also there is less need for No Bullshit guides, because advanced math/phys books are quite good and bullshit free. It seems it's the freshman-year books that suck the most.

yankoff
I have both of your books: math&physics and linear algebra. Keep up a great job!
blumkvist
bg?
ivan_ah
Да. Inspiration-а за книгата идва до голяма степен от кондензираните книги коите се използват в Българските университети.
alixaxel
Just bought your book, looks awesome and I'm sure it'll come in handy! =)
gmays
I'm doing http://justaddcontent.com solo and self-funded. It turned into a bigger project that I anticipated, especially for my first product.

I started working on it full-time in October. It started as a hobby project about two years ago. It took particularly long because I have a non-technical, military background and had to teach myself to code, design, write copy, marketing, etc. It's been a fun challenge.

I still work on it 12-14hrs a day on average, but I still love it and I love the problem I'm solving. The last few months I started focusing on product again and my customers absolutely love it, which is awesome. Now I'm turning my attention back to marketing.

Like the other guys, I'm not making millions yet, but I'm 100% self-funded and in no danger of running out of money. I continue to put 100% of what I make back in the business after my essentials.

I'm not sure when I'll start hiring, but I have some pretty major plans that I'll need help executing. It's just one of those things where it'll completely change the game, but it'll also change the dynamic of the business.

ramykhuffash
Well done! I don't need a business website, but I felt a slight urge to give you my money after reading the value proposition. I especially liked the "what we do vs what you do" part.
gmays
Thanks, that really means a lot. Over the last few months I've been working hard to refine it. I feel like I'm finally getting there.
adventured
What technical skills did you end up teaching yourself (if you don't mind answering)?

I was reading the about page, fast skimming, and thought for a moment you flew the FA-18. Nope, just your awesome wife!

In looking over your site, it might be valuable to add a blog, where you write about the needs of small businesses regarding hosting (what's new, what's coming, etc). Can be a great way to build some extra traffic, and authority.

gmays
Everything. My BA is in Psychology, my MS is in Finance, and I spent the last 8 years in the Marine Corps (joined right after college) so I had no experience with programming, design, product development or anything like that.

In grad school I built a website for my thesis (2010) and fell in love with web development. I originally wrote it in HTML, but became cumbersome updating menus on every page, so I 'discovered' PHP includes, which was like inventing the wheel for me. From there I started playing with different web development frameworks and doing more advanced stuff. I really just fell in love with web development even though I sucked at it (particularly because I'm color blind, figure that one out).

It was fun to see my skills evolve. I still have a long ways to go, but as I iterate I see my own progress. Since I've worked on it alone it's like a journey of self-discovery.

Yeah, my wife is awesome. I surprised her in when I told her I wanted to leave the Marine Corps to turn my hobby project into a business, but she was totally supportive once she saw how passionate I was about it...really can't ask for more than that. She also works 12-14hrs a day and we don't have any kids, so it's perfect.

I agree, you're absolutely right about the blog. I've been 'meaning' to do it for the last few months and I'm finally getting around to it. The blog should be up in the next week or so.

pedroo
Sounds like an amazing journey. Congrats on all the hard work.
gmays
Thank you!

It totally was, and it continues to be. I built the beta in my free time when I came off missions on my last 12-month deployment to Afghanistan (returned April 2013). When I deployed in April 2012 I didn't know anything about tech. I listened to podcasts (I downloaded hundreds before deploying, mostly Mixergy) when I worked out (still do) and read a lot of business books.

I feel like I still have a lot to learn, but I've come a long way in the last two years. It's been one hell of a ride, I'm just happy I'm still enjoying it. Don't tell my customers, but I'd do this for free I love it so much haha.

whatevsbro
>> This website is protected and guaranteed secure by a 100% hacker free security guarantee. This guarantee ensures that this website was scanned and deemed free from of any phishing scams, exploits, or malware that could infect your computer and jeopardize your safety.

So you're selling snake-oil too?

dlss
I think it's in the same spirit as a 100% update SLA or a 100% satisfaction guarantee
gmays
Exactly! From the beginning I considered this an essential feature of a business website that the budget website builders didn't offer. So after putting it together, why not offer it as a key feature/differentiator? We'll see if it helps over the next few months.
gmays
I don't believe so. All websites are scanned regularly.

There's no way to make a website completely hack-proof, so the guarantee means that any security related issues (hacking, malware, etc.) will be fixed at no cost to the customer.

In doing customer development I was surprised to learn how many small businesses had experience with hacking or had security as a primary concern. Website cleanup typically costs a couple hundred dollars on the low-end, so the guarantee provides peace of mind. It's a bit expensive on our end, but it's just an incentive to do an even better job.

Would you call that selling snake-oil? If so, let me know (my contact info is in my profile). I'm not a security expert, but I do hire them and believe the security guarantee is accurate. Please contact me if you disagree or I can improve it, I take this pretty seriously. Thanks for bringing it up, that's why I love posting here.

imjk
When you say, "built on the same platform trusted by Ford, NFL, Sony, eBay, CNN," do you mean they use the same backend technology, or that they're actually customers of yours?
gmays
The same backend technology. Most of my customers are small businesses or marketing departments in larger businesses.
bacon
He means WordPress.
fuzzythinker
Really love how you layout the "What We Do" vs. "What You Do" - Strong selling point, visually appealing, and pretty unique.
gmays
Thanks, I really appreciate that. I'm actually pretty self-conscious about the design because I don't have a design background and I'm color blind. Every time I use new colors (which isn't often) I have to send them to my wife to let me know if they look ok. It's a real pain in the ass, but whatever, I love the work.
fuzzythinker
The entire page is very professional, good CTAs, easy to understand. I'm even more impressed now that you say you did it yourself and don't have a design background.
vram22
Checked out the site a bit, looks good. Also good domain name :)
gmays
Thanks! I picked up the domain name for around $150, which I actually thought was expensive at the time. The .org and .net versions were available, thankfully.
santa_boy
Nice.

How do you market this stuff? How are you getting customers?

If you don't mind, can you share some stuff on the revenue numbers and what your experience has been from conversations with customers?

Is there a way we could chat up?

patio11
Even if you were to scope it just to software/SaaS product companies, there's minimally hundreds of these in the world and dozens of them have HN accounts. Most don't post on threads like this, so I feel the need to pipe up and say "This is quite doable, and done, much more than you might expect."

I run a small software company (two, technically). Products include Bingo Card Creator (http://www.bingocardcreator.com), Appointment Reminder (https://www.appointmentreminder.org), and occasional offerings for training for other software companies. I used to do consulting, too, but quit to focus on products.

I'd describe it as "modestly successful." It's the sole financial support for my wife and I. I'm the only full-time employee of the business (for a very quirky understanding of the words "full-time").

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iagooar
A little bit off-topic, but I find it really interesting how some American webpages have a look and feel that is recognizable in a fraction of second. The website https://www.appointmentreminder.org/ is one of these, the second you enter, the second you know it is a US American page.
joelennon
What a bizarre comment, I expected to see American flags and red and blue text but the site looks like any website, American or otherwise.
tonyedgecombe
I thought that until I visited the page, the graphics and content both feel American to me.
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georgiecasey
the american phone number is the only thing that stands out for me
peterjancelis
It's a theme from WooThemes, a company with 2 South African founders and one Norwegian one and, as far as I know, an international customer base.

Not sure what is so US American about this theme.

tinco
I think he's talking about the marketing style, or perhaps the art style of the eyecatcher.
tatalegma
Are you talking about appointmentreminder? I thought that was a single owner, the guy who lives in Japan and who also created Bingo Card Creator?
Harelin
He's talking about Appointment Reminder's theme.
visualR
Although patio is an American he lives in Japan
zerr
It really requires a different mindset. For instance, while BCC makes sense, I can't imagine someone willing to pay for something like Appointment Reminder.
letstryagain
I think my dentist uses it. It's easy to forget an appointment that's 6 months in the future.
notahacker
One of my colleagues commented earlier this week how impressed he was that his doctor's surgery sent him an SMS the day before the appointment, presumably driven by similar software.
patio11
Suppose you run a professional services business where you have appointments. If people don't come to an appointment, you don't get money. You might pay an office manager to call people the morning of their appointment to remind them, so that they come into their appointment, so you get paid, right? Appointment Reminder is like an office manager who costs $200 a month, not $4,000 a month, is vastly more likely to successfully reach a customer, (virtually) never forgets to call, and does not consider boring, repetitive work to be an insult to her intelligence. For many of my customers, $200 is substantially less than they earn for a single appointment. (Think less "hair salon" and more "HVAC repair firm.")
rmc
tl;dr: Helps businesses not lose money. So they pay for it.
zerr
I didn't mean appointment reminding in general - which is a good thing obviously. But I thought it was a long time solved problem by other means (and not necessary by office manager), be it some "enterprise" calendar or todo software which are integrated in most of the "enterprise"/business software products, etc...
gk1
The crucial detail is that some small HVAC company may not even be using an "enterprise/business software product"... In fact they're probably still keeping appointments on a sheet of paper.
patio11
Substantially all problems were solved by someone else first. That doesn't meaningfully inhibit you from solving them, too. Reasons why this could redound to your advantage include superior marketing, positioning, ability to attack different niches, lower cost structure, or the ability to survive off the crumbs the big guys don't care about.

It's totally worth it for me to have the CEO and head of product development talk to your office manager for 30 minutes then custom code an import script, to get you onboarded at $200 to $500 a month. The 800 LB Gorilla basically doesn't care about you below $1k a month.

HeyLaughingBoy
Very late to this party, but...

I'm used to my dentist's office manager calling me every six months to remind me about my cleaning appointment. This last time, the call was automated and I instantly thought "hey, Appointment Reminder."

No, it turns out it was SmileReminder that the dentist uses. When I went in for the appointment I spoke to the office manager and the light in her eyes was obvious: "Now I don't have to spend hours calling everyone to remind them. I love it" No idea how much they pay for the service, but it's obviously worth it to them.

dublinben
> If people don't come to an appointment, you don't get money

This might only be common in the medical field, but I've always seen cancellation fees of around 100% of the appointment price.

chc
The medical field is one of the few where you feasibly can charge somebody who doesn't show up. Joanne the hairdresser down the street can't do that because she doesn't have all of your info down to your SSN and in fact she doesn't even have a collections department. Joanne's only recourse is to sit there twiddling her thumbs.

(And, BTW, I know several hairdressers who can go well over $200 for a single appointment.)

davidw
This is a pretty good comment in that it highlights the thought processes a lot of us go through. "I can't believe ..." or "I can't imagine ...". Believe it - there are tons of people out there willing to pay for various niche things that make their lives/businesses better. I've heard the same thing about one of my own projects, LiberWriter. There's open source software that kinda/sorta does what we do, but a lot of people just want to pay someone and make the problem go away. They don't want to know HTML or how NCX files work.
glazskunrukitis
Pato11's stories are always inspiring and interesting to read. They were a huge motivator to start my own business, which I eventually did.

My first attempt in online business was GetSSL.me (https://getssl.me), which has been one-man shop most of the time. It was pretty simple to set up and run, but the biggest pain point was payments, because of my geographic location. Also marketing was a big issue, because I am not a marketer and had to learn everything on the go. To be honest it was more like trial and error approach.

imjk
As someone who has no idea about the SSL certificate business, how does your business work? Are you a reseller or do you make money on affiliate commissions? Just genuinely curious.
dublinben
For one thing, their first product is sold for $2 more than it costs from other resellers.
glazskunrukitis
I am a reseller. GetSSL.me processes customer's order, requests a certificate from certificate authority (e.g. Comodo) and then they send the certificates to the customer.

The point of GetSSL.me is simplicity, price and support. If you were buying directly from Comodo, you would overpay a great amount, because reseller prices are much cheaper.

A lot of clutter has been removed from ordering process and you can get certificate in just a few minutes. Our support is friendly and helps with basically anything. Also a lot of people want to buy stuff from small, approachable businesses not from large corporations (e.g. GoDaddy).

mstump
Your cert for getssl.me has expired...
glazskunrukitis
Sorry that you had to see that, we had a little SSL downtime today while we renewed our certificates. All systems are operational now.
jasonkester
To underscore Patrick's point about just how many of these businesses there really are, he's one of the few folks I remember from the old Business of Software forums over at joelonsoftware.com that seem to have migrated over here.

That was a tiny little board where the owners of single player software businesses would get together to ask silly questions about how to update their shareware product's PAD files. There were a few hundred of these businesses represented there just among the regular users.

Most of them fly under the radar since, having products that provide a comfortable living with relatively low workload and no need to follow the latest hot technology trends, there's little reason your average Dot-Com-Thousandaire would ever stumble across a place like Hacker News.

Edit: forgot to plug S3stat (http://s3stat.com) and Twiddla (http://twiddla.com), my two main revenue generators, and FairTutor (http://fairtutor.com), hopefully the next one.

raphinou
I like the idea of the cheap bastard plan of s3stat. Very well done and well presented.
jdeibele
I have two daughters, a niece and a nephew who might be moving from Spanish Immersion this fall to classes that are more rigorous in math, science, etc. Maybe I'm your target audience., maybe not. When I look at your website, the last blog post and tweet are from 2010. It makes things look dead. We're not homeschooling but http://homeschoolspanishacademy.com/ looks a lot more active. Also, "fair trade" often seems to translate as "expensive". Education seems more valuable than coffee (now that I'm on my second cup) but not having any sense of what pricing or structure is like is off-putting.
imjk
I think you're getting at one of the major dilemmas of running a one-man lifestyle business, the need for self-self discipline and motivation. Once things are automated and profitable, it's hard to find the motivation to keep innovating and eventually even just updating the product. In my case, I started a niche website in 2008 that soon became profitable. I thereafter started working on other projects that we more successful and I abandoned new developments on my original site, which is still profitable and producing about the same revenue as 2008. It's just not a large enough revenue source to continue working on it over my other projects.
jasonkester
Thanks for that. Hey, your email's not in your profile so I can't contact you directly, but if you'd like some free lessons, I'd love to have you, the kids, and the nieces as beta testers when we relaunch this spring.

Drop me an email (in my profile) if you're interested!

kewball
Thanks patio11 and everyone else who has shared their story. I have been consulting for a few years and I plan on moving to a product based income. Built products in the past that have not been successful but hearing stories of others who have done it is motivation to keep trying.
ohashi
1 man startup - http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare I do web hosting reviews. Not the scummy pay-for-placement stuff you see, but an actual review site. It tracks what people are saying about hosting companies on Twitter and publishes the results.

The story is told a bit here http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/25/web-hosting-reviews-are-a-c... I was just tired after 10 years of still relying exclusively on my experience and the experiences of people I knew. Figured there must be a better way and I had been working with Twitter data for thesis and saw this opportunity.

cykho
Thanks for sharing - this is awesome. I've had an incredibly hard time finding good hosting service reviews.
ohashi
Glad you like it. It really is hard. You can read a lot of reviews and people will say contradictory stuff. One of the biggest takeaways from looking at all the data I've collected is that no company is even close to perfect. These services are pretty hard to compare apples to apples because there are a lot of touch points dealing with customers. The human interactions are hard to quantify. Sometimes a hard drive dies and you catch a support rep on a shitty day. You may have a really bad experience. Is that normal or just an outlier? It's really hard to tell without enough data. So I try and grab as much of it as possible and publish it transparently. My hope is that it is useful and people end up at companies they are more satisfied with, let the good guys benefit from treating people properly rather than paying the highest commission and locking people in.
BorisMelnik
wow, love this. may actually be the first web hosting review site I would ever look at. I get more spam on my blog from web hosting review sites than anyone. not sure why but seems like you have a lot of blackhat competition.

love your site & framework. good luck! Will share.

ohashi
Thank you! The competition is incredibly black hat. Try running the sites listed for 'web hosting reviews' under some SEO tools and it's often very clear which black hat strategies they are using (blog spamming, edu/gov spam, etc). I haven't been able to crack the top search terms yet because it's incredibly competitive and it's not a level/fair playing field. But working on creating some interesting content and building high quality links will hopefully pay off in the long run.

I am always open to ideas and suggestions for how to market this better. And I appreciate you sharing it!

itry
Interesting. You make a living from this? Is it all SEO driven?
ohashi
Yeah, I've been working on it for 3 years, in the past year it's been able to support me. It's not a lot of money, but it's enough that I can subsist on it. It also doesn't eat my time 100% anymore, I can do some consulting on the side when I feel like it. I'm actually just traveling in south asia now, trying to live cheap and seeing if I can work from anywhere.

As far as SEO, I get some SEO traffic although most of it is to blog posts that aren't that related to web hosting. The most popular ones are about creating a reverse proxy/caching server with nginx and long running processes in php. web hosting review seo is super competitive and I'm nowhere near the front page for most terms unfortunately.

itry
Thanks for the info. Inspiring. So you have other traffic sources apart from SEO?
ohashi
I have honest to god links, which actually still send traffic (amazing, right?). I also get some from social sources. I apparently get a bunch of direct traffic too... no idea where/why they are coming, but some days it's pretty good. Today's direct traffic is probably all HN.
tbrooks
I love the mad-lib style form on the home page.

I assum it converts well?

ohashi
It really depends on the traffic source/quality honestly. For some it can be exceptionally helpful (ie you have no idea what you need). For the HN crowd I linked directly to the data because I figured people would be far more comfortable with that.
enigmabomb
I sent you a contact form email. =)
musgrove
I run a web design and development studio that is just myself, although I established it as an LLC, and have been successful with it. I focus on WordPress solutions and started it by just diving in head-first and work pretty hard at it. I have a marketing background which helped me get it off the ground quickly, and am good at managing time, which has helped. I totally love it.
mattront
Just launched Pinegrow Web Designer (http://pinegrow.com) two months ago. The company is actually run by my wife and me, but I do all the work with Pinegrow while she is taking care of our other projects.

Pinegrow has been paying most of our bills since launch and I have a lot of expansions in the pipeline: full support for Foundation alongside Bootstrap, developer edition that'll work with templates, a similar app for designing emails...

abuzzooz
Pinegrow looks awesome. May I ask about what library you used to write it on the Mac? Do you have an embedded HTML renderer, or did you write your own?
mattront
Thanks! It's a Javascript app packaged with node-webkit. At first I packaged it as a Chrome App, but node-webkit was a lot more flexible and simple.

At the moment it uses Chromium to render HTML, but I'll add a custom renderer to support various templates.

sheff
This looks great! The upcoming developer edition that will work with templates sounds really useful as well.

Any plans to support the SASS version of Bootstrap ?

mattront
Partial support for SASS will be out next week (together with Foundation). The way it works is that when CSS rules are saved Pinegrow saves .css, .less and .scss versions. Variables, expressions and most of the functions are supported.
girvo
Gosh pinegrow is a cool project, but the massive deal breaker for me is a lack of a Linux client :( any chance of that at all? For distribution (cause packaging is a bitch, to be honest) you can use something like Ermine to compile twice (i386 and x64) and then convert to a single static binary.

For now, I'll continue playing with it on my Mac, but Linux support would be the best.

mattront
Actually, I have an experimental Linux build. Didn't really have a chance to test it. Here it is, if you would like to try it out:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gyzegb9sae3jlwh/Bv9NtDF96z (select ... and Download as zip).

Please let me know how it works out.

girvo
Giving it a try now, will send you an email with how I go :)
phantom_oracle
Wow! You're actually on HN! I've visited your site before, and you must see a lot of click-throughs from review sites, because you guys are up there with divshot and the other site-builders.

I'll also be testing out the linux client, and I'm sure that you are probably aware of the fact that a lot of web devs use some form of linux as their main desktop.

mattblalock
Man, 3 days is nothing!

Give me some time to fall in love, and I'll happily pay. It seems so shortsighted, as if I'd somehow use up all the usefulness of your app in 7 days or perhaps even 30 days.

Its a tool for work, and if it can reduce my load in any significant way I'd pay $500 for it. Now, I'll never really know. Too bad... for both of us.

mattront
Matt,

I get your point and have thought a lot about it before deciding on 3 days.

3 days was a compromise between having a short sales cycle (we are bootstraping the app) and letting users try the app before they buy it. We also have an online version available for free without any time limitations. The only thing the online version can't do is open local files.

We'll reconsider extending the trial to 7 days.

If you like the app and feel it could be useful to you it would be a shame to blow it off simply because of the short trial. If you need to try it out for longer, just send me an email and I'll set you up.

itengelhardt
I don't know whether HN is the right place to ask this question. The crowd for this frequents either http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm or http://academy.micropreneur.com

There's also a number of podcasts (notably "Startups for the Rest of Us" and "Bootstrapped With Kids")

davidw
Hi Christoph! I came here to post the bootstrapped.fm link too, but I think HN is a fine place to post this discussion too. I think the small, bootstrapped company is where it's at for many of us who don't want to or can't do the VC thing in SV. That's probably a large majority even on a site like this.

Rob's book is an obbligatory reference in this space too:

http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching-...

My own thing is not 'successful' in that it's not my main source of income just yet, but it's not too far off, either: http://www.liberwriter.com

One of the key things I've learned from it is to go do something that matters to 'ordinary people', rather than something that's "cool" from a computer guy point of view.

itengelhardt
Hi David! Great to hear that you are doing well with LiberWriter. That definitely is a pain point for people.

I like that you kept the layout simple using only bootstrap. that's a lot faster & cheaper than doing a full blown design.

davidw
Our customers could not care less about the design stuff as long as it looks decent, so it is not something I have bothered with even now that I have some money I could spend on it.
itengelhardt
Interesting, considering that you actually DESIGN their products. :)
davidw
eBooks don't actually allow for a lot of fancy design if you want them to work well on a variety of platforms.
itengelhardt
I image cross-platform compatibility is a PITA. But I find it interesting that people who pay for ebook design, don't care about website design. Mind you: That's no criticism of you OR your work. I just love the fact that people are more interested in the value than in the website design, even if they get value out of design work.

Hope that makes things clearer. Again: You're doing a great job!

davidw
eBooks are mostly about stripping out people's "design" stuff and replacing it with some fairly standard components that actually work, and adding in some various bits and pieces in XML, a hyperlinked table of contents, and stuff like that.
dangrossman
Hey there. /raises hand.

https://www.improvely.com and https://www.w3counter.com

Five figures a month, just me, I've written about my solo business a couple times in other Ask HN threads. Ten years ago (almost to the day), in my college dorm, I was looking at the Webalizer web stats report my web host provided for my blog, and thought "I could do something much cooler than this". So I did. I had built a few educational sites and threw some ads on them for a couple years before that, but W3Counter was the first service I actually charged a subscription for, and now I make a living building and selling this stuff.

leobelle
Ghostery blocks w3counter so it blocked pretty much everything on the actual site, maybe use a static domain that isn't blocked by ghostery. :O
dangrossman
You're running Ghostery for the purpose of blocking W3Counter and every other site like it. You can't really do that then lament the fact that it worked. I'm not going to invest time and effort into evading you; if you want to see web stats sites, you can just turn off the extension. Somehow I don't think there are any Ghostery users looking to sign up.
leobelle
I meant you should use a different domain for static content on your marketing page, and I'm not lamenting anything. Just giving you some advice. Ghostery has been installed over 1 million times just in Chrome. Any one has ghostery installed and is going to your site will see a completely broken webpage.
chill1
Why was leobelle being downvoted? I can understand disagreeing with what they were saying. It's an opinion after all. But, what they were saying wasn't that far off base..
stedaniels
Maybe if Ghostery was developed in a half way decent manner it wouldn't have a bad history of breaking sites and would block tracking more intelligently rather than blanket blocks of domains.
djt
Probably because the adverts that are blocked pay for the site. Kind of like asking musicians for zippy share links to their music.
dangrossman
Ghostery isn't an ad blocker, it's an analytics blocker. It's for people that don't want to be tracked on the web.
zbeewhs
If you don't mind me asking, what is your background? Do you have any advice for someone who aspires to follow in your footsteps?
dangrossman
I was just a kid whose family bought a computer at the right time. I got hooked, taught myself programming from online tutorials, and never stopped creating things. The stuff I made got more complex and more polished each time, until it got to the point that I can create stuff other people are willing to pay to use. There's really no prerequisite other than a computer and an interest in programming.
zbeewhs
Awesome. Thanks for the response! It's always nice to get some motivation to crack open a few books on a Saturday night.
fiatjaf
Do you have lots of users for W3Counter? How much users do you need for offering free content and making a profit from advertising? I'm interested.
emilioolivares
Awesome Dan, thanks for sharing. Very inspiring to see a one man show producing such fine products. Is there anything you outsource? You should write a book on the details of how you did it, I'd buy it in a heartbeat!
benackles
Hey Dan, Improvely looks like an awesome product. Incredible work for a one-person shop. Our company was talking about a click fraud monitoring system last week. I'm going to pitch this to the rest of our agency tomorrow.
benackles
Do you have a way to track call metrics? We'd like to be able to track conversions from a Google Voice number.
dangrossman
Nope. Call tracking is difficult and expensive, both in terms of money and complexity; I'd have to 10x my prices before even touching it. You also wouldn't be using a Google Voice number -- call tracking services work by renting huge numbers of phone numbers, and assigning a unique number to each visitor to your site for some time. Each person sees a different number, and their calls get routed to whatever your real number is after being logged for analytics. Improvely only tracks stuff that happens on your website.
bobosha
Not my business, but www.DuckDuckGo.com (Gabriel Weinberg) is a good example.
dangrossman
DDG isn't a solo business, not anymore at least. They've got "11-50 employees" now.
danpat
I created:

http://skitrails.info/

I'm an avid cross-country skier, and traditionally daily trail reports are done by hand by the maintenance staff after they're out all night working on the trails.

I had the bright idea of putting GPS tracking devices in grooming equipment and creating the "what's been groomed" report automatically, in real-time.

It took about 4 seasons to really get it right, and there was no appreciable income for that period. Lots of lessons learned about equipment (antennas, good wiring practices in vehicles, power cleanliness in big equipment, etc), good ways to present the data, map projections, how to deal with messy data, dealing with non-technical users, cross-border shipping tarrifs, mobile-network provisioning rules, the list goes on. I did it alongside my full-time job for the first 4 years.

It's a tiny niche, and one I never expect to get all that big, but it looks like I'll be able to make it my sole income source next season.

Which is great, because it'll let me go skiing more.

pokoleo
Hey - you should add a "how to setup" link to your site.
peterjancelis
I looked at your website and don't really understand how customers start using your site and how they pay you.

Do you sell them a GPS tracker and show them their GPS logs in an online map maybe?

If so, I'd make the selling of the GPS tracker more obvious. You can also do customer testimonials.

danpat
The site is focussed mainly on the consumer, the skiers, for whom the service is free (they just look at the maps).

The "customers" are ski area managers, they pay me to publish their maps and generate their trail reports.

The sign-up process is slightly obtuse on purpose. Because I'm still busy developing the site, only the really motivated customers actually contact me (via the "Contact" page), so I don't have to spend too much time doing a sales pitch that goes nowhere. I'm fortunate that I have a decent runway to play with.

I'll change that a bit this summer once I'm no longer frantically building out features.

There is effort required on my part for each sign-up, mostly around cleaning up GIS data that new customers supply, although I do supply a backend with tools for map management. The ski area managers are often extremely non-technical, and like the personal touch. I charge a modest premium for that.

kyleblarson
This is cool. I live in the Methow Valley and the MVSTA should use this!
dublinben
Or they could use a service that doesn't charge the public for the information.
danpat
I don't charge the public. Ski areas pay me a yearly fee to publish their reports. I handle all the data processing, generating maps, keeping servers up and running, mobile device provisioning, equipment testing, warranty, tech support, etc, etc.

There are a couple of areas that have tried to DIY, with limited success, they usually simply don't have the technical knowledge on staff. I've been surprised myself at the breadth of technical turf I've had to cover to create something that works reliably and simply. For a reasonably technical software engineer with a bit of hardware experience, it's not a big deal, but for everyone else, it's too complex a problem.

One of the really interesting problems I had to solve was reliably figuring out which trail the grooming equipment was traversing. Unlike roadways, the GPS data for the trails is typically either non-existent, inaccurate or just plain wrong. Cleaning that up is a bit of effort for each ski area. In addition, ski trails are often in much closer proximity than roadways, which combined with GPS error margins, means that I had to do some fairly gnarly stuff to avoid jumping between nearby trails constantly. It looks simple enough on the surface, but it required some real hair-pulling to get working reliably.

Contract negotiations with cell-network providers weren't much fun either. Many ski areas are in pretty marginal cell-network coverage regions, so finding devices that behaved well in that environment was critical (in addition to handling very cold weather, i.e. -40F for 8 hour stretches). The grooming staff are typically completely non-technical, working weird shift hours, etc, so the system has to be completely hands-off after installation. Finding a device that would do that, handle the harsh environment and be properly certified to operate on the north american mobile networks was no easy task.

HeyLaughingBoy
How do you handle installation? Do you go to every site to do it yourself, or is it contracted to someone local? I have had product ideas where this was one of the hurdles I couldn't cross: how to get non-technical people to install my product on equipment I had never seen before.
danpat
The devices are pretty easy to install, 3 wires (power, ignition, ground). Because this is heavy equipment, there's usually a mechanic somewhere nearby that can handle at least that.

I also make a version of the tracker that I pack inside a Pelican case and expose a cigarette lighter plug, for use on snowmobiles. Most people can handle plugging that in, no instructions required.

My local ski area has a couple of machines that they let me crawl through, so I take lots of photos of the important parts of the installation process, best places to place antennas, etc, and put them in an "install guide" PDF that I print and include in any shipments I send. I also wrote up a "how to test/verify that the unit is working" guide, and ask people to go through that before contacting me for troubleshooting. If they call, I ask if they've gone through the test/verify guide. If they haven't, I tell them to do that, then call back if it's still not working.

So far, so good.

HeyLaughingBoy
Thank you for replying. That was very helpful to see it from a different perspective.
danpat
The MVSTA did contact me back in November, but I guess they decided against it for the time being. Feel free to lobby them :-)

A couple of areas are funding their subscription by getting a local ski shop to pay for the service. There's a huge range of budgets across the industry, it's been tricky figuring out pricing that works for everyone.

sixQuarks
OP asked for businesses that provide a majority of your income. With a site that has an alexa ranking of over 3 million, there is no way this is your primary source of income.
eropple
> it looks like I'll be able to make it my sole income source next season

Chill, man.

sixQuarks
Sorry, but if everyone replies with their side project, this page will be full of non-relevant sites. Like the OP, I'm interested in seeing fully self-sufficient one-man startups.
danpat
The income from this website isn't strongly correlated to it's global web ranking.

Ski areas pay me to generate trail reports, and either link to the "default" report I publish for each area, or they publish the reports on their own websites. Reports are also printed and pinned up in lodges, or emailed by marketing departments to subscribed skiers. I'm not depending on people visiting my site for revenue.

What you have to realize is that people aren't out there searching for "gps grooming reports" (although I think I do pretty well in the search results for that phrase now). A this stage, they don't even know it exists. The sales channels that have worked so far are: word-of-mouth (it's a tiny industry where everyone knows everyone), personal introductions and a few cold-calls when I can summon the courage, and I don't expect that to change significantly.

This is the first "season" that I've worked on it full time and I've almost hit minimum wage. I expect to do better than that next winter. I have a decent runway, live very cheaply and don't have billion-dollar ambitions. I've supplemented the revenue with a little bit of side-consulting, but not a lot.

fookyong
http://beatrixapp.com

Solo, self funded and profitable. I work on it while traveling around Asia.

Agree with patio11 there's probably way more than would speak up here. I seldom contribute to HN or the bootstrapping forums mentioned in another reply. I browse a little, but 99% of my time spent in front of the computer is spent working on product or replying to customer emails.

How I got started:

I've built SaaS apps before but they were the dreaded "solution looking for a problem" type.

Then I decided to do things strictly the Lean way. Got out of the building. Talked to customers about an idea I had. Pretty soon I discovered an adjacent problem that everyone had, that sounded fun to solve, and that I had specific domain knowledge in. I built and launched my MVP in one month, from a beach in Koh Samui. I've been traveling ever since then, spending each month in a different country.

Charged from day 1. Had paying customers from day 1.

I find changing my environment enables me to compartmentalize my work better - like I try to get major new features rolled out before I head to my next destination.

Not planning on doing this solo forever. Not ruling out hiring some help down the line and maybe a permanent office somewhere.

But for now it's pretty fun the way it is!

sami_b
I remember that you had other apps before like GoodGecko and Peashoot, what happened to them?
fookyong
Goodgecko just never made any meaningful amount of money plus it was a competitive space (surveys) so it was shut down.

Peashoot did ok but in the end there were too many free competitors (twitter analytics).

I think if the same thing happened now, I'm a more experienced entrepreneur so I'd be able to deal with free competitors better - figure out what customers are still willing to pay for, aim for the enterprise market etc.

icebraining
Sounds useful, and I like the demo. Just a note: when I scroll down to the footer, the demo "pulls me up", hiding the links :)
bemmu
If I understand correctly, this will post automatically to a Facebook page when users sign up. Any trouble with token expiration? I think it was changed from unlimited to a shorter time recently.
fookyong
It's handled gracefully in the app. If it expires and the app tried to post something unsuccessfully the user gets an email asking them to reconnect.

Facebook tokens aren't unlimited but they are long enough such that the user doesn't have to reconnect all the time.

medius
Can you please share how you marketed the app? What worked and what didn't?

Everyone: When sharing information about your app, I would request people to share marketing approaches as well. It would greatly help people who are just getting started.

goodproduce
I've worked full-time as a consultant since 2007 and make a little over low six figures after taxes and paying contractors. We (http://www.goodproduce.net) do a lot of basic services like content development, web design (mainly WP), social media management, hosting, deck creation, and general "digital" consulting for high net-worth individuals (primarily athletes and their brand partners.

In the early days, I worked to stay visible through conducting interviews for my company blog - that got us on the map in the sports community. It also helps that we never say no to a request...ever.

scottclark
What billing model are you on? Hourly? Retainer? Fixed?
zengr
I think newsblur.com (YC S12) is run by Sam alone.
bjoerns
I run https://www.spreadgit.com, a hosted version control system for Excel. Doing this solo and full time. It's been a hell of a ride so far but I love it.
emilioolivares
Wow this is an awesome idea. Every business has this problem with multiple people trying to modify the same excel file.
_fountainhead_
I run http://getreplied.com

It's a very simple app to help people get their email replied.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
manish_gill
Hey,

So I just clicked on your app, and ended up "cancelling" when Google OAuth asked to manage my email address. The app then took me to a Django debug log. Looks like you are running the app with DEBUG=True. You might want to change that, so it would show a generic error message instead of providing me with all the view/template info!!

boksiora
hi _fountainhead_ on your site, please give a demo of the products or at least some descriptions or screenshots, the only thing i see is now asking for my email and i don't know for what i am signing about
Ecio78
I'm not sure he is particularly active on HN but Rob Walling[1] is a solo entrepreneur managing at least a couple of Saas products: Hittail[2] (which he bought and then grow) and Drip[3]. He also conducts a podcast on Saas[4] and also organises a conference for self-funded startups[5]. In the past Patio11 spoke there too

[1] http://www.softwarebyrob.com/ [2] http://www.hittail.com/ [3] https://www.getdrip.com/ [4] http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ [5] http://www.microconf.com/ [3]

raffi
I run a business selling penetration testing software that I develop. It's completely bootstrapped. I do very little services work (I actively send this type of stuff to friend's companies). Right now, it's just me, although that's probably going to change. By most of my own definitions and the one you posted here... it's successful.

How did I get started on this? Sort of by accident.

I was working for Automattic after an acqui-hire thing. After a year there, I found that I missed working in security. I found a full-scope penetration testing gig three blocks from my apartment.

In my spare time, I started to tinker with a few ideas and released them as an open source project. Said project saw a lot of interest within the hacker community very quickly. I didn't expect this. Folks formed an opinion on it pretty quickly. Some people hate it. Others love it. Of those who know it, very few are in-between.

I left my pen testing job with a decent amount of money saved up. I didn't know exactly what I would go and do afterwards. I spent some time tinkering with Android, just for giggles.

I was very reluctant to start a business that used my "successful?" open source project. Partially because it leverages another open source project owned by another company.

I was at a conference in 2011 and someone from a US government agency asked if I was selling anything. I said no. He said that was too bad, because he had end of year money, and he liked my open source stuff. It was then that I decided to look at expanding my open source kit into a commercial product.

April will mark the two year anniversary of my first customer. My customers are well known organizations and they trust my software to assess how well they protect their networks. I'm constantly in awe of this.

brador
When's the end of year money period?
spydum
Pretty much oct, nov, december you will see large enterprise shops who have unspent capex budget, and are afraid that if they do not spend it, the next years budget will be reduced to last years spend.. So most enterprise fiefdoms spend 99-100% of capex budget regardless of if they needed it or not.
Coldmode
For the US government it is usually August and September. The fiscal year ends on September 30.
gblanchette
Hello from Quebec, I am on Hacker News, as a big reader not commenting. My online business, is profitable, it make all my income, an ok salary for me :-). I have read the book '4 hours week' and work only few hours a week. The business start with a shareware game (1990), quit my day job (2002) to create more sharewares, fail at the first one (the password/unlock was hack the first week). So I come with the idea of having a client/server game (2004) (harder to hack). That work enough to make a small salary. Then I build another client/server game (2011), almost the same as the first one but localized in 3 languages. Then I received a lawyer letter (2011) to close both of my online sites. I did make some modifications, after 2 years they leaves me alone... Being afraid of closing, I was looking for a plan B (2012), I works hard on web sites that have a lot of visitors to make money with AdWords, it works. Now half of the revenue come from the 2 online games, and the other half come from AdWords. The shareware, online games and web sites are all related to a very popular crossword game.
hgfischer
I live in a draconian tax country. How can I open a online international business and receive money from anywhere in the world? Do I need to move to a tax heaven?
CyberFonic
You might not have to move, just have your company operating from an appropriate tax haven. You typically need to pay lawyers, accountants, etc to achieve what you are thinking about and they end up costing more than the tax you would have to pay. Do your numbers first before you get too preoccupied with the tax. As a very general comment, in some low tax countries you need to spend a lot of money to have what you get more or less for free in other higher tax countries.
ivanca
You can save the money in an international account (paypal?) and when you need to retrieve the money fly to such country or someone else who can do it for you.
dublinben
From your perspective, the US state of Delaware might be an excellent location to incorporate. It's very inexpensive, popular, and would let you use all sorts of US-based payment services like Stripe and Paypal.
stevesearer
I run http://officesnapshots.com which publishes photos of office design projects from around the world.

I started it in 2007 as a gin side project to teaching history. I'm no longer teaching and it is the majority of my income.

cocoflunchy
Just a heads up, I can't see any text on your website (Chrome 33.0.1750.146 on Mac)

http://imgur.com/Ptmxgsm

ct
Chrome Version 33.0.1750.117 m on Win 8.1 doesn't show text either.
stevesearer
thanks for the heads up - I haven't been able to reproduce it myself but have received a couple other reports of that happening.

if you inspect element, is there no text as well?

pinakothek
This is possibly the chrome webfont rendering bug that's been popping up on chrome 33, WordPress sites seem very susceptible to it: https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/chrome/tYHS...
bemmu
That's great to hear. I love the site and was always wondering if it was just a small side project or something bigger now.
stevesearer
Glad you've enjoyed the site, I always like hearing from people that have been reading for a while. I started it in 2007 and there are still a number of people that have been reading since it initially made it to the FP of Digg.

I've been adding new features recently, like the pinterest-like area for browsing office photos by room.

My goal of late has been to help people find and interact with the old posts that would traditionally be lost in the date-archive format of a traditional blog.

cauterize
What is meant by a "gin side project"?
dublinben
It might be a typo for fun side project.
stevesearer
Yeah, I meant fun :)

Basically I saw images of Google's offices and wondered if there were any sites that showed only office photos. There weren't any that I could find so I bought a domain and started posting photos I came across.

It was a collection of candid photos that weren't very good at first, but it is mainly architectural photography submitted by design firms now.

cauterize
gin side project. noun. :: A fun side project that turns into successful venture worthy of posting to Hacker News (with or without having been conceived while drinking gin).
MikeX3
How do you earn income from this site?
pharaohgeek
I don't know why, but I've always enjoyed looking at things like this. Companies that have really cool workspaces always fascinated me. Great site! Keep up the good work!