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Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate and from what?

66 points by yogurt ↗ HN
I think it's time for a follow up / new thread. Previous threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4467603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487

29 comments

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andersthue
We are currently at $392/month from 3 customers who has signed on as early bird users on the TimeBlock method, we wrote the first line of code mid march, after 1 month of interviews with potential customers.

Besides being a tool to do project management easier than in trello, it is primarily a new methodology that helps Makers and Managers understand their differences and their needs.

The method helps Makers be in flow by teaching Managers to leave them alone, help minimize procrastination by helping Makers divide projects and plan their week, thereby increasing their internal motivation.

Sign up for our launch list and read more at http://timeblock.com

Edit: Changed the number, signed on a new customer :)

Tankenstein
I'm sorry, but please, please, PLEASE, do not hijack scrolling. There is no reason for it, it's distracting, often fucks up mobiles. I mean no disrespect, just don't do it. Cool product!
andersthue
Uhm, I do not understand what you mean by hijacking scrolling? Could you elaborate, perhaps on email anders at timeblock.com
osxrand
Agreed, the page loads, shows data, then goes completely blank for 1-2 seconds while the scroll bars load. Safari 8.0.6 OS X Yosemite.
dangrossman
Around $40K/month

* https://www.improvely.com - Pure SaaS, with most of the revenue coming from agency customers on higher end plans

* https://www.w3counter.com - Ad-supported freemium. 99% of the users are on a free plan and see a couple banners around their reports. A couple hundred users pay to remove the ads and get other features.

* Recurring commissions from affiliate programs. Mainly from personally referring other small business owners to a good merchant account provider for credit card processing and a web hosting company. They both do a revenue share where I get a percentage of each referral's monthly fees.

vishalzone2002
did you just say $40k/month? that is amazing. I know so many small startups that haven't scaled to that level. Good for you, congrats !!
pknerd
Care enough to share:

1- How did you start?

2- % of Revenue are you getting from W3Counter?

dangrossman
> How did you start?

Early 1990s, writing HTML tutorials on a site I called "Website Goodies". I learned HTML myself from a GeoCities site. I had ads on there from the start, from TeknoSurf AdWave (now Advertising.com), ValueClick (now Conversant), and IIRC briefly some kind of ads from Microsoft bCentral (defunct). Enough to pay for the domain and web hosting, and eventually enough to buy a computer of my own and cable internet from @HOME under a parent's name.

WSG started with articles (outdated and long gone now), then I started adding "tools" as I learned to program. Originally they were all CGI scripts written in Perl with text files for storage. Later PHP and MySQL after reading Kevin Yank's tutorial, which was later picked up by SitePoint as a book, now on its 4th edition. I made hosted guestbooks, a banner rotator, a hosted hit counter, things like that. At some point I came to know of hosted web analytics tools. This was long before Google Analytics, and the cool looking ones were B2B products that cost way more than I could afford.

I made my own web stats program. Each website got a separate log table with a couple hundred rows before I purged old entries. Real-time reports based on querying that log for the top pages, top referrers, etc. I learned to use PHP and GD to draw numbers on images, made a bunch of counter backgrounds in Paint Shop Pro, and offered customizable counters that doubled as the tags for logging to the database for the reports. At some point I decided to move it to its own domain, and chose W3Counter for world wide web counter.

By that point I had just graduated high school. Got serious about earning enough to pay bills, started a bunch of e-commerce sites. That's when I found a need for e-commerce conversion tracking, and being too cheap to pay for it, made another analytics tool for that. Eventually rewrote it and tried to sell it SaaS as the poorly named "W3ROI". Learned from the couple dozen people I got to try it, started over from scratch in 2012 and Improvely was the result.

eminkel
Just came to say, I think some of my understanding of HTML may have come from WSG, and that I remember the name from the early 2000s, about the time I was learning HTML. I also remember messing with the CGI scripts.
pknerd
What were your marketing strategies?
vijayr
Another request to add to OP's post - could you also add how you got started, especially if it is SaaS? Meaning, how did you get the idea first for your service/product?
andersthue
I got the idea to http://timeblock.com without knowing it :)

January 5th this year I did another adjustment to how we worked in my consultancy. Another bc. I have been trying all kind of stuff for many years, leaning on NetFlix, Valve software and many others who are trying to remove management, control and rules.

After three weeks I noticed I had started to sleep better than I had since I started my business in 1998. I told my accountant about what I was doing now and he was very excited, this made me think that I better tell some more about this.

The next company I told about the TimeBlock method switched to it within 36 hours, this made me realize that I was onto something. I then used a month to talk to potential users until I was sure that I had something. This something is TimeBlock.

vijayr
Thank You for the answer.

wow, that must be a nice feeling to solve their problems :)

For someone who is just a programmer, how do I find such problems?

andersthue
Your welcome, and yes it is nice and gratifying (and quite a bit scary) to have invented something that people start using after 45 minutes introduction.

In the beginning I thought it had to be a fluke, so I tested it more and more, pushing then envelope and finally asking customers to pay for a beta product.

They said "ok", which was even scarier, because now we had to deliver!

I found the problem when I stopped looking for it - I have been reading the zenhabits "letting go" book many times (six at last count) and part of finding something worthwhile to work on was stopping to search for "the thing"(tm) and start looking at what was around me.

When you stop forcing yourself to get an idea and start looking with an open mind and open eye you start noticing stuff that others do not, and perhaps you might even discover something that is right for you to spend some time on

ca98am79
currently around $20k/month from http://park.io

I don't know if it is technically "recurring" because it isn't subscription-based, but it is consistent and growing each month since I started one year ago

izolate
That is awesome. How do you secure the expired domains?
ca98am79
Thanks! I have created scripts that catch them the instant they drop
neoterics
That's awesome! Any insights on how you did marketing for this service?
ca98am79
I haven't really done any marketing - most users find it from either parked domains or word of mouth
teamcobby
For me it's around $1600-$1800/month https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/cobbysoft-media-inc./id40... A portfolio of paid apps. Most of them were created to scratch my own itches. I was learning saxophone at the time and couldn't really find a fingering chart software that can play the exact notes and vice versa. One thing lead to another, that's how it all began.

http://www.optimalplugins.com/ Branching out to wordpress plugins. Speaking of which, I think the headline generator is a really awesome plugin for any blogger. Just need some help to scale the marketing part.

http://www.stickynotespro.com/ A tiny SaaS working in progress :). My mind is always coming up with ideas and I usually write them down in sticky notes or in the note app. However, being a visual person, I need to see the post it to make things happen. If some one cover the sticky notes with a blanket, the task will never get done. Creating this site to store big ideas digitally and have the ability to see all the sticky notes on demand.

ronnier
$2,550 a month from a rental property.
Stoo
£10-20 per month. I am so living the dream right now.

£10 comes from my very first paying SaaS customer for Storytella[0].

The remaining £0-10 comes from self-publishing my fiction through Amazon KDP.

[0] https://storytel.la/

keviv
I'm making close to $100 from DigitalOcean Referrals every month. I'm one of the early adopters who get paid via Paypal for referrals, rather than getting paid in Hosting Credits. I've already made more than $1500 in commissions.

Around $30 from Madmimi Referrals every month (They have recurring 25% commission with a max cap of $10000). I've made around $600 in commissions.

My Affiliate links if you want to sign up for any of the two services:

DigitalOcean - https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=4d7fb2079a96 Madmimi - https://madmimi.com/short_ref/iMk