14 ms·

Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

• dm2 13y ago
  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/ http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
  • IndieDevClub 13y ago
    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 13y ago
    Isn't working for a single client called a "job"?
  • collyw 13y ago
    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 13y ago
  I run a small one-man-show publishing house: http://minireference.com 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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
    I have both of your books: math&physics and linear algebra. Keep up a great job!
  • blumkvist 13y ago
    bg?
    • ivan_ah 13y ago
      Да. Inspiration-а за книгата идва до голяма степен от кондензираните книги коите се използват в Българските университети.
  • alixaxel 13y ago
    Just bought your book, looks awesome and I'm sure it'll come in handy! =)
• danoc 13y ago
  I didn't create it, but Pinboard (https://pinboard.in/ https://pinboard.in/) is a great example of a successful one person business. Founder Maciej Cegłowski wrote about it here: https://static.pinboard.in/xoxo_talk_thoreau.htm https://static.pinboard.in/xoxo_talk_thoreau.htm
• gmays 13y ago
  I'm doing http://justaddcontent.com 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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
    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.
• abdophoto 13y ago
  I didn't create this, but http://viralnova.com http://viralnova.com is known for being run by one person and has been quite successful. Maybe the most successful that I've ever seen. http://www.businessinsider.com/viral-nova-considering-a-sale-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/viral-nova-considering-a-sale...
• patio11 13y ago
  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 http://www.bingocardcreator.com), Appointment Reminder (https://www.appointmentreminder.org 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").
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • iagooar 13y ago
    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/ https://www.appointmentreminder.org/ is one of these, the second you enter, the second you know it is a US American page.
    • joelennon 13y ago
      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 13y ago
        I thought that until I visited the page, the graphics and content both feel American to me.
        • deleted 13y ago
          [deleted]
• ohashi 13y ago
  1 man startup - http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare 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-cesspool-review-signal-wants-to-fix-that/ 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 13y ago
    Thanks for sharing - this is awesome. I've had an incredibly hard time finding good hosting service reviews.
    • ohashi 13y ago
      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 13y ago
    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.
• musgrove 13y ago
  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.
• bdunn 13y ago
  My company consists of just me, and is fairly profitable. And to reiterate patio11, there are quite a few of us. I detailed income and how much I contribute monthly to each of my income streams here: http://planscope.io/blog/how-i-changed-the-world-in-2013/ http://planscope.io/blog/how-i-changed-the-world-in-2013/
• mattront 13y ago
  Just launched Pinegrow Web Designer (http://pinegrow.com 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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
    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.
• itengelhardt 13y ago
  I don't know whether HN is the right place to ask this question. The crowd for this frequents either http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm or http://academy.micropreneur.com http://academy.micropreneur.com There's also a number of podcasts (notably "Startups for the Rest of Us" and "Bootstrapped With Kids")
  • davidw 13y ago
    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-ebook/dp/B003YH9MMI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=&tag=dedasys-20 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 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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
        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 13y ago
• dangrossman 13y ago
  Hey there. /raises hand. https://www.improvely.com https://www.improvely.com and https://www.w3counter.com 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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
        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 13y ago
          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..
• bobosha 13y ago
  Not my business, but www.DuckDuckGo.com (Gabriel Weinberg) is a good example.
  • dangrossman 13y ago
    DDG isn't a solo business, not anymore at least. They've got "11-50 employees" now.
• danpat 13y ago
  I created: http://skitrails.info/ 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 13y ago
    Hey - you should add a "how to setup" link to your site.
  • peterjancelis 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
• fookyong 13y ago
  http://beatrixapp.com 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 13y ago
    I remember that you had other apps before like GoodGecko and Peashoot, what happened to them?
    • fookyong 13y ago
      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 13y ago
    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 :)
• goodproduce 13y ago
  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 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 13y ago
    What billing model are you on? Hourly? Retainer? Fixed?
• zengr 13y ago
  I think newsblur.com (YC S12) is run by Sam alone.
• bjoerns 13y ago
  I run https://www.spreadgit.com 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 13y ago
    Wow this is an awesome idea. Every business has this problem with multiple people trying to modify the same excel file.
• mihaela 13y ago
  I sell Asterisk reporting sw for win @samreports.com. It makes about $1000 a month in revenues. I also work as iOS developer for the man. I have a free iOS app on the AppStore (HRTecaj), soon to be commercial, when I add ATMs. I was Asterisk integrator, and learned a lot about the system, made software to present call reports in customisable and pleasant way. SAMReports has been selling, consistently, for 4 years. I made a few updates, but now I'm working on a major update.
• _fountainhead_ 13y ago
  I run http://getreplied.com http://getreplied.com It's a very simple app to help people get their email replied.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • manish_gill 13y ago
    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 13y ago
    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
• thinkcomp 13y ago
  I run PlainSite: http://www.plainsite.org http://www.plainsite.org
  • boksiora 13y ago
    Nice project
• Ecio78 13y ago
  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/ http://www.softwarebyrob.com/ [2] http://www.hittail.com/ http://www.hittail.com/ [3] https://www.getdrip.com/ https://www.getdrip.com/ [4] http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ [5] http://www.microconf.com/ http://www.microconf.com/ [3]
• albumedia 13y ago
  http://albumedia.com http://albumedia.com Just a one-man show creating simple web and mobile apps.
• raffi 13y ago
  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.
  • suyash 13y ago
    Congratulations on your successful business. Can you share link to your business website please?
    • zakelfassi 13y ago
      http://www.advancedpentest.com/ http://www.advancedpentest.com/
  • brador 13y ago
    When's the end of year money period?
• gblanchette 13y ago
  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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
  I run http://officesnapshots.com 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 13y ago
    Just a heads up, I can't see any text on your website (Chrome 33.0.1750.146 on Mac) http://imgur.com/Ptmxgsm http://imgur.com/Ptmxgsm
    • ct 13y ago
      Chrome Version 33.0.1750.117 m on Win 8.1 doesn't show text either.
    • stevesearer 13y ago
      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 13y ago
        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/tYHSqc-fqso https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/chrome/tYHS...
        • stevesearer 13y ago
          Excellent! Thank you - I'll take a peek to see if I can find a working fix.
          • pinakothek 13y ago
            Please let me know if you find a good one, that bug is affecting me as well.
• spiritplumber 13y ago
  http://www.robots-everywhere.com http://www.robots-everywhere.com I used to employ two people, but I automated them away. I am successful in the sense that I have clear title to my home at age 33, if that counts.
  • gmays 13y ago
    Did the employees feel an intense wave of irony wash over them when their job at Robots Everywhere was automated away? I'd be thinking, "Well ain't that a bitch."
  • Blahah 13y ago
    Did the employee contract include a waiver: "The undersigned, for one, agrees to welcome our robot overlords." Also, clear title at 33 should meet anyone's definition of successful. I just got a mortgage at 28 and that day is a long way off. Must feel good :)
    • spiritplumber 13y ago
      Yeah, it did actually. The whole thing was written fairly tongue in cheek.
  • tomp 13y ago
    Hey! I was always interested in building robots, but I always thought that (1) I just don't have the time to bootstrap, and (2) I'm only a software developer and don't know enough hardware. You're living my dreams! Congrats!
• Osiris 13y ago
  I sell a laptop battery meter (http://batterybarpro.com http://batterybarpro.com). It's not income replacing; it makes about $1,000 per month, but it's been crucial in saving enough for down payments one two houses. I've tried to get the revenue numbers up, but I've never been able to break a $2,000 month.
  • joelennon 13y ago
    Have you considered building a mac version? I love little utilities like this, especially at your price point. Nice product.
    • Osiris 13y ago
      I've never written Mac software. If someone is interested in going in on a port with me, let me know.
      • bemmu 13y ago
        Maybe you might consider adding at least a form for "Looking for the Mac version? Enter your email to get a notification when BatteryBar Pro is released on it."? Then if eventually you release that version, mailing that list could make quite a bit of money for very little effort now. If the list grows very large, it would add further justification to develop that version too.
  • huhtenberg 13y ago
    > I've never been able to break a $2,000 month. Try charging $9.95 instead of $8.00? :)
    • Osiris 13y ago
      I did. It used to be $10. I've tried a whole slew of different pricing options, like cheap, but time-limited, as well as price points between $4 and $10. I've found that for a simple tool, people seem to find $10 a bit off-putting. I've been running a 50% promotion recently (for over a month now) and revenue is up about 70%.
• singingfish 13y ago
  I spent a number of years wasting time on IRC looking at and chatting to people about techincal issues, plus a bit of humourous banter. These days the all of my income comes from activities where IRC is the main means of communication.
  • iends 13y ago
    You run botnets?
• smokeybourbon 13y ago
  I have nothing currently online but I've launched a few websites in the past that I thought would be useful. I could never figure out how to get people to even look at my homepage. For those that launched successful websites on your own, how did you get the first group of visitors?
• paulhauggis 13y ago
  You can have a successful online business with one-person, but there will always be a maximum to the amount of money you can make and it does not scale well. I ran a 1-person company for the past 3 years (B2B SAAS). I now have 2 other partners in the company to pick up the slack and we will be hiring a few employees next month. It's difficult to: maintain your current business (IE: new features, bug fixes, customer service) while at the same time, trying to get new business (marketing, new ideas, planning) and also have any kind of life outside the business. You also won't be able to go on any kind of real vacation and time-off is challenging. I didn't think about these things at 20, but at 30, it's starting to become more and more important.
  • gmays 13y ago
    Excellent points, thanks for the insight. I'm not as far along as you, but already starting to see the same challenges.
  • cpncrunch 13y ago
    Actually, vacation / time off shouldn't be an issue. I've been doing this for 15 years and now my product runs like clockwork. Generally unless I'm doing new dev work, I only have a few support emails per day. As long as I go on vacation somewhere where I can at least have wifi in the evenings and mobile data during the day to occasionally check my email, it's not a problem. Also I regularly take long breaks during the day, or take days off to go on trips somewhere. I think you need to do this otherwise you'll be in danger of burning out. It also helps to plan for the worst. Right now my slight concern is lack of RAID on my server. However I back up every day to a separate disk on the server (plus offsite downloads every couple of weeks), so in the worst case it will probably just take me an hour or two to get most things up and running on a new server. Obviously not the best thing to happen on vacation though :)
    • scottclark 13y ago
      LOL, when I was running my own servers it seemed the only time they would go down was when I was on vacation.
    • 13y ago
• useflyer 13y ago
  www.lawdingo.com is a single founder which is absolutely killing it
• lalwanivikas 13y ago
  Matthew Inman runs The Oatmeal (http://theoatmeal.com/ http://theoatmeal.com/) alone and he crossed $500,000 annual revenue in 2012. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal
• nunodonato 13y ago
  For those who have successfully started a one-man online business/app, how did you get it known? Adwords? Advertising?
  • cpncrunch 13y ago
    My own product spread virally. I think that is about the only feasible way to do it. I've tried advertising a few times myself, but it never, ever pays for itself.
    • gk1 13y ago
      > "I think that is about the only feasible way to do it." It may be the only way to do it very quickly. Most companies don't just go viral on day 1, they work very hard to get customers. Some times advertising makes sense, other times it doesn't, but it's certainly not the only option.
      • cpncrunch 13y ago
        I meant, it's the only feasible way to do it if you're a single founder with zero funding.
        • gk1 13y ago
          I still have to disagree. You don't have to look far (patio11's Bingo Card Creator) to find single-founder businesses that reached level of success without going viral. (I suppose this all depends on your definition of viral, too.)
          • cpncrunch 13y ago
            Yes you're right - he seems to be using adsense to drive traffic. I guess if adsense didn't work for small businesses, google wouldn't be making the money they do :)
• whalesalad 13y ago
  plentyoffish.com
• cperciva 13y ago
  I run Tarsnap: http://www.tarsnap.com/ http://www.tarsnap.com/ I got started because I wanted good backups and there were no solutions available which I was satisfied with.
  • balladeer 13y ago
    Are you planning to build sth on top of Glacier or include Glacier as an storage option (seeing it's on S3 anyway)? It will bring the cost down a great deal.
    • ch0wn 13y ago
      See http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-09-04-why-tarsnap-doesnt-use-glacier.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-09-04-why-tarsnap-doesn...
      • balladeer 13y ago
        Many of us have alternative backup solutions. Like I use CrashPlan to backup pretty much everything and the most important files are backed up also to my external hard drive and a friend's machine (all via CrashPlan). Having said that I still consider I've only one off-site backup that is CrashPlan servers and though they provide excellent service they have failed many times before and hence I need an insurance. My entire laptop (except OS and apps) glaciated by Tarsnap can be that insurance policy which I'll most probably never access anyway, until when My laptop and all those three backup destination fail at once and in that scenario I will be willing to pay that cost seeing I saved a lot during those years/months.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
• deleted 13y ago
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• dotmic_com 13y ago
  I run a product search engine called Dotmic http://www.dotmic.com/ http://www.dotmic.com/ .Recently we partnered with 60+ store and now we are profitable. :)
  • nebulasri 13y ago
    How do you market your site? Do you advertise (adwords perhaps)? How do you get stores to partner with you?
• waqas- 13y ago
  hey. The good thing about a one man operation is that you dont have any overheads. I started my startup with 4 people, but later learned that one was enough to start off with and i should scale according to the profits im making - instead of putting my own money into it (which i didnt have much of anyway). My startups: (http://opensource.com.pk http://opensource.com.pk) and (http://sells.pk/ http://sells.pk/) are web agencies specializing in different areas. The former provides managed freelance outsourcing for larger projects and the latter specialized in e commerce for small/medium businesses. The first few clients help you pay the bills and buy bread, but if you keep at it and be persistent after a year you will have more clients than you can handle, that is the time to get employees. I am almost reaching that point, and that is what excites me these days.
• Orthanc 13y ago
  Not sure if this is what Hacker News would normally consider a business but I run a YouTube channel as my one-person business: http://www.youtube.com/cgpgrey http://www.youtube.com/cgpgrey
  • benhohner 13y ago
    Your videos are so informative. Thank you! I especially loved the series on FPTP voting.
  • vijayr 13y ago
    Wow, you make your living from your youtube channel?
• gtheme 13y ago
  I am running premium Ghost Blog marketplace http://www.gtheme.io/ http://www.gtheme.io/ I solo doing design, develop, marketing, as well as writing contents around Ghost.
  • santa_boy 13y ago
    What kind of traffic are you getting? What is the source of traffic? I was contemplating something like but thought themeforest may be a better channel to sell. How do you market the site?
• bemmu 13y ago
  I run http://www.candyjapan.com http://www.candyjapan.com It just crossed 500 paying members. I started it with my wife, but recently the shipping part is no longer done by us two manually, but by a local supermarket. In the beginning it was just an email to some previous customers asking if they might be interested in a club like this. Then a landing page and a HN post. From there it grew through blog mentions and now there is a trickle of organic traffic coming in. Before this I had some small apps on social networks that made more money, but were much more unstable. While Candy Japan could wither away, I expect the death would be more gradual. I still have some of the older sites / apps which together are still making around $500 / month, which is a nice bonus. Probably anyone working as a salaried programmer in the US is making a more money than I am currently, but I enjoy the freedom and the thought that there really is no upper limit. If we ever do hit 1000 members I'm planning to have a celebration :-)
  • yincrash 13y ago
    I just subscribed. You should add a meta description / opengraph description / image so I can share it on facebook and have the description of the website show up properly rather than just be blank.
  • imjk 13y ago
    How much advertising do you do? I notice you're buying ads on search for key terms. Do you do much display advertising. I'm sure you've figured out the lifetime value of your customers and you buy advertising based on that. If your margin's decent, you can probably get more aggressive with display ads to scale the business. I think the business has a ton of potential.
    • bemmu 13y ago
      I've bought ads, but it would have been better not to. Total I've probably spent around $3000 over ~2 years for campaigns that only brought in around 30 conversions. It would have been better to just spend that time blogging instead. I tried Facebook (side banner, newsfeed and promoted posts), AdWords, web comics, stumbleupon, Reddit ads. Some of the campaigns were close to break-even, though. With this few conversions, it's hard to make any judgement to what works and small tweaks in particular are basically impossible. Noise drowns everything. It's inviting to start getting fancy with A/B testing age ranges or gender targeting on FB ads, but unless I am mistaken about 230 conversions are needed to say A/B test male vs. female assuming it would give a 30% boost. If you know how to figure out the optimal targeting without spending ~$20000 on each test, let me know :-) If I could get LTV up (reducing churn might be the lowest hanging fruit now), conversions up or write better ads, paid advertising could still be doable in the future.
• gadr90 13y ago
  You should check out the SideProject Book[1]. It's specifically about bootstraped, successful, single owner projects. It features some of the projects that appeared here, actually, like BCC. As of myself, I am currently trying to educate myself into dividing my time better between my "day job" and my product. Hard to do, though, when your day job absolutely rocks... It's very easy to work all day long without realizing you should have stopped in the middle of the afternoon. Not a bad problem to have, mind you. [1] http://www.sideprojectbook.com/ http://www.sideprojectbook.com/
• zrail 13y ago
  I wrote a book[1] that generates about $2k of revenue per month. Not quite your definition of success, but it's given me a taste. I'm now in the beta testing process for my next thing[2]. [1]: https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments [2]: http://www.pagesnap.io http://www.pagesnap.io
  • ortuna 13y ago
    Just want to say that I'm using Docverter to try to make a new business :D.
    • zrail 13y ago
      Awesome! Email me if you have any questions or need any help.
• fleaflicker 13y ago
  http://www.fleaflicker.com/ http://www.fleaflicker.com/ (A fantasy sports site.) Started solo, sold, bought back, now operates as a team of two but I am the sole technical member.
  • MattyMc 13y ago
    How do you generate revenue from this free service?
  • georgiecasey 13y ago
    wtf, that's where we do all our leagues every year! can't believe it's just 2 guys and one techie.
• bizifyme 13y ago
  I am running a complete payment gateway that supports VISA and MasterCard and mobile payments by SMS. The name of the service is: https://www.bizify.me https://www.bizify.me For an introduction to the service: https://www.bizify.me/hacker-news/ https://www.bizify.me/hacker-news/
  • medwezys 13y ago
    FYI HN is not indexed by google :)
    • bizifyme 13y ago
      Sorry for the long text. I had a pre-written text that I used for an earlier presentation, so I just copied the text and made some minor corrections. But hopefully, the text is a good introduction anyway. :)
• christiangenco 13y ago
  I've got three: * Textbooks Please: a textbook search engine for college students. It's grossed ~$20k, almost all of which has been reinvested, and not paying myself that much. * dbinbox: an inbox for your dropbox for receiving files too large to email. It's got ~25k users, but has made less than $1k in donations. I need to give this one a reboot soon. * Email Tip Bot: send bitcoin with email. Launched two weeks ago and I've already got my first 200 users :D I really enjoy the process of making these kinds of things, but I find it enormously exhausting to do the other half of marketing, SEO, publicity, etc. I'm working on getting better at SEO, but would love to find someone that likes the marketing side. PS: http://solo.im/ http://solo.im/
• fiatjaf 13y ago
  http://nomadia.com.br/ http://nomadia.com.br/ A website generator and a login/fetch user info/filter service attached for brazilian firms/hotels/inns that offer rooms to rent for long periods/temporary housing. A very niche market in which I fill myself inn, was developing something just for me and got the idea of offering it to others. I have just one client (so I don't qualify to "successful"), but I'm following patio11 advice of offering services do niche underserved markets. Does anyone has any advice? My biggest problem is how to market to such a niche. I'm trying to email people, but the people in niche are really non-computer users, so it is difficult.
• pcunite 13y ago
  I've worked goffconcepts.com full time since 2003 entirely alone (the "we" is my wife). My new product FileSearchEX is highly pirated so I'll probably be moving on to other things. I only recommend SaaS, forget about fat client software. The search engines enable a very toxic landscape otherwise.
  • huhtenberg 13y ago
    Can you elaborate? This is really interesting. Do you have any (basic?) license enforcement and anti-reversal protection in your code? What do you mean by toxic search engine landscape?
  • zerr 13y ago
    Interesting. I always thought that illegal downloads are negligible. Maybe your security is non-existent?
• coreymaass 13y ago
  I build MVP's for people who have an idea for a web app. It's at http://builtFromIdeas.com http://builtFromIdeas.com
  • fiatjaf 13y ago
    Do you have much clients? How can you work with a fixed price?
• hartcw 13y ago
  I develop and sell Smart Shooter. http://kuvacode.com http://kuvacode.com Its a traditional desktop app (windows, mac), but only sold online via our own website or the mac app store. I created it about 4 years ago, and work on it solely in my spare time. In fact I'm employed full time at a major tech company but this I keep separate. To claim its profitable is a bit misleading, because of cause the major cost in developing such software is my own time. I've incorporated as a limited company here in Finland but do not pay myself a salary, so the only costs to the business are web hosting and occasional hardware purchases (computers, cameras). I started this as a project for personal interest; at the time I was working as a software engineer developing financial trading software. Smart Shooter was a good way to develop something that covered both my interests in graphics programming and digital photography, to alleviate the borebom from my day job. So for me its been successful, its still an pleasureable hobby, allows me an excuse to play around with the latest cameras, and brings in some pocket money. It doesn't generate enough revenue that I could quit my main job, but the possibilities could be there if situations change.
• amitmathew 13y ago
  I run a small business called Cram Fighter (http://cramfighter.com http://cramfighter.com) that is targeted at students (mostly medical) that are preparing for standardized exams. I got the idea after watching my wife preparing for her board exams and it seemed like a perfect little project to learn iOS programming. Initially my goal was to do earn maybe $5k annually, but now I'm on track to surpass my salary as senior developer by next year. You'll find a lot of one-person businesses targeting tiny, but profitable, niches like mine. What's great about it is that often when you find a tiny opportunity, it opens up a lot of other problems that need solving that you would never find otherwise. It's also a great way to learn the skills of running a business in a relatively stress-free way (at least compared to running a startup). The only downside is if you're anything like me, you'll get antsy working on small projects and yearn to tackle bigger, more ambitious problems. Sometimes 1-person companies have the potential for turning into a company with startup-like growth, sometimes not. I'm still trying to figure out how far I can take my company.
• phantom_oracle 13y ago
  I like reading about stories like this (from all the successful solo founders). It proves that you don't need to get multi-million-dollar valuations to be successful and that the general entrepreneur is pretty content with the amount he/she is making (+1 to thousandaire). These are stories entrepreneurs (who are realists) should read about and we'd probably all be better off avoiding those "billion dollar acquisitions" (for fear that it will consume us mentally, physically and emotionally).
• marxdeveloper 13y ago
  I run a small online game called RPG MO(http://rpg.mo.ee http://rpg.mo.ee). It gets about 20k unique visits every month. Money wise it generates enough payments to pay for the server and associated services and leaves a little for advertising as well. It doesn't cover all of my bills yet so I have to maintain a full-time job while studying in the university. I still have high hopes in this project though.
• braindead_in 13y ago
  I ran Scribie. http://scribie.com http://scribie.com. I started it in August 2008 and was the only person working on it for 5 years. In 2013 we established our first QA center and now we are around 20.
  • emilioolivares 13y ago
    Wow this is very cool. This you actually do the transcribing, I'd imagine you outsource this, correct?
• vladstudio 13y ago
  I've been running http://www.vladstudio.com http://www.vladstudio.com (where I publish my wallpapers and other stuff) for several years, and for quite some time, it was my primary source of income. Unusual, because my premium accounts are not really a "product", but just a way to "like" or "donate".
• reboog711 13y ago
  Since you didn't specify the type of business ( http://www.dot-com-it.com http://www.dot-com-it.com) ; I run a consulting business as a programmer that is just me. In the 'early' days (I started in 1999) I sort of fell into it. I was burnt out and walked out of a job. Networking got me 2 consulting client, and things just ballooned from there. I fell into it accidentally and learned a lot of hard lessons along the way. In the early days I did a lot of fixed fee projects for small businesses. On some projects I made tons of income; and on other projects I put in a lot of unpaid time [due to me incorrectly bidding the project and/or improperly handling change requests. I tried my hands at podcasting with a sponsorships model ( http://www.theflexshow.com http://www.theflexshow.com ). That made ~$30K throughout its' life. Even though I had a huge audience for the size of the market, no one was trying to sell anything to that market. I make ~$30K or so throughout its run and gave away a bunch of sponsorship in exchange for other services. Not bad; but not enough to pay the bills. I took the profits from the consulting business and pumped them into a product business selling advanced components to Flex developers ( http://www.flextras.com http://www.flextras.com ). I did this full time, stopping all consulting. The business was, in essence, a failure. It generated $10K per year which is a nice side income; but not a "pay your bills income. The business was slowly growing, until some Adobe PR mishaps killed executive confidence in the Flash Player as an application development platform; which killed our sales. It was generating about $10K per year and was growing. But, that is not enough to pay the bills. I shut it down and open sourced all the code. Now; I'm back to consulting, however the bulk of my clients right now are hourly as opposed to fixed fee. This is very profitable because many clients just keep renewing contracts and giving me work. However, it is the least bit satisfying because there is no defined end point and it feels like I'm just churning my wheels to kill time. Sometimes it feels like clients are creating just enough work to keep me busy so that I'll be there when they really need me. Despite having multiple ongoing clients; it doesn't feel like I'm a business owner because they are paying for my time, explicitly. That isn't scalable in any way. I'm prepping to launch a book under the Nathan Barry's "Authority" model which will teach Flex Developers how to program in AngularJS. More info at ( http://www.lifeafterflex.com http://www.lifeafterflex.com ). People seem excited about this beyond anything I ever expected. I asked my newsletter if anyone was interested in reviewing a pre-release copy and I got 20+ responses which is a significantly higher response rate than usual. If the early interest is any indication; more people will read my book than ever bought a Flextras component. I've also dabbled with a in Mobile Game ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.igorKnots.magondaMaze https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.igorKn... ), a recording studio (not online), and a CD duplication business (not online). All had varying levels of success.
• xpose2000 13y ago
  I run http://www.fantasysp.com/ http://www.fantasysp.com/, which provides tools and services to help people manage their fantasy sports teams. I started it because I wanted a faster way to get my player news... fast forward 7 years later and its a full fledged business.
  • MattyMc 13y ago
    Forgive me for asking, but what is your revenue model? (If you wouldn't mind sharing). Love the service.
• senith 13y ago
  I run http://www.graduatetutor.com/ http://www.graduatetutor.com/ myself. It is technically not one man because there are other independent tutors working with me too!
• blantonl 13y ago
  I own and operate http://www.radioreference.com http://www.radioreference.com and http://www.broadcastify.com http://www.broadcastify.com. I do all the development, business management, and support. I have a team of community volunteers that do a lot of day to day moderation and member management. I got started simply building a set of community resources for the radio communications and hobbyist market. We're very profitable and these businesses provide the majority of my family's income.
• scottclark 13y ago
  Great Thread.... I live entirely in the consulting space working on SEO/SEM and content marketing, and have done so alone since 1997. After a few pivots in web design, hosting and domaining, I've ended up in a place where I can be picky with clients and charge good fees. I hit the website development market on its first big wave, and moved into search before 99% of other SEOs even knew the discipline existed (and before some were even out of elementary school!) I make much more than a full-time employee would, but there is a lot of bosses and stress comes in waves. I have learned how to fire clients (hard to do) and how to size up opportunities. But the company is me. It's not saleable - no intellectual asset exists beyond what I bring to the table. So it's never going to have an "exit." This is my main gripe. Also, I relocated to Kentucky after writing tons of code in The Valley and ended up in Lexington, KY - a great university town with a highly educated population (and a Google eCity.) This has offered me a nice lifestyle, plenty of time to raise my kids and material rewards for probably 60% of Santa Clara's cost. My company is at http://www.buzzmaven.com http://www.buzzmaven.com. Good luck!
  • enigmabomb 13y ago
    Cheers Scott, I consult in this space also, though recently I've been trying to productize my way out of it. I built http://killswit.ch http://killswit.ch to help folks like us who are one person agencies and have to deal with sending traffic to sites they don't control. It sucks when your KPI's suffer because of someone else. Let me know if you want to give it a whirl.
• andersthue 13y ago
  I run TSR Watermark Image software, a Windows Software (!) that people downloads and pay for once (!), it covers around 50% of my salary, the rest comes from consulting. Working on other windows software, and working towards starting a SaaS app, blogging about it all :)
• NicoJuicy 13y ago
  I'm trying to do a business on the side (besides my full time job). Currently i created a member management site on www.ledenboek.be/EN for sport clubs, i'm still improving this. But it's also a test for marketing and gaining clients. Next up is Surveyor ( a email/sms marketing web application which i used myself (not public yet). I'm going to use it first for clients who ask me to create their website. But the big one is a document management system, that is totally different from the existing onces. I already have interest have a company with +/- 100 users and we are setting up a small demo in April there (ps. This will hit Hackernews in about 2-3 months)
• lettergram 13y ago
  I don't know exactly how you define "successful online business," but I am currently a university student making $500 - $2000 a month at about 5 to 10 hours a week. Basically, there is a market for vintage computer hardware, so I post some adds offering to take away old office items they can't just throw away. Such as old keyboards, terminals, etc. and they pay me a nominal fee ($1 - $5 per item depending) to rid them of their "trash". I then resell those items after cleaning them up a bit for extremely high profit margins $35 - $120 for 20 minutes of work (since I was payed to take away the trash). One of the things I did was sold Model M keyboards which I made USB compatible: http://austingwalters.com/keyboards/ http://austingwalters.com/keyboards/ Another way I make money is by tutoring or helping out with programming, I use to help out local people, but I have since switched over to Google Helpouts. Usually, it's just explaining some algorithms and writing some C code. Pretty easy, no real upkeep, and I can set what ever hours I want.
• T-A 13y ago
  PierreA seems to be doing well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934352
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• dtracy4 13y ago
  I run http://flevy.com http://flevy.com. It's a marketplace for premium business documents (e.g. business frameworks/methodologies, financial models, presentation templates, etc.). I do contract work out via odesk/elance from time to time.
• rs 13y ago
  I run https://xp-dev.com https://xp-dev.com and more recently http://deployer.vc http://deployer.vc and https://zoned.io https://zoned.io - all as a solo. I am hiring now, have used freelancers for help over time, but generally it has been a solo effort. Do tell if you have any specific questions, and I'll be more than happy to help out!
• pushkargaikwad 13y ago
  I am running inBoundio - http://www.inboundio.com http://www.inboundio.com (I call it basecamp of marketing) and is the only guy so I do all the work. I am really not that worried about slow growth or not making much money, I am enjoying what I am doing, works on average 6 hours a day and can spend rest of my time on learning new things and thinking about life and philosophy. I started because I felt that market (and so do I) need such simplified software. Most of the options were too complicated and were very costly. I will soon be touching 100 paying customers so will write a detailed post and share it on hackernews.
• graeme 13y ago
  I run http://lsathacks.com http://lsathacks.com, and have a related book series I sell e-books on my site and through affiliates, and sell print books on amazon. All told I make around $3,000 a month in passive revenues. I also make $4000-$5000 more in tutoring revenues. However, the site is fairly new (I just sold the books through affiliates/print previously). As I grow the site I expect I may be able to get over $10,000 per month passive. The LSAT is an admission exam for American and Canadian law schools. My materials/lessons teach people how to do better on it.
• cacahuates 13y ago
  http://www.writtalin.com/ http://www.writtalin.com/ Content-based site.
• rbchv 13y ago
  I developed the Electrician Calculator Pro, a National Electrical Code compliant calculator for engineers, electricians, lighting designers, etc: http://www.electriciancalculator.com http://www.electriciancalculator.com I first created the Android version about 3 years ago, then the iOS version about 1 year ago. It currently makes just enough to cover some bills, although I believe it has a greater potential. I'm currently looking for ways to make this a recurring revenue stream instead of a one time payment gig.
• nns1212 13y ago
  Not sure if this counts. I have created a simple landing page open source project: http://rails-landing-page.herokuapp.com/ http://rails-landing-page.herokuapp.com/ I get a lot of consulting (development + design) business when clients learn about us via this application. I also use it set up landing pages for any Startups/SMEs are developing their MVP/Beta application with me.
• yanonymator 13y ago
  My sales are $2000/day, 7 days - I'm in my 15th year of business. 100% of my presence is automated (I do nothing day-to-day). The only advice I'm qualified to give, is how to succeed: don't listen to anyone elses advice: use your brain. It is 100% common sense - everyone elses opinions are uninformed and almost always from someone who doesn't really know. Nobody who has succeeded will willingly reveal how to succeed - they're too busy enjoying the fruits of success to waste the time. If you find someone who is willing to tell you, they are usually fake - the "telling you" part is a cog in whatever scam they're involved with (stock investment, bitcoins, realestate, whatever). Read my lips: COMMON SENSE. And, no, I like my income. I'm not telling what I'm doing!
• fathobbitss123 13y ago
  i run dealsextra.com.au