How many people on hacker news are running successful<i></i> online businesses on their own? What is your business and how did you get started?<p><i></i> Defining successful as a profitable business which provides the majority of the owners income.
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."<p>I run a small software company (two, technically). Products include Bingo Card Creator (<a href="http://www.bingocardcreator.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.bingocardcreator.com</a>), Appointment Reminder (<a href="https://www.appointmentreminder.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.appointmentreminder.org</a>), and occasional offerings for training for other software companies. I used to do consulting, too, but quit to focus on products.<p>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").
I'm doing <a href="http://justaddcontent.com" rel="nofollow">http://justaddcontent.com</a> solo and self-funded. It turned into a bigger project that I anticipated, especially for my first product.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>How did I get started on this? Sort of by accident.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
I run a small one-man-show publishing house: <a href="http://minireference.com" rel="nofollow">http://minireference.com</a>. 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...<p>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.<p>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.
I run <a href="http://www.candyjapan.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.candyjapan.com</a><p>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.<p>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.<p>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 :-)
I created:<p><a href="http://skitrails.info/" rel="nofollow">http://skitrails.info/</a><p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Which is great, because it'll let me go skiing more.
Hey there. /raises hand.<p><a href="https://www.improvely.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.improvely.com</a> and <a href="https://www.w3counter.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.w3counter.com</a><p>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.
1 man startup - <a href="http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare" rel="nofollow">http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare</a> 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.<p>The story is told a bit here <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/25/web-hosting-reviews-are-a-cesspool-review-signal-wants-to-fix-that/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/25/web-hosting-reviews-are-a-c...</a> 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.
<a href="http://beatrixapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://beatrixapp.com</a><p>Solo, self funded and profitable. I work on it while traveling around Asia.<p>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.<p>How I got started:<p>I've built SaaS apps before but they were the dreaded "solution looking for a problem" type.<p>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.<p>Charged from day 1. Had paying customers from day 1.<p>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.<p>Not planning on doing this solo forever. Not ruling out hiring some help down the line and maybe a permanent office somewhere.<p>But for now it's pretty fun the way it is!
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.
I run Tarsnap: <a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tarsnap.com/</a><p>I got started because I wanted good backups and there were no solutions available which I was satisfied with.
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.<p>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).<p>One of the things I did was sold Model M keyboards which I made USB compatible: <a href="http://austingwalters.com/keyboards/" rel="nofollow">http://austingwalters.com/keyboards/</a><p>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.
Just launched Pinegrow Web Designer (<a href="http://pinegrow.com" rel="nofollow">http://pinegrow.com</a>) 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.<p>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...
I don't know whether HN is the right place to ask this question. The crowd for this frequents either <a href="http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm" rel="nofollow">http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm</a> or <a href="http://academy.micropreneur.com" rel="nofollow">http://academy.micropreneur.com</a><p>There's also a number of podcasts (notably "Startups for the Rest of Us" and "Bootstrapped With Kids")
Not sure if this is what Hacker News would normally consider a business but I run a YouTube channel as my one-person business: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/cgpgrey" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/cgpgrey</a>
I run a small business called Cram Fighter (<a href="http://cramfighter.com" rel="nofollow">http://cramfighter.com</a>) 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.<p>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).<p>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.
I've got three:<p>* 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<p>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.<p>PS: <a href="http://solo.im/" rel="nofollow">http://solo.im/</a>
I run <a href="http://officesnapshots.com" rel="nofollow">http://officesnapshots.com</a> which publishes photos of office design projects from around the world.<p>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.
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<p>[1] <a href="http://www.softwarebyrob.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.softwarebyrob.com/</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.hittail.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.hittail.com/</a>
[3] <a href="https://www.getdrip.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.getdrip.com/</a>
[4] <a href="http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/</a>
[5] <a href="http://www.microconf.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.microconf.com/</a>
[3]
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: <a href="http://planscope.io/blog/how-i-changed-the-world-in-2013/" rel="nofollow">http://planscope.io/blog/how-i-changed-the-world-in-2013/</a>
I didn't create it, but Pinboard (<a href="https://pinboard.in/" rel="nofollow">https://pinboard.in/</a>) is a great example of a successful one person business.<p>Founder Maciej Cegłowski wrote about it here:
<a href="https://static.pinboard.in/xoxo_talk_thoreau.htm" rel="nofollow">https://static.pinboard.in/xoxo_talk_thoreau.htm</a>
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.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.sideprojectbook.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sideprojectbook.com/</a>
I sell a laptop battery meter (<a href="http://batterybarpro.com" rel="nofollow">http://batterybarpro.com</a>). 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.<p>I've tried to get the revenue numbers up, but I've never been able to break a $2,000 month.
<a href="http://www.robots-everywhere.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.robots-everywhere.com</a> 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.
I run <a href="https://www.spreadgit.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.spreadgit.com</a>, 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.
I develop and sell Smart Shooter.<p><a href="http://kuvacode.com" rel="nofollow">http://kuvacode.com</a><p>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.<p>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).<p>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.<p>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.
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].<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments" rel="nofollow">https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://www.pagesnap.io" rel="nofollow">http://www.pagesnap.io</a>
I am running a complete payment gateway that supports VISA and MasterCard and mobile payments by SMS.<p>The name of the service is: <a href="https://www.bizify.me" rel="nofollow">https://www.bizify.me</a><p>For an introduction to the service: <a href="https://www.bizify.me/hacker-news/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bizify.me/hacker-news/</a>
<a href="http://nomadia.com.br/" rel="nofollow">http://nomadia.com.br/</a><p>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.<p>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?<p>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.
I've worked full-time as a consultant since 2007 and make a little over low six figures after taxes and paying contractors. We (<a href="http://www.goodproduce.net" rel="nofollow">http://www.goodproduce.net</a>) 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.<p>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.
I do consulting and software development and am technically a small business.<p>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.<p>I don't make millions, but I make enough and am happy.<p>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: <a href="http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/</a>
I like reading about stories like this (from all the successful solo founders).<p>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).<p>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).
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.
Great Thread....<p>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!)<p>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.<p>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 <a href="http://www.buzzmaven.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.buzzmaven.com</a>. Good luck!
I run a small online game called RPG MO(<a href="http://rpg.mo.ee" rel="nofollow">http://rpg.mo.ee</a>).
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.
I build MVP's for people who have an idea for a web app. It's at <a href="http://builtFromIdeas.com" rel="nofollow">http://builtFromIdeas.com</a>
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?
I didn't create this, but <a href="http://viralnova.com" rel="nofollow">http://viralnova.com</a> is known for being run by one person and has been quite successful. Maybe the most successful that I've ever seen. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/viral-nova-considering-a-sale-2014-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/viral-nova-considering-a-sale...</a>
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.
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).<p>Read my lips:<p>COMMON SENSE.<p>And, no, I like my income. I'm not telling what I'm doing!
I'm trying to do a business on the side (besides my full time job).<p>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.<p>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.<p>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)
I am running inBoundio - <a href="http://www.inboundio.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.inboundio.com</a> (I call it basecamp of marketing) and is the only guy so I do all the work.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I will soon be touching 100 paying customers so will write a detailed post and share it on hackernews.
I run <a href="http://lsathacks.com" rel="nofollow">http://lsathacks.com</a>, and have a related book series<p>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.<p>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.<p>The LSAT is an admission exam for American and Canadian law schools. My materials/lessons teach people how to do better on it.
I own and operate <a href="http://www.radioreference.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.radioreference.com</a> and <a href="http://www.broadcastify.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.broadcastify.com</a>. I do all the development, business management, and support.<p>I have a team of community volunteers that do a lot of day to day moderation and member management.<p>I got started simply building a set of community resources for the radio communications and hobbyist market.<p>We're very profitable and these businesses provide the majority of my family's income.
I developed the Electrician Calculator Pro, a National Electrical Code compliant calculator for engineers, electricians, lighting designers, etc:<p><a href="http://www.electriciancalculator.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.electriciancalculator.com</a><p>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.
PierreA seems to be doing well: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934352" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934352</a>
I run <a href="https://xp-dev.com" rel="nofollow">https://xp-dev.com</a> and more recently <a href="http://deployer.vc" rel="nofollow">http://deployer.vc</a> and <a href="https://zoned.io" rel="nofollow">https://zoned.io</a> - all as a solo. I am hiring now, have used freelancers for help over time, but generally it has been a solo effort.<p>Do tell if you have any specific questions, and I'll be more than happy to help out!
Not sure if this counts. I have created a simple landing page open source project: <a href="http://rails-landing-page.herokuapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://rails-landing-page.herokuapp.com/</a><p>I get a lot of consulting (development + design) business when clients learn about us via this application.<p>I also use it set up landing pages for any Startups/SMEs are developing their MVP/Beta application with me.
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.
I've been running <a href="http://www.vladstudio.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.vladstudio.com</a> (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".
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: (<a href="http://opensource.com.pk" rel="nofollow">http://opensource.com.pk</a>) and (<a href="http://sells.pk/" rel="nofollow">http://sells.pk/</a>) 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.
Matthew Inman runs The Oatmeal (<a href="http://theoatmeal.com/" rel="nofollow">http://theoatmeal.com/</a>) alone and he crossed $500,000 annual revenue in 2012.<p>Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal</a>
I run <a href="http://www.fantasysp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.fantasysp.com/</a>, which provides tools and services to help people manage their fantasy sports teams.<p>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.
I run <a href="http://flevy.com" rel="nofollow">http://flevy.com</a>. 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.
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.<p>Working on other windows software, and working towards starting a SaaS app, blogging about it all :)
<a href="http://www.fleaflicker.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.fleaflicker.com/</a> (A fantasy sports site.) Started solo, sold, bought back, now operates as a team of two but I am the sole technical member.
I ran Scribie. <a href="http://scribie.com" rel="nofollow">http://scribie.com</a>.<p>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.
I run <a href="http://www.graduatetutor.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.graduatetutor.com/</a> myself. It is technically not one man because there are other independent tutors working with me too!
I run a product search engine called Dotmic <a href="http://www.dotmic.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.dotmic.com/</a> .Recently we partnered with 60+ store and now we are profitable. :)
I am running premium Ghost Blog marketplace <a href="http://www.gtheme.io/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gtheme.io/</a><p>I solo doing design, develop, marketing, as well as writing contents around Ghost.
I run <a href="http://getreplied.com" rel="nofollow">http://getreplied.com</a><p>It's a very simple app to help people get their email replied.
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.
Since you didn't specify the type of business ( <a href="http://www.dot-com-it.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.dot-com-it.com</a>) ; 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I tried my hands at podcasting with a sponsorships model ( <a href="http://www.theflexshow.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.theflexshow.com</a> ). 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.<p>I took the profits from the consulting business and pumped them into a product business selling advanced components to Flex developers ( <a href="http://www.flextras.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.flextras.com</a> ). 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 ( <a href="http://www.lifeafterflex.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.lifeafterflex.com</a> ). 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.<p>I've also dabbled with a in Mobile Game ( <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.igorKnots.magondaMaze" rel="nofollow">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.igorKn...</a> ), a recording studio (not online), and a CD duplication business (not online). All had varying levels of success.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.