7 ms·

I can answer any questions, whether about how to get a great Christmas present, or questions about the article!

by chrischen 10y ago

aaawow 10y ago
do you see deep learning artistic services as competitors to real artists? e.g. https://deepart.io/ https://deepart.io/
- chrischen 10y ago
  To real artists, perhaps, but we currently only offer direct photo to painting services, which mean the only services offered by artists on our site are directly copying photos and turning them into physical artworks. So unless deepart.io is combined with a painting robot, we don't feel threatened. And in fact we already released both a painting robot and the first free-to-use neural network style transfer demo.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    You keep saying 'we' whereas my impression is that this is a solo project, is the lady you mention in the article your partner in the business (since you mention no employees)?
    - chrischen 10y ago
      Right now the business is just me. We is used out of habit, since it's technically a C corp and I technically have investors.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        That's a nice thing you've built there, congratulations. Very impressive!
csallen 10y ago
I have a question! (Even though I could've just asked you this during the interview itself.) You say that you've automated most of the process of running the business: "I've gradually adapted the software over time to automate every process, and generally I only have to step in in rare instances of high-level disputes." How much time do you spend working nowadays? And on what? What's your typical day look like?
- chrischen 10y ago
  It's passive income in the sense that if I just dropped everything and played video games all day, the income would sustain itself. However that's far from what I actually do :). It simply means I can free myself up to work on new features or increase revenue. So I'm still working about on average 5-8 hours per day, 6-7 days a week. I like to travel a bit, and work while traveling. Since I have no employees, this makes it easier to have this lifestyle. Whenever I get a chance to sit down in a coffee shop I'll usually stay a few hours and do work.
  - antaviana 10y ago
    Do you ever take several days off? Like a two-three week vacation without being online at all. This is what I find most difficult to do for a 1-employee operation that offers a 24/7 service.
    - chrischen 10y ago
      All the time. Customer service is handled by the sellers directly.
  - ska 10y ago
    So it is not passive. That's ok, almost all "passive income" isn't, and the term has been abused into near uselessness. Sounds like the term you are actually looking for is "lifestyle business" Nothing wrong than that, and it's a more sensible (i.e. well defined) goal that passive income.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
thang 10y ago
How much customer support (for either artists or buyers) did you have to do as this grew before you managed to automate everything? How long did it take to define/implement/automate these processes?
- chrischen 10y ago
  I'm primarily a coder. So it doesn't take long to identify something that I have to repeatedly do manually, and then automate a solution that would reduce the incidences of it. A feature can be pushed out as fast as a day or sometimes take a week, if it's a complex problem.
pdog 10y ago
I have a question about the concept of hiring artists and sourcing from factories in China. What does Instapainting do—in terms of due diligence—to ensure safe working conditions and fair labor practices for workers in the factories that make the product?
- chrischen 10y ago
  We're just a marketplace, like Etsy or Ebay behind the scenes. That being said, I have personally visited many of the sellers and for advanced products such as highly detailed portrait paintings (the ones sold on Instapainting.com), the artists always work from their home and are independent contractors. It's only for large quantity mass replica work that are actually done in factories, and I've visited those factories as well, however they do not provide the detailed portraits type of work.
- dilemma 10y ago
  Did you also ask Tesla and SpaceX about what they do to ensure humane working conditions? I've worked in a studio/factory in China and visited plenty; from what I've read, they're far better than SpaceX.
countryqt30 10y ago
What keywords / search terms did you optimize for?
- chrischen 10y ago
  The keyword discovery at first was mostly accidental. Basically after the techcrunch article was pushed out, I eventually noticed that certain keywords were ranking based on that article, and certain ones were converting to sales. Then it was a matter of pushing out more publicity to rank higher, and then later on identify other keywords.
franciscop 10y ago
How do you learn the business part of what you are doing? I can and do program fancy websites quickly, but I fail to see how I could monetize it. I mean about things that scale well, are kind of low-work and mostly an experiment. So, how do you pick which experiments to try? Do you have like many ideas constantly like that? Do you try few of them until one sticks? How do you know you will be able to pull it off later on?
- chrischen 10y ago
  I learned everything I know how to do through practice and execution. Yes I've had many ideas. Many terrible, most inconsequential. You'll of course only read about the 1 or 2 successful ones on HN ;). After trying hundreds of ideas, you get lazy and get faster at pushing out ideas. Then just keep at the ones that stick.
  - franciscop 10y ago
    I see, so it's basically the same as releasing Open Source software only that you need a plausible selling thing, possibly with a physical product. I'll start trying to sell some of them, thanks (:
noddingham 10y ago
I'm interested in your thoughts on how you came about the idea. I don't want to be disparaging but do you consider it "lucky" that you had a friend point you towards selling art reproductions online? Were you already thinking of similar ideas? There's that gulf between ideas and execution, and you clearly executed well. Given that you had previous ideas that you weren't able to successfully execute on (relative to Instapainting), I'm also curious of your thoughts comparing those experiences? Also, congrats on the success and thanks for sharing some of the inside details.
- chrischen 10y ago
  The short answer is I tested hundreds of ideas. At that point, you could tell I was cutting all the bullshit. The original Instapainting.com page was just a single page with some pictures and a Stripe Checkout form after all.
  - shostack 10y ago
    Can you elaborate on your testing process and some of the other things you tested? What was your criteria for success?
niccolop 10y ago
What other verticals do you think you’ll expand into?
- chrischen 10y ago
  I was thinking of maybe turning Instapainting into a social network.
  - niccolop 10y ago
    So a social network for Chinese painters?
z3t4 10y ago
Can I ask how old you are ? You seem to have amazing determination and knowledge. Thanks for sharing! It's refreshing to see you doing "old school" public relations instead of relying solely on SEO witch is very risky.
6stringmerc 10y ago
I'm a somewhat vain individual. Any of your talented artists capable of making me one of those Dorian Gray type portraits[1]? Kidding aside, I compliment you on the innovation and using technology to streamline the relationship between customer and producer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray
charlierguo 10y ago
What were your favorite resources for learning SEO?
reledi 10y ago
- Have you experimented with painters from areas other than China? - What's the onboarding process like for a painter? - I read on the reddit soft-launch post that one way the business handled scaling was by printing out the photos and then painting over them. Did it turn out to be a successful strategy?
- mistermann 10y ago
  What a great idea....I woulda kept that one a secret.
ehsanu1 10y ago
Congrats Chris, I knew you'd make it!
rmsaksida 10y ago
Could you elaborate on the marketplace backing Instapainting? You've mentioned sellers and painters - if I understood correctly, does that mean Instapainting immediately delegates to 3rd party sellers once a sale is done through the website, and it's the sellers who handle hiring the painters, shipping and (some of) customer service? If so, that's amazing and quite surprising. It really is a marketplace/bidding portal wholly abstracted for the end user. Congrats on the website and success, very inspiring story!
- chrischen 10y ago
  Yes. It is fundamentally a marketplace abstracted for the end user. It evolved into this way over time, and I didn't set out planning to build it this way.
linuxlewis 10y ago
Sites down.
vatotemking 10y ago
> I've used PHP, Node.js, Mongo, and React.js. The stack consists largely of micro-services, which is crucial in allowing me (the only developer) to migrate the site to new technologies. Can you pls elaborate on this?
- chrischen 10y ago
  It lets me uograde parts of the application piecemeal.
  - webmaven 10y ago
    That's not an elaboration... Really, could you go into some more detail on how you structure, build, and deploy your microservices? Monitor them? Scale? Do migrations?
jgorn 10y ago
Hi Chris, question about a very minor part of your sales funnel. The question about sharing the customers photo & painting on your site defaults to YES (which is 'free') and offers a NO option at +$3 extra charge. Pricing theory, I'm particularly thinking of loss aversion, would suggest you'd get more customers selecting your preferred option of YES if you offer a discount for making this selection (-$3) and leave the rate unchanged for those declining to share. I'm curious if you A/B tested this pricing option and found the +$3 charge more successful (assuming you are trying to maximise customers opting to share their photos)? Anecdotally I'd be more inclined to pick the option that gives me a discount, if it existed.

I can answer any questions, whether about how to get a great Christmas present, or questions about the article!

aaawow 10y ago

do you see deep learning artistic services as competitors to real artists? e.g. https://deepart.io/ https://deepart.io/

chrischen 10y ago
To real artists, perhaps, but we currently only offer direct photo to painting services, which mean the only services offered by artists on our site are directly copying photos and turning them into physical artworks. So unless deepart.io is combined with a painting robot, we don't feel threatened. And in fact we already released both a painting robot and the first free-to-use neural network style transfer demo.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  You keep saying 'we' whereas my impression is that this is a solo project, is the lady you mention in the article your partner in the business (since you mention no employees)?
  - chrischen 10y ago
    Right now the business is just me. We is used out of habit, since it's technically a C corp and I technically have investors.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      That's a nice thing you've built there, congratulations. Very impressive!

csallen 10y ago

I have a question! (Even though I could've just asked you this during the interview itself.) You say that you've automated most of the process of running the business: "I've gradually adapted the software over time to automate every process, and generally I only have to step in in rare instances of high-level disputes." How much time do you spend working nowadays? And on what? What's your typical day look like?

chrischen 10y ago
It's passive income in the sense that if I just dropped everything and played video games all day, the income would sustain itself. However that's far from what I actually do :). It simply means I can free myself up to work on new features or increase revenue. So I'm still working about on average 5-8 hours per day, 6-7 days a week. I like to travel a bit, and work while traveling. Since I have no employees, this makes it easier to have this lifestyle. Whenever I get a chance to sit down in a coffee shop I'll usually stay a few hours and do work.
- antaviana 10y ago
  Do you ever take several days off? Like a two-three week vacation without being online at all. This is what I find most difficult to do for a 1-employee operation that offers a 24/7 service.
  - chrischen 10y ago
    All the time. Customer service is handled by the sellers directly.
- ska 10y ago
  So it is not passive. That's ok, almost all "passive income" isn't, and the term has been abused into near uselessness. Sounds like the term you are actually looking for is "lifestyle business" Nothing wrong than that, and it's a more sensible (i.e. well defined) goal that passive income.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

thang 10y ago

How much customer support (for either artists or buyers) did you have to do as this grew before you managed to automate everything? How long did it take to define/implement/automate these processes?

chrischen 10y ago
I'm primarily a coder. So it doesn't take long to identify something that I have to repeatedly do manually, and then automate a solution that would reduce the incidences of it. A feature can be pushed out as fast as a day or sometimes take a week, if it's a complex problem.

pdog 10y ago

I have a question about the concept of hiring artists and sourcing from factories in China. What does Instapainting do—in terms of due diligence—to ensure safe working conditions and fair labor practices for workers in the factories that make the product?

chrischen 10y ago
We're just a marketplace, like Etsy or Ebay behind the scenes. That being said, I have personally visited many of the sellers and for advanced products such as highly detailed portrait paintings (the ones sold on Instapainting.com), the artists always work from their home and are independent contractors. It's only for large quantity mass replica work that are actually done in factories, and I've visited those factories as well, however they do not provide the detailed portraits type of work.
dilemma 10y ago
Did you also ask Tesla and SpaceX about what they do to ensure humane working conditions? I've worked in a studio/factory in China and visited plenty; from what I've read, they're far better than SpaceX.

countryqt30 10y ago

What keywords / search terms did you optimize for?

chrischen 10y ago
The keyword discovery at first was mostly accidental. Basically after the techcrunch article was pushed out, I eventually noticed that certain keywords were ranking based on that article, and certain ones were converting to sales. Then it was a matter of pushing out more publicity to rank higher, and then later on identify other keywords.

franciscop 10y ago

How do you learn the business part of what you are doing? I can and do program fancy websites quickly, but I fail to see how I could monetize it. I mean about things that scale well, are kind of low-work and mostly an experiment. So, how do you pick which experiments to try? Do you have like many ideas constantly like that? Do you try few of them until one sticks? How do you know you will be able to pull it off later on?

chrischen 10y ago
I learned everything I know how to do through practice and execution. Yes I've had many ideas. Many terrible, most inconsequential. You'll of course only read about the 1 or 2 successful ones on HN ;). After trying hundreds of ideas, you get lazy and get faster at pushing out ideas. Then just keep at the ones that stick.
- franciscop 10y ago
  I see, so it's basically the same as releasing Open Source software only that you need a plausible selling thing, possibly with a physical product. I'll start trying to sell some of them, thanks (:

noddingham 10y ago

I'm interested in your thoughts on how you came about the idea. I don't want to be disparaging but do you consider it "lucky" that you had a friend point you towards selling art reproductions online? Were you already thinking of similar ideas? There's that gulf between ideas and execution, and you clearly executed well. Given that you had previous ideas that you weren't able to successfully execute on (relative to Instapainting), I'm also curious of your thoughts comparing those experiences? Also, congrats on the success and thanks for sharing some of the inside details.

chrischen 10y ago
The short answer is I tested hundreds of ideas. At that point, you could tell I was cutting all the bullshit. The original Instapainting.com page was just a single page with some pictures and a Stripe Checkout form after all.
- shostack 10y ago
  Can you elaborate on your testing process and some of the other things you tested? What was your criteria for success?

niccolop 10y ago

What other verticals do you think you’ll expand into?

chrischen 10y ago
I was thinking of maybe turning Instapainting into a social network.
- niccolop 10y ago
  So a social network for Chinese painters?

z3t4 10y ago

Can I ask how old you are ? You seem to have amazing determination and knowledge. Thanks for sharing! It's refreshing to see you doing "old school" public relations instead of relying solely on SEO witch is very risky.

6stringmerc 10y ago

I'm a somewhat vain individual. Any of your talented artists capable of making me one of those Dorian Gray type portraits[1]? Kidding aside, I compliment you on the innovation and using technology to streamline the relationship between customer and producer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray

charlierguo 10y ago

What were your favorite resources for learning SEO?

reledi 10y ago

- Have you experimented with painters from areas other than China? - What's the onboarding process like for a painter? - I read on the reddit soft-launch post that one way the business handled scaling was by printing out the photos and then painting over them. Did it turn out to be a successful strategy?

mistermann 10y ago
What a great idea....I woulda kept that one a secret.

ehsanu1 10y ago

Congrats Chris, I knew you'd make it!

rmsaksida 10y ago

Could you elaborate on the marketplace backing Instapainting? You've mentioned sellers and painters - if I understood correctly, does that mean Instapainting immediately delegates to 3rd party sellers once a sale is done through the website, and it's the sellers who handle hiring the painters, shipping and (some of) customer service? If so, that's amazing and quite surprising. It really is a marketplace/bidding portal wholly abstracted for the end user. Congrats on the website and success, very inspiring story!

chrischen 10y ago
Yes. It is fundamentally a marketplace abstracted for the end user. It evolved into this way over time, and I didn't set out planning to build it this way.

linuxlewis 10y ago

Sites down.

vatotemking 10y ago

> I've used PHP, Node.js, Mongo, and React.js. The stack consists largely of micro-services, which is crucial in allowing me (the only developer) to migrate the site to new technologies. Can you pls elaborate on this?

chrischen 10y ago
It lets me uograde parts of the application piecemeal.
- webmaven 10y ago
  That's not an elaboration... Really, could you go into some more detail on how you structure, build, and deploy your microservices? Monitor them? Scale? Do migrations?

jgorn 10y ago

Hi Chris, question about a very minor part of your sales funnel. The question about sharing the customers photo & painting on your site defaults to YES (which is 'free') and offers a NO option at +$3 extra charge. Pricing theory, I'm particularly thinking of loss aversion, would suggest you'd get more customers selecting your preferred option of YES if you offer a discount for making this selection (-$3) and leave the rate unchanged for those declining to share. I'm curious if you A/B tested this pricing option and found the +$3 charge more successful (assuming you are trying to maximise customers opting to share their photos)? Anecdotally I'd be more inclined to pick the option that gives me a discount, if it existed.