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How to Come Up with Profitable Business Ideas
- coreymaass 8y agoSo proud to be included in this. A lot of solopreneurs started with WordPress and moved to SaaS. I went the other way and still see so much opportunity in WordPress plugins, plugins-as-apps, and SaaS.
- GoodbyeEarl 8y agoI've been thinking about this market lately, have you done something similar?
- ehnto 8y agoI found WordPress plugins to be a bit of a race to the bottom for many ideas (eg: something is already doing it for free) but I imagine there is a great market for enterprisey plugins. There are also some excellent plugin markets for most eCommerce platforms if you've got the drive to develop in them. Companies using an eComm platform are likely to be actual businesses so they are willing to spend more money for a quality plugin.
- coreymaass 8y agoYes, the low hanging fruit has been plucked, sometimes a dozen times. But if you think of WordPress as a very simple method of self-hosting, there are lots of apps that have yet to be built. The other option is building a SaaS app and using a single WordPress install or WordPress multisite as the platform. I thought this was a crazy idea a couple years ago. Now I know of dozens of apps that have WordPress as the back-end, and it works well.
- petra 8y agoWhat about WordPress as a web app development tool for non-programmers ? Is it possible now ? Or could reasonable scale plugins will make it possible ?
- coreymaass 8y agoObviously, it depends on the app you're trying to make. But I recently worked with a founder who found a niche, used Gravity forms to collect data, Gravity view to display and export the data, (your basic CRUD in programming parlance) and this solved the basic needs of the problem. I presented on this a couple years ago at a WordCamp, and am giving the updated version in a week at WordCamp Belfast. https://wordpress.tv/2017/06/05/corey-maass-rapid-web-app-development-on-wordpress/ https://wordpress.tv/2017/06/05/corey-maass-rapid-web-app-de...
- davidjnelson 8y agoThis is awesome! Here’s a list of companies with over $240k/year in revenue: https://www.indiehackers.com/round-table/how-to-come-up-with-profitable-online-business-ideas?revenue=20001%2B https://www.indiehackers.com/round-table/how-to-come-up-with...
- tome 8y agoHuh? Isn't that just the same page?
- davidjnelson 8y agoIt adds the filter of over 20k MRR.
- tome 8y agoOh, that makes much more sense. Thanks! That's a very cool site.
- jotm 8y agoIt is amazing reading these tbh, always wanted to start a non-physical business, but the real world is always in the way. Right now I sell spare parts salvaged from home appliances headed for scrap, it is surprisingly profitable, so much that 2 people can't keep up with it (having full time jobs, though). Selling to small repair shops and directly to end users. Would be a great full time business, but unless an investor is interested, it will take a while.
- existencebox 8y agoThis is fascinating to me. I know when buying replacement car parts, the first place I always used to look was the junkyard, but I figured this was a very thoroughly exploited field. (I used to, in my more shoestring and duct tape phase, build my server racks out of secondhand parts too, but I rapidly learned the power costs/lack of computational/hardware modernity bit me in the ass, so there's also my question of what sort of salvage doesn't fall prey to this?) My gut feel was broadly that it's cheaper to buy something new on digikey than to spend the man-hours cutting/heatgunning the part out of some junk. Clearly I'm wrong, so take this comment as a "I'd love to learn more if you're willing/able to talk about it"
- burger_moon 8y agoI knew a person a few years back who's business was selling scrap electronics to a company in Russia. They would salvage all sorts of electronic equipment, strip them down and sort everything out and send it all to Russia in a container. It was a pretty lucrative business, at least it appeared so.
- PenguinCoder 8y agoYou need to be very careful in that space to not run afoul of ITAR and other export compliance regulations. Not worth it for a side hustle imo.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoHow much do you need?
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- davidjnelson 8y agoBusiness models of the companies with over $240k ARR: - outsourcing to humans - asset acquirement leverage - education - outsourcing to ai - event organizing - adding a missing feature to a platform - internet marketing saas - copied a website and added a missing feature - micro feedback as a service Copying a website and adding a feature is great for someone who spends their time becoming a better software craftsperson. Micro feedback as a service is a fascinating market I had never considered. Exceptional creativity there. Could be applied generally to many domains. PullRequest is doing code review as a service which is a great example of applying it to another specific domain. Edit: formatting.
- tchock23 8y agoI'm a little confused. The companies from the post that dealt with feedback had far less than $240k ARR. Which "micro feedback" companies are you referring to?
- bcyn 8y agoI think SubmitHub
- davidjnelson 8y agoExactly. SubmitHub states 55k/MRR.
- bb611 8y agoThe revenue listed in the article is per month. The above appears to correlate with the subset whose monthly revenue is >$20k.
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y agoThe business model of the first company I worked for was a simplification: take a complex (hardware) product with many features and release a version of it that only consists of the most important feature.
- njsubedi 8y agoTLDR; The most earnings are generated by software that solve problem for a niche of entrepreneurs/companies who don’t have programming knowledge/programmers in house.
- giarc 8y agoIt's more than that too. Sometimes the companies have the knowledge and skill, they just don't have the time. Their engineer might have a list of 15 things to do, and if there's a tool that accomplishes #15, just pay for it and take it off their list.
- quickthrower2 8y agoRaygun springs to mind.
- stillworks 8y agoInteresting and possibly exceptional counter example here. I worked for a product company and I was supposed to add a set of new features to the product. The way the company was setup, we were able to setup demos/calls with existing customers quite quickly. Two of the existing customers are industry giants and as I walked them through the demo, they were able to actually name the exact API calls I would have been using for the demo. And then one of them actually effectively said "take my money already and ship it" I quite lieterally asked them if they had such fine grained information on what we were going to sell them, then why are they even bothering to buy from us ? The answer was, getting a well packaged solution as a feature set in a product they are already using is far more useful for them than to have to spend time themselves writing ad-hoc/free-standing programs which do the same things even if they have the resources to do it themselves.
- quickthrower2 8y agoYeah there is probably politics etc. that disable a "industry giant" from spending their human resources on certain projects, but they may have the OK to pay an outsider to do the same. That's the situation the big consulting firms love.
- more_corn 8y agoStep 1) create value Step 2) make sure cost of creating value < value created Step 3) profit
- encoderer 8y agoThese are primarily SaaS businesses. You missed the "grind" step.
- vram22 8y agoStartup opportunity? Grind as a Service? (GaaS). Not kidding, although the acronym might make it seem so. I mean, paying a middleman (the GaaSer) to do something better / more cost-effectively than you (aka any SaaS startup founder) can (if it is an area they can specialize in, and so achieve economies of scale). SaaS's (and other cos.) already use many SaaS's anyway - at least some of them do, I've read. It's like why we pay e-commerce companie like Amazon, rather than scouting for each item we want to buy at separate vendors or vendor's sites.
- Swenrekcah 8y agoIsn't that's either: a consultant if you get paid in money, or a co-founder if you get paid in a share of the product.
- vram22 8y agoI was somewhat speculating, hence the 2 question marks in my comment. But to make it more clear: I don't think that it needs to be only either a consultant or a co-founder. I was thinking (maybe an unconventional approach, I know) of a GaaS company that has studied and has experience with, and then specializes in removing the obstacles (of the 'grind' - word from original comment I replied to) that startups commonly have trouble with. Could be with customer acquisition or customer retention or other areas, and they provide this as a service. In fact I would not be surprised if there already are companies doing this - there probably are. At least for different aspects of marketing I know there are.
- ynniv 8y agoThese filtering options make me tear my hair out. Please don't use radio boxes... almost ever. Users are almost always interested in some but not all or none, and minimums / maximums. There is no way to see "everything that isn't free or advertising based", or "more than $4,000 / mo", which is probably what most people are interested in.
- notadoc 8y agoThese are fun/interesting to browse through. Finding pain points is perhaps the easiest way to get business ideas. But as always, ideas are only a starting point, the implementation is what matters.
- aantix 8y agoIf you don't have a clue as where to start in finding a profitable idea: Ramit Sethi had an interesting article a while back about finding profitable ideas. TLDR; look for reoccurring themes in the types of tasks/data/processes people are requesting in UpWork's marketplace (UpWork use to be oDesk). Researching there has the built-in advantage that these are obviously things that people care enough about to pay money for, so that can serve as some preliminary validation. https://growthlab.com/how-i-validated-my-business-idea-using-upwork/ https://growthlab.com/how-i-validated-my-business-idea-using... https://www.upwork.com/i/job-categories/ https://www.upwork.com/i/job-categories/
- quickthrower2 8y agoYes but they are not paying a lot of money. I think a lot of those upwork postings are from hobbiests, arbitragers and really tightass businesses.
- noitsnot 8y agoI think he's suggesting finding a common need. You're not going to do the work on those sites for pocket change. You're going to create a solution then sell it Xtimes to multiple business who need it.
- MattRogish 8y agoFor a B2B SaaS company, the easiest/most likely[1] algorithm to succeed[2]: 1) Be embedded in the industry for a while 2) Make lots of connections, build credibility 3) Build SaaS app to solve key pain point you experienced in #1 4) Sell to the folks you know from #2 5) For bonus points/de-risking: find 25 potential customers (from #2) and reach out to them and validate this idea (Jobs-to-be-Done). Get a handful of them to commit, even verbally, to buy this when you've got an MVP built. [1] Clearly this is not the only way to be successful, but "I have a random idea lemme build it" is a great way to be not successful [2] Succeed = your business that makes enough revenue to support you and a reasonable lifestyle, equating (and/or eventually surpassing) what you would typically make at a W2 gig, from a diversity of customers and not trading your personal time for money.
- goatherders 8y ago1 through 3 is 100% correct in my experience. I left my job recently and after a short break I called 3 friends from the industry side and 3 friends from the customers-of-that-industry side and said "if I do this will you pay me?"
- michaelbuckbee 8y agoAgreed, but there is a slight twist to that I have seen be even more effective. 1) Consult in the industry as a contract developer at X/hour rate. 2) When you find a problem that they're facing that you might be able to turn into a business, offer them 0.75X/hour while you work on it in exchange for the right to commercialize it. Obviously this doesn't work for everything, but it's a non-obvious way to get paid while fixing a real problem and build a business.
- goatherders 8y agoGood advice. I have a B2B lead gen system that I offer - built on 19 years of experience - for 75% of the price of someone who has 2 years experience.
- ryanmarsh 8y ago2.b Be independent contractor. Carefully work on side-biz on your own time. Have good documentation and git-log in case someone at the client ends up caring when you worked on it (zero risk if it's not core biz for them and they aren't assholes). Don't tell anyone what you're working. Don't use proprietary data in your product. Profit
- swoorup 8y agoI have pondering of an idea, which encourages local economy. Products, services or goods would be preferred of the local area. This is to allow visibility of local businesses and encourage spending locally. This also would provide jobs for the local people. Its frightening that globalised economy while beneficial takes jobs or sucks out of local economy. What do you think?
- thelastidiot 8y agoThe main issue with going after random ideas, is that suddenly 3 months down the process of building some proof of concept, you lost so much of the initial thrill and focus (build B in order to build A, build C in order to build B, learn D in order to build C...) that you've eaten all the energy, end up burned out, depressed and browsing TC and sites like this one to reflect on what went wrong.
- stocktech 8y agoThat's your experience, but far from reality. You're right, it's not easy, but that's why we're here. You also have to realize discipline > motivation. Everything you just said is a personal problem, not something inherent to the process.
- ryandrake 8y agoThis is called Yak Shaving and happens all the time when building complex systems, especially by yourself. It’s happened to me many times: you start out wanting to do “simple” thing X, and end up with a tree of task dependencies 20 layers deep. After spending a whole lot of time, all you have to show for your planned mansion is a pile of foundation.
- marcosdumay 8y agoBut it's great, because once you have all that foundation you can quickly iterate on your top layer and quickly discover new pieces you are missing and must build before completion.
- thelastidiot 8y agoExcept by the time you get there, you need to figure out how to make a living (bills don't suddenly disappear when you are in "sabbatical" mode.) Trust me, I am in this right now as we speak.
- mittermayr 8y agoThat is a huge issue indeed, but it usually gets a bit better if you manage to overcome it once or twice as well as understanding where that thrill comes and feeds from. Learning to become better at your own 'thrill-management' is actually a super-important skill, i.e. knowing that you better build that prototype in two or three days rather than the next two or three months (no excuses, almost ANY SAAS prototype can be built in a week or less -- it's all about prioritising what you can do manually, fake, or add later), as well as knowing that, inherently, a lot of us here are problem-solving fans, we like to figure something out and once the challenge is completed, or we see the finish line, we want to move on to other things. A good tip I picked up from writing is to stop working not when you've finished a big package of work, but instead, right in the middle of it when your brain has already started thinking ahead of your next two or three steps. That's where you leave it, and it'll be MUCH easier to continue next morning. What also helps, of course, is past experiences -- I've built a product that requires little to no maintenance (now), the prototype took one looong day and then another weekend to roll out, and it randomly picked up Toyota as a customer in its second week. New customers kept the thrill going, and when times were calm, I just let the website 'exist' on its own -- it's made over $100k and while those kinds of projects are my daily work (compared to an 'an actual job'), the time it required to maintain would've easily been available next to a moderately demanding job. Much like other things in life, even with software, it may need to simmer for quite a while before it really starts shining. There's no single recipe of success, but people tend to forget (while looking for big dramatic SEO-guru growth-hacking insights) that getting a few basic things right will improve your chances of success dramatically (managing motivation, knowing when to let things simmer (getting from 0 to 10, and from 10 to 100 customers can often take depressingly long), knowing when to let users guide you, stuff like that).
- amelius 8y agoIf only the people who need certain functionality knew how to express themselves and to speak up, we wouldn't have to go through the messy and risky process of looking for business ideas all the time.
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y agoIf only you knew how to communicate with those people in their own language, you wouldn't have to go through the messy and risky process of looking for business ideas all the time. People who need stuff say it all the time. You know what happens when non-technical people say, "I need xxx" on a developer forum? - They're told "just google it" - They're told (implicitly) that they're stupid. - Devs pretend not to understand what they are asking for because it isn't phrased exactly how they'd like to see it expressed. I've made money from simply hanging out on certain forums, listening to what people want and then approaching them politely to offer a simple solution, asking questions along the way. It ain't rocket surgery, people!
- amelius 8y agoStill, it's the opposite of what you'd want. Instead of those people asking if you could help them, you have to go out and find forums where people might need your help. Imagine that doctors had to find patients like that. In fact, perhaps I should start a consultation hour for people in need of IT solutions.
- mlevental 8y agowhich forums? I know how to speak human
- danieltillett 8y agoI will add make a product focused on the decision maker, not the needs of the business. Make their life easier, or make them look like a genius, and you will have a successful idea. Don't fall into the trap of making a product that saves the customer money, but makes life more difficult for the decision maker.
- teslacar 8y agoThe 'free eth' business is booming cuz twitter is too inept to ban domains that spam its site and ppl are too stupid to know better. https://medium.com/@robertyusert/there-are-free-ethreum-spam-botnets-ravaging-twitter-68b25d12c2a https://medium.com/@robertyusert/there-are-free-ethreum-spam...
- matte_black 8y agoI have a small business building training data sets for neural networks. Struggling, not very sure anymore.
- laurex 8y agoIt's kind of amazing how many ideas are framed in terms of a "problem" as though it is divorced from people. A good place to start for building anything that people will want to pay for is Cindy Alvarez's book "Lean Customer Development".
- reagan83 8y agoShout out to Cindy and her book. She is a former colleague and I’m a big fan of her work.
- jiveturkey 8y agoOh is the news not out? Ideas are a dime a dozen. Ideas aren’t the problem. Execution.
- digianarchist 8y agoIdeas can be a problem. Like the guy selling disposable SMS. Sure to land themselves in legal trouble.
- ian0 8y agoA interesting one Ive come across recently are technical founders that run a solutions company where a retired exec of a large company in a particular industry is an advisor/investor and assisting with leads. Screams of corruption but in practice not really so. The exec knows there industry well, finds out where they struggle to find solutions, passes info down to the company. The company then creates specialised software to deal with it and joins a tender. As they have a trusted person on board it assists in getting in the door. Also the competition will usually not be very technically advanced. Revenue streams are variable from rev-share to cost + maintenance. In a lot of cases the same solutions can be sold to others within the same vertical or outside it. Anecdotal but founders Ive met in this area seem far more successful than those on a more traditional VC / bootstrapping tract. Perhaps because a lot of the hard part of enterprise sales is solved by the advisor. This may be an asia-specific style of business, not sure.
- cfitz 8y agoThis is not exclusive to Asia. I know more individuals whom have found success doing this than attempting to sell software which is the result of a one-off idea. It might seem rare in the States, but only because 1) the entrepreneurs heading these ventures do not want to give away profitable niches in the market and 2) they are not as fun to talk about as startups with lofty billion dollar goals.
- whataretensors 8y agoAnother risky way to setup an extra income source is to invest capital setting up blockchain services that give rewards.
- whataretensors 8y agoMention anything about working with blockchains on HN and you get downvoted. I'm not sure how this place became so close-minded, or if HN was always this way and I changed. A side project is risk. It's time and money that you invest into something. Working with chains requires technical and engineering solutions. You can build dapps, tokens, chain integrations, or just set up some mining/nodes.
- romanovcode 8y agoMy guess is that the hype is over and nobody cares about blockchain anymore.
- slackoverflower 8y agoThe reality of business is you don't have to be innovative. A lot of successful businesses are not even new ideas. Of course there is the whole concept of the first-mover advantage but in the world of SaaS there is plenty place for competition. Making a 30% improvement on one specific feature of a popular product or service can very well be a business on its own. I think a lot of people get held up on the idea that it's unethical to just steal an idea so they try and start something brand new. Innovative businesses are the riskiest.
- bmpafa 8y ago"good entrepreneurs copy ideas, _great_ entrepreneurs steal ideas"
- Bekwnn 8y ago> "good entrepreneurs copy ideas, _great_ entrepreneurs steal ideas" Worth mentioning that the original quote was "artists". There is a lot of valuable inspiration to be derived from other creative professions in this industry. "Measure twice, cut once" is one I've quoted a lot, originating from carpenters.
- lazyjones 8y agoExactly. Look at the largest, most successful IT companies. They have some innovative products or product features, but none of them invented anything completely new (even Apple and certainly not Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft...). The CSE I founded (and sold, allowing me to retire comfortably) was neither original, nor particularly innovative in 1997 when I started (pricewatch.com existed etc.), and it's extremely profitable to this day. There are plenty of good ideas out there and much more existing, profitable businesses in need of a slightly better competitor.
- allenleein 8y agoFor startup founder, just master the concept of leverage. The opportunity exists in the business world because when companies become successful is when collective leadership becomes most focused on maintaining success. Usually, leadership tends to see more risk in the downside of the current plan and than upside in taking on new things. Few things companies doing regularly: 1. View a temporary trend as a competitive advantage. 2. Focus on building reputational momentum. 3. Believe it’s easy to span across generations. 4. Love being right. 5. Love the new idea, not new way of thinking. Being right and staying right is totally different. Doing well reduces the incentive to explore other ideas, especially when those ideas conflict with your proven business model. The idea is not important as thinking. And knowing how your idea evolving is more important to have a good idea. Because you will realize how to generate your own point of view. Usually, the traditional Business Thinking Process is: Dissect the dominant business model in your industry. How big is the remaining market? Find a way to get in. Instead, in order to master and beat the odds, you should just totally ignore “the market things” and think about: What’s the business model other people can’t/hard to clone? What’s the opportunity cost of building it? What’s your advantage to build that business? First, why can you ignore the market? Because Which market does not depend on you, it’s on the user. You’re not in the market you think you’re in – you’re in the market your users think you’re in. Most failed companies made the wrong “Awesome product” by choosing the wrong market and following the wrong standard. If your business fits in a market design by someone else, your dead. Pepsi never catches Coke. Bing never catches Google. The real question is can you design a market that you can dominate. Second, market-size is not important at all. Numbers are about the past if you wanna create new things, you need to focus on what’s the one that can’t be copied and people don’t know they need it yet. If you thinking about market-size, the market you are talking about is old and full of competitors. Market means buyers not a customer segment or existing category. So. Igore competition. Create your own category. Original post(https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/_posts/2018-04-12-strategy-to-master-theodds.md https://github.com/functionalflow/brains/blob/master/_posts/...)
- icebraining 8y agoWhat products have you built following this philosophy?
- justonepost 8y agoI don’t know about this but I have an interesting marketing idea. Pretend you’re making a lot of money and go around talking to a lot of different people who might be interested in your product and saying what a successful business it is. Simple truth is that any successful business person does not go around talking about how much money they make unless they have to because it just encourages other businesses to copy their features.
- monkeydust 8y agoOver 10 years I have had about half a dozen side enterprises whilst doing a very demanding full time job. Several of these made money, most didn't. The best one was an ocr app which netted around usd 24k before the market got saturated. It's very difficult to manage work with a side job and a family! However, unexpected to me, the biggest benefit from these side gigs is that I am better at my day job. I have learnt new techniques and skills vs my peers. I am able to manage new situations better than others and make better predictions on outcomes. This has been the biggest benefit. There's a lot to be said for companies that allow employees to officially pursue other (non conflicting) interests.
- fredguth 8y agoI would strongly recommend watching Jason Cohen's presentation on MicroConf 2013 (https://vimeo.com/74338272 https://vimeo.com/74338272).
- kalonis 8y agoAnother tip for finding business ideas: be good at ms excel and offer people with a non technical background your help with their existing spreadsheets. As far as I see it seven out of ten spreadsheets contain at least one idea for a simple saas product. Those spreadsheets have often been tailored to fulfill exactly the needs of a certain industry but the people who created them know they are far from perfect and are often willing to pay for a more convenient solution.
- timvdalen 8y agoIt's not the greatest sign that some of these great, profitable ideas go to 404 pages. Not all of these companies made it.
- woogiewonka 8y agoI have a bunch of app ideas if anyone wants to build one with me. I am a UX/UI designer, would need a developer (probably iOS or Android, but web would be helpful too). Reply with contact info if interested.
- woogiewonka 8y agoI should mention that I will be validating these ideas before proceeding so we are not building a junk app. Cheers.
- kukabynd 8y agoHow to reach you?