7 ms·

I got 40 paying customers in 6 months with 0 dollars spent

155 points by thomasthelliez 7y ago

mikece 7y ago
All great ideas and seems to reinforce the notion that by being helpful and delivering value to others they are more likely to return value to you (especially if you have something of premium value to offer). I'm curious if the "solo-preneur" had a fully articulated (written) business plan complete with an exit strategy in case the business became successful but they got sick of it. I applaud people who have the vision and motivation to build a business on the side but really feel for them when they feel trapped by their own creation and cannot get out.
- thomasthelliez 7y ago
  Thank you mikece, to be honest I have no plan whatsoever regarding how I will react if the business become really successful. It is not my full time job, more a hobby to me so I just enjoy it and do my best to acquire qualified traffic to see were it goes.
ivalm 7y ago
At 5.99 monthly that's $239.60/month, which seems low after 12 month product build + 6month post launch...
- Bootwizard 7y ago
  Low compared to what? If he's making more than his operating costs, it's not low. I'd love to make an extra $240 a month.
  - mattcdrake 7y ago
    The implication is that 18 months of development has an opportunity cost associated with it, even if OP spent no money.
    - michaelscott 7y ago
      If there's not much maintenance, low operating costs and a loyal customer base (or just a straight $200/month, let's say) the lifetime of that income may make up for that 18 months even in opportunity cost. Tough to know without a longer timeframe.
  - HenryBemis 7y ago
    > Low compared to... "I worked on this project during my free time (weekends, evenings, holidays) for approximately 12 months, from April 2018 to March 2019." If by "free time" the author means 1h per working day and 4 per day on weekends, that would be ~680h -> 85 days (8h per day)(back to back). Not that's not a good ROI at least for me. I won't count the deeply unique value of "time not spent with family/friends/children". I sincerely hope that this picks up and gets 4000 paying customers, but so far for a year's worth of work it's not impressive.
    - RobertRoberts 7y ago
      A lot of people don't have family (at all, or perhaps near enough to spend time with). Also, young people's time has a different value from an older married with kids people's time. (most young people I know spend tons of time on youtube, yik yak (zip zap? or whatever it's called), playbox x-one things, etc...)
      - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
        Yes, people spend their time to have a life. If that's YouTube, so be it. What matters is that their time is worth at least minimum wage, probably more if you are a skilled professional. So saying 'I did it for $0' is not useful. Example: I could spend a week learning carpentry and build a dinner table, or I could buy it from IKEA for $40. That's a dumb move for most people, unless I am super interested in carpentry.
        RobertRoberts 7y ago
        > ... saying 'I did it for $0' is not useful. He spent time, not money. His statement is accurate. Edit: It's a subjective point of view to say it's not "useful". I found it helpful to see what he did.
    - wazanator 7y ago
      They spent their time working on a project that they enjoyed, successfully completed, and ended up with 40 customers. I would not call that a waste of time at all. Even if it dies off in 6 months it's a great learning experience and the kind of thing that's great to talk about with a hiring manager.
  - mattmaroon 7y ago
    Low compared to working at Walmart which would probably have paid much more.
- idunno246 7y ago
  It mentions partnerships with a discount and rev share generates a lot of sales, so probably even lower than that But it was also twelve months of side project time, not full time
- allie1 7y ago
  Not necessarily (if most of those 40 came from 1 source, and it's a traffic source that can be expanded upon). Wonder if that was the case here?
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  Count VAT, tax, and other costs 170(?) per month. At this scale it is better to deliver pizzas. As I wrote on another comment I sincerely wish that it grows to 4000, so it becomes a proper income.
  - thrownaway954 7y ago
    WRONG!!! Cause delivering pizzas means YOU have to deliver the pizzas. The site makes money while the dude is sleeping and at his day job. You can't do that and deliver pizzas.
    - ivalm 7y ago
      Sure, but he already spent probably ~500 hours. At $100/hour (assuming competent but not FANG dev in CA) that's $50k worth of labor. If he nets $200/months he would need 250months ~ 20 years. My point is, if he did it for fun it's a success (he got a nice product, yay!), but it's not a financial success.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
  240$/month is a heck of a lot better than most indie projects.
  - mrieck 7y ago
    That's what I was thinking about my project. Only took me 8 years (on the side) to make a cartoon maker/meme editor that exports to MP4 and I get paid $0 for it and have no traffic: https://www.superanimo.com https://www.superanimo.com
    - thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
      This looks cool and might have potential for creative types. Unfortunately most people aren't that creative. But, have you tried contacting UTubers that do these types of animes? I'd imagine they'd be super interested in it. sometimes even mainstream Utubers use short animations to highlight certain things or use arrow animations in their presentations. From what I hear, editing takes a super long time and is a big pain point for them. It might be worth sitting down with them over skype to discuss it with them and figure out how your product or one similar to it could help them.
qwerty1234599 7y ago
Opportunity cost. Had you worked a traditional job for those 6 months, you would have got at least $40k
the_black_hand 7y ago
Great work. Excellent post. Did you get any enterprise customers? The site is very well made and high quality, but to be honest I'm a little surprised that people were willing to pay for this. I too I'm a 'solo-preneur' but I struggle with validating my ideas. How polished was your UI/UX when you launched on producthunt?
- thomasthelliez 7y ago
  Thanks! Not yet any enterprise customers. When I launched on ProductHunt, the UI/UX was exactly the same as today.
dsaavy 7y ago
Excellent work! In a crowded space that’s pretty impressive to be profitable that quickly. How much maintenance/work on the product do you do per week excluding marketing and sales?
- thomasthelliez 7y ago
  Thank you, I fixed a few bugs the first couple of months, then nothing. I just answer questions (emails mostly and chat). Maybe 20 minutes by week.
  - dsaavy 7y ago
    Sounds like the perfect setup, good work!
steve76 7y ago
Thank you! Great links! I'm working on a platform that pays out on completed unit tests and this was the inspiration I needed.
ivanstojic 7y ago
You may have spent $0, as in that's the amount that left your pocket. However, you invested your time, your skills and expertise. While it's cool that you are making headway, a better question is: does this financially make sense in the long run.
- thomascgalvin 7y ago
  Even if it ends up being a total waste of time, that's still better than a total waste of time and money. I would also argue that getting 40 paying customers is pretty decent validation, and the author can now spend money on marketing if that's the direction they want to take it.
- tempsolution 7y ago
  Exactly. I always find it amusing when people say they did something for 0$ by working in their spare time. This calculation doesn't make any sense. Can you build the initial Google project in your spare-time? Probably, if you find enough qualified volunteers. Does that mean it's a viable business? Absolutely not. You need to check how much you would have get paid when working in your last highest paying job... (Even when you do things in spare time)
  - HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
    I get your point, but taken to its logical conclusion, no one should ever stop working, because it costs them money to do so. If my alternative is sitting in front of the TV, or reading a book, or gardening, or... whatever but I choose to do something like this, the cost of that time is effectively zero because that's what I would have been doing with it otherwise. So, by "working" at something I enjoy and that I'm doing by choice, I'm basically being paid to entertain myself.
  - imgabe 7y ago
    Many people are salaried and won't get paid any additional money for working more hours at their job.
  - mikekchar 7y ago
umvi 7y ago
> Another 100% free technique that still requires effort and time to set up is to answer Quora questions where your website and product will be the answer. No wonder Quora is such garbage now. It's basically a self-promotion platform.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  Yeah it was great when I started reading it, but after a while I noticed that kind of thing happening all of the time. Often, the promotional "answers" weren't even helpful! It really did cheapen the platform immensely.
- papreclip 7y ago
  This post is an ad for his product, too.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - panpanna 7y ago
    And we all walked right into that one... I guess "how to successfully do X" of the type of clickbait HN readers enjoy.
  - derrick_jensen 7y ago
    There's no expectation otherwise when you click on the link, whereas Quora always starts with a question and the advertisement can't be unbiased if the author has any stake in it.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
  Sure the questions need to be legitimate questions that people need the answers too. But, if the questions are legit, then what's the problem with answering that question with a product? as long as it's relevant and solves your problem, then you should be greatful someone took the time to respond to your question (whether you wrote it or not), and even gave you a solution
pawurb 7y ago
You mention SEO efforts but looks like you are making a standard error of keeping your blog on a seperate subdomain that throws away all the backlinks karma from making it to the front of HN. You can check out this post for more details https://pawelurbanek.com/simple-seo-mistake https://pawelurbanek.com/simple-seo-mistake
- alexmingoia 7y ago
  Google themselves has stated they treat content at subdomains and root domains equally, with the exclusion of link farming via subdomains: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-treat-subdomains-vs-subdirectories-22485.html https://www.seroundtable.com/google-treat-subdomains-vs-subd... If a subdomain blog has high ranking from backlinks, it’s not really a problem that this doesn’t transfer to the root domain. The visitor gets the content they want and the visitor is also exposed to the company/product that owns the blog. For example, if I land on Stripe’s blog and I’m interested in a credit card processor, there’s a high likelyhood I will also visit their main site, and I will be more qualified since they’ve already provided value from the blog post. Search engines rank pages, not domains. Search results aren’t a list of domains, they are a list of pages. The domain is only one factor in the page’s rank. Whether a blog lives at a subdomain or root domain, the root domain will not rank higher than the blog post for keywords backlinked to that post. "Make good content others want to link to" is not something automated SEO testing and SEO consultants can sell, unlike "You have a subdomain blog, please move it to /blog for better SEO points."
  - methyl 7y ago
    > Search engines rank pages, not domains. Search results aren’t a list of domains, they are a list of pages. The domain is only one factor in the page’s rank. Whether a blog lives at a subdomain or root domain, the root domain will not rank higher than the blog post for keywords backlinked to that post. The problem is when you want to rank both your content on the blog AND some dedicated landing pages. Keeping blog separate will make it harder to get the juice passed to your landings.
    - 7y ago
shanecleveland 7y ago
I agree with many suggestions, and I believe the results are very reproducible with some effort. I would offer an alternative approach to launching with working billing in place. I believe a good way to validate an idea is to launch a site quickly and see how easy it is to generate traffic. I would rather not spend time on coding that may never get used. And early usage may point to improvements and pivots where time will be better spent before attracting paid users. And it's possible to fake it with free trial periods that extend longer than promised. No one will complain about being allowed to continue using a site for free. And I believe it relieves some of the stress of having trying to support paid customers on early versions of a site.
frozenport 7y ago
I thought this was satire but because the return on invested time is quite low. If you're making less than $300 a month, it may make sense to just away the product for free.
floodyberry- 7y ago
"Area man who thinks he's business guru outs self as generic seo spammer"
mattmaroon 7y ago
I normally don't use sports metaphors, but this is like if someone said they spent a year practicing their free throws and got up to hitting 30% of them, but they had a lot of fun doing it. I would read such an article as more of "how not to practice free throws".
kelvin0 7y ago
I have a similar programming background as the author, so this really resonates with my 'marketing' weaknesses. This post is simple, yet it really gives me simple steps to figure out how to get the 'marketing' aspect for my product... which was a bit obscure to me, until now. Of course not looking to build the next big thing, just help me understand the basics and get my feet wet. Thanks!
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
It's awesome that after posting in numerous places he was able to finally get some SEO juice. But, the article makes it sound like you're highly likely to get SEO juice from doing this. My experience, from numerous projects I've started over many years is that the vast majority of time, you won't get any SEO traffic at all even though I've gotten temporary increases in traffic from posting on HN and ProductHunt, quorra and reddit.
CTOSian 7y ago
local prostitutes operate in a similar way too..
HashThis 7y ago
He got 40 paying customers paying ~$5 to $15. Is this a big success? Am I missing something?

All great ideas and seems to reinforce the notion that by being helpful and delivering value to others they are more likely to return value to you (especially if you have something of premium value to offer). I'm curious if the "solo-preneur" had a fully articulated (written) business plan complete with an exit strategy in case the business became successful but they got sick of it. I applaud people who have the vision and motivation to build a business on the side but really feel for them when they feel trapped by their own creation and cannot get out.

thomasthelliez 7y ago
Thank you mikece, to be honest I have no plan whatsoever regarding how I will react if the business become really successful. It is not my full time job, more a hobby to me so I just enjoy it and do my best to acquire qualified traffic to see were it goes.

ivalm 7y ago

At 5.99 monthly that's $239.60/month, which seems low after 12 month product build + 6month post launch...

Bootwizard 7y ago
Low compared to what? If he's making more than his operating costs, it's not low. I'd love to make an extra $240 a month.
- mattcdrake 7y ago
  The implication is that 18 months of development has an opportunity cost associated with it, even if OP spent no money.
  - michaelscott 7y ago
    If there's not much maintenance, low operating costs and a loyal customer base (or just a straight $200/month, let's say) the lifetime of that income may make up for that 18 months even in opportunity cost. Tough to know without a longer timeframe.
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  > Low compared to... "I worked on this project during my free time (weekends, evenings, holidays) for approximately 12 months, from April 2018 to March 2019." If by "free time" the author means 1h per working day and 4 per day on weekends, that would be ~680h -> 85 days (8h per day)(back to back). Not that's not a good ROI at least for me. I won't count the deeply unique value of "time not spent with family/friends/children". I sincerely hope that this picks up and gets 4000 paying customers, but so far for a year's worth of work it's not impressive.
  - RobertRoberts 7y ago
    A lot of people don't have family (at all, or perhaps near enough to spend time with). Also, young people's time has a different value from an older married with kids people's time. (most young people I know spend tons of time on youtube, yik yak (zip zap? or whatever it's called), playbox x-one things, etc...)
    - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      Yes, people spend their time to have a life. If that's YouTube, so be it. What matters is that their time is worth at least minimum wage, probably more if you are a skilled professional. So saying 'I did it for $0' is not useful. Example: I could spend a week learning carpentry and build a dinner table, or I could buy it from IKEA for $40. That's a dumb move for most people, unless I am super interested in carpentry.
      - RobertRoberts 7y ago
        > ... saying 'I did it for $0' is not useful. He spent time, not money. His statement is accurate. Edit: It's a subjective point of view to say it's not "useful". I found it helpful to see what he did.
  - wazanator 7y ago
    They spent their time working on a project that they enjoyed, successfully completed, and ended up with 40 customers. I would not call that a waste of time at all. Even if it dies off in 6 months it's a great learning experience and the kind of thing that's great to talk about with a hiring manager.
- mattmaroon 7y ago
  Low compared to working at Walmart which would probably have paid much more.
idunno246 7y ago
It mentions partnerships with a discount and rev share generates a lot of sales, so probably even lower than that But it was also twelve months of side project time, not full time
allie1 7y ago
Not necessarily (if most of those 40 came from 1 source, and it's a traffic source that can be expanded upon). Wonder if that was the case here?
HenryBemis 7y ago
Count VAT, tax, and other costs 170(?) per month. At this scale it is better to deliver pizzas. As I wrote on another comment I sincerely wish that it grows to 4000, so it becomes a proper income.
- thrownaway954 7y ago
  WRONG!!! Cause delivering pizzas means YOU have to deliver the pizzas. The site makes money while the dude is sleeping and at his day job. You can't do that and deliver pizzas.
  - ivalm 7y ago
    Sure, but he already spent probably ~500 hours. At $100/hour (assuming competent but not FANG dev in CA) that's $50k worth of labor. If he nets $200/months he would need 250months ~ 20 years. My point is, if he did it for fun it's a success (he got a nice product, yay!), but it's not a financial success.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
240$/month is a heck of a lot better than most indie projects.
- mrieck 7y ago
  That's what I was thinking about my project. Only took me 8 years (on the side) to make a cartoon maker/meme editor that exports to MP4 and I get paid $0 for it and have no traffic: https://www.superanimo.com https://www.superanimo.com
  - thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
    This looks cool and might have potential for creative types. Unfortunately most people aren't that creative. But, have you tried contacting UTubers that do these types of animes? I'd imagine they'd be super interested in it. sometimes even mainstream Utubers use short animations to highlight certain things or use arrow animations in their presentations. From what I hear, editing takes a super long time and is a big pain point for them. It might be worth sitting down with them over skype to discuss it with them and figure out how your product or one similar to it could help them.

qwerty1234599 7y ago

Opportunity cost. Had you worked a traditional job for those 6 months, you would have got at least $40k

the_black_hand 7y ago

Great work. Excellent post. Did you get any enterprise customers? The site is very well made and high quality, but to be honest I'm a little surprised that people were willing to pay for this. I too I'm a 'solo-preneur' but I struggle with validating my ideas. How polished was your UI/UX when you launched on producthunt?

thomasthelliez 7y ago
Thanks! Not yet any enterprise customers. When I launched on ProductHunt, the UI/UX was exactly the same as today.

dsaavy 7y ago

Excellent work! In a crowded space that’s pretty impressive to be profitable that quickly. How much maintenance/work on the product do you do per week excluding marketing and sales?

thomasthelliez 7y ago
Thank you, I fixed a few bugs the first couple of months, then nothing. I just answer questions (emails mostly and chat). Maybe 20 minutes by week.
- dsaavy 7y ago
  Sounds like the perfect setup, good work!

steve76 7y ago

Thank you! Great links! I'm working on a platform that pays out on completed unit tests and this was the inspiration I needed.

ivanstojic 7y ago

You may have spent $0, as in that's the amount that left your pocket. However, you invested your time, your skills and expertise. While it's cool that you are making headway, a better question is: does this financially make sense in the long run.

thomascgalvin 7y ago
Even if it ends up being a total waste of time, that's still better than a total waste of time and money. I would also argue that getting 40 paying customers is pretty decent validation, and the author can now spend money on marketing if that's the direction they want to take it.
tempsolution 7y ago
Exactly. I always find it amusing when people say they did something for 0$ by working in their spare time. This calculation doesn't make any sense. Can you build the initial Google project in your spare-time? Probably, if you find enough qualified volunteers. Does that mean it's a viable business? Absolutely not. You need to check how much you would have get paid when working in your last highest paying job... (Even when you do things in spare time)
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y ago
  I get your point, but taken to its logical conclusion, no one should ever stop working, because it costs them money to do so. If my alternative is sitting in front of the TV, or reading a book, or gardening, or... whatever but I choose to do something like this, the cost of that time is effectively zero because that's what I would have been doing with it otherwise. So, by "working" at something I enjoy and that I'm doing by choice, I'm basically being paid to entertain myself.
- imgabe 7y ago
  Many people are salaried and won't get paid any additional money for working more hours at their job.
- mikekchar 7y ago

umvi 7y ago

> Another 100% free technique that still requires effort and time to set up is to answer Quora questions where your website and product will be the answer. No wonder Quora is such garbage now. It's basically a self-promotion platform.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
52-6F-62 7y ago
Yeah it was great when I started reading it, but after a while I noticed that kind of thing happening all of the time. Often, the promotional "answers" weren't even helpful! It really did cheapen the platform immensely.
papreclip 7y ago
This post is an ad for his product, too.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- panpanna 7y ago
  And we all walked right into that one... I guess "how to successfully do X" of the type of clickbait HN readers enjoy.
- derrick_jensen 7y ago
  There's no expectation otherwise when you click on the link, whereas Quora always starts with a question and the advertisement can't be unbiased if the author has any stake in it.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
Sure the questions need to be legitimate questions that people need the answers too. But, if the questions are legit, then what's the problem with answering that question with a product? as long as it's relevant and solves your problem, then you should be greatful someone took the time to respond to your question (whether you wrote it or not), and even gave you a solution

pawurb 7y ago

You mention SEO efforts but looks like you are making a standard error of keeping your blog on a seperate subdomain that throws away all the backlinks karma from making it to the front of HN. You can check out this post for more details https://pawelurbanek.com/simple-seo-mistake https://pawelurbanek.com/simple-seo-mistake

alexmingoia 7y ago
Google themselves has stated they treat content at subdomains and root domains equally, with the exclusion of link farming via subdomains: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-treat-subdomains-vs-subdirectories-22485.html https://www.seroundtable.com/google-treat-subdomains-vs-subd... If a subdomain blog has high ranking from backlinks, it’s not really a problem that this doesn’t transfer to the root domain. The visitor gets the content they want and the visitor is also exposed to the company/product that owns the blog. For example, if I land on Stripe’s blog and I’m interested in a credit card processor, there’s a high likelyhood I will also visit their main site, and I will be more qualified since they’ve already provided value from the blog post. Search engines rank pages, not domains. Search results aren’t a list of domains, they are a list of pages. The domain is only one factor in the page’s rank. Whether a blog lives at a subdomain or root domain, the root domain will not rank higher than the blog post for keywords backlinked to that post. "Make good content others want to link to" is not something automated SEO testing and SEO consultants can sell, unlike "You have a subdomain blog, please move it to /blog for better SEO points."
- methyl 7y ago
  > Search engines rank pages, not domains. Search results aren’t a list of domains, they are a list of pages. The domain is only one factor in the page’s rank. Whether a blog lives at a subdomain or root domain, the root domain will not rank higher than the blog post for keywords backlinked to that post. The problem is when you want to rank both your content on the blog AND some dedicated landing pages. Keeping blog separate will make it harder to get the juice passed to your landings.
  - 7y ago

shanecleveland 7y ago

I agree with many suggestions, and I believe the results are very reproducible with some effort. I would offer an alternative approach to launching with working billing in place. I believe a good way to validate an idea is to launch a site quickly and see how easy it is to generate traffic. I would rather not spend time on coding that may never get used. And early usage may point to improvements and pivots where time will be better spent before attracting paid users. And it's possible to fake it with free trial periods that extend longer than promised. No one will complain about being allowed to continue using a site for free. And I believe it relieves some of the stress of having trying to support paid customers on early versions of a site.

frozenport 7y ago

I thought this was satire but because the return on invested time is quite low. If you're making less than $300 a month, it may make sense to just away the product for free.

floodyberry- 7y ago

"Area man who thinks he's business guru outs self as generic seo spammer"

mattmaroon 7y ago

I normally don't use sports metaphors, but this is like if someone said they spent a year practicing their free throws and got up to hitting 30% of them, but they had a lot of fun doing it. I would read such an article as more of "how not to practice free throws".

kelvin0 7y ago

I have a similar programming background as the author, so this really resonates with my 'marketing' weaknesses. This post is simple, yet it really gives me simple steps to figure out how to get the 'marketing' aspect for my product... which was a bit obscure to me, until now. Of course not looking to build the next big thing, just help me understand the basics and get my feet wet. Thanks!

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

It's awesome that after posting in numerous places he was able to finally get some SEO juice. But, the article makes it sound like you're highly likely to get SEO juice from doing this. My experience, from numerous projects I've started over many years is that the vast majority of time, you won't get any SEO traffic at all even though I've gotten temporary increases in traffic from posting on HN and ProductHunt, quorra and reddit.

CTOSian 7y ago

local prostitutes operate in a similar way too..

HashThis 7y ago

He got 40 paying customers paying ~$5 to $15. Is this a big success? Am I missing something?