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>You rarely see anything more than a couple hundred bucks a month. There are notable exceptions, but unfortunately a lot of those notable exceptions are scammy,
by mtlynch 6mo ago
>You rarely see anything more than a couple hundred bucks a month. There are notable exceptions, but unfortunately a lot of those notable exceptions are scammy, spammy business models.
I suspect this is largely sampling bias.
I host meetups for indie founders, and several attendees earn their living through solo businesses. When I go to conferences like Microconf, I meet lots more.
The problem with measuring financial success by who posts about it on HN is:
* The more someone is making at their solo business, the less they want to blab about it and attract competitors.
* The people earning at the low end are more desperate for people to see what they're doing so they can pick up new customers, so they're more likely to talk about their work.
* The more successful founders are busier and spend less time posting on HN.
- brunoborges 6mo ago> The more someone is making at their solo business, the less they want to blab about it and attract competitors. Exactly! And this is why every time I see someone selling a course while bragging about making a lot of money, I know for sure they are _not_ making money.
- nemomarx 6mo agoWell you never know, maybe selling the course is the profitable part?
- Ekaros 6mo agoI have always felt that online courses selling on how to sell online courses are underserved market... You do not hear too much about those, not that I have looked.
- bombcar 6mo agoThey do exist if you dig - for example: https://johntreed.com/products/how-to-write-publish-and-sell-your-own-how-to-book https://johntreed.com/products/how-to-write-publish-and-sell...
- thaumasiotes 6mo agoThere are a lot of people out there hawking a lot of different schemes that they say will get you where you want to go. “Build relationships,” they’ll say, or “work smarter, not harder,” or “first, decide what it is you really want.” And it sort of seems like they must know what they’re talking about, because aren’t they successful themselves? Don’t they have trophy spouses and expensive haircuts and mansions on the coast? Surely they’re in possession of some secret system for achieving one’s dreams! Well, yeah, they’ve got a system. Their system is selling hope to schmucks like you. Their seminars, their self-help books, their crazy diets and exercise plans? That stuff doesn’t help you. It helps them. This text can currently be found in the blurb for a shirt at https://shirt.woot.com/offers/steamworks-operatica https://shirt.woot.com/offers/steamworks-operatica . It's possible that's where I found it originally, but my memory suggests to me that I found it somewhere else, on a blog, and that the continuation was different.
- thih9 6mo agoI’ve seen people bragging about making a lot of money selling a course about selling courses. That somehow felt honest.
- mamonster 6mo ago"It is inconceivable that anyone will divulge a truly effective get-rich scheme for the price of a book. There is ample opportunity to use wealth in this world, and neither I nor my friends, nor anyone else I have ever met, has so much of it that they are interested in putting themselves at a disadvantage by sharing their secrets." Victor Niederhoffer, The Education of a Speculator
- pipes 6mo agoA family member of mine has done really well out of Amazon fba. She took someone's course and that got her going. I did the same course but really struggled to get going. I gave up. It wasn't for me. But yeah I'm guessing the guy selling the course makes more off that than his fba business
- dsr_ 6mo ago> successful founders are busier I thought it was supposed to be "passive".
- jimbokun 6mo agoI note neither your post or the one you replied to contain any quantitative data about how many profitable solo businesses there are.
- encoderer 6mo agoI know over a dozen 1-2 person SaaS, not including my own. Some of them have hired some help now but they are still more on the "lifestyle business" side. They are in many different spaces, and founders from around the world. I am not a big networker, but this is my niche and it's big enough that I just know a slice.
- jemmyw 6mo agoI don't know any. I know a couple of people who had ideas that became bigger startups, but only 1 who was a friend rather than via networking. And I know a few people who did try the small saas or other small software based business but they all failed and now have jobs.
- encoderer 6mo agoThere’s one on the front page right now - healthchecks.io
- jemmyw 6mo agoOk? My point wasn't that they don't exist, I was just pointing out that anecdata from one person who is deeply into a group where it's a thing has large counter points. And I thought my example worth mentioning because my group is into it but nobody amongst it has made a success of it.
- encoderer 6mo agoJust an fyi
- dasil003 6mo ago
- TuringNYC 6mo agoSo true. The latest rage on IG is "this guy built a trading system on OpenClaw and is now making 10k, comment MONEY and i'll DM you the recipe." No indy hedgefund algotrader gives away their golden goose, that would crowed out the trade.
- seibelj 6mo ago[dead]
- jldugger 6mo ago> I host meetups for indie founders, and several attendees earn their living through solo businesses. When I go to conferences like Microconf, I meet lots more. Isn't this also sampling bias?
- parineum 6mo agoIt for sure is but it's being ised to refute an affirmative assertion, not make it's own assertion.
- wolvesechoes 6mo ago> It for sure is but it's being ised to refute an affirmative assertion, not make it's own assertion. To refute assertion you need to claim negation of that assertion, which is assertion in itself, as every negation can be rewritten to become affirmation, and vice versa.
- parineum 6mo agoNot really. > All cats are white. > All the cats I see are black. The second statement doesn't actually imply that all cats are black but it does refute that all cats are white. It doesn't make it's own claim about all cats, it just adds an anecdote that doesn't conform to the first statement.
- bulbar 6mo agoThe second statement implies the negation of the first though. So OP is correct assuming the term "claim" includes "implies". However, the original argument regarding smoking bias is correct of course.
- wolvesechoes 6mo agoIt negates original assertion. There is no difference between assertion and negation in logic.
- Maxatar 6mo ago
- Hendrikto 6mo ago> I host meetups for indie founders, and several attendees earn their living through solo businesses. When I go to conferences like Microconf, I meet lots more. > I suspect this is largely sampling bias. FTFY.
- mtlynch 6mo agoI'm not claiming that all indie founders are successful. I'm disputing the claim that almost all indie founders are struggling by saying I regularly meet indie founders who are successful. Not like driving exotic cars successful, but making a good living, in some cases with income on par with mid-to-senior FAANG dev jobs.
- coldtea 6mo ago>I host meetups for indie founders Speaking of sampling bias, isn't this like asking a shovel vendor about the success rate of gold prospectors? :)
- mtlynch 6mo agoHonestly, no. They're free meetups. I don't stand to gain anything by exaggerating the results of the meetup attendees. Unless you think I'm trying to recruit people on HN to come to my meetups and meet successful founders?