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I run Built With Bootstrap (http://builtwithbootstrap.com http://builtwithbootstrap.com). It's making 4 figures a month at the moment. It's mostly passive inco

I run Built With Bootstrap (http://builtwithbootstrap.com http://builtwithbootstrap.com). It's making 4 figures a month at the moment. It's mostly passive income as I spend no more than a few hours per week actually working on the site. Though I spend considerably more monitoring the stats and feeds etc etc My biggest win with this site is the extremely low cost to run it - something I want to talk about more if anyone's interested. My only real regular cost is the domain name! Pretty phenomenal for a site that continues to attract thousands of visitors per day :) a model I'm proud of and hopefully can continue! But of course, all standing on the shoulders of giants! Many thanks has to go to far more talented people than me... both for the site's foundations and it's popularity.

galfarragem 13y ago
I use also tumblr platform (very underrated IMHO). If you can adapt your website/blog to it you get a decent free hosting. However if your blog depends on SEO I would not recommend it (unless you develop a custom theme and really know what you are doing).
- simonhamp 13y ago
  I totally agree that Tumblr is underrated. It's by no means perfect for SEO, but I haven't found it a problem. Would certainly be nice to have a little more control over certain bits, but it hasn't been detrimental to mine, now PageRank 7 (if that still means anything?)
  - galfarragem 13y ago
    Once I made the experience, two blogs, one on wordpress, one on tumblr, as similar as they can be, same posts, etc. After few days the wordpress one was in first page of google, the tumblr one still very difficult to find. Anyway to cut costs I kept the tumblr one. Nowadays (2,5 years later) my blog is pagerank 4 (good rank for the traffic I have) and reasonable SEO. Even not being perfect like you say I would also recommend tumblr. (http://archimodels.info http://archimodels.info)
  - simonhamp 13y ago
    galfarragem: It depends on the kind of site you want to run ultimately, but personally I think you made the right choice. You have had free hosting, no headaches of a hacked site or overloaded server, minimal downtime and a thriving social system all rolled into one. I think PageRank 4 is incredible - there are millions of sites that would love that! What's your site?
cko 13y ago
I've visited that site quite a few times and I'm very interested in how you're keeping running costs low.
- simonhamp 13y ago
  As galfarragem mentions, it runs on Tumblr to start with. This is a totally free, simple blogging platform, pretty much perfectly suited to the needs of the site. I get awesome hosting for free and a fair amount of flexibility. Yes there are limitations and the admin of the site isn't quite as easy, but when you haven't got much admin it's ok. The most important reason for choosing Tumblr was the Submissions feature. Visitors can submit a post just as I need it to be. It costs them nothing, it costs me nothing - all the hard work is done (mostly - I obviously need to do some editing, but this is minimal.) But the absolute killer feature of Tumblr is the queue. Without this, there's no way I could manage the site. Would I like more features from Tumblr? Sure. Will it happen? Probably not. Do I need those features? Not right now. I handle all submissions myself, the Twitter feed, Facebook Page, Google+ page... all done by me (with the help of the awesome http://bufferapp.com/ http://bufferapp.com/) I use IFTTT (http://ifttt.com http://ifttt.com) to check for new posts on Tumblr and cross-post to Buffer (Twitter) and Facebook - this isn't perfect yet because I'd like it to use Buffer for Facebook, Twitter and Google+, but IFTTT doesn't support that yet. Technically the $10/month for Buffer is a cost... but I use it personally and on other projects, so this is obviated by the fact that I would be using it anyway. I use the awesome BuySellAds (http://buysellads.com http://buysellads.com) to serve ads. Yes they take a cut and this too is technically a "cost"... but it comes straight out of money I wouldn't be making anyway so I don't see it as a cost. I also run with a few affiliates and these bring in a little extra revenue.
  - pcharles 13y ago
    How many uniques/month does it take for you to turn a profit??
    - simonhamp 13y ago
      Well as revenue is largely from ads (that are reliant on page views) I needed to build up visitor numbers to generate ~100k page views a month on a regular basis Each visitor brings about 2 page views on average so 50k visits a month puts me over the threshold. Uniques are at about 70% (I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader) But to actually turn a profit... I really only need a very small fraction of this. Maybe 10%..? It's all moot tho, as I need the numbers to be high as this is what gets advertisers paying. Thankfully this comes with a natural abundance of funds making this the most profitable project I've ever worked on
Zaheer 13y ago
Hi simonhamp, Congrats on the project! I'd love to hear more about how you're running it for so low cost! Have you open sourced the site? I'd love to also hear your stack. I've managed to keep all my projects (even one exceeding 5 Million+ ) extremely low cost (pretty much the domain name only as well) and always looking for more ideas to save! Feel free to PM me as well!
- Zaheer 13y ago
  Woops just saw the comment below how its on Tumblr. Should've noticed that earlier. Any other hacks?
- simonhamp 13y ago
  Thanks Zaheer. Please see my other comment to cko
rhubarbcustard 13y ago
That's a great return, good work! Are the profits mostly from affiliate click throughs to ThemeForest and the like?
- simonhamp 13y ago
  Thanks :) no actually the largest source of revenue is from ad sales at the moment. I do use affiliates, but they are small in comparison. I think this is largely to do with the fact that I don't push affiliates too much at the moment. The effort-return ratio is nowhere near as good as the ads.
squigs25 13y ago
Wow - this is awesome - good for you! I'll have to look into tumblr hosting - what are the limitations? Do you ever find yourself locked into a blog-like schematic? But also, if you're so successful with a passive approach, it sounds like you've found a real market demand. Have you considered taking a more active approach given the success? How long would you say this took you to setup initially?
- simonhamp 13y ago
  Thanks! Yes there are many limitations. And yes it is definitely locked into a blog-like schematic. It's not really for making a "website"... it's for writing a simple blog - thankfully that's all BWB is :) I definitely think the active approach will yield greater results, but right now I'm doing even more interesting things in my day job and other side projects that I enjoy. This gives me the freedom to keep doing those things :) As for initial setup, I rolled it out in the same afternoon I had the idea and incrementally built on it from there. It's certainly nothing like it was when I began it.
4thethrillofit 13y ago
Very impressive, thanks for sharing! I'm more interested in how you grew the user base plus any other growth hack tips you might have? There is the obvious free SEO and social media publicities, but it's always tricky to get engaged users.
- simonhamp 13y ago
  I would say I got lucky. I started the site not too long after the public launch of Bootstrap. And after about two weeks of farming Bootstrap sites myself (to build up content) I submitted it to HN. Then it went nuts. I got a spot on the official docs homepage without even asking and rode the wave as Bootstrap soared to becoming the most popular frontend framework and Github repo. The popularity this brought was untold as hundreds of sites started naturally linking to BWB. I guess being first was the most important thing here. I've also made a point to make it always free and easy for folks to submit a site. There's no complex review process and no fee (if you don't mind waiting in line). This gets some loyal supporters who are happy to provide new content on a somewhat regular basis. The knock-on effect has been that Google seems to love the site and now the majority of my visitors come from searches. This despite Tumblr not being the greatest base for SEO. No "growth hacking" required, whatever that is...
smefi 13y ago
wow that's very cool!

galfarragem 13y ago

I use also tumblr platform (very underrated IMHO). If you can adapt your website/blog to it you get a decent free hosting. However if your blog depends on SEO I would not recommend it (unless you develop a custom theme and really know what you are doing).

simonhamp 13y ago
I totally agree that Tumblr is underrated. It's by no means perfect for SEO, but I haven't found it a problem. Would certainly be nice to have a little more control over certain bits, but it hasn't been detrimental to mine, now PageRank 7 (if that still means anything?)
- galfarragem 13y ago
  Once I made the experience, two blogs, one on wordpress, one on tumblr, as similar as they can be, same posts, etc. After few days the wordpress one was in first page of google, the tumblr one still very difficult to find. Anyway to cut costs I kept the tumblr one. Nowadays (2,5 years later) my blog is pagerank 4 (good rank for the traffic I have) and reasonable SEO. Even not being perfect like you say I would also recommend tumblr. (http://archimodels.info http://archimodels.info)
- simonhamp 13y ago
  galfarragem: It depends on the kind of site you want to run ultimately, but personally I think you made the right choice. You have had free hosting, no headaches of a hacked site or overloaded server, minimal downtime and a thriving social system all rolled into one. I think PageRank 4 is incredible - there are millions of sites that would love that! What's your site?

cko 13y ago

I've visited that site quite a few times and I'm very interested in how you're keeping running costs low.

simonhamp 13y ago
As galfarragem mentions, it runs on Tumblr to start with. This is a totally free, simple blogging platform, pretty much perfectly suited to the needs of the site. I get awesome hosting for free and a fair amount of flexibility. Yes there are limitations and the admin of the site isn't quite as easy, but when you haven't got much admin it's ok. The most important reason for choosing Tumblr was the Submissions feature. Visitors can submit a post just as I need it to be. It costs them nothing, it costs me nothing - all the hard work is done (mostly - I obviously need to do some editing, but this is minimal.) But the absolute killer feature of Tumblr is the queue. Without this, there's no way I could manage the site. Would I like more features from Tumblr? Sure. Will it happen? Probably not. Do I need those features? Not right now. I handle all submissions myself, the Twitter feed, Facebook Page, Google+ page... all done by me (with the help of the awesome http://bufferapp.com/ http://bufferapp.com/) I use IFTTT (http://ifttt.com http://ifttt.com) to check for new posts on Tumblr and cross-post to Buffer (Twitter) and Facebook - this isn't perfect yet because I'd like it to use Buffer for Facebook, Twitter and Google+, but IFTTT doesn't support that yet. Technically the $10/month for Buffer is a cost... but I use it personally and on other projects, so this is obviated by the fact that I would be using it anyway. I use the awesome BuySellAds (http://buysellads.com http://buysellads.com) to serve ads. Yes they take a cut and this too is technically a "cost"... but it comes straight out of money I wouldn't be making anyway so I don't see it as a cost. I also run with a few affiliates and these bring in a little extra revenue.
- pcharles 13y ago
  How many uniques/month does it take for you to turn a profit??
  - simonhamp 13y ago
    Well as revenue is largely from ads (that are reliant on page views) I needed to build up visitor numbers to generate ~100k page views a month on a regular basis Each visitor brings about 2 page views on average so 50k visits a month puts me over the threshold. Uniques are at about 70% (I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader) But to actually turn a profit... I really only need a very small fraction of this. Maybe 10%..? It's all moot tho, as I need the numbers to be high as this is what gets advertisers paying. Thankfully this comes with a natural abundance of funds making this the most profitable project I've ever worked on

Zaheer 13y ago

Hi simonhamp, Congrats on the project! I'd love to hear more about how you're running it for so low cost! Have you open sourced the site? I'd love to also hear your stack. I've managed to keep all my projects (even one exceeding 5 Million+ ) extremely low cost (pretty much the domain name only as well) and always looking for more ideas to save! Feel free to PM me as well!

Zaheer 13y ago
Woops just saw the comment below how its on Tumblr. Should've noticed that earlier. Any other hacks?
simonhamp 13y ago
Thanks Zaheer. Please see my other comment to cko

rhubarbcustard 13y ago

That's a great return, good work! Are the profits mostly from affiliate click throughs to ThemeForest and the like?

simonhamp 13y ago
Thanks :) no actually the largest source of revenue is from ad sales at the moment. I do use affiliates, but they are small in comparison. I think this is largely to do with the fact that I don't push affiliates too much at the moment. The effort-return ratio is nowhere near as good as the ads.

squigs25 13y ago

Wow - this is awesome - good for you! I'll have to look into tumblr hosting - what are the limitations? Do you ever find yourself locked into a blog-like schematic? But also, if you're so successful with a passive approach, it sounds like you've found a real market demand. Have you considered taking a more active approach given the success? How long would you say this took you to setup initially?

simonhamp 13y ago
Thanks! Yes there are many limitations. And yes it is definitely locked into a blog-like schematic. It's not really for making a "website"... it's for writing a simple blog - thankfully that's all BWB is :) I definitely think the active approach will yield greater results, but right now I'm doing even more interesting things in my day job and other side projects that I enjoy. This gives me the freedom to keep doing those things :) As for initial setup, I rolled it out in the same afternoon I had the idea and incrementally built on it from there. It's certainly nothing like it was when I began it.

4thethrillofit 13y ago

Very impressive, thanks for sharing! I'm more interested in how you grew the user base plus any other growth hack tips you might have? There is the obvious free SEO and social media publicities, but it's always tricky to get engaged users.

simonhamp 13y ago
I would say I got lucky. I started the site not too long after the public launch of Bootstrap. And after about two weeks of farming Bootstrap sites myself (to build up content) I submitted it to HN. Then it went nuts. I got a spot on the official docs homepage without even asking and rode the wave as Bootstrap soared to becoming the most popular frontend framework and Github repo. The popularity this brought was untold as hundreds of sites started naturally linking to BWB. I guess being first was the most important thing here. I've also made a point to make it always free and easy for folks to submit a site. There's no complex review process and no fee (if you don't mind waiting in line). This gets some loyal supporters who are happy to provide new content on a somewhat regular basis. The knock-on effect has been that Google seems to love the site and now the majority of my visitors come from searches. This despite Tumblr not being the greatest base for SEO. No "growth hacking" required, whatever that is...

smefi 13y ago

wow that's very cool!