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Hey there. /raises hand. https://www.improvely.com https://www.improvely.com and https://www.w3counter.com https://www.w3counter.com Five figures a month, jus

Hey there. /raises hand. https://www.improvely.com https://www.improvely.com and https://www.w3counter.com https://www.w3counter.com Five figures a month, just me, I've written about my solo business a couple times in other Ask HN threads. Ten years ago (almost to the day), in my college dorm, I was looking at the Webalizer web stats report my web host provided for my blog, and thought "I could do something much cooler than this". So I did. I had built a few educational sites and threw some ads on them for a couple years before that, but W3Counter was the first service I actually charged a subscription for, and now I make a living building and selling this stuff.

leobelle 13y ago
Ghostery blocks w3counter so it blocked pretty much everything on the actual site, maybe use a static domain that isn't blocked by ghostery. :O
- dangrossman 13y ago
  You're running Ghostery for the purpose of blocking W3Counter and every other site like it. You can't really do that then lament the fact that it worked. I'm not going to invest time and effort into evading you; if you want to see web stats sites, you can just turn off the extension. Somehow I don't think there are any Ghostery users looking to sign up.
  - leobelle 13y ago
    I meant you should use a different domain for static content on your marketing page, and I'm not lamenting anything. Just giving you some advice. Ghostery has been installed over 1 million times just in Chrome. Any one has ghostery installed and is going to your site will see a completely broken webpage.
    - chill1 13y ago
      Why was leobelle being downvoted? I can understand disagreeing with what they were saying. It's an opinion after all. But, what they were saying wasn't that far off base..
      - stedaniels 13y ago
        Maybe if Ghostery was developed in a half way decent manner it wouldn't have a bad history of breaking sites and would block tracking more intelligently rather than blanket blocks of domains.
      - djt 13y ago
        Probably because the adverts that are blocked pay for the site. Kind of like asking musicians for zippy share links to their music.
        dangrossman 13y ago
        Ghostery isn't an ad blocker, it's an analytics blocker. It's for people that don't want to be tracked on the web.
zbeewhs 13y ago
If you don't mind me asking, what is your background? Do you have any advice for someone who aspires to follow in your footsteps?
- dangrossman 13y ago
  I was just a kid whose family bought a computer at the right time. I got hooked, taught myself programming from online tutorials, and never stopped creating things. The stuff I made got more complex and more polished each time, until it got to the point that I can create stuff other people are willing to pay to use. There's really no prerequisite other than a computer and an interest in programming.
  - zbeewhs 13y ago
    Awesome. Thanks for the response! It's always nice to get some motivation to crack open a few books on a Saturday night.
fiatjaf 13y ago
Do you have lots of users for W3Counter? How much users do you need for offering free content and making a profit from advertising? I'm interested.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  There are about 70,000 users.
emilioolivares 13y ago
Awesome Dan, thanks for sharing. Very inspiring to see a one man show producing such fine products. Is there anything you outsource? You should write a book on the details of how you did it, I'd buy it in a heartbeat!
benackles 13y ago
Hey Dan, Improvely looks like an awesome product. Incredible work for a one-person shop. Our company was talking about a click fraud monitoring system last week. I'm going to pitch this to the rest of our agency tomorrow.
benackles 13y ago
Do you have a way to track call metrics? We'd like to be able to track conversions from a Google Voice number.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  Nope. Call tracking is difficult and expensive, both in terms of money and complexity; I'd have to 10x my prices before even touching it. You also wouldn't be using a Google Voice number -- call tracking services work by renting huge numbers of phone numbers, and assigning a unique number to each visitor to your site for some time. Each person sees a different number, and their calls get routed to whatever your real number is after being logged for analytics. Improvely only tracks stuff that happens on your website.

leobelle 13y ago

Ghostery blocks w3counter so it blocked pretty much everything on the actual site, maybe use a static domain that isn't blocked by ghostery. :O

dangrossman 13y ago
You're running Ghostery for the purpose of blocking W3Counter and every other site like it. You can't really do that then lament the fact that it worked. I'm not going to invest time and effort into evading you; if you want to see web stats sites, you can just turn off the extension. Somehow I don't think there are any Ghostery users looking to sign up.
- leobelle 13y ago
  I meant you should use a different domain for static content on your marketing page, and I'm not lamenting anything. Just giving you some advice. Ghostery has been installed over 1 million times just in Chrome. Any one has ghostery installed and is going to your site will see a completely broken webpage.
  - chill1 13y ago
    Why was leobelle being downvoted? I can understand disagreeing with what they were saying. It's an opinion after all. But, what they were saying wasn't that far off base..
    - stedaniels 13y ago
      Maybe if Ghostery was developed in a half way decent manner it wouldn't have a bad history of breaking sites and would block tracking more intelligently rather than blanket blocks of domains.
    - djt 13y ago
      Probably because the adverts that are blocked pay for the site. Kind of like asking musicians for zippy share links to their music.
      - dangrossman 13y ago
        Ghostery isn't an ad blocker, it's an analytics blocker. It's for people that don't want to be tracked on the web.

zbeewhs 13y ago

If you don't mind me asking, what is your background? Do you have any advice for someone who aspires to follow in your footsteps?

dangrossman 13y ago
I was just a kid whose family bought a computer at the right time. I got hooked, taught myself programming from online tutorials, and never stopped creating things. The stuff I made got more complex and more polished each time, until it got to the point that I can create stuff other people are willing to pay to use. There's really no prerequisite other than a computer and an interest in programming.
- zbeewhs 13y ago
  Awesome. Thanks for the response! It's always nice to get some motivation to crack open a few books on a Saturday night.

fiatjaf 13y ago

Do you have lots of users for W3Counter? How much users do you need for offering free content and making a profit from advertising? I'm interested.

dangrossman 13y ago
There are about 70,000 users.

emilioolivares 13y ago

Awesome Dan, thanks for sharing. Very inspiring to see a one man show producing such fine products. Is there anything you outsource? You should write a book on the details of how you did it, I'd buy it in a heartbeat!

benackles 13y ago

Hey Dan, Improvely looks like an awesome product. Incredible work for a one-person shop. Our company was talking about a click fraud monitoring system last week. I'm going to pitch this to the rest of our agency tomorrow.

benackles 13y ago

Do you have a way to track call metrics? We'd like to be able to track conversions from a Google Voice number.

dangrossman 13y ago
Nope. Call tracking is difficult and expensive, both in terms of money and complexity; I'd have to 10x my prices before even touching it. You also wouldn't be using a Google Voice number -- call tracking services work by renting huge numbers of phone numbers, and assigning a unique number to each visitor to your site for some time. Each person sees a different number, and their calls get routed to whatever your real number is after being logged for analytics. Improvely only tracks stuff that happens on your website.