Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

For the past 20 years I've been a recruiter, and a few years back I started a resume writing and career consulting business called Resume Raiders (http://resumeraiders.com). It's a literal mom & pop operation and I do 99% of the projects myself.

I started the business because I've always loved writing, am good at navigating tricky job search and career situations (I've seen it all after 20 yrs in recruiting), and I enjoy it more than recruiting. I also noticed most resume writers didn't really have a background in hiring, but rather were just trained writers that probably had a hard time making it in journalism or other areas.

I'd been writing resumes for my recruiting candidates for many years, and many of those candidates would rely on me for career advice as well. It was odd to provide career advice as a third-party recruiter, as there were times when I might have some financial interest in what a person does. As an example, if someone approached me and said "Should I leave my job?", a recruiter might say "yes" with the thought that if this person leaves I might get a placement fee if I help them find work.

Resume Raiders is now my primary focus and has been quite profitable since it started. There is very little overhead. I live in a pretty expensive area, but my clients come from all over the world. I also offer a discount to HN'ers (see my profile page).

bredren · 8 years ago

I worked with Dave, too! While I didn’t get the gig I was after at the time, I was super happy with the help I got from him. Not surprised, but glad to hear the biz is working.

fecak · 8 years ago

Thanks for the kind words! Biz has been great. I was in a 'test mode' for a bit, as I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do this full-time and earn enough to maintain my lifestyle (wife, 2 kids, relatively expensive place to live), but it's been very successful and incredibly fulfilling on a personal level as well.

maxk42 · 8 years ago

Ha! Hi Dave! I've been watching your little business flourish via your LinkedIn page for a couple years now and it's been a joy to observe it blossoming. Keep up the good work and I bid you continued luck in the future!

fecak · 8 years ago

Thanks! I used to enjoy doing social media ads for my recruiting business (my 3yo daughter will likely kill me when she's older as she was featured in most of the memes), and I'm still figuring out social for my resume business.

People are more likely to follow a recruiting biz on social (might have a job for me?), but a resume biz is very time specific. Thanks for keeping an eye on me!

vfulco · 8 years ago

Congrats Pal. As a fellow resume editor, etc. and 2 years into my professional services biz in Shanghai, hat tip to you.

mapster · 8 years ago

Congrats. curious why you don't list the grid of services on your main page? do you use PPC or other lead gen practices you can share?

fecak · 8 years ago

No lead gen services at all. Most clients via referral or Reddit and HN. I could list the services on my main page, that's not a bad idea.

Pieter Levels is the creator of:

  - https://nomadlist.com/
  - https://remoteok.io/
  - https://hoodmaps.com/

And he just broke €50,000/m a few days ago: https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/96802754410347315...

superasn · 8 years ago

Yes, this guy is truly an inspiration. If you're a one person business, you will find this tweet very useful:

https://mobile.twitter.com/levelsio/status/93870716650815488...

(aka stop running after shiny new things and just do it!)

dharma1 · 8 years ago

I think that's right. But there's a limit to what kind of business you can create with a single php file in 2018, and typically those spaces are pretty competitive.

Pieter's approach of what lead him to land on Nomadlist is I think where the value is - scratch your own itch, and do a lot of business experiments - don't spend more than a month or two on a business idea if it hasn't gained traction, move to the next one. Again, only works for some type of businesses.

_xzxj · 8 years ago

No offense but Pieter Levels seems like a bit of a bastard, and you can see it in that thread. I don't pay much attention to him, but when I do come across his social media posts they're pretty off-putting. He's pretty successful yes, but €50k/mo is not exactly f-you money.

dharma1 · 8 years ago

Here's a recent talk by Pieter - https://youtu.be/6reLWfFNer0

I think it's really good. Probably the best startup talk I've seen in a while.

In my opinion, there are benefits to doing things alone, but you have to be able to learn a lot of things quick, have a lot of available time with few distractions, and be very focused and persistent.

Cons: it's not as fun, and will probably take longer than working with people with specific talents.

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matte_black · 8 years ago

*Revenue though, not profit

chrishn · 8 years ago

Not many expenses, though.

filipm · 8 years ago

Here's a couple of links you might like, although not all of them are exactly what you're looking for:

- https://www.indiehackers.com/ (of course)

- https://www.starterstory.com/

- https://www.authorityhacker.com/undercover/

- https://failory.com/

- Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? (Jan 5, 2017): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13326535 (thanks @jbonniwell)

- Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? (Mar 9, 2014): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7367243

- Ask HN: Sideprojects/passive income businesses with little or no own coding?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15806208

- Pieter Levels - Turning Side Projects into Profitable Startups (1h presentation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6reLWfFNer0

sixQuarks · 8 years ago

I would say that these sites chronicle just the tip of the iceberg. I run a successful solo online business and would never agree to be profiled as I don't want to invite competition.

gkya · 8 years ago

You also invite competition by selling/advertising your product. For any product, it's most probably one of the customers that'll go "I can make something better than this!" Also, if your income depends on absence of competition, that means that your product needs a bit of improving and that your business is fragile.

overcast · 8 years ago

In my opinion, those site are just advertising for your business.

charlesdm · 8 years ago

You're not wrong. They are a great source for inspiration.

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ABCLAW · 8 years ago

Responses like this really show the best side of HN. I'm not the OP, but I appreciate the work in pulling together these resources.

Thanks and you're welcome :)

iovrthoughtthis · 8 years ago

acabal · 8 years ago

I run Scribophile, one of the largest writing communities online, as a one-person business, though I have a ton of help from our volunteer forums moderators.

The story is pretty unimpressive... I had the idea back in the days when web 2.0 was the new hotness, so I decided to make it happen and use it as an excuse to learn web 2.0 technologies. It was a freemium model from day 1, though I didn't expect many people to buy the paid upgrade.

People seemed to like it, paid upgrades were getting sold, and after a while of it being a hobby I realized I could live off the earnings and decided to make it full time.

It allowed me to spend many years being a digital nomad back when that sort of thing wasn't quite popular yet. I traveled to a lot of places and met a lot of fascinating people. Now I'm settled at home but those years of my life were priceless.

These days we're one of the largest and most respected writing communities online, at least 3 of our members have been in Writers of the Future awards ceremonies, and our members regularly go on to be published by major publishers and smaller outfits.

I should also emphasize that having one's own business doesn't mean you're a millionare, like many assume. I make a comfortable living but much less than you'd think if you pictured a "business owner guy". I still very much consider myself a success, because I get to do what I love, and on my own schedule. (For example I took a little time off to start a new hobby, standardebooks.org, which produces high-quality, modern ebook editions of public domain literature, and releases them free of cost and via CC0.)

vram22 · 8 years ago

Just checked out standardebooks.org a bit. Seems like a great idea. Will check it out more and share it with others via my social media channels.

I checked out a couple of books there. Neither had PDF as an available format. Why is this? Is PDF not considered an ebook format?

jasim · 8 years ago

So you're the wonderful person who started standardebooks. Many thanks!

cperciva · 8 years ago

Tarsnap. I have an employee now, but I ran the company myself for the first ten years and from ~2011 onwards Tarsnap has been the vast majority of my income.

I got started by... well, sitting down and scratching my itch. I wanted good backups, and it turned out that other people wanted them too.

ghostbrainalpha · 8 years ago

Can you give a simple explanation why a Tarsnap backup is superior to competitors, but for someone who isn't going to understand the research paper?

Does it backup my website like S3, or does it back up my personal files like Dropbox?

No. It backs up your files like tar. (Except with deduplication and encryption and cryptographic signing and off-site storage.)

zerr · 8 years ago

I guess this is the trade-off - you should spend a significant time (or maybe a whole life) on one thing (e.g. backups) to become successful, so the price is to miss out on a lot of other stuff.

coaxial · 8 years ago

I love tarsnap as well. Does its thing very well without getting in the way. It's a pleasure every time I use it.

3riverdev · 8 years ago

I'll add another "Thank you for Tarsnap!"

iUsedToCode · 8 years ago

Tarsnap is great. I love supporting it.

SimplyUseless · 8 years ago

I love tarsnap

vshabanov · 8 years ago

I'm running BazQux https://bazqux.com paid feed reader. It's my only source of revenue.

I wanted to read comments in feed reader (there were few forums with very interesting discussions) and Google Reader only allowed to read blog posts. So I've started developing my own feed reader.

I believed that comments reading feature is killer and thought that Internet is big and many people will like it and I will be rich soon ;) I saved some money and quit my job to focus completely on my product.

Guess what? After initial release nobody purchased my product. I was quite disappointed and started asking people what they didn't liked (turned out to be the most important thing to do). And I've started to add features they've missed, asked again, improved again. And got first purchase few months later and second purchase few more months later.

Few times I thought to abandon project. But then Google announced it will discontinue Google Reader. By that time I had more or less usable product and got a lot of new clients and a lot of feedback (which is very important). Worked like crazy for a few months and after Google Reader was closed I've had enough clients to pay the bills.

It's still in active development with a huge TODO list.

Can't say that it is success. I would make more if I go to day job (and won't worry as much about what to do next to have income in the future) but I'm working on my own project, talking with my own clients, using technologies selected by me and can work on my own schedule (although after being burned out and birth of baby I returned to working 5 days a week in office -- my own office indeed, with piano ;)

Having one-person online business is definitely possible but it's not as romantic/easy as it sometimes shown. "Wow, this guy could work on the beach" is actually "damn, I must work even on the beach".

odonnellryan · 8 years ago

> "Wow, this guy could work on the beach" is actually "damn, I must work even on the beach".

This is a fantastic way to put it.

scyclow · 8 years ago

I've only made about $5.00 on it so far (certainly not enough to retire on), but my latest endeavor is looking quite promising: http://fastcashmoneyplus.biz

subpar · 8 years ago

Love this. Any interest in a merger with the cash machine that is http://subpar.biz/

I talked to the board, and they say that we're not taking merger requests at the moment, but would be open to a licensing agreement :P

HeyLaughingBoy · 8 years ago

Oh my god. I'm trying so hard to keep from laughing my ass off!

agitator · 8 years ago

Damn, the jokes don't end. Co-worker was wondering why the site was using a whole core to run, and checked developer mode for crypto mining.

martin-adams · 8 years ago

This reminds me of LINGsCARS which is a 100% legit business. https://www.lingscars.com/

She even featured on Dragons Den: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc1ktZRZ5ZM

szukai · 8 years ago

I think I laughed a little too much looking at the site. Good work.

athenot · 8 years ago

This is absolutely hilarious! Geocities meets cryptocurrencies.

ai_ia · 8 years ago

I laughed for full three minutes. Thanks for this stranger.

paulcnichols · 8 years ago

Legit

yread · 8 years ago

but WHY?

why NOT?

amrrs · 8 years ago

Not sure if you've checked https://www.indiehackers.com/ before, it's full of such stories and those are amazing and inspirational. Because those are not your Googles or Amazons, it's just solo business that are very practically approachable.

csallen is the best. Love indie hackers so much.