Six Figures in 6 days

https://tr.af/6

by brunojppb • 6 years ago

643 285 6 years ago

tr.af

pulse7• 6 years ago

He writes "97% profit margins". How is that possible if AppStore takes 30%?

EDIT: This seems to be outside AppStore.

eertami• 6 years ago

It isn't an App Store app, he's taking payment on his own site and delivering PNGs to an email address.

Not sure how I feel about the article. Kind of reads like those "I got stupid lucky this one time, so can you!" fluff pieces at best, and at worst is just further advertisement/marketing for the icon pack.

todd_t• 6 years ago

I got stupid lucky this one time, so can you!

If you publish often, act immediately, be transparent, etc, etc. Luck is at the intersection of preparation and opportunity.

MauranKilom• 6 years ago

Not sure how far you read, but the "lessons learned" at the bottom abstracts very well from the necessary but not sufficient "I got lucky" condition. I found it informative.

leppr• 6 years ago

It is advertisement for his "Notion to Website" product. It's nicely done, because this is the first thing I got from the article, and I think so will most entrepreneur types reading it. The whole point is "I made $100k from being able to quickly spin up a website + payment system at the right time".

holtalanm• 6 years ago

just further advertisement/marketing for the icon pack.

this reads 100% like most blog posts looking to promote their product. a bit of inspiration wrapped around 'try my product!', with a dash of bragging about their success.

aceelric• 6 years ago

Congrats !

maaarghk• 6 years ago

why when i ctrl+clicked on a link did the current tab change URL instead?

ainiriand• 6 years ago

The magic of JS and terrible devs.

traf4• 6 years ago

It's fixed.

kyran_adept• 6 years ago

As an Android user, I am completely blown away by two things: #1 iPhones got this only in 2020, when Android had this since the first version, #2 iPhone owners are willing to spend $28 for a icon pack, a very nice one, but still an icon pack.

hnlmorg5• 6 years ago

Technically it's still not available to iPhone users. The actual method of changing the icons is a really nasty workaround that needs to be performed for each and every application. Instructions: https://icons.tr.af/how

Don't get me wrong, I do love my iPhone, but this isn't something most people (myself included) will have the patience to do.

tl• 6 years ago

It also slows down the launch of every app because you're launching an app to launch your app. The idea that people would pay money, do a bunch of extra work and make their device slower just to change the appearance of their home screen because a handful of people on social media popularize it blows my mind.

rmetzler2• 6 years ago

I don't even understand why you would want to change icons on your phone.

coldtea2• 6 years ago

Yeah. On the other hand we had 1/10 less mallware, faster UIs, updates for older devices up to several years, and other small things since day one which Android still doesn't have :-)

komali2• 6 years ago

If you're gonna rehash the iOS vs android flamewar at leat use up to date arguments...

oefrha2• 6 years ago

Is the average iPhone owner willing to spend $28 on an icon pack? Probably not.

Can you find 3626 iPhone owners willing to spend $28 on an icon pack? Sure you can. In fact I bet you can find 3626 Android owners willing to part with $28 too.

The key to this success story is this:

Then, MKBHD happened.

ahmadss• 6 years ago

the key to his success is honing his craft via side projects, sharing these ideas often, having a quick and easy tooling to publish ideas, pushing to prod and sharing these ideas. thats the key to success. the MKBHD pickup is just the recognition of the skill honed through this process.

bluedino• 6 years ago

I wonder what he would have gotten had he did a paid advertisement on Daring Fireball, MacRumors, etc

shanecleveland3• 6 years ago

Sure. He said it himself.

And went on to say:

The market will decide a huge part of what comes after sharing something, so continually increase your odds by building, publishing, then repeating.

All the people here decrying everything he had done up until this point and proclaiming any degree of success is attributable only to luck is amazing. It's not the same as stumbling on a winning lotto ticking on the street (unless you have spent years scouring the streets looking for winning lotto tickets).

accountLost• 6 years ago

#2 A few thousands iPhone owners out of 900 millions willing to pay $28 for a icon pack. Not that mind blowing for me. Compare that to the billions of $ users spend on loot boxes.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-05-01-loot-boxes...

doc_gunthrop3• 6 years ago

It's not an apt comparison. Loot boxes is gambling, which is something completely different.

mrtksn• 6 years ago

iPhones got this only in 2020, when Android had this since the first version

It's not a technical achievement(that took Apple 10 years to do), it's a design choice(that Apple made then and now). It can have multiple motivations that we can speculate on, would have been great to have someone from Apple to give us some perspective.

iPhone owners are willing to spend $28 for a icon pack, a very nice one, but still an icon pack.

There are multiple games that make billions of $ by simply selling cosmetic items, this is very similar. It also has a a version in the physical world, people pay a premium for stuff with a special visual design and no functional advantage all the time. Handbags, clothes, cars, jewellery, movie merchandise(like Darth Vader helmets etc), houses, paint, books, computers - you name it, people actually pay for design.

zmk_• 6 years ago

It seems more like an unintended consequence, not a design choice by Apple.

yonixw• 6 years ago

It's not a technical achievement(that took Apple 10 years to do), it's a design choice

That's the most poetic way of saying "it's not a bug, it's a feature"

swiley• 6 years ago

Of course most X11 DEs have had this since the 90s.

bdcravens4• 6 years ago

Other than the derisive "sheeple" response, why do people stick with iPhones when Androids have more desirable features?

aembleton3• 6 years ago

Androids have more desirable features

That's subjective. Many people prefer iPhones. They may find the features of iPhone more desirable or some other aspect about it like the Apple ecosystem.

crehn• 6 years ago

Apple's obsession over small details and creating a delightful UX.

fuzzy2• 6 years ago

My iPhone is almost 4 years old. It is still very fast (never had to reset it) and still gets updates.

What's not to like?

My last Android (Nexus 5) stopped receiving updates just 2 years after I bought it, because of some ridiculous graphics driver bs.

elboru• 6 years ago

This is anecdotal of course. But I was an Android user since the first Galaxy S until the Galaxy S7 (with Nexus and some others in between). I don’t know if this is still the case but every single time I had one of the big updates my phone just started getting slower and slower, most of my phones got a crack in the screen, battery started draining really quickly. I couldn’t spend more than 1.5 years with the same phone without wanting a new one really bad.

Then I got my first iPhone almost three years ago, and I still have the same phone and I don’t feel a need to get a new one. After several major updates my phone still works perfectly (even better I would say). Battery is in 85% and still lasts a whole day. Do I miss some features? of course, but the same would be true if I switched to Android, I would miss Shortcuts, Airdrop and other small features, plus at present time I can’t think of a big feature I’m missing from Android.

jschwartzi2• 6 years ago

My 4 year old Apple phone continues to work great, while every Android phone I've used would get progressively slower and less capable with each Android update.

Also there was a plethora of Android features to support local advertising that I considered very invasive of my privacy. One example was an ad campaign for a children's clothing store called "Charming Charlie" which would pop up on my phone whenever I walked past their store at the mall regardless of whether Bluetooth and Wifi were on or off.

Finally, I can actually talk to a live human when I'm having problems with my Apple phone.

angst_ridden• 6 years ago

Different people value different things. What's desirable is not the same for everyone. Also, never underestimate the magnitude of inertia. There's a point many of us reach where we're more interested in your tools being consistent and predictable, rather than bleeding edge. We dread OS updates rather than look forward to them, because it means we'll need to allocate brain cycles to something that's changed and that's just not that important. We'd rather be allocating those brain cycles to a project that we consider interesting and maybe even important, rather than adding fancy stuff to our phone's home screen layout.

triceratops2• 6 years ago

They last longer physically. Apple supports them with updates and security fixes for absurd lengths of time (like 5 years or something). So if you take care of your phone it's better for the environment.

mattbrewsbytes• 6 years ago

My iPhone 7 is a tool. It does its job, I don't feel any need to hack it, mod it or change it or upgrade every year. I text people, call people, take pics, browse the web, install other apps for things like ordering food, maybe play a game, etc.

In my opinion, most features that have come out in recent years for smart phones don't really matter to users. They are marketing checklists.

ponker2• 6 years ago

There are very few things in my life where I’ve purchased the highest-features version. I have a regular Medeco lock on my house instead of a Smart Lock. I didn’t give my TV internet access so it acts as a “dumb TV.” I own two kitchen knives instead of a set with a knife for every single scenario. Instead of the fancy closet organizers I have a regular bar and a set of shelves. Phones are no different — I rarely prefer the one with the most “stuff,” I like the thing that has the best execution on the stuff it has.

outworlder• 6 years ago

Different platforms have different priorities.

Is android still using really low resolution icons?

talmr2• 6 years ago

Off topic, but I really like that I don't have to customize my iPhone much at all. It works great right off the bat, I don't need to download another camera app, another gallery app, or have to root it so I can fix my CPU settings so the phone won't melt just in my pocket (happened on my LG android back in 2015 which made me switch to iOS and never look back).

JohnTHaller• 6 years ago

In fairness, I don't have to do any of that to my Google Pixel either. It all just works great off the bat. I can if I want to, but I don't. I do appreciate being able to install my own fully open source web browser of choice (Firefox) and my own fully open source ad blocker of choice (uBlock) instead of being stuck using skins over Safari's engine.

IkmoIkmo• 6 years ago

Not even that but, you can't change icons. What you can do is create a siri shortcut, assign an icon to that, and make the shortcut just open an app. Everytime you click it, it'll load siri, then siri loads the app, visibly and with a delay.

It's painful to use and look at, all of which was described in the video, and people paid $28 for it. Pretty insane.

asdff4• 6 years ago

It's almost as ridiculous as people spending $100 on windows 10 licenses so they can change their desktop background.

LandR• 6 years ago

There is nothing on this blog that I can see except text and some links at the bottom, yet if I have JS disabled I just get a black page.

JS to display text. Brilliant.

elliotbnvl2• 6 years ago

React.

Uberphallus• 6 years ago

Doesn't this piss search engines off? Does the content even get indexed?

m1gu3l• 6 years ago

JS to display text = i don't have to read this.

aendruk• 6 years ago

I feel strongly enough about this that I had “js;dr” stickers made and have been distributing them at conferences for a couple years.

infraviolet• 6 years ago

I recently made the switch from a Gatsby-powered version of my blog to a traditional server-templating based one. Currently there's zero JS on my website. The immediate impact is that my website is much more lightweight and loads and renders much faster. I plan to A/B test the visitor behavior across these two versions and share the results.

Though if you really go all in on no-JS (which I understand what OP isn't recommending), there are certain issues. Like if you have a "subscribe" button at the bottom of your page, using a non-AJAX POST request to submit the email will not get you to the bottom of the page by itself (which would come for free if using JS). So using JS can provide a better UX in these aspects.

EDIT: The blog in question: https://pythonautomationtutorial.com

lights0123• 6 years ago

I really wish HTML5 supported the image loading style where a very low-res image is encoded in base64 with a heavy blur, and then the real image is loaded later and then replaced. That's the default in Gatsby (and its clones), and it truly does feel quite nice. You have a huge (0.25MB, 1080p, never cached due to bad ETAG generation) JPEG that takes at minimum 1.6 seconds to download, and keeps showing the browser loading animation while it's active, while the image is loaded in vertical chunks at a time. Firefox puts a turtle next to that asset to show that it takes a while to download.

much more lightweight and loads and renders much faster

Were you hosting it on the same host you're currently using? The downside with server-side templating is that you can't use a cheap global CDN like GitHub Pages or Netlify, which will be faster than your own servers in pretty much every case. The few extra KBs of JS (compressed) is likely offset by the latency of physical distance.

rudasn• 6 years ago

I also have JS disabled on mobile and it loaded fine. Using Chrome on android. Maybe its something else?

traf4• 6 years ago

I think the animsition plugin I was using was causing some issues, so I removed it.

aembleton3• 6 years ago

Works fine for me on Firefox 81 with JS disabled.

Igelau3• 6 years ago

I guess you're not a "practicing minimalist"

m12k3• 6 years ago

All I'm seeing is a completely black page. Wonder if it's uBlock origin, Firefox, or macOS that the page doesn't play nice with.

querez• 6 years ago

Same here, but if you let the page sit for ~30 seconds, it suddenly loads some content. Probably a very unoptimized homepage design.

michaelbrooks• 6 years ago

I thought it was uBlock, and disabled it to see what would happen. Once I refreshed the page, it displayed which led me to believe something weird was going.

I tried again with uBlock enabled and refreshed the page which worked. So the bottom line is, refresh the page, and you should see the content.

marzullo• 6 years ago

For me, on Windows10/FF82b4, I had to click the reader view mode. No clue why it rendered like that by default.

Daniel_sk• 6 years ago

Blank page with FF + uBlock but then the text appeared after page refresh.

traf4• 6 years ago

I believe this was the animsition script that was causing the issues. I removed it and should load fine now.

malydok• 6 years ago

The same issue occurs on https://super.so/, if you happen to have any affiliation with them.

dt3ft2• 6 years ago

So he says oversharing doesn't exist? I built https://20-things.com but I doubt anyone would care to look at its source code since it was built with ASP.NET MVC (not Core). To publish or not to publish?

TedDoesntTalk3• 6 years ago

Microsoft published the source code for things like calc and other ancient tools (I seem to remember notepad and minesweeper but I could be wrong). The interest was huge and it made the HN front page.

So why not? If nothing else, it is historically significant.

dt3ft2• 6 years ago

Valid point. I'll get it out asap. Thank you.

m12k3• 6 years ago

So the trick to being in the right place at the right time is to find the right place, then just wait there for the right time to arrive.

TedDoesntTalk3• 6 years ago

If you read his post, he says to continually publish to find out what sticks. Your comment sounds like you want to publish once and succeed. You need to also fail to succeed.

m12k3• 6 years ago

I don't think we disagree. One of Unity's founders once compared what they did, making a game engine for Mac, to building a ship in the desert. Then the iPhone App Store came along, like a tidal wave through the desert, and they've been riding that wave ever since.

glaberficken• 6 years ago

I guess the gist of it is more that with digital assets you don't really need to wait at the right place. You keep laying "traps" in several places as you "wait". Then just keep on the lookout and when one of the "traps" is triggered go and attack it again taking in mind the current context.

macNchz2• 6 years ago

It’s funny how trends change but Apple users’ appetite for icons stays the same...10 years ago Apple made the navigation icons in iTunes greyscale instead of color. I wasn’t sold on it so I fired up ResEdit and quickly edited the old icons into the new sprite file inside the app package.

I saw other people complaining online so I posted the updated resource file on my $5/mo shared hosting and put a link on a forum...it was picked up on some blogs but I didn’t realize it had become popular, then I woke up a couple of days later and I’d blown through 10s of gigs of bandwidth and had my hosting account frozen (conveniently the day I’d planned a long roadtrip to test a gps/photo sharing app I’d been working on).

Years later people were still asking if I could help them change their iTunes icons, or even getting mad at me that I hadn’t updated the file to work with newer versions!

https://osxdaily.com/2010/09/03/get-color-icons-back-in-the-...

jacquesm2• 6 years ago

Nothing like free users when it comes to entitlement. I think this is mostly because they don't realize which companies are large and which are small or even just hobby projects, it is trivial to appear much larger than you are on the web.

MiroF• 6 years ago

think this is mostly because they don't realize which companies are large and which are small or even just hobby projects

Definitely - it is hard for many to grasp how productive a single engineer can be in putting together a project that looks quite polished and professional.

But also, some people are just mean.

a13692099932• 6 years ago

To be fair, part of that (as suggested by "getting mad at me that I hadn't updated the file to work with newer versions"), is that macNchz was providing a service that should have been provided officially by Apple, and many users lack (or decline to exhibit) the perceptiveness to realize that Apple has abrogated its reponsibility to correct defects in products it recieves payment for, and that this is not a official Apple website, but rather a internet rando cleaning up after one small subset of Apple's negligence.

Though, as MiroF points out, some people are just jerks.

mdorazio• 6 years ago

A lot of free users also simply have no concept of how much effort something takes since they've never done it themselves, and by extension have no concept of what that effort translates to in zero cost labor. It's something I see a lot in the maker side of the world with things like 3d printable files.

thanhhaimai• 6 years ago

It's funny you mentioned this. When I was on iOS, I was never satisfied with the icons (or the UI in general). I always wanted to customize it. The stock colors/design just left me wanted for more. It's an unconscious feeling; there is no concrete thing to pin point and say that the UI is bad.

What's strange is that, since I switched to Android a couple years back, I no longer had the urge to change the icons or customizing the UI. There is something about the design that makes it feel "okay". You don't feel like you're fighting the phone or being left wanted for more.

I just picked up an iphone from family to check it out, and instantly feel the need to customize it. For all the UX experts, is there a theory/phenomenal for this that I can read more?

derefr• 6 years ago

I don't think it's really that Android design is more "okay." I think it's that the iOS (and moreso macOS) icon design-language has the potential for some really distractingly-beautiful outlier icons — icons that really twig on people's "gathering fresh ripe fruit" reward system. And when there's some of those sitting on your Dock as part of your every-day experience, you start to both:

1. want every icon to be as tantalizing as those icons already are (and so desire to customize the "lesser" icons to achieve that); and

2. feel like something very precious has been lost whenever an icon is made less tantalizing.

I would hazard a guess that the "greyscale makes people less addicted to their phones" research is more true for iOS users than Android users. iOS just has a higher average level of visual addicting-ness in its design. (Which, to be clear, has nothing to do with differing levels of "polish" or anything like that; addicting-ness is its own thing. Some [good] design-aesthetics have it; other [also good] design-aesthetics don't.)

chr• 6 years ago

Not a UX person.

There's a threshold after which something is so good it's worth criticizing?

kitsunesoba• 6 years ago

That's interesting, I experience the exact opposite. I find iOS quite satisfactory after some very light customization (mainly wallpaper), but when using Android something consistently feels missing and although it drives an urge to customize, I'm not sure could be sated through any amount of tweaking.

Waterfall2• 6 years ago

Do you feel the same with an iPad? I do with my phone but I think it has more to do with your utility of it. The iTunes app may not look proper in your computer. Android may simply suit you better. Do you find yourself trying to make it work like Android?

peterburkimsher• 6 years ago

That was you! Thank you so much! I still use iTunes 10, with the coloured icons.

I just can't move on from the mini player, 18 years of play counts/last played, AppleScript, offline USB sync with an iPhone 4S, and of course your coloured icons. I even had to make my own RSRC edits with Themepark to show the icons correctly on Retina, based on your work. I'm not mad at you; I'm grateful for keeping the best music player (in my opinion) looking beautiful.

Any suggestions for other media management software is welcome, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to leave my beloved iTunes 10.6.3. More likely I'll run a 10.5 emulator just to keep it going through future decades.

macNchz2• 6 years ago

That’s awesome–glad it was helpful back in the day! Honestly I totally agree about iTunes 10, I‘ve come to mostly dislike the current iTunes but never thought to try downgrading. I still maintain my iTunes library with play counts and metadata going back to 2003, but find myself reaching for Spotify first these days.

xmprt• 6 years ago

Have you considered putting the website back up and instead adding a purchase link so the hosting costs are worth it for you (assuming people are still bugging you about it).

falcolas5• 6 years ago

Meta rant: Why, oh why do people use low contrast colors and expect people to be able to read their blog? Has nobody heard about accessibility? Or do they not care, because “I can read it”.

hamza_nouali• 6 years ago

I checked Chrome DevTools and it looks accessible. even though, it's hard to read.

falcolas5• 6 years ago

Chrome tools will tell you if it meets the minimum "don't sue me" standards, not whether it's readable. Their other choices - thin stroke font, minimal font size - make the contrast insufficient.

jedimastert3• 6 years ago

Has nobody heard about accessibility? Or do they not care, because “I can read it”.

Genuinely, no. For those who have it, vision is such an integral part of...well, existence that intuitively grasping that people have completely different ways of perceiving it beyond the obvious is extremely difficult. This goes a bit beyond the "try to explain 'blue' to someone" troupe. I have difficulties explaining my own brand of vision difficulties (or hearing difficulties, for that matter) without basically explaining the optics of vision and going from there.

For instance, for folks with without some kind of color difficulties, being able to look at two colors (what most would perceive as) completely different colors and being able to say "those colors would look the same to color blind folks" is almost impossible without training or extra tools.

So no, it doesn't occur to someone without training to constant question their own perception, unfortunately. The most we can do is give web masters a shout when we notice and promote accessibility tools wherever we can

falcolas5• 6 years ago

I get what you're saying, but decreasing vision acuity is one thing everybody in this world is guaranteed to run into (barring an early death, that is).

riebschlager• 6 years ago

The contrast ratio between #000000 and #8F9BA8 is 7.42:1 which passes accessibility guidelines.

falcolas5• 6 years ago

For many of us, some of these combinations are not very readable. That is why 4.5:1 is a minimal contrast ratio.

Having a thin stroke (the space font face) and small character size (18 px, which is a 12 pt equivalent) for your typeface typically means that you need to increase the contrast to compensate.

In other words, 7.5:1 is insufficient given the design choices. Even if it's "legal".

Igelau3• 6 years ago

Guidelines are only a map, they are not the territory. The eye of the beholder is more important than the contrast ratio.

thatguy0900• 6 years ago

I'm 25 and this is still a little uncomfortable to read.

jedimastert3• 6 years ago

Also, I think the issue isn't contrast, but line weight

joana035• 6 years ago

Pro tip: Ctrl+Alt+R in firefox :-)

huhtenberg3• 6 years ago

This appears to do absolutely nothing.

lisper• 6 years ago

Heh, the whole page just looks black to me, and I have normal vision and the latest version of Firefox.

aembleton3• 6 years ago

Just use Reader View to make it more accessible.

alasano• 6 years ago

Perhaps an unpopular opinion but I thought the opposite, was very easy on the eyes.

novok2• 6 years ago

When I was a teen white text on black was easy to read and cool. I remember my dad making a comment about how it was hard to read and a bit incredulous that I was fine with it. As I got older, not so much in certain contexts. The author is probably young.

MrLeap• 6 years ago

This is heartening. I've made some goofy stuff recently that I've been vacillating between releasing or not.

The most complete thing is a uhh.. parody text editor.. game. I've seen other indie projects recently that gave me all sorts of imposter syndrome and made me second guess the value in something so critical as a text editor made for laughs. I'm encouraged by a 28$ icon pack to wrap it up and put it out there, even if it's for 2$ and doesn't sell at all. Ride or die, right?

huhtenberg3• 6 years ago

Re: the icon set that this guy's pitching - does anyone remember the Prada phone? It was one beautifully done UI.

https://www.slashgear.com/prada-phone-3-0-by-lg-review-08215...

read_if_gay_4• 6 years ago

It looks like an amateurishly themed phone to me. But I probably would have thought differently in 2012.

vmception7• 6 years ago

I would ignore most of this advice and simplify it this way:

Act Immediately

Get an influencer

All the rest of OP's journey doesn't really matter.

My newest venture this summer did 7 figures after I got motivated by watching Hamilton, this was also a week long period of sales, which came after a 2 week long period of idea and building hype. It definitely came down to doing something very trendy and having people know about it, and there is nothing organic in that process. I don't think the same venture could do that now already. It would have to be new trendy things.

55555• 6 years ago

same experiences here. timing and big scale. trends and influencers are powerful.

chrisbrauns2• 6 years ago

I think "Publish Often" is also an important part of OP's success. Had they not practiced making custom icons since 2013, they probably would not have been ready to capitalize on the one time they got buzz.

vmception7• 6 years ago

I don't.

I've hired people on fiverr and tapped development teams I've worked with before to deliver quickly.

"Had I not have already vetted that development team I wouldn't have been ready to capitalize so quickly. Had I not practiced making static websites. Had I not practiced tying SSL to domain names so that people take me seriously."

I'm not diminishing OP's skill, I am diminishing the message and pointing out which parts are repeatable. This is prosperity preaching (being rewarded for prior sacrifices because of those prior sacrifices) and wasting everyone's energy if they actually believe that and approach life this way. Unsubscribe to that logic and you still have execute quickly + make sure people know about it.

richrichardsson• 6 years ago

"Publish Often" is also an important part of OP's success

100% this, I sell audio plugins and every time I release a new product there is a huge uptick in sales, and not just from existing users.

irchans• 6 years ago

Hamilton the 2020 movie?

vmception7• 6 years ago

Yes, I find it very motivational

dgs_sgd• 6 years ago

I was similarly motivated after reading Chernow's biography of Hamilton. Reading about how he wrote his 51 essays for the Federalist Papers in such a short time, often publishing one or more per week... that kind of intellectual energy really blew me away.

trwhite2• 6 years ago

Anyone know which font that is? Devtools says "space" but for obvious reasons it's hard to find with Google search. Space Mono is made by Colophon but I don't see it on their website.

traf302• 6 years ago

Space Grotesk by Florian Karsten https://fonts.floriankarsten.com/space-grotesk

trwhite2• 6 years ago

Thanks!

aroundtown• 6 years ago

The good-ole be lucky story.

umvi• 6 years ago

It's like Among Us.

Published in 2018, absolutely exploded in 2020 due to a single Twitch streamer. I'm pretty sure the devs of Among Us became millionaires virtually overnight. Influencers with large followings wield awesome power.

read_if_gay_4• 6 years ago

And Flappy Bird before that, right?

giarc2• 6 years ago

I don't think Flappy Bird went viral as a result of a single or even multiple influencers. It seemed to spread by word-of-mouth and blew up that way.

kevmo314• 6 years ago

Also before the hype, Among Us wasn't doing well at all. They went from practically zero to straight millions. That's some crazy luck.

DLay• 6 years ago

My takeaway from the success of these things is that influencers need to happen upon them organically rather than being paid to advertise them.

asdff4• 6 years ago

Influencers are so valuable per hour that I doubt there is any real estate on their social media pages for organic content that hasn't already been paid for.

stets• 6 years ago

distribution > product

ansible• 6 years ago

I must congratulate you on having a settings icon not be a gear, or even a less meaningful tool of some sort.

tubularhells2• 6 years ago

Apple users pay 28 USD for an icon pack. I'm blown away. Is this how they behave with everything? Just ask what you want and they will pay for it?

spiderfarmer2• 6 years ago

People who just want something that sets them apart from their peers.

Why are you blown away? People pay 50 USD for a personalised phone cover. Is this different because it's software?

tubularhells2• 6 years ago

There is no difference between these two kinds of insane behaviours.

lma21• 6 years ago

I'm an Apple user since 2007. I didn't buy this icon pack.

cestith• 6 years ago

4,188 sales out of 6,200,000 impressions. That's a 0.0675% conversion rate. The exposure is what's driving the numbers.

When the author said "charge more" that's correct when the initial price was $1. I wonder the conversion rate on this if it had been $7. Maybe at a quarter of the price there would have been five times or even ten times the sales. We don't know because no data was gathered. Clearly the conversions would have been higher at a notably lower price, but it's unclear where the crossover point for total profits would be. Alternately, some portion of those 4188 buyers would have purchased at $60 or even $80.

Something to remember here is while you can as a consultant make more money in 40 hours if you charge more per hour for your time rather than working extra hours or turning away excess work, the point the author made about leveraging digital distribution should prove it's not the same scenario. Once your development cost is sunk, distribution (outside of an app store) is nearly free. Selling fewer units at a higher price isn't necessarily any better than selling more units at a lower price. The total's the thing.

war1025• 6 years ago

Just ask what you want and they will pay for it?

Consider that, for many, spending $28 on a meal is something they do without a second thought.

If they are willing to spend that on food, which is a need they have much more often, why wouldn't they spend it on frivolous one time purchases?

That's consumer culture in a nutshell.

asdff4• 6 years ago

People pay to activate windows 10 which is 3x the price.

georgiecasey• 6 years ago

In 2013, the jailbreaking days of iOS were in full effect.

I thought jailbreaking was basically over by 2013

skinnymuch• 6 years ago

That’s correct. That’s around The downfall of jailbreaking.

hota_mazi3• 6 years ago

What blows me away is that this is 2020 and iOS still won't let you place icons anywhere you want on your screen.

It's not just that you're not allowed to make your home screen look the way you want it, it's that even if you decide for a certain ordering, moving the icons in the right order is tougher than a sliding puzzle.

jasonv• 6 years ago

The way widgets are handled in iOS 14, I'll go so far as to say Apple decided this would never be available.

It's all very automated now, the re-ordering of icon placements based on widget insertion, the folding and unfolding of "screens" based on the flow of icons to the next screen when widgets push an overflow.

hota_mazi3• 6 years ago

Apple decides things will never happen until they make them available (e.g. the iPhone 1 didn't support third party apps).

You are describing how the broken way iOS handles icons works. Great. That was not my point. It's broken in the first place.

Do you know how many operating system developed in the past forty years don't allow users to position icons where they want?

There's just one: iOS.

I just don't understand the motivation behind this decision. It makes no sense.

person_of_color2• 6 years ago

How do these idea even pop into ones head? How can I start hustling? I’m a simple pleb engineer at FAANG, but want to get rich quick.

nicky02• 6 years ago

Be smart and creative, think different, and most importantly actually try stuff. Have a product in the world that people can pay you for. Don’t expect anything to happen but do it anyway. Whatever idea sets off a feeling of fear and excitement, do that idea. Don’t wait for a safe bet because there are none. If you are embarrassed to describe your idea because it doesn’t make sense to people, that’s also a good sign.

burlesona• 6 years ago

If you are working at a FAANG you are already getting rich quick.

Working as a freelancer / small business hustler etc., bursts of success like this are extraordinarily rare, and typically fall between long seasons of not making much at all.

The upside of the freelancing / side hustling life isn’t the money, it’s the freedom.

tstewart161• 6 years ago

Lots of practice, learning, and failure. This guy got a great combination of product/market fit, timing, and exposure. Finding product/market fit is a skill trainable like anything else (although an incredibly difficult skill to master), timing is just that (plenty of luck involved - but easier with product/market fit). Finally: exposure is easy with the first two - if you have solved a hot problem really well, of course everyone will pick up on that and make it viral.

Start with practicing finding product market fit and getting better at timing things. If you can do those, the rest (exposure, wealth, connections, etc) fall into place. It’s that simple, but it definitely isn’t easy at all

person_of_color2• 6 years ago

But I have the mindset that icons aren't worth a god damn dime yet 100k.

codegladiator• 6 years ago

Get an influencer and you can sell even an icon pack at $28 to thousands of people.

m3kw9• 6 years ago

28 is too high for icons. The conversion rate is very telling. Do a 70% sale and promote it and watch it rocket. Maybe that was the plan

bochoh• 6 years ago

I have several side projects and blog regularly and can definitely agree that it's rain or shine for smaller creators without large audiences. I go from several sales in a day to weeks without any interest.

Edit: That being said I'm on Twitter @k0ode if you want to follow along.

atarian• 6 years ago

Hmm I can see this potentially creating a new market. The biggest issue is probably getting app developers on board with variations of their logo.

nerfhammer• 6 years ago

the actual tweet (doesn't seem to be linked in the article) https://twitter.com/traf/status/1307707156788060160

bb88• 6 years ago

Good job on the icons. They look more apple than the Appleish than the apple icons.

harrisonjackson• 6 years ago

Nice coverage for super.so, too! That bump will keep boosting the earnings from this icon pack - whole ecosytem you have here.

Igelau3• 6 years ago

The "no copyright intended" notice on super.so is the text equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

b20000• 6 years ago

so how much was paid in ads on twitter and how much was paid to the influencer?

gregcrv• 6 years ago

Two questions:

- who pays $28 for icons you have to install yourself one by one?!

- most of these icons are protected by copyright/trademark laws, how is still legal?

xorfish• 6 years ago

Ah, success, luck and skill. A really interesting topic.

There is also a very good Veritasium Video about that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I

tengbretson2• 6 years ago

Of course I check the comments here and theres the usual chorus of dismissals as "just luck."

It's funny because anyone who actually believed that would never have created those icons 7 years ago. They would have never published them and they would have never stuck their neck out to promote them.

In a way it seems like the best way to ensure that you never "get lucky" is to assume that it's all just luck in the first place.

dralley• 6 years ago

This is basically the origin of the saying "you create your own luck".

Luck is absolutely, 100% a factor here, but you won't get lucky without putting the effort in first.

animal_spirits• 6 years ago

Opportunity is where preparation meets luck

cromulent• 6 years ago

"Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck."

-- Roald Amundsen

ConsiderCrying• 6 years ago

It's not just luck because it's talent plus savviness plus the ability to spin your story. Sure, luck factors in but as anyone with a success story will tell you, it's never just luck unless you're talking about the lottery.

bmh1003• 6 years ago

The problem is that the article does not describe a repeatable process. Maybe the author's experience is repeatable, but that is not part of the content. The most critical component was the marketing, i.e. "going viral" on Twitter. Some marketing firms specialize in doing so and seem to have skill, yet I see no indication of where the author intentionally took steps to achieve that effect. Therefore, yes, it does seem like the author "got lucky".

stingraycharles• 6 years ago

Since when is “repeatable process” a requirement for not being qualified as “lucky”? Maybe the OP is just a talented and dedicated person who delivers high quality work, and because of their dedication, was at a place where they were ready-to-go and seize the opportunity when iOS 14 arrived.

Someone much wiser than me once said, “dedicated people can force luck to happen”, implying that it’s only a small part of the equation.

bityard• 6 years ago

Is that a problem, though? A major component of success is in fact luck. Doing the right thing at just the right time, with enough prior planning and skill to be able to follow through if it takes off. If making a bunch of money somehow with few hurdles was reliably repeatable, everyone would start doing it. Until the market is saturated and then it stops being repeatable.

First mover advantage ties into this here, as does discussions on the free market, and other interesting economic theory.

shmageggy• 6 years ago

It may not be a perfectly repeatable recipe (that doesn't exist), but there's solid, actionable advice here. Particularly "act immediately". Things only go viral when the moment is right, and that moment is usually very fleeing.

One supporting data point: back when the game 2048 went viral I happened to be on a break with nothing to do, so I coded up an AI for it in one night [1]. The next day it blew up on Twitter and elsewhere. There have since been many other, better AIs, but since mine was first and came out when the game was on everyone's mind, it was the only one that got so much attention.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379821

wesleywt• 6 years ago

"The harder I practice, the luckier I get' - Gary Player, a legendary South African golfer.

asdff4• 6 years ago

It is really just luck. For every OP with 6 figures in profit for their icon pack, there are a thousand more who dream of making $17 and will never see it. The reality of the world is that there are far more hardworking and talented people than there are successful people, and blindly toiling holding out hope of getting lucky might not be the best use of ones efforts. Imagine if OP never got the plug from the influencer. Would it be worth it to take time away from, say, working a full time job to make a grand total of $17 for all your efforts? Absolutely not, that is realizing a loss. Instead, people should be strategic about their efforts, and direct them toward whatever opportunities are available in your life that offer a return for little risk. Not busting ass and hoping luck will one day come in to pay you for all the labor you put in.

shanecleveland3• 6 years ago

people should be strategic about their efforts, and direct them toward whatever opportunities are available in your life that offer a return for little risk.

I believe you summed up what he did to achieve his "luck."

He said he made $6k before the influencer came along. Seems pretty good for a start.

And because he has made strategic, low-risk efforts in the past, this opportunity actually became possible. The influencer never would have gotten a whiff of this otherwise.

boyakasha• 6 years ago

So you, I, all the HN commenters, and the author, all had the same probability of making $100,000 from iOS icons last week? Was it just a random roll of the dice? I guess we were just unlucky then. Fingers crossed for next week.

To say "it is really just luck" is honestly just ridiculous. Our probability was 0%. His probability was significantly higher, due to the previous work and decisions he has made. That's not "just luck".

There is no such thing as a deterministic, risk-free business strategy. You can only make bets, try to maximise your odds, and repeat. That's what the author is doing. I knew nothing about him before today, but I can see his business ethos. He's doing a good job, and the market is validating that with their wallets.

tengbretson2• 6 years ago

It sounds like you did not make six figures from your icon pack. Do you have a link to it so that I can buy it? I'm dying to try it out.

rodolphoarruda• 6 years ago

Well, from a business perspective this is no less than very impressive. Was he just a heck of a lucky guy? I don't know, luck is everywhere now, but the guy was pretty aware of the steps his product was taking and was able to react accordingly to maximize revenue... that's the secret.

nonsapreiche• 6 years ago

People what to change an X but can not make one theirself so find someone who sell an X that fits the willing

(x={icon,...})

delaaxe• 6 years ago

This is a typical phenomenon of Extremistan: https://coffeeandjunk.com/mediocristan-extremistan/

luord• 6 years ago

Try many things once to figure out what you want to do twice.

For some reason, that was the line that stuck with me the most.

Now, the only real skill I have is in software development, but fortunately there are a lot of things to try in software development, so I can give that suggestion a try run.

erdinc• 6 years ago

it is always good to read success after the story.

block_dagger• 6 years ago

"the idea of being annoying or over-sharing is only an idea that you invent to stop you from sharing" - I strongly disagree. It's invented by the community to prevent enormous amounts of spam.

maciejw• 6 years ago

What blows my mind is how humble and optimistic that post is. I think the author is still a little bit sceptic: he was well prepared and after initial success he executed perfectly but still: what are the odds? Good luck!

anderspitman• 6 years ago

My takeaway from this is build an audience.

hansdieter1337• 6 years ago

The most important part to achieve this: Have a lot of luck

ponker2• 6 years ago

Nothing is as powerful as having someone’s attention. If Brownlee can get this guy $100K with a tweet imagine what he’s pulling down himself.

lxe2• 6 years ago

So I quickly packaged them, uploaded them to Gumroad, and embedded them on a Notion site using Super. All of this took about two hours.

Love the software stack. Is this the norm these days? Am I out of touch with web tech?

firloop• 6 years ago

I think Super is the author’s own product fwiw

novok2• 6 years ago

It's not a development stack, it's more of a product stack. It's like saying you opened a shopify store and made a page with blogger in 2 hours.

lxe2• 6 years ago

Oh no I just bought this but then I looked at the instructions... It's not for the faint of heart to do this for every app.

andrepd• 6 years ago

He forgot the most important lesson: be lucky :)

dheera• 6 years ago

All from one. Single. Tweet.

Well yes, but you usually either need (a) tens of thousands of pre-existing Twitter followers or (b) a huge amount of luck that some celebrity that you @ed retweets you.

sturza• 6 years ago

The most important point was missed: MKBHD happened

wgx• 6 years ago

Seems lots of people are jumping on the bandwagon: https://gumroad.com/l/aLnrp

Six Figures in 6 days

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