Ask HN: One man SaaS apps that are profitable?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8418464

by Im_a_throw_away • 12 years ago

29 15 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Do you know any one man SaaS app that are profitable?

I'm asking this because I'm considering starting a SaaS app as a side project, and I'm looking for some inspiration.

Thanks!

davismwfl• 12 years ago

I believe https://www.appointmentreminder.org/ is a good example, correct me if I am wrong. I have no affiliation as it is patio11's.

Maybe others have some more good examples. I am sure there are a lot of examples, but that is one that sticks out immediately.

Im_a_throw_away3• 12 years ago

A few that I have in mind:

- http://www.improvely.com

- http://www.appointmentreminder.org

- http://www.briefmetrics.com

kasey_junk• 12 years ago

https://pinboard.in/

Bonus. Has the best twitter there is.

anthony_franco• 12 years ago

http://hittail.com - Rob Walling http://getdrip.com - also Rob Walling http://bidsketch.com - Ruben Gamez http://getmysky.com - Josh Isaak http://snapinspect.com - Sam Ovens

All of them have interviews online for you to learn about their process.

jasonkester• 12 years ago

Both of mine (https://www.s3stat.com/ and http://www.twiddla.com/) are turning nice profits. There are dozens of other people here running successful single player businesses.

The nice thing about having a single person is that you get to define Profitable as "income minus server expenses" rather than "income minus server expenses and everybody else's fixed salary". You also, if you prefer, may choose to define your own salary as "income minus server expenses", which gets to be a very nice thing after a while.

There are lots of other nice things about running a business by one's self. Dig around for old threads here on the topic for more examples.

zura• 12 years ago

How do you market your projects?

NameNickHN2• 12 years ago

http://www.appointmind.com/

Very little support requests and almost all of the development is being paid for by various customers.

Im_a_throw_away3• 12 years ago

This looks great! Do you mind answering a few questions?

When this product was created? How many customers do you have? How do you market your product?

Thanks!

NameNickHN2• 12 years ago

I started developing in 2001. The number of customers is less than I would like. There is not much marketing going on. A little bit of content marketing, AdWords, guest blogging.

frading2• 12 years ago

I run https://www.printmosaic.com and https://www.everytimehq.com. Both are profitable.

tomahony• 12 years ago

Ah. I was looking for something to print that style of mosaic recently. Bookmarked!

frading2• 12 years ago

Great, glad it peeked your interest. Don't hesitate to reach me if you have questions about it.

Also, if you're a dev, did you notice it has an api? https://www.printmosaic.com/api

palidanx• 12 years ago

I run https://www.menutail.com which makes nutrition facts labels.

Im_a_throw_away3• 12 years ago

Here are all the ones that have been mentioned so far. I'm sure there are a lot more!

- http://www.improvely.com