Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate and from what?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724759

by yogurt • 11 years ago

66 29 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I think it's time for a follow up / new thread. Previous threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8629919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4467603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487

andersthue5• 11 years ago

We are currently at $392/month from 3 customers who has signed on as early bird users on the TimeBlock method, we wrote the first line of code mid march, after 1 month of interviews with potential customers.

Besides being a tool to do project management easier than in trello, it is primarily a new methodology that helps Makers and Managers understand their differences and their needs.

The method helps Makers be in flow by teaching Managers to leave them alone, help minimize procrastination by helping Makers divide projects and plan their week, thereby increasing their internal motivation.

Edit: Changed the number, signed on a new customer :)

Tankenstein• 11 years ago

I'm sorry, but please, please, PLEASE, do not hijack scrolling. There is no reason for it, it's distracting, often fucks up mobiles. I mean no disrespect, just don't do it. Cool product!

andersthue5• 11 years ago

Uhm, I do not understand what you mean by hijacking scrolling? Could you elaborate, perhaps on email anders at timeblock.com

dangrossman2• 11 years ago

Around $40K/month

* https://www.improvely.com - Pure SaaS, with most of the revenue coming from agency customers on higher end plans

* https://www.w3counter.com - Ad-supported freemium. 99% of the users are on a free plan and see a couple banners around their reports. A couple hundred users pay to remove the ads and get other features.

* Recurring commissions from affiliate programs. Mainly from personally referring other small business owners to a good merchant account provider for credit card processing and a web hosting company. They both do a revenue share where I get a percentage of each referral's monthly fees.

vishalzone2002• 11 years ago

did you just say $40k/month? that is amazing. I know so many small startups that haven't scaled to that level. Good for you, congrats !!

pknerd3• 11 years ago

Care enough to share:

1- How did you start?

2- % of Revenue are you getting from W3Counter?

dangrossman2• 11 years ago

How did you start?

Early 1990s, writing HTML tutorials on a site I called "Website Goodies". I learned HTML myself from a GeoCities site. I had ads on there from the start, from TeknoSurf AdWave (now Advertising.com), ValueClick (now Conversant), and IIRC briefly some kind of ads from Microsoft bCentral (defunct). Enough to pay for the domain and web hosting, and eventually enough to buy a computer of my own and cable internet from @HOME under a parent's name.

WSG started with articles (outdated and long gone now), then I started adding "tools" as I learned to program. Originally they were all CGI scripts written in Perl with text files for storage. Later PHP and MySQL after reading Kevin Yank's tutorial, which was later picked up by SitePoint as a book, now on its 4th edition. I made hosted guestbooks, a banner rotator, a hosted hit counter, things like that. At some point I came to know of hosted web analytics tools. This was long before Google Analytics, and the cool looking ones were B2B products that cost way more than I could afford.

I made my own web stats program. Each website got a separate log table with a couple hundred rows before I purged old entries. Real-time reports based on querying that log for the top pages, top referrers, etc. I learned to use PHP and GD to draw numbers on images, made a bunch of counter backgrounds in Paint Shop Pro, and offered customizable counters that doubled as the tags for logging to the database for the reports. At some point I decided to move it to its own domain, and chose W3Counter for world wide web counter.

By that point I had just graduated high school. Got serious about earning enough to pay bills, started a bunch of e-commerce sites. That's when I found a need for e-commerce conversion tracking, and being too cheap to pay for it, made another analytics tool for that. Eventually rewrote it and tried to sell it SaaS as the poorly named "W3ROI". Learned from the couple dozen people I got to try it, started over from scratch in 2012 and Improvely was the result.

vijayr2• 11 years ago

Another request to add to OP's post - could you also add how you got started, especially if it is SaaS? Meaning, how did you get the idea first for your service/product?

andersthue5• 11 years ago

I got the idea to http://timeblock.com without knowing it :)

January 5th this year I did another adjustment to how we worked in my consultancy. Another bc. I have been trying all kind of stuff for many years, leaning on NetFlix, Valve software and many others who are trying to remove management, control and rules.

After three weeks I noticed I had started to sleep better than I had since I started my business in 1998. I told my accountant about what I was doing now and he was very excited, this made me think that I better tell some more about this.

The next company I told about the TimeBlock method switched to it within 36 hours, this made me realize that I was onto something. I then used a month to talk to potential users until I was sure that I had something. This something is TimeBlock.

vijayr2• 11 years ago

Thank You for the answer.

wow, that must be a nice feeling to solve their problems :)

For someone who is just a programmer, how do I find such problems?

ca98am793• 11 years ago

currently around $20k/month from http://park.io

I don't know if it is technically "recurring" because it isn't subscription-based, but it is consistent and growing each month since I started one year ago

izolate• 11 years ago

That is awesome. How do you secure the expired domains?

ca98am793• 11 years ago

Thanks! I have created scripts that catch them the instant they drop

neoterics• 11 years ago

That's awesome! Any insights on how you did marketing for this service?

ca98am793• 11 years ago

I haven't really done any marketing - most users find it from either parked domains or word of mouth

nicholas73• 11 years ago

Set to make $10-15 this month from Adsense!

http://sudokuisland.com

ingend88• 11 years ago

@andersthue, which book are you referring to ?

andersthue5• 11 years ago

It's the "letting go ebook" from Leo Babauta : http://zenhabits.net/lg/

rk0567• 11 years ago

$200 per month from Google Adsense

http://portchecker.co

teamcobby• 11 years ago

For me it's around $1600-$1800/month https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/cobbysoft-media-inc./id40... A portfolio of paid apps. Most of them were created to scratch my own itches. I was learning saxophone at the time and couldn't really find a fingering chart software that can play the exact notes and vice versa. One thing lead to another, that's how it all began.

http://www.optimalplugins.com/ Branching out to wordpress plugins. Speaking of which, I think the headline generator is a really awesome plugin for any blogger. Just need some help to scale the marketing part.

http://www.stickynotespro.com/ A tiny SaaS working in progress :). My mind is always coming up with ideas and I usually write them down in sticky notes or in the note app. However, being a visual person, I need to see the post it to make things happen. If some one cover the sticky notes with a blanket, the task will never get done. Creating this site to store big ideas digitally and have the ability to see all the sticky notes on demand.

ronnier• 11 years ago

$2,550 a month from a rental property.

Stoo• 11 years ago

£10-20 per month. I am so living the dream right now.

£10 comes from my very first paying SaaS customer for Storytella[0].

The remaining £0-10 comes from self-publishing my fiction through Amazon KDP.

[0] https://storytel.la/

keviv• 11 years ago

I'm making close to $100 from DigitalOcean Referrals every month. I'm one of the early adopters who get paid via Paypal for referrals, rather than getting paid in Hosting Credits. I've already made more than $1500 in commissions.

Around $30 from Madmimi Referrals every month (They have recurring 25% commission with a max cap of $10000). I've made around $600 in commissions.

My Affiliate links if you want to sign up for any of the two services:

DigitalOcean - https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=4d7fb2079a96 Madmimi - https://madmimi.com/short_ref/iMk

Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate and from what?

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