ctek

PageBlox (https://www.pageblox.com/) earns about $300 a month and is growing steadily... The hardest part has been SEO and marketing, something I am still quite new at.

I created a simple SaaS app, https://www.pageblox.com/ that makes $300 dollars a month. I think that in a year or slightly more it could break a thousand a month if I market aggressively. I think I was able to pull it off by targeting a very specific problem and its accompanying keyword phrase: "css layout generator". Over-simplifying, the steps are: 1. find a problem that people and have and its niche, low competition keyword that get about 5000-8000 searches a month 2. build a web based app that solves that problem 3. grow your traffic 4. a/b test and iterate

Marketing is by far the hardest part!

Google in Poland does work on interesting work from what I've read... search and gmail for example.

It is more difficult to forge a stamped receipt, true. As to whether it proves that you purchased the item is debatable because both a receipt and a stamped receipt can be easily forged. The question is: is it necessary? Tally up all the man-hours a country spends stamping receipts. Could that time be put to better use? North America seems to function fine without them. Perhaps we've come to realize them as redundant - or are we too gullible to not demand rubber stamped receipts in the first place?

Can anyone explain European rubber stamp-fetishism? Has there ever been a study done showing that rubber stamping practically everything (20 euro purchase at an electronics store) is effective in preventing forging of documents? To an outsider visiting continental Europe the practice looks redundant and almost comical.

I was working on my niche web app, http://www.pageblox.com for many months and was at times (when feeling overly optimistic) extremely delusional about how much I would make when I turned on payments. The truth is, you have _no idea_ what your conversion rates will be until you actually turn on payment processing. I thought it would be around 2% but in fact was less than .1%

Even though I only made $95 my first month (a lot less then what I had hoped) I now have a clear idea of where I stand and what needs to be improved and tweaked. It'll be a slow and at times painful process (SEO, A/B testing, blog posts, re-design, features) to make the profitability worth all the hours put in so far...

We have an extensive JavaScript codebase at the large corporation I work at and by simply enforcing the use of ECMAScript 5 Strict Mode and verifying with JSLint we are able to catch most potential issues but then again, nobody there is writing large systems in JavaScript, only flourishes of browser-side interactivity...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire#Lea...

Great niche idea however why isn't the site targeting specific keywords to drive traffic?

Seems like an attempt to drive traffic to the Jelastic site through content farming (blog posts targeting keywords, etc.). As least they could use authors who know what they are writing about. Doesn't cast Jelastic in a good light...

Impressive, but be very careful going up against established players such as Balsamiq because you will have a difficult time competing. I am not sure if you want to one day make this a paid app, but if you do, think about developing and marketing it to the needs of a specific niche. Remember, there are thousands of similar "projects" and clones of existing software that died a very slow and painful death because they were not profitable enough to continue developing.

Interesting. How many unique views a month does your site get now and what kind of conversion rates are you seeing? I am planning to launch a paid version of my app, http://www.pageblox.com and my potential customers are also developers/designers.

Thanks for the feedback, PageBlox is not meant to be a tool for professional or even novice web developers. It allows someone who has no experience with html/css to create a functioning cross-browser compatible layout and build on top of that with their own css, which is trivial to learn.

I created https://www.pageblox.com, a layout tool for web designers. I've been getting between 1500-2000 uniques a month, so when I turn on the paid version, I should be making at least a few hundred a month depending on how the conversion rate turns out...

I have to admit that more than anyone else, Amy and Patrick inspired me to create my minimum viable product, https://www.pageblox.com which is currently an html/css layout creator. It may end up turning into a CMS, or evolve into a feature-rich web design tool. I launched several months ago and am putting in time every day (except Sundays). It hasn't been easy, but once you establish momentum, it's hard to stop. I, however have not quit my job (I am very risk averse). The podcast Startups for the Rest of Us and the book "Start Small, Stay Small" are probably the best resources for learning how to build your own products...

My advice to someone looking to start something on the side: don't quit your job, but find a low-stress job at a large corporation with normal 8 hour workdays and a short commute.

This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. The question to ask is: who doesn't do this?

The should seem obvious to most, but the problem with countries that have laws that "protect" workers (as in Poland, where I've been working for the past several years) is that such laws dramatically suppress wages and job creation.

You can't get laid off for no reason (only so-called "mass" lay-offs where a minimum of 20% of staff has to go due to restructuring reasons - or, of course, disciplinary action) but the salary you employer pays you (much lower if such laws didn't exist) has to take into account that there can can be long periods of time where there is no work for you to do and they can't get rid of you legally.

just added tinymce editor...

thanks for the heads up, I just did

Thanks for checking out the code. I am aware that JavaScript's "bad parts" are used throughout. This is of course a prototype built rather quickly. In the end all of this will be done using backbone.js (and will be much faster). If I approached this pedantically, it would have taken me much longer.

yes, this is the next feature I will implement

I have considered that but I would like as much of the UI as visible as possible, nothing hidden. I would like to make a decision as to show controls on hover (or not) based on some measurable usability testing.

that was tricky to implement so for now I used buttons... it's on my to-do list

thanks for the feedback, very helpful. I am thinking about what kind of new features to add and I would like to keep the features to an elegant minimum. HTML5 tags would be nice but I don't want to overwhelm the user with a cluttered UI.

...a project that showcases my JavaScript skills. I am looking for consulting work so please contact me if you need a front-end designer/developer

http://www.linkedin.com/in/example doesn't use dust.js if it did you would see it imported when viewing source. Am I missing something?

It's sad to see Notifo shut down, but this is beginning to feel like 2000 all over again. There are simply too many startups.

The desire to be attractive is hard-wired into female biology. Fundamentally, we exist to survive and reproduce. Millions of years of evolution have evolved visual cues that signal health - especially reproductive health in both men and women however women's interest in successfully advertising their reproductive health is absolutely essential to what they have evolved over millions of years to do - which is bear children.

High intelligence is not necessary to survive and reproduce successfully even in today's world which explains why most women (and probably most - but less men) would rather be "hot" than "smart". In general, during the reproductive phase of their lives (and long after that as well), women focus advertising their reproductive health, and men - their status.

High intelligence however is key to acquiring status - which is much more important for men than for women which in my mind explains why more men than women are interested in being smart.

It seems like the market for html/css tools is so vast, it doesn't seem hard to build yet another tool that can end up being profitable. I've been working on a grid-based rapid html prototyping tool http://pageblox.com and I was looking to incorporate live css editing similar to this into it. Of course Fog Creek put a twist on it I never would have considered (editing/modifying css of an already live site). I'm very curious to see how (and learn from) how this will evolve as I assume this is their feedback/iteration phase.