Patrick McKenzie (patio11) runs Bingo Card Creator, a one-person software business, and wrote about its sales, A/B testing, and Rails.
HN holds it up as the canonical one-man software business example. Commenters note its plain design and point to his blog for lessons.
{tl;dr} Niche the hell out of it. Over and over again. {/tl;dr}
Well, first impression of the site leaves me feeling a little in the past. (Circa IE5?) I'm a visual person and the way you present yourself means a lot to me personally, so take that with a grain of salt.
The product actually looks pretty interesting and could work in a lot of different scenarios. I actually have been following Patrick McKenzie over at http://www.bingocardcreator.com/ for some time and he has a product which is not very unlike yours.
Vidinotes (like Bingo Card Creator) are products with a very specific window of opportunity. Generally, these sales will only convert if the user is absolutely certain that this product will satisfy their need at THAT MOMENT. If there's even a shadow of a doubt, there only needs to be a more promising alternative and you've lost the sale.
So in the vein of what Patrick did for Bingo Card Creator, I'd consider setting up single-purpose sites targeted to specific use cases. These sites are likely to convert much better than the general site you have now and probably wouldn't take much time if you develop a good system for it.
Patrick recently got together with Andrew Warner (Mixergy) and Noah Kagan (AppSumo) and made a video that discusses exactly what I'm describing to you. If this resonates with you, I suggest checking it out. (It sounds like promoting, but I've been a customer of Noah's and reader of Andrew's for a while, shared drinks with and genuinely find…
Chris - your posts are one of the highlights of Hacker News for me. A few comments/suggestions:
1. It would be great if you could organize your revenue/expenses a bit more. Something like BCC Stats [1] would be great. Perhaps just take the metrics you are tracking now, put them in a Google Spreadsheet, and create some simple Google Charts that are automatically updated and published. It would take a few hours to set up, but your stats would be much easier to gather and publish going forward.
2. Have you thought about ways to make website flipping more passive? What are the sticking points on this income stream and how can they be removed? I have given this a lot of thought and was able to go from a website idea to gathering sign-ups on a website in less than 6 hours. My idea was not successful, but I wasted very little time/energy by using ThemeForest, AdWords coupons, and a simple email script to validate it. If the site became popular, I would have developed it more fully and perhaps sold it or just collected income passively.
3. On a more personal note, how does your wife/family view this "work" situation? I assume that they are happy, but I have found that sometimes family and friends do not understand how this type of stuff works. I'm married with kids, too. In my experience, most people equate hard work with high pay -- but we have found a way to work smarter not necessarily harder.
Thanks for sharing this information!
[1]…
> barely profitable
Patrick wrote "year in review" posts going back to 2006, and they include full numbers, so you can see for yourself. Profit margins in 2014 (the most recent review) were at a whopping 60% across all his businesses. (See here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-in-review-2014/)
> closing down
He sold his SaaS businesses, and they are operated by other people. Here's a podcast episode about it: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/08/26/kalzumeus-podcast-episode-13-selling-online-businesses-with-thomas-smale/
They are still in operation, and presumably still profitable:
https://www.appointmentreminder.org/
https://www.bingocardcreator.com/
> Growth or death
Not really. Moving past patio11 as an example, just look at local businesses in your community. The ones that have been there the longest (> 50 years) have undoubtedly gone through periods of both growth and decline (I don't mean decline toward death, I mean decline for a bit and then start growing again). Many of the ones that have been there for about 20 years will have reached a sort of "asymptote" of growth--they would have grown for the first 10 or 15 years and then stabilized around a size that feels "comfortable". There are many more businesses in the world than just start-ups and public companies.
"It'd be a strange thing to pitch to investors too."
I think there is something here actually.
For example it's a constant annoyance to me that when I get chinese food or sushi from the same places on a regular basis I actually have to make a phone call and talk to someone. At one place where they know me they actually make me give them my phone number which allows them to pull me up in their system. Just having to recite my phone number annoys me to no end.
I am sure there are obviously people who have solved the problem of using a smartphone or a simple web interface to help order pickup food (or delivery). But they haven't made any headway in the major city suburb where I am located.
For the life of me I don't understand why someone doesn't create a "bingo card creator" [1] type business to serve this market at a reasonable monthly fee. Most ideas on HN are "start by getting funded or incubated" as opposed to things that actually could be sold, proven, and then scaled. Write the app then knock on some doors and sell it (after giving it away to test restaurants for free).
[1] http://www.bingocardcreator.com/
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11
Sometimes called on HN "lifestyle" business.
i think you miss that diaspora is an open source project. once they release a 'developer preview' people _can_ actually use go an use it. i would not call that 'launched' or '1.0' (which is the open source analog to launching in my opinion).
sitting on top of yr code will not spawn discussion, attract devs/tester to have a look. therefor the opensource mantra is release early+often.
it took me 2 minutes to find out what BCC means. for those also wondering:
http://www.bingocardcreator.com/
sorry but BCC is not open source so i call it a bad comparison. commercial software is different. the thousands of diaspora end-users you talk of are probably quite aware they are guinnee-pigs of a facebook counter project.
"facebook but private", sorry but again i dont think you get diaspora as it is more like "facebook but distributed".
calling diaspora a "flop" is like calling mozilla before 1.0 a flop: it's open source (something you dont seem to get), its out there for _anyone_ to play with freely, to collaborate on, to learn from...
"What can you really learn from this mail?"
It makes (some) people feel good by "validating" closely held beliefs ;-)
Seriously though, you are right. There is no specific data of any kind on the application/company/customers etc.
Without data, this is hardly a "case study". (The Bingo Card Creator addition of MixPanel - http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/tracking-with-mixpanel.htm - is a much better "case study" of a subset of the "Customer Discovery" Idea , especially if there is a follow up).
Comparitively, the referenced post in the google group is very lightweight, with no concrete insights or data.
You'll see many such "experiences" in lists devoted to specific methodologies (agile/lean/scrum etc) Sounds like a "testimonial" invented by a marketing person (not saying this isn't true, just that there is no data and the post is very content lite, and so practically valueless)