What Web App To Build To Make Big Money

Hullo everyone, web log mail author hither. Over the last 18 months I've learned an incredible amount from the users hither on Hacker News, and I figured that information technology's virtually time I started giving something back. None of my web apps brand serious money, just they bring in plenty to make a difference to life, and I'g hoping that my articles will assistance others get on the aforementioned path - if not somewhat more successfully! ;) Please feel complimentary to ask me whatsoever questions. I'm aiming to have the next function written and live by early next calendar week.

Thanks for writing this commodity. Looking at the timeline and the slowish traction really gives balance to the i-built-a-5000-a-day-app-in-3-days-in-my-PJs articles that tend to dominate the news. Information technology'due south a good look at building an bodily product that shows it's not all roses and hockey-stick adoptions.

Thank you for your thanks! :) That's why I wrote this - as I said, it'south not a huge amount of money, just it'south an enjoyable hobby, and great that information technology pays for a few meals out a month. The question on my mind is - tin I do ten of these and make some existent money? ;)

I agree, and it'due south the nighttime hours that brand the learning lessons explicit, rather than implicit or looking like luck. Looking frontward to the rest.

Splitting isn't a huge deal to me. It's hard to write sometimes, and getting a chip out there helps y'all get the remainder out there. Now, paginating manufactures (you know, it'southward non similar in that location isn't infinite vertical space). That is a dissimilar story.

While i concur that it can exist annoying, i think the signal is to get users to subscribe to his web log, which i did, but only because i recollect the majority of the overall weblog content will exist interesting to me.

Take a couple of questions for yous (unrelated to twittemachine): Practice freelancers sites bring enough jobs/money to work on it total time and make a living? Is information technology a positive feel?

Do freelancers sites bring enough jobs/money to work on it total time and make a living? I estimate it depends on where you alive, but for here in Poland, sure :) And whilst freelancing can be somewhat of a lonely business, I found it very satisfying :)

Thank you for sharing your experience. Btw, couldn't yous earn more money past lowering the price? I personally observe it likewise high.

Btw, couldn't y'all earn more money by lowering the toll? I personally detect it too loftier. I'll mention something near that in part Two ;)

I honey the tone of your writing (both in the post and on TweetingMachine), it's modest still confident. Some feedback: * [Edit: Looks similar it'due south correct there in the center and I'yard but blind. :)] I couldn't discover the pricing subsequently the 10 twenty-four hour period trial anywhere. This frustrated me and fabricated me not want to try it at all without knowing what I was getting into. * Twitter frowns upon auto-follow/unfollow services. You should be very careful with this. I recently had to brand changes to my own service considering the Twitter API policy team didn't like me telling people who unfollowed them. Corking work, I expect forrad to the second office!

> I recently had to brand changes to my own service because the Twitter API policy team didn't like me telling people who unfollowed them. Just curious: which department of the Twitter API ToS do yous read every bit restricting notifying them of people that unfollowed them? I know that the API policy explicitly prohibits automated unfollowing and restricts automated following, but oasis't always seen anything that addresses notifications of a someone unfollowing another user.

They referenced Section Two.four.B, namely since native Twitter apps don't "organically brandish" unfollows, y'all should not as well. > Respect the features and functionality embedded with or included in Twitter Content or the Twitter API. Exercise non endeavor to interfere with, intercept, disrupt, filter, or disable whatsoever features of the Twitter API or Twitter service, and you should merely surface actions that are organically displayed on Twitter.

Ah, that does seem to follow from the quoted section. Cheers for referencing it, I capeesh it. It's a big bummer as a potential Twitter-hacker, too. I can come across why they wouldn't want clients & add together-ons to surface unfollows, but information technology blankets quite a scrap of functionality, and then it comes down to an effect of selective enforcement. Sigh.

You're welcome. The way I read it is "don't exercise things we don't already exercise" which is a actually bad constraint, effectively forbidding any kind of innovation. I tin can understand the spirit of their selective desire to address this specific violation, simply I'm non convinced it's equally much of a problem as they're making it to exist. Oh well.

[Edit: Looks like it's right there in the center and I'm only blind. :)] I couldn't detect the pricing either, so I think it is hiding in plainly sight.

Totally hold. I thought information technology wasn't listed anywhere until I looked at the comments here. It would probably improve conversions a lot if there was a simple "Pricing" tab at the top.

Brand sure you lot purchase the guy who recommended themeforest a beer. He sounds very wise and probably is totally awesome.

Yeah, he has his moments ;-p It'd exist ideal if of a sudden it earned enough to purchase a couple of tickets from Canada to Warsaw so that this guy and his +1 can collect a pint in person :)

I absolutely love reading articles like this that are grounded in reality where the point of the app is to actually make money. The fact that you lot are making any coin at all brings value to what you have to say that all of us can learn from. I think nigh entrepreneurs will agree that it is that first sale that is the hardest part. I wait forward to your next commodity!

It looks like what you are getting at is that the design is important. I don't think your original design is a bad starting bespeak, much better than any designs I've come up with for my projects. It'd exist squeamish if y'all got into the details of integrating a themeforest theme with an existing lawmaking base. A reason I've avoided ownership a theme, don't know what I'd practice with it once I had it.

It'd be dainty if you got into the details of integrating a themeforest theme with an existing lawmaking base of operations. Honestly, it's pretty simple: you have the HTML for each page that is demonstrated. Chop out the relevant bits for headers, footers, and so any tables etc. that yous might need, re-create beyond the various css, js and images directories and you're done! It actually doesn't take long. Sometimes the themes come with PHP versions as well, but not always. If you want to test yourself, why not try downloading an open source theme (eastward.g. http://www.oswd.org/) and take a expect at what's in the HTML? I can't guarantee it'll be an identical process, but it should be fairly similar :)

Hey everyone, I have a semi-related question (since it's briefly mentioned in the article): is it possible to make a decent bacon exclusively by doing freelance work through vWorker (rentacoder) and the likes?

I found it not besides troublesome to earn betwixt $2,000 and $3,000 a calendar month. By Polish standards (even later on tax) that's really not bad, but I realise information technology might not be that neat in, say, London or New York.

I would certainly dearest an commodity about how to do that. In my express experience, it'due south actually pretty hard to make decent money through these sites.

I have never tried getting work off of vWorker or similar sites, only today I looked through vWorker for the first fourth dimension in a while and it however seems to be what information technology was: a bunch of people offer inappreciably anything for complex projects. I'd imagine you would need to get through hundreds of postings in order to detect someone who is offer a fair amount of coin for a decent sized project. That said, if you lot dedicate all of your fourth dimension to doing that (sifting through all of the bad postings on multiple freelance piece of work sites to find the gems) and build a reputation, it seems possible to brand some good money.

Wow, it's like reading my own history, peculiarly the beginning, the knowing that gazillions of people will be clamoring for what you build. It's tough when you find that 99% of reactions are "meh..."

Hey guys, non sure if anyone has realized, simply for SaaS projects the Extended version of the theme is required. And then $1000 is what he should have paid for the admin panel... I hope no i involved with ThemeForest finds out :)

Can anyone elaborate on this? From the regular license clarification: The principal matter you cannot do is offer the particular upwards for resale either on its ain or as function of a projection. So you tin use the item in a free game, but not in a game that is on sale. Yous can employ the item in a website, just non in a web template that yous sell. Here are the full legal terms: http://themeforest.cyberspace/wiki/support/legal-terms/licensing-te... Specifically, I wonder if you lot are referring to this line: (d) Unless you have our prior written consent, yous must non directly or indirectly license, sub-license, sell or resell or provide for complimentary the Piece of work or offer to practice whatever of these things. All of these things are referred to equally Resale. (g) You must not incorporate the Piece of work in a work which is created for Resale past you or your client. I wonder what they mean by "indirectly selling" the Work. Does this utilize to SaaS? What about Freemium products?

Taken from http://wiki.envato.com/buying/licenses-buying/themeforest-re... Regular License Examples - The Regular License could be used for whatsoever of the following: Single website (commercial, personal, or not-turn a profit). Unmarried website for a customer (commercial, personal, or not-profit). Single intranet site project. Extended License Examples - The Extended License could be used for whatsoever of the following: Template for a web service such equally WPMU. Role of a software parcel for sale. To me that reads like in this example, the Regular license would be fine. The extended license seems more than about situations where your customers will exist creating their own unique and publicly accessible content using the template (You lot showtime up a blogging service www.omgblogs.com and someone could create their blog at mahblog.omgblogs.com then selection from a template you got from ThemeForest)

Go around the blogger trouble by generating a referral token for each blogger to apply in linking to your site, and show them the token/link in their account page. Make the rules so that a weblog post referral simply requires a single click - that way you tin can verify that the blog mail service is from who they say they are Once y'all accept that infrastructure, y'all can use it equally a more than generalized referral arrangement for people that want to tweet out a link to your product, etc. For eg. every tweet referral signup gets y'all a costless month At that place are hordes of freelancers out there who do zero but affiliate marketing. For those types, you lot want to send them 30-50% of acquirement. At that place are entire products to do this for yous - cj.com et al. Their referrals made up over fifty% of new users on a product I worked on previously.

>Go around the blogger problem past generating a referral token for each blogger to utilize in linking to your site, and show them the token/link in their account page. this would solve the trouble of people who don't produce clickthroughs getting paid, just it wouldn't solve the problem of looking scummy, and if you have a bunch of duplicated content all over the place, you look scummy, and the person who actually wrote the content is going to be cheesed. Reputation management (which is to say, wanting to not look scummy) is the primary reason why I don't accept a referral system. Well, that and I'm not willing to put that much cash in to client acquisition. But information technology'due south primarily nigh reputation; Information technology's hard plenty presenting a consistent bulletin when you take two or 3 employees. Fifty-fifty if yous only intendance near money, reputation is worth quite a lot. I'k sure there are ways to do affiliate marketing without looking scummy, but information technology's not obvious or piece of cake.

At $500/mo, this is more like a "weekend-style" business organization, providing some nice walking around money even if not enough to pay the bills.

Cheers for writing this upwards! We're currently going through a similar experience. The practiced news is that we went from 1 signup a month to quite a few per twenty-four hours (with a few days at over 100 new signups) -- generally by following things that we've learned here on HN. A few weeks ago, my co-founder was getting pretty bummed out and was starting to look similar throwing in the towel...so nosotros managed to get covered in a few places simultaneously (finally, months of contacting the editors of diverse popular sites paying off) and we had more new traffic than we new what to practise with. Exciting stuff!

Sounds like your hard work paid off indeed! Intendance to elaborate on how you gained users? Did you only email editors, or did you have other strategies as well? What were your pitches like? I'd love to hear!

I'thousand working on a blog mail service that'll probably provide some more (and different details) but here's our story: Well, since we launched only a few months before, nosotros were still a little scared as to how the site and service would scale (and how much our server bill would jump). So we wanted to grow kinda slowly and so we could manage information technology finer. Our strategy and so was to reach out to editors or writers of smaller sites that seemed like they were in our milieu, and see if any of them showed whatsoever interest. I call back we contacted...xxx or 40 editors. We actually didn't get whatsoever coverage at all, which was really disheartening. Merely we kept plugging away on the site and the app, adding a couple additional features. In the meanwhile I kept sending out emails, filling out forms. Users kept trickling in. We as well started using our ain app ourselves, sending out Momentomails to our friends and to each other. Making sure the service was live and validating the idea...building upwardly expected user patterns, establishing adequate levels of service quality...etc. Ane thing we institute slightly disturbing, was the large number of sites that offer different levels of review prioritization depending on if you lot email them and expect some free coverage, or if you lot pay them. And I suppose I tin can see how that could exist an interesting revenue channel, but if I wanted to pay somebody to encompass me, I'd probably just buy advertising space...then it felt kinda scammish and nosotros decided not to do that. Our service should either be interesting and useful on its ain, or we should keep working on it until information technology is. On a whim, I decided to send out a contact to some bigger sites, Lifehacker being i of them. Withal zilch. Nigh two weeks after submitting to Lifehacker, this happened: http://lifehacker.com/#!5787941/momentomail-sends-messages-f... I'thou not sure how much getting covered on April 1st hurt us or not (we answered a few user contacts answering if we were real or non). But we had a massive spike in new traffic. Massive. We couldn't even see some of our previous spikes on the graph it was so huge. Nosotros floated effectually the elevation x hot sites on LH for two or three days then the fasten extended out for awhile. So far, LH has been the just major site to cover u.s.a., but information technology's allow us observe how things spread on the cyberspace. If you search for Momentomail in google, you'll find dozens of pages where we show up, almost all reposts or links to LH's story. A few tweets bounced around the tweetosphere...(or whatsoever it's chosen)...and very interesting -- foreign translations of the LH post, showing up a few days afterwards, sent us echos of the initial spike. Suddenly a rush of Italian users, or Turkish users, or Indonesian users. Nosotros haven't gotten the metrics yet, but anecdotally, it looks like most 20% of our new signups are now coming from Spanish language countries...which is pretty heady. It's definitely slowed down, and we're still kind of processing all this new traffic, but there'due south a steady stream of new signups everyday. We've institute a few bugs were squashing. Once we add a couple planned (and highly requested features) we'll probably become around and recontact many of the sites that we contacted before...only also the sites that carried our story from the initial Lifehacker story. In case anybody is interested, some fun notes: we run on GAE, and we had our quota set up to a cap of virtually $5/day, before the LH story, nosotros'd barely even showed upwards on the quota information (we'd only been using the free service). The week of the LH story, the quotas showed some activity, but we never broke Google's gratuitous quota. So our hosting fees and then far on GAE are $0. Information technology'due south definitely a cost effective fashion to bootstrap a new product. (though secretly we promise to have to "good trouble" of having to increase our quota cap).

Wow, great! Thanks for all of the details. Really helps to put things into perspective. Sounds like yous're doing all the right things and hustling away. The reason I'yard curious is because I "launched" my starting time spider web app a few months agone. In actuality it was just a feeler to see how the production faired in the wild - core functionality was in that location, but greatly defective features. The only place I shared was HN and it was received tremendously well. It hung out on the front page for the majority of the day, resulted in thousands of hits and hundreds of signups, with more than trickling in during the weeks following. At the time, I was reluctant to promote anywhere else earlier incorporating a few new features. Unfortunately, I was pulled away past more demanding projects, and so I haven't had time to make all of the changes and features I had planned on (or marketing), resulting in significantly decreased traffic. Now that my other projects are winding down, I can focus more time on edifice and promoting this app. Stories like yours help a bunch, so I appreciate the details. Could I become your e-mail service accost? I'd dearest to stay in touch, merely I don't meet it anywhere in your profile.

Correct now I use the most bones of PayPal business accounts. With IPN notifications, information technology'due south pretty simple to go up and running quickly.

This is corking, expect forward to reading the second role. At first, the toll seems expensive, just when I think virtually it, it'southward really not. You are offering a lot of functionality when it comes to scheduling tweets and that'south a feature people volition find super useful (unfortunately a lot of those people may be spammers, just at the end of the day equally far as your concerned, your business concern is your concern and theirs is theirs). I'chiliad not a huge advocate of freemium and I would not propose lowering the price, however y'all may want to extend the gratuitous trial catamenia a fiddling longer.

I'chiliad not a huge abet of freemium and I would not propose lowering the cost, however you may want to extend the free trial period a little longer. Thanks for the positive feedback :) Regarding the gratis trial, I'thou kinda hesitant, every bit if you can't decide after 10 days, volition another x actually make that much of a difference? That said - I have I could be wrong ;) How long practice you think would exist fair?

You desire it to be long enough for your customers to integrate it into their habits. If they tend to be slow to decide (depression conversion for a given trial menstruation length), then they might merely need more time to depend on it.

2 weeks seems fair. Long enough to become familiar with the system, but brusk enough to make it inconvenient to continue signing up for complimentary trial periods repeatedly with different twitter accounts they can keep making up. FWIW, Basecamp offers a 30 day free trial for their services.

This is interesting. In the adjacent piece tin can I request you get into a flake more detail nigh how y'all increase in traffic flow to your site...basically what marketing did y'all exercise?

Thanks, an interesting read that puts a lot of the other "I'grand then amazing because my rails app makes me and my uni buddies £50k a month" into perspective. But I'd echo the comments above - would be skillful to see the next posts become up soon in particular to what you really started doing differently that saw it increase. Perchance others here will be able to build on that to give some communication to turn that $500 into $5k :)

I'm non certain why you are using prgmr over Linode, Slicehost, or the Rackspace Cloud servers. The others have really simple backup tools.

Because prgmr is cheap and I wanted to go on costs under command from day one. :) For example, in that location'due south no point in me paying for a nice control panel when I tin set upwards Apache or nginx in no time on my own. I'chiliad non a super sysadmin, but I know enough to quickly write a script that backs up lawmaking and database to Dropbox at regular intervals and so on. So paying for those extras? Not sure I see the indicate when you're non even covering hosting costs :)

Friendly reminder: exam restoring from that, regularly. Afterward your hard drive crashes is a bad time to learn that, e.yard., zipping up a folder of MySQL files is non exactly backup best practise.

I'd aggrandize this to actually accept the time to implement (or make yourself) a organisation to automate said backups and maybe even testing them automagically. You'll probably terminate up using the same set of scripts for all your beginning projects and it'll be worth having.

Don't forget to check logs to make certain your automation actually works. Periodically make full restore from blank metallic or fresh VPS image using your backups and post-obit written procedure. Make corrections if something does not work as expected.

Thank you, great advice :) Right now I'm taking backups of dumps - wearisome, only a tiny bit easier to deal with. At some betoken I'k thinking near replicating to a slave somewhere, although to exist honest I need to do some more than reading almost best practises.

Yes. Obviously, specifics will exist dependent upon your verbal situation, but it would be prissy to have a pocket-size road-map for backups. I occasionally have my database dumps and fire upward postgres on the home server and make sure I tin restore the database. That'due south well-nigh as far as I accept information technology unremarkably. Probably not a robust failsafe, but it's what I do now.

How nearly a write-up on how to go prgmr upward and running? If it doesn't take a super sysadmin, information technology might be squeamish to run into the process yous took.

How about a write-up on how to get prgmr up and running? I could do, but honestly it doesn't differ much more a standard Linux setup - the merely deviation is a lack of command panel.

I think you're drastically underestimating the price of a crash and the need for a good backup. If you go downwardly, how many customers may you lot lose for life? What do you tell those users if you happen to lose some of their scheduled tweets? How many refunds volition be requested? Not to mention the fourth dimension it will take you to bring everything back to life on a new server.

if you lot don't mind me asking, what parcel are yous using on prgmr.com and the level of traffic information technology handles. I've been looking at some VPS options and I wanted to brand sure I select the right 1 that is non oversold + performs well.

Thank you. That is a actually useful article. I may switch from slicehost to linode as a result, particularly as my 1024MB slicehost slice has struggled badly under highish (30,000+ uniques a 24-hour interval) traffic.

I may switch from slicehost to linode as a consequence I'd heard rumblings in the past to the outcome of "Linode has amend performance than Slicehost," but I hadn't really seen such a detailed, quantified comparing until now. Now I'm thinking well-nigh switching likewise. My Slicehost slices take never impressed me from a functioning standpoint, that'southward for sure. Their admin console and service have kept me in the fold so far, just I think it's fourth dimension to at least spin up 1 Linode case and do some re-evaluating.

if you don't mind me asking, what bundle are yous using on prgmr.com and the level of traffic information technology handles. I'm using the 1GB offer. This is something that I may blog most briefly, so far it'south running TweetingMachine and a couple of other tools, and has supported the Hacker News traffic decently as well. That's most likely thanks to me using nginx and w3 total cache on the Wordpress web log. That said, if someone really wanted to DDOS me, it wouldn't take much for it to fall over ;)

I just looked at prgmr (I hate that proper noun), and it looks similar y'all can get a really really tiny VPS for $48 for a year. That'due south light-headed cheap. I'm instruction a couple of the users on thingist python, and I've been wanting to give them accounts on a box so that they could have a real-world sandbox to play in...$48/yr lets me afford that pretty freaking easily. prgmr sounds freakishly awesome. What was that site the other day? showoff.io or something? $5/mo for a VPS vs $5/mo for a dynamic DNS updater/NAT traversal mechanism. (Just waiting for my instance to spin up now)

An Amazon EC2 Micro case is pretty close to that price, plus you don't have to pay for it while it's not running, and yous get to learn AWS likewise.

An amazon EC2 micro instance is something similar $lx/mo. I know this because I tried to sign up for their "gratuitous" tier a few months ago, and got charged. Luckily amazon had my business relationship information on file, so they went ahead and simply charged me for the residual. (It took a few weeks/months to get my money refunded...and forever convinced me that amazon'due south customer support is completely worthless) I'm certain AWS works for some people, but that left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

I feel as though you may have encountered the aforementioned problem every bit I did when starting my Amazon service. The micro instance - the free tier - is actually free, and if you run more than i, additional ones price roughly $15/calendar month. All the same, what most likely happened is that when spinning up your first instance, yous started a "Small" instance instead of a micro. "Small" is the default server selected when adding a new instance through the AWS webpage, and I did the aforementioned matter without realizing right abroad that it was not the free tier. Small instances cost roughly $67.50 per running month, so information technology would seem to me that this could accept been what happened to you.

Yeah, I recollect that's what happened to me to. I judge it just felt kindof "bunko"y to me. Imagine going into a restaurant that says "free cafe", where in that location are some non-gratuitous things mixed in that aren't really labeled all that well. The affair is, yeah, I made a error and clicked the wrong thing. That happens. What was frustrating to me, though, and why I'll never employ AWS again was how long it took to find out what happened. There was no support e-mail, no support chat, naught.

> An amazon EC2 micro instance is something like $threescore/mo. An EC2 micro instance is around $fifteen/mo (0.02 x 24 x 30). If you were charged $60 (0.085 x 24 x thirty), you were running a small-scale instance. They aren't the same thing, and Amazon did/is doing a shit job of making people looking for the freebie account aware of the difference. AWS is pretty crawly if information technology meets your needs. Nosotros use it at work, and don't take many problems with customer support. That said, information technology seems like there'southward obvious support prioritization based on account value. I'm lamentable you had a bad experience. For what information technology's worth what you saw was more terrible marketing/back up treatment for freebie accounts than anything related to the service every bit ordinarily used.

Is this the primary problem y'all encounter with my service? you think this is a bigger trouble, for instance, than my provisioning delays? (e.k. it usually takes a day or and then for a new customer to get ready up.) I'grand actually working on a cheap depression-functioning storage service designed for backups (webdav and zfs snapshot accessible. I'm targeting 1/tenth the toll of s3 before majority discounts, but I likewise am also targeting a lower level of back-up and performance.) but I thought the master demand would exist people on other services or on their ain servers wanting a backup, so it'southward interesting to hear if other people identify a much college priority on ease of setting up backups.

Because if you lot know your unix and you have the fourth dimension and feel to quickly setup the stack y'all need there's no need for a pretty control panel. If I simply need ONE VM for something I know it's trivial to setup for me and volition probably very seldom require me to apply a admin console, I'd e'er become with pgrmr. There are situations though, where going with a bigger and shinier provider might brand sense, but about of the time pgrmr is mighty fine for a beginning hobby business.

Love how he cited the crappy design as the main reason why the app sucks ... Then gain to put the minimum attempt into design to adress the trouble. Requite a designer a chance to piece of work for you, you will end up with a result that is meliorate merely more importantly unique.

Thanks! The reason why I've separated is fourth dimension - I thought it would be meliorate to release them equally I write them, rather than make everyone wait several weeks :)

I can definitely run into it from your perspective: non just does it have less time to write one article rather than three [and probably less force per unit area as well!], it gives yous content for your website (not to mention a steady stream of visitors wanting to meet your content, rather than just i big group of visitors then nothing). From my perspective though, it is unfortunate: I'm interested in the story, only I don't know if I will be interested enough to check back a few weeks from at present to see the updates, perhaps because I forget the URL, perhaps considering I don't see a post on HN about information technology, or perchance because I just forget. I also call back I'k spoiled by the internet: I want things now! :)

Solution: RSS! I'm a google reader user, and when I find things similar this, I toss them in at that place. If it's not interesting enough going forward, I tin always unsubscribe. Of form, if the author is using twitter/facebook/whateverelse to hype posts, you lot can use those to similar outcome, too.

My solution is looking at integrating MailChimp'south offering once the traffic's died down a bit. I should take done information technology before actually, but am reluctant to further stress a server that's already getting a bit upset ;)

Ok, maybe I'll be the loan dissenter - and a torn one at that. I really call up this is a great article and I think this is information that should certainly be shared out... I accept 1 nitpick with what the author states that bothers me greatly. Blank with this argument - I am not against what he did, just this is the biggest worry in hiring whatsoever exterior dev to exercise whatsoever work for you, and thus has a clear and existent event for the market place and industry overall: The only thing that I feel is a niggling weird is that nosotros have a developer who says he saw a bunch of requests for an application that does X. he then turns and build the application to practice 10 himself. This in and of itself is fine -- just it will certainly air current upward pissing people off/alienating people entirely. The point is that the valley mantra is "ideas are worthless, but execution matters* -- then it makes all devs look similar they are just sitting around waiting to leach off others ideas and execute on them themselves for personal profit. I don't think there is a clear win-win situation here, I but want to point out that the mode this article is written, it seems to prove out the worry of the non-dev side of the world == "What is the risk of trying to recruit a developer for my idea, then they just plough and build it for them selves?" (MZ Comes to heed) This means that ideas ARE Not worthless, they do have value. Surely, only if yous can manage to execute on them - merely if the ideas were so worthless in-and-of themselves why arent the millions of developers constantly outdoing themselves with utterly amazing works. They aren't. Information technology takes a cracking thought AND great execution to thing.

phlux, didn't we have this argument before? ;) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2061369 To try and analyze further: ideas are not worthless, only they besides don't have value. How can that exist? Simple, unless an idea is coupled with execution its value is zippo. This is what leads to the phrase 'ideas are worthless' which is misleading IMO when phrased that way. > why arent the millions of developers constantly outdoing themselves with utterly amazing piece of work That argument is flawed on many levels. Start, the percentage of the population with a high level understanding of technology is small, and the per centum of those who are developers is smaller, and the percentage of those that are corking developers is smaller however. So saying "the millions of developers" like there really are that many working directly on tech innovation in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in the US is questionable at best. At present, if you lot're asking why don't the "great" proportion of developers do astonishing work the answer is that they practice. They are the reason you tin can view and mail on Hacker News with a working Bone, or listen to thousands of songs on a device every bit modest equally your hand, and on that same device check electronic mail, play games, download thousands of apps, and make phone calls, etc. In other words, great developers are busy building things. Many amazing things. Some developers build things for companies, and some venture out on their own to build new and innovative things like Twitter, Groupon, or Facebook, some of which work and many which don't. But there certainly are many amazing pieces of engineering that take been built so far, and in that location are many more to come... These won't all come at the same fourth dimension, only the tinkerers are out there... building, trying, failing, and trying once more. They are doing the hard work of executing, and for a small fraction of them, it will pay off. Edit: Let me put the idea challenge dorsum on you, phlux. If your belief is "idea" people are certainly only held back from their $ millions in success by not being developers, why don't they borrow, sell, or mortgage $50K on their house etc. and just become the thought built and cash in? It's that easy, right?

Ok, I call up I need to clarify what I believe an "idea" to be. So, this is both to yous and Random42... To Random42's bespeak, simply having an idea like: "Wouldn't it exist cool if cars could wing" is apparently worthless. I think that I was not articulate plenty: I remember of an idea as a vetted plan. An idea, based on an agreement of a trouble and a market, a vision on how it will make money. A design a spec and fifty-fifty mock-ups. Far more than a simple statement of wishful thinking. For me, whenever I have "an idea" I take it every bit far as I can take it sans having it developed. For example, I accept a current "idea" in the medical space (which is where my electric current full fourth dimension focus is) that is a patient entertainment system. This thought is based on several years of full time health care systems design feel designing two hospitals each with a upkeep of more $500 million. It is an iterative development of a previous thought which nosotros implemented and congenital and released open source, and a solid understanding of the market, the challenges and the sales cycle. Farther, information technology is arrived at with the inclusion of hospital It and Clinical staff that I have worked with on ii projects -- and input from the founder of one of the existing marketplace leading companies in this space. I accept a product spec, financial model, business concern plan and mock-ups. This is my "idea" -- information technology is non worthless because it is a proven, fully informed documented production plan. I still demand development and a host of other things to accomplish this. I accept millions of simple wishful thinking ideas equally well, but for annihilation that has value - real potential I go through the above. I obviously was not clear with what I thought an thought was... I hope this makes my perspective a little more clear.

> For me, whenever I accept "an idea" I take it as far equally I can take information technology sans having it adult. Merely that's the problem. Y'all know why? Considering anybody tin can practice this. You can have one million people exercise this, for 1 million years, and you know what you'd end up with? Nothing. Don't get me incorrect, it's great that you also attach careful research to your idea, but that only serves to lessen the risk you lot've overlooked obvious reasons for it to fail. It doesn't mean it won't fail. If your idea was guaranteed to succeed then crossing over into evolution wouldn't exist a trouble. You'd be able to get the money somehow. I know many ordinary people who have gear up aside as much every bit $l-100K just by being focused. Or y'all could get investment, or a SBA backed bank loan. But idea people won't really piece of work to do these things, considering they know the truth: their idea may end up failing (being worthless when really tried). Either that or the other truth: even once an idea is developed it takes fourth dimension and effort to grow it into a success.

Um, no. I am edifice this. I am not just sitting effectually thinking upwardly some idea and wishing it were true. I am very early in my ain development abilities, but I have a technical co-founder, a hospital that has agreed to pilot this and experience in my field which informed the design of the idea. I think I see manner to much arrogance on HN. It appears that you guys are and so eager to endeavor to find why things shouldn't be built, when maybe its better to figure out why things should. I beloved how you all assume that one comes up with an idea, and then merely sits around and attempts to wish it into existence. Lets take a poll. How many of you lot hither think of yourself as a mediocre developer? I'chiliad willing to bet that many are under the impression they are some Ninja Star developer and that NOTHING in this world tin possibly work unless yous personally come up with information technology.

> Um, no. I am edifice this. I am not merely sitting around thinking up some idea and wishing information technology were true. Well, at present we're talking! :) You are under the wrong impression. Information technology'due south not that hackers don't want to encounter thought people succeed, it's that we don't have much respect for people who are on the sidelines and all talk with no activity. I'm a programmer, but offset and foremost I'm an entrepreneur. If a person is willing to put their cervix on the line while facing risk and uncertainty, they have my respect. I don't care if they can't even gear up a Wordpress web log. I wish you all-time of luck with your venture! It's not near airs; it's near action. You lot're in the club every bit far every bit I'thousand concerned.

You are thinking in the line of, A * Idea + B * Execution == Northward Units of success/value. Most of the people hither believe, C * Thought * Execution == Northward units of success/value. Ideas all solitary ARE worthless. Only when coupled with decent execution, they generate some success/value. They are more of a multiplier cistron, than having a worth of itself. Permit me give yous some (admittedly) extravagant example of ideas (They are not my original ideas). one. cars that tin can fly, just based on solar energy. 2. A machine, that lets you travel through time. iii. A medicine, that makes you alive forever/ you dont grow old. Do you believe, should I (Or the person who had these original ideas/fantasy) call for the share of coin, when these ideas are implemented?

> will certainly wind upward pissing people off/alienating people entirely If someone else implementing a vaguely similar idea makes those people pissed off, well, it's certainly not the implementors fault. I've had a zillion ideas only to find out that someone has already executed them. At first it somewhat pissed me off, similar isn't there annihilation that hasn't been already done? And so I got over it and realized that you need a crapload of hard piece of work, persuasion and elbow grease to make the ideas a product that people want to utilize badly enough that they pay yous for it.

it would be skillful if y'all besides describe what kind of architexture you are using for the app and why - what frameworks , languages ( django, jquery ) also what other tools y'all are using for development/testing and why ( github, eclipse, firebug etc.)

Thats an inspiring story and informative tips..Iam on my mode to build one pocket-size app. I am expect atleast half of your earnings. Thats also big for me... as pocket coin. Waiting for your next office.

The fact that this article is then popular is sort of sad.That shows that a lot of people on HN are not making $500 a month from their spider web apps .We should have higher goals than this.

Every great product starts out equally a dream but only a few brainstorm with keen fanfare. OP is talking about the more than common reality of launching something new. Equally a wise advertisement one time said, it takes time to cook a craven.

I concur, kinda. I'k glad for the writer's success so far (and, every bit another HNer said, that the give-and-take "lifestyle" has not yet reared its caput in give-and-take). On the other hand,back in October, about how my products had brought in $216,000 in revenue in 2010 to date (from $0 in 2008), and I got maybe 30 votes on HN, barely made it onto the front page: http://unicornfree.com/2010/i-made-216668-from-products/ Which leads to me to wonder: Why is this $500/mo (subsequently 1.5 yrs) essay and then pop, simply nobody was interested in mine? For me, it'southward not just about getting the hits, simply getting my message out at that place (I am all about making & SELLING paid products, not "startups"), then it's a question of effectiveness. I've observed that HN seems most interested in rags-to-minimum-wage stories, and rags-to-riches stories, only non much in betwixt (which is where I fall -- at present). Just there's probably besides something else going on, whether it's me, my essay, or the audience. If anyone has any ideas/pointers, I'd dearest to hear them.

I've observed that HN seems most interested in rags-to-minimum-wage stories, and rags-to-riches stories, just non much in betwixt If anyone has whatsoever ideas/pointers, I'd honey to hear them. Hello, original post author here! :) I think the main difference between our two posts is that mine goes into more detail about how I created the app and bought in revenue, whereas your posts lists only that you lot're already making serious dough (incidentally, congratulations! :)), and how your revenues have grown - not a lot near how to go in that location in the get-go place. Why is this $500/mo (subsequently one.5 yrs) essay so popular I'd like to take issue with this point, although please practice correct me if I'thou seeing criticism where none was intended :) This is obviously non a full-on startup - I don't work viii hours every evening on it; in fact I barely put in that many hours on it per month. Maybe I need to clarify this in my next blog post. Either way, I don't understand why you're knocking it for being one.5 years old.

Hey, mootothemax, I wasn't knocking y'all! Sad if it came across that style. I only added the fourth dimension frame because our time frames were the same. If we look at stories like ours PURELY every bit inspiration fodder (vs personal sagas), wouldn't you prefer to read about somebody who ended upwardly with a hundred thousand instead of a hundred? :) That's not to downplay your success at all, because you've gotten what you lot've wanted in the manner you wanted. That'due south what success is about, IMO. Cheers for the tip about the specificity, I bet you're right & will try that approach next time.

Leaving aside such issues as fourth dimension of the mean solar day/week when manufactures were posted (I take no idea if that has played a factor in this case) I concur that the specificity issue is likely to exist applicable. > wouldn't you prefer to read about somebody who > ended up with a hundred thousand instead of a hundred? How nigh if information technology's presented every bit "$100,000 with full time hours" compared with "a $100 with a few hours"? From my perspective at least, I view an commodity nigh how to achieve "a $100 with a few hours (spread over a year)" as seeming more than attainable and accessible than one near "$100,000 with full time hours (spread over a year)". I'd think "Hey, maybe I could exercise that" about the former and more "That'd be absurd to do that" nearly the latter. I like that y'all've got a "mission" to show that what y'all've achieved is attainable for others also and I look forward to reading more about how.

Cheers for the feedback! You lot actually told me something very of import, indirectly -- our SaaS app got to $1500/mo (start) to about $4,500 on a very part-fourth dimension basis, before we put much time into it. Conspicuously I should talk near this part of the story more.

If you really read his commodity instead of lamenting your lack of upvotes, y'all'd know that what he wanted WAS a rags to riches story.

You hateful like admit that my communication way might be part of the problem and enquire for pointers? Oh look - did that. Hmm!

For me, I prefer the OP'due south article as it's very much from the perspective of someone yet "in the trenches", whereas your artcle seems to be approaching it from the angle of already being through the trenches and reflecting on how awesome it went. I suppose it'southward like comparing watching Rocky to watching 2 hours of Lennox Lewis in his prime, you desire to see the progression happening, not necessarily expect back. That would be the main point from my perspective and information technology's simply a matter of preference.

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2471130

Posted by: hartleyromay1958.blogspot.com

Share this post