How I Made $350 In Two Days With Three Pages and Some Payment Code
Published in 2011, this chronicle by @dshipper details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $350.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 224 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 84 comments
I've noticed a recent trend of self-promotion that I don't understand. I'm not writing to criticize, I just want to know why you say some of the things you do.
For instance, you call yourself a "rising sophomore". What does this mean? How is it different from any other sophomore? Can you explain why you chose that word and what the impression you intended to convey is?
Also, I love that you made a product like this quickly. In reading your story I noticed something you did right that I totally would have done wrong, and I appreciate being reminded of it. I applaud your gumption.
But then I clicked thru to the website and saw: "Our team of web usability experts has put together a comprehensive survey". So, do you have a team of web usability experts behind domain polish? I'm assuming it is your solo project. Why not say "Our carefully crafted, comprehensive survey" instead? Do you think that would really kill your sales that much? Do you have any qualms about saying you have a "team" of "experts"?
Notice, I'm not passing judgement... I'm asking questions because I want to understand your thinking, and also I find this alien culture of the "kids today" baffling and mystifying. :-)
That was a great read, very interesting.
I have to take issue with one point. It says:
``` I've made $350 to date. All from three pages and some payment code.
``` Sounds brilliant, and it's the title here. Earlier, however, it says:
``` I was scrambling to fill orders. I had a huge TextEdit file open with customer names, site URLs, and email addresses. I sent every email, and set up every survey by hand.
``` So, the three pages and the payment code were the structure, and in truth, you were doing the work.
``` By 6 am I had completed processing every order and went to bed. I got up an hour later for work at 7 am.
...
So now I’m sitting here writing this blog post with a bunch of orders to fill, features to build, and customers to help.
``` So this is a continuing requirement, that you service the requests from your customers via your web site.
It's a service, and it's making you money, and it's successful. For those things alone you deserve to feel happy and a little smug. But I felt misled by the title.
But having said that - all power to your elbow, and well done.
So, if I understand this is essentially reselling Mechanical Turk services with a little work in hiding the details from the customer? I'm not quite sure if this is a scam or not...
...but I can think of plenty of cases where people sell "expertise" which boils down to the same thing... normally its a bit more complicated than this though. I wonder if the customers would pay if they knew of Amazon's service? My guess is they just don't know about it, or at least didn't think it would be any good for them...
Feedback Army (which was actually built by HN user raffi when he was inspired by a comment on HN) has been doing this for a while.
The comment that inspired it:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=362459
Various other HN discussions about it:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=feedback%2Barmy%2Bsite%3Anews.ycombinator.com
Well, if I understood correctly he didn't really make $350 in the end. He had his upfront costs, his processing costs and his turk costs. I'd be curious how much return he's getting after all that and figuring in something for his time. If he can automate some of his tasks to eliminate some overhead then he may have something. But if in the end he's making minimum wage after factoring in costs then, well, it is what it is.