Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? - <AUTHOR> How many people on hacker news are running successful online businesses on their own? What is your business and how did you get started?
 Defining successful as a profitable business which provides the majority of the owners income. <comment><USER3> Even if you were to scope it just to software/SaaS product companies, there's minimally hundreds of these in the world and dozens of them have HN accounts. Most don't post on threads like this, so I feel the need to pipe up and say "This is quite doable, and done, much more than you might expect."

I run a small software company (two, technically). Products include Bingo Card Creator ([http://www.bingocardcreator.com](http://www.bingocardcreator.com)), Appointment Reminder ([https://www.appointmentreminder.org](https://www.appointmentreminder.org)), and occasional offerings for training for other software companies. I used to do consulting, too, but quit to focus on products.

I'd describe it as "modestly successful." It's the sole financial support for my wife and I. I'm the only full-time employee of the business (for a very quirky understanding of the words "full-time").

<comment><USER4> It really requires a different mindset. For instance, while BCC makes sense, I can't imagine someone willing to pay for something like Appointment Reminder.

<comment><USER3> Suppose you run a professional services business where you have appointments. If people don't come to an appointment, you don't get money. You might pay an office manager to call people the morning of their appointment to remind them, so that they come into their appointment, so you get paid, right? Appointment Reminder is like an office manager who costs $200 a month, not $4,000 a month, is vastly more likely to successfully reach a customer, (virtually) never forgets to call, and does not consider boring, repetitive work to be an insult to her intelligence. For many of my customers, $200 is substantially less than they earn for a single appointment. (Think less "hair salon" and more "HVAC repair firm.")

<comment><USER4> I didn't mean appointment reminding in general - which is a good thing obviously. But I thought it was a long time solved problem by other means (and not necessary by office manager), be it some "enterprise" calendar or todo software which are integrated in most of the "enterprise"/business software products, etc...

<comment><USER3> Substantially all problems were solved by someone else first. That doesn't meaningfully inhibit you from solving them, too. Reasons why this could redound to your advantage include superior marketing, positioning, ability to attack different niches, lower cost structure, or the ability to survive off the crumbs the big guys don't care about.

It's totally worth it for me to have the CEO and head of product development talk to your office manager for 30 minutes then custom code an import script, to get you onboarded at $200 to $500 a month. The 800 LB Gorilla basically doesn't care about you below $1k a month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm doing [http://justaddcontent.com](http://justaddcontent.com) solo and self-funded. It turned into a bigger project that I anticipated, especially for my first product.

I started working on it full-time in October. It started as a hobby project about two years ago. It took particularly long because I have a non-technical, military background and had to teach myself to code, design, write copy, marketing, etc. It's been a fun challenge.

I still work on it 12-14hrs a day on average, but I still love it and I love the problem I'm solving. The last few months I started focusing on product again and my customers absolutely love it, which is awesome. Now I'm turning my attention back to marketing.

Like the other guys, I'm not making millions yet, but I'm 100% self-funded and in no danger of running out of money. I continue to put 100% of what I make back in the business after my essentials.

I'm not sure when I'll start hiring, but I have some pretty major plans that I'll need help executing. It's just one of those things where it'll completely change the game, but it'll also change the dynamic of the business.

<comment><USER6> When you say, "built on the same platform trusted by Ford, NFL, Sony, eBay, CNN," do you mean they use the same backend technology, or that they're actually customers of yours?

<comment><USER5> The same backend technology. Most of my customers are small businesses or marketing departments in larger businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I run a business selling penetration testing software that I develop. It's completely bootstrapped. I do very little services work (I actively send this type of stuff to friend's companies). Right now, it's just me, although that's probably going to change. By most of my own definitions and the one you posted here... it's successful.

How did I get started on this? Sort of by accident.

I was working for Automattic after an acqui-hire thing. After a year there, I found that I missed working in security. I found a full-scope penetration testing gig three blocks from my apartment.

In my spare time, I started to tinker with a few ideas and released them as an open source project. Said project saw a lot of interest within the hacker community very quickly. I didn't expect this. Folks formed an opinion on it pretty quickly. Some people hate it. Others love it. Of those who know it, very few are in-between.

I left my pen testing job with a decent amount of money saved up. I didn't know exactly what I would go and do afterwards. I spent some time tinkering with Android, just for giggles.

I was very reluctant to start a business that used my "successful?" open source project. Partially because it leverages another open source project owned by another company.

I was at a conference in 2011 and someone from a US government agency asked if I was selling anything. I said no. He said that was too bad, because he had end of year money, and he liked my open source stuff. It was then that I decided to look at expanding my open source kit into a commercial product.

April will mark the two year anniversary of my first customer. My customers are well known organizations and they trust my software to assess how well they protect their networks. I'm constantly in awe of this.

<comment><USER8> When's the end of year money period?

<comment><USER9> Pretty much oct, nov, december you will see large enterprise shops who have unspent capex budget, and are afraid that if they do not spend it, the next years budget will be reduced to last years spend.. So most enterprise fiefdoms spend 99-100% of capex budget regardless of if they needed it or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I run a small one-man-show publishing house: [http://minireference.com](http://minireference.com). I produce math/physics textbooks for adults. I'm the author, business person, marketing person, and strategic partnerships person. Revenues are not stellar, but they keep me off the streets...

The value I provide is synthesis of a lot of educational material that exists out there into a coherent package (a book). In many ways, my work is similar to what linux distro package managers do: ensuing prerequisites are covered before the main package is installed.

I remember hearing one of the early Internet/www inventors saying the Internet will allow people to "live from the fruits of their intellectual labour." Does anyone know who this was??? With eBooks and print-on-demand this is finally possible now. I would encourage everyone with deep domain knowledge about a subject to start writing about it and publish a small book. I think "information distillation" is of great value for readers. Feel free to email me if you need help/advice with the publishing stuff.

<comment><USER11> I read the preview to your book and it looks fantastic. Just what has been missing in school. I'm an engineering student and like many other will greatly benefit from this text. Have you considered writing more on math and physics? I would surely buy even more advanced topic like electricity, magnetism, and discrete math (Sets, proofs, induction etc.)

<comment><USER10> Hi tictac, and thank you for the kind words.

I actually have a draft on E&M which is 70% done, but I've now learned that it takes me about 1 year to get a book into good shape so I won't try to finish it just yet and instead spend the next six months working on the business side of things: scaling distribution and sales.

Two other topics which I feel competent enough to write about are probability and vector calculus so by 2015 I'll get to these topics too. I don't feel I have enough experience teaching more advanced topics to write about them--- also there is less need for _No Bullshit_ guides, because advanced math/phys books are quite good and bullshit free. It seems it's the freshman-year books that suck the most.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I run [http://www.candyjapan.com](http://www.candyjapan.com)

It just crossed 500 paying members. I started it with my wife, but recently the shipping part is no longer done by us two manually, but by a local supermarket. In the beginning it was just an email to some previous customers asking if they might be interested in a club like this. Then a landing page and a HN post. From there it grew through blog mentions and now there is a trickle of organic traffic coming in.

Before this I had some small apps on social networks that made more money, but were much more unstable. While Candy Japan could wither away, I expect the death would be more gradual. I still have some of the older sites / apps which together are still making around $500 / month, which is a nice bonus.

Probably anyone working as a salaried programmer in the US is making a more money than I am currently, but I enjoy the freedom and the thought that there really is no upper limit. If we ever do hit 1000 members I'm planning to have a celebration :-)

<comment> daniel-levin I love this.

I clicked on the link, and being South African, I've been conditioned into thinking that all sorts of cool services/products from overseas either aren't available here or are prohibitively expensive to import. So, I was delighted when your page said, "Free shipping from Japan, even to South Africa". Thank you.

<comment><USER13> It generates that text from geolocation and is a brilliant move.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I created:

[http://skitrails.info/](http://skitrails.info/)

I'm an avid cross-country skier, and traditionally daily trail reports are done by hand by the maintenance staff after they're out all night working on the trails.

I had the bright idea of putting GPS tracking devices in grooming equipment and creating the "what's been groomed" report automatically, in real-time.

It took about 4 seasons to really get it right, and there was no appreciable income for that period. Lots of lessons learned about equipment (antennas, good wiring practices in vehicles, power cleanliness in big equipment, etc), good ways to present the data, map projections, how to deal with messy data, dealing with non-technical users, cross-border shipping tarrifs, mobile- network provisioning rules, the list goes on. I did it alongside my full-time job for the first 4 years.

It's a tiny niche, and one I never expect to get all that big, but it looks like I'll be able to make it my sole income source next season.

Which is great, because it'll let me go skiing more.

<comment><USER15> This is cool. I live in the Methow Valley and the MVSTA should use this!

<comment><USER16> Or they could use a service that doesn't charge the public for the information.

<comment><USER14> I don't charge the public. Ski areas pay me a yearly fee to publish their reports. I handle all the data processing, generating maps, keeping servers up and running, mobile device provisioning, equipment testing, warranty, tech support, etc, etc.

There are a couple of areas that have tried to DIY, with limited success, they usually simply don't have the technical knowledge on staff. I've been surprised myself at the breadth of technical turf I've had to cover to create something that works reliably and simply. For a reasonably technical software engineer with a bit of hardware experience, it's not a big deal, but for everyone else, it's too complex a problem.

One of the really interesting problems I had to solve was reliably figuring out which trail the grooming equipment was traversing. Unlike roadways, the GPS data for the trails is typically either non-existent, inaccurate or just plain wrong. Cleaning that up is a bit of effort for each ski area. In addition, ski trails are often in much closer proximity than roadways, which combined with GPS error margins, means that I had to do some fairly gnarly stuff to avoid jumping between nearby trails constantly. It looks simple enough on the surface, but it required some real hair-pulling to get working reliably.

Contract negotiations with cell-network providers weren't much fun either. Many ski areas are in pretty marginal cell-network coverage regions, so finding devices that behaved well in that environment was critical (in addition to handling very cold weather, i.e. -40F for 8 hour stretches). The grooming staff are typically completely non-technical, working weird shift hours, etc, so the system has to be completely hands-off after installation. Finding a device that would do that, handle the harsh environment and be properly certified to operate on the north american mobile networks was no easy task.

<comment><USER17> How do you handle installation? Do you go to every site to do it yourself, or is it contracted to someone local? I have had product ideas where this was one of the hurdles I couldn't cross: how to get non-technical people to install my product on equipment I had never seen before.

<comment><USER14> The devices are pretty easy to install, 3 wires (power, ignition, ground). Because this is heavy equipment, there's usually a mechanic somewhere nearby that can handle at least that.

I also make a version of the tracker that I pack inside a Pelican case and expose a cigarette lighter plug, for use on snowmobiles. Most people can handle plugging that in, no instructions required.

My local ski area has a couple of machines that they let me crawl through, so I take lots of photos of the important parts of the installation process, best places to place antennas, etc, and put them in an "install guide" PDF that I print and include in any shipments I send. I also wrote up a "how to test/verify that the unit is working" guide, and ask people to go through that before contacting me for troubleshooting. If they call, I ask if they've gone through the test/verify guide. If they haven't, I tell them to do that, then call back if it's still not working.

So far, so good.

<comment><USER17> Thank you for replying. That was very helpful to see it from a different perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hey there. /raises hand.

[https://www.improvely.com](https://www.improvely.com) and [https://www.w3counter.com](https://www.w3counter.com)

Five figures a month, just me, I've written about my solo business a couple times in other Ask HN threads. Ten years ago (almost to the day), in my college dorm, I was looking at the Webalizer web stats report my web host provided for my blog, and thought "I could do something much cooler than this". So I did. I had built a few educational sites and threw some ads on them for a couple years before that, but W3Counter was the first service I actually charged a subscription for, and now I make a living building and selling this stuff.

<comment><USER19> Ghostery blocks w3counter so it blocked pretty much everything on the actual site, maybe use a static domain that isn't blocked by ghostery. :O

<comment><USER18> You're running Ghostery for the purpose of blocking W3Counter and every other site like it. You can't really do that then lament the fact that it worked. I'm not going to invest time and effort into evading you; if you want to see web stats sites, you can just turn off the extension. Somehow I don't think there are any Ghostery users looking to sign up.

<comment><USER19> I meant you should use a different domain for static content on your marketing page, and I'm not lamenting anything. Just giving you some advice. Ghostery has been installed over 1 million times just in Chrome. Any one has ghostery installed and is going to your site will see a completely broken webpage.

<comment><USER20> Why was leobelle being downvoted? I can understand disagreeing with what they were saying. It's an opinion after all. But, what they were saying wasn't that far off base..

<comment><USER21> Probably because the adverts that are blocked pay for the site. Kind of like asking musicians for zippy share links to their music.

<comment><USER18> Ghostery isn't an ad blocker, it's an analytics blocker. It's for people that don't want to be tracked on the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1 man startup - [http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare](http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare) I do web hosting reviews. Not the scummy pay-for-placement stuff you see, but an actual review site. It tracks what people are saying about hosting companies on Twitter and publishes the results.

The story is told a bit here [http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/25/web-hosting- reviews-are-a-c...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/25/web-hosting-reviews-are- a-cesspool-review-signal-wants-to-fix-that/) I was just tired after 10 years of still relying exclusively on my experience and the experiences of people I knew. Figured there must be a better way and I had been working with Twitter data for thesis and saw this opportunity.

<comment><USER23> wow, love this. may actually be the first web hosting review site I would ever look at. I get more spam on my blog from web hosting review sites than anyone. not sure why but seems like you have a lot of blackhat competition.

love your site & framework. good luck! Will share.

<comment><USER22> Thank you! The competition is incredibly black hat. Try running the sites listed for 'web hosting reviews' under some SEO tools and it's often very clear which black hat strategies they are using (blog spamming, edu/gov spam, etc). I haven't been able to crack the top search terms yet because it's incredibly competitive and it's not a level/fair playing field. But working on creating some interesting content and building high quality links will hopefully pay off in the long run.

I am always open to ideas and suggestions for how to market this better. And I appreciate you sharing it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [http://beatrixapp.com](http://beatrixapp.com)

Solo, self funded and profitable. I work on it while traveling around Asia.

Agree with patio11 there's probably way more than would speak up here. I seldom contribute to HN or the bootstrapping forums mentioned in another reply. I browse a little, but 99% of my time spent in front of the computer is spent working on product or replying to customer emails.

How I got started:

I've built SaaS apps before but they were the dreaded "solution looking for a problem" type.

Then I decided to do things strictly the Lean way. Got out of the building. Talked to customers about an idea I had. Pretty soon I discovered an adjacent problem that everyone had, that sounded fun to solve, and that I had specific domain knowledge in. I built and launched my MVP in one month, from a beach in Koh Samui. I've been traveling ever since then, spending each month in a different country.

Charged from day 1. Had paying customers from day 1.

I find changing my environment enables me to compartmentalize my work better - like I try to get major new features rolled out before I head to my next destination.

Not planning on doing this solo forever. Not ruling out hiring some help down the line and maybe a permanent office somewhere.

But for now it's pretty fun the way it is!

<comment><USER12> If I understand correctly, this will post automatically to a Facebook page when users sign up. Any trouble with token expiration? I think it was changed from unlimited to a shorter time recently.

<comment><USER24> It's handled gracefully in the app. If it expires and the app tried to post something unsuccessfully the user gets an email asking them to reconnect.

Facebook tokens aren't unlimited but they are long enough such that the user doesn't have to reconnect all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hello from Quebec, I am on Hacker News, as a big reader not commenting. My online business, is profitable, it make all my income, an ok salary for me :-). I have read the book '4 hours week' and work only few hours a week. The business start with a shareware game (1990), quit my day job (2002) to create more sharewares, fail at the first one (the password/unlock was hack the first week). So I come with the idea of having a client/server game (2004) (harder to hack). That work enough to make a small salary. Then I build another client/server game (2011), almost the same as the first one but localized in 3 languages. Then I received a lawyer letter (2011) to close both of my online sites. I did make some modifications, after 2 years they leaves me alone... Being afraid of closing, I was looking for a plan B (2012), I works hard on web sites that have a lot of visitors to make money with AdWords, it works. Now half of the revenue come from the 2 online games, and the other half come from AdWords. The shareware, online games and web sites are all related to a very popular crossword game.

</comment><comment><USER26> I run Tarsnap: [http://www.tarsnap.com/](http://www.tarsnap.com/)

I got started because I wanted good backups and there were no solutions available which I was satisfied with.

<comment><USER27> Are you planning to build sth on top of Glacier or include Glacier as an storage option (seeing it's on S3 anyway)? It will bring the cost down a great deal.

<comment><USER28> See [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-09-04-why-tarsnap- doesn...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-09-04-why-tarsnap-doesnt-use- glacier.html)

<comment><USER27> Many of us have alternative backup solutions. Like I use CrashPlan to backup pretty much everything and the most important files are backed up also to my external hard drive and a friend's machine (all via CrashPlan). Having said that I still consider I've only one off-site backup that is CrashPlan servers and though they provide excellent service they have failed many times before and hence I need an insurance. My entire laptop (except OS and apps) glaciated by Tarsnap can be that insurance policy which I'll most probably never access anyway, until when My laptop and all those three backup destination fail at once and in that scenario I will be willing to pay that cost seeing I saved a lot during those years/months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't know exactly how you define "successful online business," but I am currently a university student making $500 - $2000 a month at about 5 to 10 hours a week.

Basically, there is a market for vintage computer hardware, so I post some adds offering to take away old office items they can't just throw away. Such as old keyboards, terminals, etc. and they pay me a nominal fee ($1 - $5 per item depending) to rid them of their "trash". I then resell those items after cleaning them up a bit for extremely high profit margins $35 - $120 for 20 minutes of work (since I was payed to take away the trash).

One of the things I did was sold Model M keyboards which I made USB compatible: [http://austingwalters.com/keyboards/](http://austingwalters.com/keyboards/)

Another way I make money is by tutoring or helping out with programming, I use to help out local people, but I have since switched over to Google Helpouts. Usually, it's just explaining some algorithms and writing some C code. Pretty easy, no real upkeep, and I can set what ever hours I want.

</comment><comment><USER30> Just launched Pinegrow Web Designer ([http://pinegrow.com](http://pinegrow.com)) two months ago. The company is actually run by my wife and me, but I do all the work with Pinegrow while she is taking care of our other projects.

Pinegrow has been paying most of our bills since launch and I have a lot of expansions in the pipeline: full support for Foundation alongside Bootstrap, developer edition that'll work with templates, a similar app for designing emails...

<comment><USER31> Gosh pinegrow is a cool project, but the massive deal breaker for me is a lack of a Linux client :( any chance of that at all? For distribution (cause packaging is a bitch, to be honest) you can use something like Ermine to compile twice (i386 and x64) and then convert to a single static binary.

For now, I'll continue playing with it on my Mac, but Linux support would be the best.

<comment><USER30> Actually, I have an experimental Linux build. Didn't really have a chance to test it. Here it is, if you would like to try it out:

[https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gyzegb9sae3jlwh/Bv9NtDF96z](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gyzegb9sae3jlwh/Bv9NtDF96z) (select ... and Download as zip).

Please let me know how it works out.

<comment><USER31> Giving it a try now, will send you an email with how I go :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I don't know whether HN is the right place to ask this question. The crowd for this frequents either [http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm](http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm) or [http://academy.micropreneur.com](http://academy.micropreneur.com)

There's also a number of podcasts (notably "Startups for the Rest of Us" and "Bootstrapped With Kids")

<comment><USER33> Hi Christoph! I came here to post the bootstrapped.fm link too, but I think HN is a fine place to post this discussion too. I think the small, bootstrapped company is where it's at for many of us who don't want to or can't do the VC thing in SV. That's probably a large majority even on a site like this.

Rob's book is an obbligatory reference in this space too:

[http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers- Launching-...](http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching- ebook/dp/B003YH9MMI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=&tag=dedasys-20)

My own thing is not 'successful' in that it's not my main source of income just yet, but it's not too far off, either: [http://www.liberwriter.com](http://www.liberwriter.com)

One of the key things I've learned from it is to go do something that matters to 'ordinary people', rather than something that's "cool" from a computer guy point of view.

<comment><USER32> Hi David! Great to hear that you are doing well with LiberWriter. That definitely is a pain point for people.

I like that you kept the layout simple using only bootstrap. that's a lot faster & cheaper than doing a full blown design.

<comment><USER33> Our customers could not care less about the design stuff as long as it looks decent, so it is not something I have bothered with even now that I have some money I could spend on it.

<comment><USER32> Interesting, considering that you actually DESIGN their products. :)

<comment><USER33> eBooks don't actually allow for a lot of fancy design if you want them to work well on a variety of platforms.

<comment><USER32> I image cross-platform compatibility is a PITA. But I find it interesting that people who pay for ebook design, don't care about website design. Mind you: That's no criticism of you OR your work. I just love the fact that people are more interested in the value than in the website design, even if they get value out of design work.

Hope that makes things clearer. Again: You're doing a great job!

<comment><USER33> eBooks are mostly about stripping out people's "design" stuff and replacing it with some fairly standard components that actually work, and adding in some various bits and pieces in XML, a hyperlinked table of contents, and stuff like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I run a small business called Cram Fighter ([http://cramfighter.com](http://cramfighter.com)) that is targeted at students (mostly medical) that are preparing for standardized exams. I got the idea after watching my wife preparing for her board exams and it seemed like a perfect little project to learn iOS programming. Initially my goal was to do earn maybe $5k annually, but now I'm on track to surpass my salary as senior developer by next year.

You'll find a lot of one-person businesses targeting tiny, but profitable, niches like mine. What's great about it is that often when you find a tiny opportunity, it opens up a lot of other problems that need solving that you would never find otherwise. It's also a great way to learn the skills of running a business in a relatively stress-free way (at least compared to running a startup).

The only downside is if you're anything like me, you'll get antsy working on small projects and yearn to tackle bigger, more ambitious problems. Sometimes 1-person companies have the potential for turning into a company with startup- like growth, sometimes not. I'm still trying to figure out how far I can take my company.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've got three:

* Textbooks Please: a textbook search engine for college students. It's grossed ~$20k, almost all of which has been reinvested, and not paying myself that much. * dbinbox: an inbox for your dropbox for receiving files too large to email. It's got ~25k users, but has made less than $1k in donations. I need to give this one a reboot soon. * Email Tip Bot: send bitcoin with email. Launched two weeks ago and I've already got my first 200 users :D

I really enjoy the process of making these kinds of things, but I find it enormously exhausting to do the other half of marketing, SEO, publicity, etc. I'm working on getting better at SEO, but would love to find someone that likes the marketing side.

PS: [http://solo.im/](http://solo.im/)

</comment><comment><USER36> I run [http://officesnapshots.com](http://officesnapshots.com) which publishes photos of office design projects from around the world.

I started it in 2007 as a gin side project to teaching history. I'm no longer teaching and it is the majority of my income.

<comment><USER37> Just a heads up, I can't see any text on your website (Chrome 33.0.1750.146 on Mac)

[http://imgur.com/Ptmxgsm](http://imgur.com/Ptmxgsm)

<comment><USER36> thanks for the heads up - I haven't been able to reproduce it myself but have received a couple other reports of that happening.

if you inspect element, is there no text as well?

<comment><USER38> This is possibly the chrome webfont rendering bug that's been popping up on chrome 33, WordPress sites seem very susceptible to it: [https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/chrome/tYHS...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/chrome/tYHSqc- fqso)

<comment><USER36> Excellent! Thank you - I'll take a peek to see if I can find a working fix.

<comment><USER38> Please let me know if you find a good one, that bug is affecting me as well.

<comment><USER39> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22011139/google-fonts- are...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22011139/google-fonts-are-not- rendering-on-google-chrome/22025804#22025804)

<comment><USER38> Haven't had good results with that one, but thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm not sure he is particularly active on HN but Rob Walling[1] is a solo entrepreneur managing at least a couple of Saas products: Hittail[2] (which he bought and then grow) and Drip[3]. He also conducts a podcast on Saas[4] and also organises a conference for self-funded startups[5]. In the past Patio11 spoke there too

[1] [http://www.softwarebyrob.com/](http://www.softwarebyrob.com/) [2] [http://www.hittail.com/](http://www.hittail.com/) [3] [https://www.getdrip.com/](https://www.getdrip.com/) [4] [http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/) [5] [http://www.microconf.com/](http://www.microconf.com/) [3]

</comment><comment><USER41> Not sure if this is what Hacker News would normally consider a business but I run a YouTube channel as my one-person business: [http://www.youtube.com/cgpgrey](http://www.youtube.com/cgpgrey)

<comment><USER42> Your videos are so informative. Thank you! I especially loved the series on FPTP voting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> My company consists of just me, and is fairly profitable. And to reiterate patio11, there are quite a few of us. I detailed income and how much I contribute monthly to each of my income streams here: [http://planscope.io/blog/how-i-changed-the-world- in-2013/](http://planscope.io/blog/how-i-changed-the-world-in-2013/)

</comment><comment><USER44> I didn't create it, but Pinboard ([https://pinboard.in/](https://pinboard.in/)) is a great example of a successful one person business.

Founder Maciej Cegłowski wrote about it here: [https://static.pinboard.in/xoxo_talk_thoreau.htm](https://static.pinboard.in/xoxo_talk_thoreau.htm)

</comment><comment><USER45> You should check out the SideProject Book[1]. It's specifically about bootstraped, successful, single owner projects. It features some of the projects that appeared here, actually, like BCC.

As of myself, I am currently trying to educate myself into dividing my time better between my "day job" and my product. Hard to do, though, when your day job absolutely rocks... It's very easy to work all day long without realizing you should have stopped in the middle of the afternoon. Not a bad problem to have, mind you.

[1] [http://www.sideprojectbook.com/](http://www.sideprojectbook.com/)

</comment><comment><USER46> I sell a laptop battery meter ([http://batterybarpro.com](http://batterybarpro.com)). It's not income replacing; it makes about $1,000 per month, but it's been crucial in saving enough for down payments one two houses.

I've tried to get the revenue numbers up, but I've never been able to break a $2,000 month.

<comment><USER47> > _I 've never been able to break a $2,000 month._

Try charging $9.95 instead of $8.00? :)

<comment><USER46> I did. It used to be $10. I've tried a whole slew of different pricing options, like cheap, but time-limited, as well as price points between $4 and $10. I've found that for a simple tool, people seem to find $10 a bit off- putting. I've been running a 50% promotion recently (for over a month now) and revenue is up about 70%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> [http://www.robots-everywhere.com](http://www.robots-everywhere.com) I used to employ two people, but I automated them away. I am successful in the sense that I have clear title to my home at age 33, if that counts.

<comment><USER49> Did the employee contract include a waiver:

"The undersigned, for one, agrees to welcome our robot overlords."

Also, clear title at 33 should meet anyone's definition of successful. I just got a mortgage at 28 and that day is a long way off. Must feel good :)

<comment><USER48> Yeah, it did actually. The whole thing was written fairly tongue in cheek.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I run [https://www.spreadgit.com](https://www.spreadgit.com), a hosted version control system for Excel. Doing this solo and full time. It's been a hell of a ride so far but I love it.

<comment><USER51> Wow this is an awesome idea. Every business has this problem with multiple people trying to modify the same excel file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I develop and sell Smart Shooter.

[http://kuvacode.com](http://kuvacode.com)

Its a traditional desktop app (windows, mac), but only sold online via our own website or the mac app store. I created it about 4 years ago, and work on it solely in my spare time. In fact I'm employed full time at a major tech company but this I keep separate.

To claim its profitable is a bit misleading, because of cause the major cost in developing such software is my own time. I've incorporated as a limited company here in Finland but do not pay myself a salary, so the only costs to the business are web hosting and occasional hardware purchases (computers, cameras).

I started this as a project for personal interest; at the time I was working as a software engineer developing financial trading software. Smart Shooter was a good way to develop something that covered both my interests in graphics programming and digital photography, to alleviate the borebom from my day job.

So for me its been successful, its still an pleasureable hobby, allows me an excuse to play around with the latest cameras, and brings in some pocket money. It doesn't generate enough revenue that I could quit my main job, but the possibilities could be there if situations change.

</comment><comment><USER53> I wrote a book[1] that generates about $2k of revenue per month. Not quite your definition of success, but it's given me a taste. I'm now in the beta testing process for my next thing[2].

[1]: [https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern- payments](https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments)

[2]: [http://www.pagesnap.io](http://www.pagesnap.io)

<comment><USER54> Just want to say that I'm using Docverter to _try_ to make a new business :D.

<comment><USER53> Awesome! Email me if you have any questions or need any help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I am running a complete payment gateway that supports VISA and MasterCard and mobile payments by SMS.

The name of the service is: [https://www.bizify.me](https://www.bizify.me)

For an introduction to the service: [https://www.bizify.me/hacker- news/](https://www.bizify.me/hacker-news/)

<comment><USER56> FYI HN is not indexed by google :)

<comment><USER55> Sorry for the long text. I had a pre-written text that I used for an earlier presentation, so I just copied the text and made some minor corrections. But hopefully, the text is a good introduction anyway. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> [http://nomadia.com.br/](http://nomadia.com.br/)

A website generator and a login/fetch user info/filter service attached for brazilian firms/hotels/inns that offer rooms to rent for long periods/temporary housing.

A very niche market in which I fill myself inn, was developing something just for me and got the idea of offering it to others. I have just one client (so I don't qualify to "successful"), but I'm following patio11 advice of offering services do niche underserved markets. Does anyone has any advice?

My biggest problem is how to market to such a niche. I'm trying to email people, but the people in niche are really non-computer users, so it is difficult.

</comment><comment><USER58> I've worked full-time as a consultant since 2007 and make a little over low six figures after taxes and paying contractors. We ([http://www.goodproduce.net](http://www.goodproduce.net)) do a lot of basic services like content development, web design (mainly WP), social media management, hosting, deck creation, and general "digital" consulting for high net-worth individuals (primarily athletes and their brand partners.

In the early days, I worked to stay visible through conducting interviews for my company blog - that got us on the map in the sports community. It also helps that we never say no to a request...ever.

<comment><USER59> What billing model are you on? Hourly? Retainer? Fixed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I do consulting and software development and am technically a small business.

I'm down to a single client (much easier to manage than multiple clients) so I can pretty much pick my projects, work at my own pace, and get paid fairly decently.

I don't make millions, but I make enough and am happy.

Below isn't really business but was a brilliant idea by someone. It isn't my site but maybe it'll inspire someone to do something similar: [http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/](http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/)

<comment><USER61> I remember that website. In college my friend and I called it the Pet Rock of the internet. Still can't believe that idea made $1 million.

btw - I'm making a club for people to discuss/show their side projects and startups with other devs, check my profile for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I like reading about stories like this (from all the successful solo founders).

It proves that you don't need to get multi-million-dollar valuations to be successful and that the general entrepreneur is pretty content with the amount he/she is making (+1 to thousandaire).

These are stories entrepreneurs (who are realists) should read about and we'd probably all be better off avoiding those "billion dollar acquisitions" (for fear that it will consume us mentally, physically and emotionally).

</comment><comment><USER63> I sell Asterisk reporting sw for win @samreports.com. It makes about $1000 a month in revenues. I also work as iOS developer for the man. I have a free iOS app on the AppStore (HRTecaj), soon to be commercial, when I add ATMs. I was Asterisk integrator, and learned a lot about the system, made software to present call reports in customisable and pleasant way. SAMReports has been selling, consistently, for 4 years. I made a few updates, but now I'm working on a major update.

</comment><comment><USER59> Great Thread....

I live entirely in the consulting space working on SEO/SEM and content marketing, and have done so alone since 1997. After a few pivots in web design, hosting and domaining, I've ended up in a place where I can be picky with clients and charge good fees. I hit the website development market on its first big wave, and moved into search before 99% of other SEOs even knew the discipline existed (and before some were even out of elementary school!)

I make much more than a full-time employee would, but there is a lot of bosses and stress comes in waves. I have learned how to fire clients (hard to do) and how to size up opportunities. But the company is me. It's not saleable - <USER2> intellectual asset exists beyond what I bring to the table. So it's never going to have an "exit." This is my main gripe.

Also, I relocated to Kentucky after writing tons of code in The Valley and ended up in Lexington, KY - a great university town with a highly educated population (and a Google eCity.) This has offered me a nice lifestyle, plenty of time to raise my kids and material rewards for probably 60% of Santa Clara's cost. My company is at [http://www.buzzmaven.com](http://www.buzzmaven.com). Good luck!

<comment><USER64> Cheers Scott, I consult in this space also, though recently I've been trying to productize my way out of it. I built [http://killswit.ch](http://killswit.ch) to help folks like us who are one person agencies and have to deal with sending traffic to sites they don't control. It sucks when your KPI's suffer because of someone else. Let me know if you want to give it a whirl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I run a small online game called RPG MO([http://rpg.mo.ee](http://rpg.mo.ee)). It gets about 20k unique visits every month. Money wise it generates enough payments to pay for the server and associated services and leaves a little for advertising as well. It doesn't cover all of my bills yet so I have to maintain a full-time job while studying in the university. I still have high hopes in this project though.

</comment><comment><USER66> I build MVP's for people who have an idea for a web app. It's at [http://builtFromIdeas.com](http://builtFromIdeas.com)

<comment><USER57> Do you have much clients? How can you work with a fixed price?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I live in a draconian tax country. How can I open a online international business and receive money from anywhere in the world? Do I need to move to a tax heaven?

<comment><USER68> You might not have to move, just have your company operating from an appropriate tax haven. You typically need to pay lawyers, accountants, etc to achieve what you are thinking about and they end up costing more than the tax you would have to pay. Do your numbers first before you get too preoccupied with the tax. As a very general comment, in some low tax countries you need to spend a lot of money to have what you get more or less for free in other higher tax countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I run PlainSite:

[http://www.plainsite.org](http://www.plainsite.org)

<comment><USER70> Nice project

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I didn't create this, but [http://viralnova.com](http://viralnova.com) is known for being run by one person and has been quite successful. Maybe the most successful that I've ever seen. [http://www.businessinsider.com/viral- nova-considering-a-sale...](http://www.businessinsider.com/viral-nova- considering-a-sale-2014-1)

</comment><comment><USER72> I've worked goffconcepts.com full time since 2003 entirely alone (the "we" is my wife). My new product FileSearchEX is highly pirated so I'll probably be moving on to other things. I only recommend SaaS, forget about fat client software. The search engines enable a very toxic landscape otherwise.

<comment><USER47> Can you elaborate? This is really interesting.

Do you have any (basic?) license enforcement and anti-reversal protection in your code?

What do you mean by toxic search engine landscape?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> My sales are $2000/day, 7 days - I'm in my 15th year of business. 100% of my presence is automated (I do nothing day-to-day). The only advice I'm qualified to give, is how to succeed: don't listen to anyone elses advice: use your brain. It is 100% common sense - everyone elses opinions are uninformed and almost always from someone who doesn't really know. Nobody who has succeeded will willingly reveal how to succeed - they're too busy enjoying the fruits of success to waste the time. If you find someone who is willing to tell you, they are usually fake - the "telling you" part is a cog in whatever scam they're involved with (stock investment, bitcoins, realestate, whatever).

Read my lips:

COMMON SENSE.

And, no, I like my income. I'm not telling what I'm doing!

</comment><comment><USER74> I'm trying to do a business on the side (besides my full time job).

Currently i created a member management site on www.ledenboek.be/EN for sport clubs, i'm still improving this. But it's also a test for marketing and gaining clients.

Next up is Surveyor ( a email/sms marketing web application which i used myself (not public yet). I'm going to use it first for clients who ask me to create their website.

But the big one is a document management system, that is totally different from the existing onces. I already have interest have a company with +/\- 100 users and we are setting up a small demo in April there (ps. This will hit Hackernews in about 2-3 months)

</comment><comment><USER75> I am running inBoundio - [http://www.inboundio.com](http://www.inboundio.com) (I call it basecamp of marketing) and is the only guy so I do all the work.

I am really not that worried about slow growth or not making much money, I am enjoying what I am doing, works on average 6 hours a day and can spend rest of my time on learning new things and thinking about life and philosophy.

I started because I felt that market (and so do I) need such simplified software. Most of the options were too complicated and were very costly.

I will soon be touching 100 paying customers so will write a detailed post and share it on hackernews.

</comment><comment><USER76> I run [http://lsathacks.com](http://lsathacks.com), and have a related book series

I sell e-books on my site and through affiliates, and sell print books on amazon. All told I make around $3,000 a month in passive revenues. I also make $4000-$5000 more in tutoring revenues.

However, the site is fairly new (I just sold the books through affiliates/print previously). As I grow the site I expect I may be able to get over $10,000 per month passive.

The LSAT is an admission exam for American and Canadian law schools. My materials/lessons teach people how to do better on it.

</comment><comment><USER77> I own and operate [http://www.radioreference.com](http://www.radioreference.com) and [http://www.broadcastify.com](http://www.broadcastify.com). I do all the development, business management, and support.

I have a team of community volunteers that do a lot of day to day moderation and member management.

I got started simply building a set of community resources for the radio communications and hobbyist market.

We're very profitable and these businesses provide the majority of my family's income.

</comment><comment><USER78> I developed the Electrician Calculator Pro, a National Electrical Code compliant calculator for engineers, electricians, lighting designers, etc:

[http://www.electriciancalculator.com](http://www.electriciancalculator.com)

I first created the Android version about 3 years ago, then the iOS version about 1 year ago. It currently makes just enough to cover some bills, although I believe it has a greater potential. I'm currently looking for ways to make this a recurring revenue stream instead of a one time payment gig.

</comment><comment> T-A PierreA seems to be doing well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6934352)

</comment><comment><USER79> I run [https://xp-dev.com](https://xp-dev.com) and more recently [http://deployer.vc](http://deployer.vc) and [https://zoned.io](https://zoned.io) \- all as a solo. I am hiring now, have used freelancers for help over time, but generally it has been a solo effort.

Do tell if you have any specific questions, and I'll be more than happy to help out!

</comment><comment><USER80> Not sure if this counts. I have created a simple landing page open source project: [http://rails-landing-page.herokuapp.com/](http://rails-landing- page.herokuapp.com/)

I get a lot of consulting (development + design) business when clients learn about us via this application.

I also use it set up landing pages for any Startups/SMEs are developing their MVP/Beta application with me.

</comment><comment><USER81> I run a web design and development studio that is just myself, although I established it as an LLC, and have been successful with it. I focus on WordPress solutions and started it by just diving in head-first and work pretty hard at it. I have a marketing background which helped me get it off the ground quickly, and am good at managing time, which has helped. I totally love it.

</comment><comment><USER82> I've been running [http://www.vladstudio.com](http://www.vladstudio.com) (where I publish my wallpapers and other stuff) for several years, and for quite some time, it was my primary source of income. Unusual, because my premium accounts are not really a "product", but just a way to "like" or "donate".

</comment><comment><USER83> I think newsblur.com (YC S12) is run by Sam alone.

</comment><comment> waqas- hey. The good thing about a one man operation is that you dont have any overheads. I started my startup with 4 people, but later learned that one was enough to start off with and i should scale according to the profits im making - instead of putting my own money into it (which i didnt have much of anyway). My startups: ([http://opensource.com.pk](http://opensource.com.pk)) and ([http://sells.pk/](http://sells.pk/)) are web agencies specializing in different areas. The former provides managed freelance outsourcing for larger projects and the latter specialized in e commerce for small/medium businesses. The first few clients help you pay the bills and buy bread, but if you keep at it and be persistent after a year you will have more clients than you can handle, that is the time to get employees. I am almost reaching that point, and that is what excites me these days.

</comment><comment><USER84> For those who have successfully started a one-man online business/app, how did you get it known? Adwords? Advertising?

<comment><USER85> My own product spread virally. I think that is about the only feasible way to do it. I've tried advertising a few times myself, but it never, ever pays for itself.

<comment><USER86> > "I think that is about the only feasible way to do it."

It may be the only way to do it _very quickly._ Most companies don't just go viral on day 1, they work very hard to get customers. Some times advertising makes sense, other times it doesn't, but it's certainly not the only option.

<comment><USER85> I meant, it's the only feasible way to do it if you're a single founder with zero funding.

<comment><USER86> I still have to disagree. You don't have to look far (patio11's Bingo Card Creator) to find single-founder businesses that reached level of success without going viral. (I suppose this all depends on your definition of viral, too.)

<comment><USER85> Yes you're right - he seems to be using adsense to drive traffic. I guess if adsense didn't work for small businesses, google wouldn't be making the money they do :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Matthew Inman runs The Oatmeal ([http://theoatmeal.com/](http://theoatmeal.com/)) alone and he crossed $500,000 annual revenue in 2012.

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal)

</comment><comment><USER88> I run [http://www.fantasysp.com/](http://www.fantasysp.com/), which provides tools and services to help people manage their fantasy sports teams.

I started it because I wanted a faster way to get my player news... fast forward 7 years later and its a full fledged business.

<comment><USER89> Forgive me for asking, but what is your revenue model? (If you wouldn't mind sharing). Love the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> I run [http://flevy.com](http://flevy.com). It's a marketplace for premium business documents (e.g. business frameworks/methodologies, financial models, presentation templates, etc.). I do contract work out via odesk/elance from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER91> I run TSR Watermark Image software, a Windows Software (!) that people downloads and pay for once (!), it covers around 50% of my salary, the rest comes from consulting.

Working on other windows software, and working towards starting a SaaS app, blogging about it all :)

</comment><comment><USER92> [http://www.fleaflicker.com/](http://www.fleaflicker.com/) (A fantasy sports site.) Started solo, sold, bought back, now operates as a team of two but I am the sole technical member.

<comment><USER89> How do you generate revenue from this free service?

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> I ran Scribie. [http://scribie.com](http://scribie.com).

I started it in August 2008 and was the only person working on it for 5 years. In 2013 we established our first QA center and now we are around 20.

<comment><USER51> Wow this is very cool. This you actually do the transcribing, I'd imagine you outsource this, correct?

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> I run [http://www.graduatetutor.com/](http://www.graduatetutor.com/) myself. It is technically not one man because there are other independent tutors working with me too!

</comment><comment><USER95> Not my business, but www.DuckDuckGo.com (Gabriel Weinberg) is a good example.

<comment><USER18> DDG isn't a solo business, not anymore at least. They've got "11-50 employees" now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> I run a product search engine called Dotmic [http://www.dotmic.com/](http://www.dotmic.com/) .Recently we partnered with 60+ store and now we are profitable. :)

<comment><USER97> How do you market your site? Do you advertise (adwords perhaps)?

How do you get stores to partner with you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> I am running premium Ghost Blog marketplace [http://www.gtheme.io/](http://www.gtheme.io/)

I solo doing design, develop, marketing, as well as writing contents around Ghost.

<comment><USER99> What kind of traffic are you getting? What is the source of traffic?

I was contemplating something like but thought themeforest may be a better channel to sell.

How do you market the site?

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> I run [http://getreplied.com](http://getreplied.com)

It's a very simple app to help people get their email replied.

<comment><USER101> Hey,

So I just clicked on your app, and ended up "cancelling" when Google OAuth asked to manage my email address. The app then took me to a Django debug log. Looks like you are running the app with DEBUG=True. You might want to change that, so it would show a generic error message instead of providing me with all the view/template info!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> [http://albumedia.com](http://albumedia.com) Just a one-man show creating simple web and mobile apps.

</comment><comment><USER103> plentyoffish.com

</comment><comment><USER104> [http://www.writtalin.com/](http://www.writtalin.com/)

Content-based site.

</comment><comment><USER105> www.lawdingo.com is a single founder which is absolutely killing it

</comment><comment><USER106> I spent a number of years wasting time on IRC looking at and chatting to people about techincal issues, plus a bit of humourous banter. These days the all of my income comes from activities where IRC is the main means of communication.

<comment><USER107> You run botnets?

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> Since you didn't specify the type of business ( [http://www.dot-com- it.com](http://www.dot-com-it.com)) ; I run a consulting business as a programmer that is just me. In the 'early' days (I started in 1999) I sort of fell into it. I was burnt out and walked out of a job.

Networking got me 2 consulting client, and things just ballooned from there. I fell into it accidentally and learned a lot of hard lessons along the way.

In the early days I did a lot of fixed fee projects for small businesses. On some projects I made tons of income; and on other projects I put in a lot of unpaid time [due to me incorrectly bidding the project and/or improperly handling change requests.

I tried my hands at podcasting with a sponsorships model ( [http://www.theflexshow.com](http://www.theflexshow.com) ). That made ~$30K throughout its' life. Even though I had a huge audience for the size of the market, no one was trying to sell anything to that market. I make ~$30K or so throughout its run and gave away a bunch of sponsorship in exchange for other services. Not bad; but not enough to pay the bills.

I took the profits from the consulting business and pumped them into a product business selling advanced components to Flex developers ( [http://www.flextras.com](http://www.flextras.com) ). I did this full time, stopping all consulting. The business was, in essence, a failure. It generated $10K per year which is a nice side income; but not a "pay your bills income. The business was slowly growing, until some Adobe PR mishaps killed executive confidence in the Flash Player as an application development platform; which killed our sales. It was generating about $10K per year and was growing. But, that is not enough to pay the bills. I shut it down and open sourced all the code.

Now; I'm back to consulting, however the bulk of my clients right now are hourly as opposed to fixed fee. This is very profitable because many clients just keep renewing contracts and giving me work. However, it is the least bit satisfying because there is no defined end point and it feels like I'm just churning my wheels to kill time. Sometimes it feels like clients are creating just enough work to keep me busy so that I'll be there when they really need me.

Despite having multiple ongoing clients; it doesn't feel like I'm a business owner because they are paying for my time, explicitly. That isn't scalable in any way.

I'm prepping to launch a book under the Nathan Barry's "Authority" model which will teach Flex Developers how to program in AngularJS. More info at ( [http://www.lifeafterflex.com](http://www.lifeafterflex.com) ). People seem excited about this beyond anything I ever expected. I asked my newsletter if anyone was interested in reviewing a pre-release copy and I got 20+ responses which is a significantly higher response rate than usual. If the early interest is any indication; more people will read my book than ever bought a Flextras component.

I've also dabbled with a in Mobile Game ( [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.igorKn...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.igorKnots.magondaMaze) ), a recording studio (not online), and a CD duplication business (not online). All had varying levels of success.

<comment><USER59> Sounds like we are in the same boat, er, treadmill. I always want to develop more products because I don't scale.

<comment><USER108> Yep, exactly. Product Businesses are tricky these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> i run dealsextra.com.au

</comment><comment><USER110> You can have a successful online business with one-person, but there will always be a maximum to the amount of money you can make and it does not scale well.

I ran a 1-person company for the past 3 years (B2B SAAS). I now have 2 other partners in the company to pick up the slack and we will be hiring a few employees next month.

It's difficult to: maintain your current business (IE: new features, bug fixes, customer service) while at the same time, trying to get new business (marketing, new ideas, planning) and also have any kind of life outside the business.

You also won't be able to go on any kind of real vacation and time-off is challenging. I didn't think about these things at 20, but at 30, it's starting to become more and more important.

<comment><USER85> Actually, vacation / time off shouldn't be an issue. I've been doing this for 15 years and now my product runs like clockwork. Generally unless I'm doing new dev work, I only have a few support emails per day. As long as I go on vacation somewhere where I can at least have wifi in the evenings and mobile data during the day to occasionally check my email, it's not a problem. Also I regularly take long breaks during the day, or take days off to go on trips somewhere. I think you need to do this otherwise you'll be in danger of burning out.

It also helps to plan for the worst. Right now my slight concern is lack of RAID on my server. However I back up every day to a separate disk on the server (plus offsite downloads every couple of weeks), so in the worst case it will probably just take me an hour or two to get most things up and running on a new server. Obviously not the best thing to happen on vacation though :)

<comment><USER111> I was going to post something similar - I was able to take 3 months to travel overseas as a 1-person business, and the business didn't collapse or run into any calamities. I always had my laptop and answered customer emails every couple of days.

Maybe it's an issue if you're running a SAAS business. Instead my stuff is consumer downloadable software, so if there was a problem it was usually just a single customer, not my entire customer base at once.

<comment><USER85> Well my business has SAAS and downloadable software versions. However I've been refining it for 15 years, so it generally runs very smoothly unless I screw something up. I usually don't touch ANYTHING in the 1-week before I go on vacation, just in case I break something.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What makes Paris look like Paris? (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/12/194622-what-makes-paris-look-like-paris/fulltext <comment><USER2> Wow--didn't expect my old paper to re-surface in 2018.

Besides being a neat visualization, one remarkable thing (to me) is that this is one of the few computer vision tasks where the state-of-the-art is still the old hand-designed descriptors--specifically HOG. The attempts to re-do this work with deep learning haven't worked so well. The closest I know is [https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.06343](https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.06343) , which I've never even seen applied to cities. The problem is actually that deep nets have too much invariance: they can classify whether a facade is in Paris or not, but there's no easy way to separate out different kinds of facades.

If anyone has questions about this work, post below and I'll try to answer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anecdotally, after having lived in Paris for ~6 months, one of the most noticeable aspects of the city is its relative uniformity. Unlike Berlin, London, or Prague, you can wander for awhile in Paris and essentially see the same style of architecture and urban landscape repeated. It has something of an "endless" effect on your time perception.

<comment><USER4> That's because Paris is stuck in the 19th century with its Haussmannian style.

Usually a city lives and changes to adapt itself to its times, and Paris was no exception... Until the 19th century.

Now the local government wants to "preserve" it for the joy of tourists, to the detriments of locals. Housing is scarce causing high prices. Buildings are old and inconvenients.

Paris is a museum-city. Designed for tourists.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I can't agree, sorry. I'm not sure if you've lived in Paris or not, but these "it's a tourist city" comments almost always come from people that haven't lived there. There are dozens of incredible neighborhoods in Paris that have little-to-no tourist presence. It's akin to saying NYC is a tourist city because Times Square is a mess.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, the rules meant to preserve the Haussmanian parts beloved by tourists are applied uniformly throughout the city, even in those neighborhoods without tourists which you mention.

There were deviations from the rules throughout the ages, especially on the left bank with the newer, taller towers (Place d'Italie, Montparnasse, Berges de Seine). But these deviations were always one off, pushed through by an ambitious leader that burned off a lot of political capital.

<comment><USER6> To build taller buildings, you would need much wider streets than what you have now, unless you want half of the city to be in a permanent shadow. This would not solve the housing issue. The density of Paris is close to the maximum possible already.

<comment><USER7> What's the point of building taller if you just increase the street width so total livable area per ground area is the same? That's nonsensical. Of course people will have to live with shadow. It's the only way to increase density (unless you want people to live in basements).

<comment><USER6> I don't know if you have been to Paris but the streets are VERY small, if you would build skyscraper, it would not be livable at all. Additionally, you need extra land for the foundation of the skyscraper (very very difficult to get in a crowded city like Paris. The point of the skyscraper is that it's cheaper for the company building it, it only makes sense in that aspect.

<comment><USER7> Eh, no. Skyscrapers are not cheap. The cheapest thing you can build is sprawling low-rise.

Some streets in Paris are narrow, others aren't. Streets with two-way road traffic are wide enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always been amazed at how at the epicenter of a large city or event there are many normal looking things that contribute subtly or inadvertently to the overall awe. It's not like everything in Times Square is magical, yet the sum of them is.

I wonder how many of these more ordinary objects or store fronts you could remove and still keep the aesthetic wonder of the place. Take out the garbage cans, the street lights, the cross walks, bring the buildings a little closer together or father apart. At what point does it's quality simply change?

<comment><USER9> > This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred > years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has > required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of > the ornamentation... but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my > family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty > good axe, y'know. Pretty good.

Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant (Discworld, #24; City Watch, #5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a way to test the validity of their result. Go to figure 6 of the paper, in which they have a set of "Extracted Visual Elements" for each city. Cover the captions under each set, then see if you can pick the city. If their results are valid, shouldn't the essence of the city be in their selected photos, allowing a person to identify the city by looking at them?

I picked London, but none of the others (which might just reflect my lack of knowledge of each city). What do others see in figure 6?

<comment><USER11> There's no reason for a human to be as good as the machine, even though it seems like a very human task. Maybe you can use the results as input to get better at that task yourself?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can this type of software be used the other way around, to turn any picture of some building into a picture of that building _in Paris_?

That's an effect I've seen with many deep learning things but that I don't understand.

<comment><USER2> The closest I'm aware of is this: [http://papers.nips.cc/paper/6650-toward- multimodal-image-to-...](http://papers.nips.cc/paper/6650-toward-multimodal- image-to-image-translation)

However, it requires rectified, segmented training data, unlike the above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure Paris _does_ look like Paris. It's quite famous for being a let down: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome)

<comment><USER14> "From the estimated six million yearly visitors, [...]around 20 Japanese tourists a year are affected by the syndrome"

With 0.0003% of people being affected, I'd argue that this so called "symptom" is hardly a noteworthy phenomenon.

<comment><USER13> The syndrome - with panic attacks etc - is the most severe response. Most people I know who've been to Paris with high or romantic expectations just get scammed, spat on, yelled at or robbed and feel a bit disappointed.

<comment><USER15> I've been to Paris a few times and when people tell me they want to go there for romantic reasons, I just tell them to go to Bruges instead. The Old Town of Bruges is exactly the way most people seem to imagine Paris: old buildings, reasonably clean, lots of street cafés and horse-drawn carriages.

Even the Eiffel tower looks better from a distance than close-up (mostly because it's really just a massive lump of steel). There are nice corners in Paris but if you haven't actually ever been to Paris before, you'll probably be disappointed by the overall experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mansard roofs. It's the mansard roofs. I never noticed them until i moved into a flat (not in Paris) which is in a mansard roof, and now i'm hyper-aware of them. Paris has them everywhere, and even has multi-storey ones, which are very rare in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the smell of Paris is very unique

<comment><USER18> The smell of Edinburgh is even more so for me, mostly due to breweries I think.

<comment><USER19> Depends which way the wind is blowing, if you're lucky it's from the brewery or distillery, sometimes you get the meat processing plant which isn't so pleasant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Although that publication says 2015, this work goes back to at least 2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4374542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4374542).

</comment><comment><USER21> Well, it isn't called the French curve without reason.</comment>


The five extra words that can fix the Second Amendment (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-five-extra-words-that-can-fix-the-second-amendment/2014/04/11/f8a19578-b8fa-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html <comment><USER2> Oh, ok. So we'll hand in all our guns, and when it's time for the militia to be called up again (forgetting the fact that all able bodied men are already members of the militia), our government is going to pass out AR-15s, then take them away again when we're done fending off the threat? The main threat that was intended by the Second Amendment, our own government?

<comment><USER3> No, it was enacted to appease The South to keep slaves from rising up. [http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second- amendmen...](http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment- was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery)

<comment><USER4> so I'll just throw the Bullshit flag right there... It is true that upon adoption, the 2nd did not apply to slaves. It only applied to 'citizens' and as slaves were not considered citizens, it did not apply to them.

however: aside from your slanted attempt to start a racial issue re: the second, there are other, more pressing backing and reasons.

A. The Federalist Papers, No. 28: Alexander Hamilton expressed that when a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government.[Halbrook, p. 67]

B. The Federalist Papers, No. 29: Alexander Hamilton explained that an armed citizenry was the best and only real defense against a standing army becoming large and oppressive. [Halbrook, p. 67]

C. The Federalist Papers, No. 46: James Madison contended that ultimate authority resides in the people, and that if the federal government got too powerful and overstepped its authority, then the people would develop plans of resistance and resort to arms. [Halbrook, p. 67]

E. The Federalists promised that state governments and citizen militias would exist to make sure the federal military never became large or oppressive. To say that the National Guard replaces the notion of the militia runs contrary to what the Founders said and wrote.

F.John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1690) aimed at reforming Britain's monarchy and parliamentary system and limiting the power of government, and profoundly influenced the Founders and all Western Civilization. John Locke explained that civil government properly exists to more effectively protect the rights that all individuals have in the "state of nature." The individuals have the rights to life, liberty, and property. They give civil government the power over themselves only to the extent that it better protects those rights. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, specifically declared that the ideas of John Locke's Second Treatise were "generally approved by the citizens of the United States."Jefferson mandated that Locke's Second Treatise be taught in the University of Virginia.

Also, feel free to look at other sites that may not align to your political echo-chamber. You may find it gives you a more complete point of view.

[http://rare.us/story/when-black-americans-used-the-second- am...](http://rare.us/story/when-black-americans-used-the-second-amendment-to- fight-the-ku-klux-klan/)

[http://constitutioncenter.org/interactive- constitution/amend...](http://constitutioncenter.org/interactive- constitution/amendments/amendment-ii)

<comment><USER5> People always bring up defense against the evil gov't. I'd be interested to see how effective some guns are going to be against tanks, nukes, drones, etc. Just seems like more alarmist bullshit to justify owning guns. However, I'm not against gun ownership — I'm only against lack of regulations so any crazy nut can buy a gun at their whim and go massacre people.

<comment><USER4> Have you ever looked up the FP-45 Liberator? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator)

Small arms are used to take out troops and gain THEIR arms, therefore gaining larger and more powerful weapons. Thats a basic military tactic when facing a larger, better armed force.

What 'regulation' would you suggest that 1.) does not deprive people of their right to own a gun and 2.) can be applied to everyone evenly? and at what point does ANYONE have to deny the right of self-defense?

there is none, because there will ALWAYS be some group of people who would be adversely affected & denied the right by no fault of their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hanging on the militia argument is actually a little bit dangerous. What happens if a state, say Texas, were to pass a law inducting every able bodied adult into "the militia" (for some definition of militia, and some definition of regulated). Would that bypass all federal restrictions on firearms?</comment>


Benchmarks of Amazon's Graviton2 64-Core CPU Against AMD's EPYC 7742 - <AUTHOR> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=epyc-vs-graviton2&num=1 <comment><USER2> The long term effects of this are substantial. So long as Graviton performance is within 10-20% Amazon will get a Cloud pricing advantage that is unparalleled. The will have an unmatched TCO. Cloud providers are probably watching closely. If Microsoft is serious about cloud it will be making plays in this space.

<comment><USER3> Will they really get much cloud pricing advantage?

Cloud compute is extremely expensive compared to bare metal hosting. That would suggest that cpu cost is not a leading factor in their pricing decisions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cloud computing is expensive compared to bare metal for sustained workloads. If you have a bursty load, you'll need to provision metal for the bursts that'll lay idle the rest of the time. On average, cloud will be cheaper.

<comment><USER3> I disagree that cloud would be cheaper on average. Unless the burstiness is very, very bursty. And even in that case, you are going to need a lot of special stuff in place in the cloud to handle huge bursts since few cloud service actually scale automatically.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DayScore: simple tool to graph your productivity - <AUTHOR> http://ukoki.com/post/32638044434/hacking-life-with-dayscore

<comment><USER2> That is downright awesome! I love that it created a page for me right away so I didn't have to register.</comment>


Review my prototype for Bucket of Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.bucketofcloud.com/vid.html

<comment><USER2> In the video, you really just jump right in, and don't do any explaining of what a WYSIWYG site creation tool is or allows you to do. Do some selling! Explain what makes your service so awesome, sets it apart, etc. I watched for awhile and all I saw were some boring text blocks moving around. Also, use a larger video so your visitors can actually see what you're doing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Even if this turns into a big flop and appears to be a waste, I have worked so hard, learned an incredible amount of useful information, and truly had a lot of fun. Why didn't I try to make something sooner in life??</comment>


Lee Sedol defeats AlphaGo in masterful comeback – Game 4 analysis - <AUTHOR> https://gogameguru.com/lee-sedol-defeats-alphago-masterful-comeback-game-4/ <comment><USER2> Earlier, with detailed discussion on why the "masterful" bit is a bit exaggerated: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11276798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11276798)

In short: The strategy is not "win the game", but "exploit the machine to cause a bug".

<comment><USER3> Seems unfair to say that he only won because there was a bug. You could equally say that the player lost because a bug in his brain caused him to not see the proper move. Stress will cause a lot of players to make mistakes, which in my mind it's a bug of our brain.</comment></comment>


Things You Can Do That Will Make You Happier - <AUTHOR> http://www.social-consciousness.com/2013/10/ten-simple-things-you-can-do-today-that-will-make-you-happier-backed-by-science.html <comment><USER2> It really bugs me that people can rip content wholesale from someone else's blog, add a tiny attribution at the bottom, and consider it fair game.

For reference, this is actually a Buffer blog post: [http://blog.bufferapp.com/10-scientifically-proven-ways- to-m...](http://blog.bufferapp.com/10-scientifically-proven-ways-to-make- yourself-happier)

<comment><USER3> And how about that bullshit that gets copied into my clipboard when I then try to copy and paste a section? I was trying to do a simple temperature conversation from the celcius temp mentioned in the article, and this is what went into my search bar:

"13.9°C Read more at: [http://www.soxxxxonsciousness.com/2013/10/ten-simple- things-...](http://www.soxxxxonsciousness.com/2013/10/ten-simple-things-you- can-do-today-that-will-make-you-happier-backed-by-science.html) Follow us on Facebook: [http://www.facebook.com/Soxxxonsciousness"](http://www.facebook.com/Soxxxonsciousness")

Edit: Broke the links so that no one would accidentally give them more views.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the long commute tip is accurate overall, however can be mitigated. Before going back to grad school, my job required a long commute (easily 60 minutes each way). Getting up early bothered me, but the drive to work was fine as local radio morning shows were pretty good (though over the course of only 4 years of this commute, schedules changed removing 3 nationally syndicated shows, and 2 local shows before just setting on NPR...FM radio seems to be a cruel world). However, driving home was the worst...just the worst, even when listening to music off of my mp3 player, if i was running late to leave by even a few minutes the commute home could take an extra 15. I was much more stressed at the end of each day just from driving, and by the time i made and ate dinner i'd only really have ~2 hours to relax before having to go to bed to get up and start again. The unhappiness timeline:

\- Stress turned into a general depression that my weekdays were robotic (sleep, wake, drive, work, drive, eat, sleep)

\- I found myself becoming a more aggressive driver (more stress = wanting to get home faster)

\- My general attitude was changing for the worse

\- I started to alienate my significant other

A friend suggested i read a book for some reason and i picked up the audio copy to kill some time on the drive home. This turned out to be a life changer. Instead of focusing on getting home as soon as i could, i was relaxing on my drive. Happiness timeline:

\- I found myself sitting in my driveway to hear the end of a chapter

\- Getting home didn't mean i needed to retreat to the study for time to unwind

\- I started driving slower and less aggressive (even letting people cut me off, etc)

\- My relationship with my SO improved

\- I felt smarter. My usual reading list is text book chapters to better understand a concept, but i really felt like i was a generally smarter person by including non-fiction.

\- Most important is that i didn't feel like i was wasting time. Driving became a hobby in some sense, as opposed to a delay of when i can start/end my day.

By the end of my tenure i sometimes looked forward to my commute, only so i could keep listening. Of course audio books may not be your game, but the thesis is that if you find some way to make you feel like you're not wasting your time then you'll most likely not mind the commute (for example, my mom calls her mother, my grandmother, everyday on the commute home).

<comment><USER5> If you like singing, your commute is an _awesome_ time to practice. Make a mix of some challenging/fun sing-along songs and just go for it.

And like so many things, if you sing for an hour a day (30 minutes each way!) you will get a LOT better at it.

<comment><USER6> Just, please not on public transportation!

<comment><USER7> There was a guy at London Bridge Station last week singing show tunes at the top of his voice. Not sure if it was an undercover camera show or a mental health issue.

<comment><USER8> why just those two options? someone singing out loud might just be happy, not mentally ill. It's not a term I use lightly in the UK: see the mental health act.

<comment><USER7> I'm not judging, but London is full of "vulnerable" people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Brain-scan heatmaps are such pseudoscientific rubbish in this context. Am I supposed to be happier with an active brain like the one pictured after exercise? or with a quiet brain like that one pictured after meditation?

</comment><comment><USER10> I grew up in a small town and was never bothered by driving around. In fact, I enjoyed it. I liked driving to and from high school.

Now that I live in a big city and the traffic is exponentially worse, I find I hate driving. This is just me, of course, but my driving experience is completely ruined in big cities most of the time. I can never quite get used to how aggressively people drive and just how bad the traffic can become. The city I'm in also has almost no public transportation.

It's not the time that bothers me. It's the manual driving and dealing with traffic. I spent a semester in Russia while in college and had about a 30 minute commute to class via the metro and I was never bothered by the time involved at all. I hardly even noticed the impact of the time spent commuting, though I admit that might have been influenced somewhat by the perpetual feeling of magic one experiences when studying abroad.

Anyway, in my case I decided to just rent an apartment in walking distance of the office and it was one of the best decisions I've made. If you're the sort of person who doesn't mind fighting traffic twice a day, I'm actually jealous of you--I could get a full house for the cost of my apartment if I moved to a suburb.

</comment><comment><USER11> >> Move closer to work – a short commute is worth more than a big house

Ah yes, a simple thing I can accomplish today!

<comment><USER12> Some would even argue that on a daily timescale, the act of commuting _is_ moving closer to work...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1\. Exercise more – 7 minutes might be enough

2\. Sleep more – you'll be less sensitive to negative emotions

3\. Move closer to work – a short commute is worth more than a big house

4\. Spend time with friends and family – don't regret it on your deathbed

5\. Go outside – happiness is maximized at 13.9°C (57°F)

6\. Help others – 100 hours a year is the magical number

7\. Practice smiling – it can alleviate pain

8\. Plan a trip – but don't take one

9\. Meditate – rewire your brain for happiness

10\. Practice gratitude – increase both happiness and life satisfaction

</comment><comment><USER14> The short commute is nice, for sure, but you can't just uproot and move at the drop of a hat. There's a (not so) secret trick I use to deal with my long commute: public transportation. I live about 30 miles from my work in the city center and there's a commuter bus park and ride that cuts out my need to drive entirely. The benefits I've found so far:

\- I save a ton of money I'd otherwise be spending on gas.

\- By not having to worry about actually driving in traffic, I've found that I'm not stressed and in a bad mood by the time I get to work.

\- I have time to myself to read, work on side projects, or take a quick nap.

\- I stay on a consistent work schedule

\- I get regular morning exercise by walking from the downtown bus stop to and from my office about 5 blocks away

When I tell people I take the bus, they're usually surprised and tend to ask "Well...how much longer does that take?". The response is always the same: "The same amount of time it would take to drive, only I don't pay for gas and I'm not stressed by traffic". Honestly, I'd recommend it to anyone.

<comment><USER15> Getting a near-by-bus job in your field isn't necessarily a drop of a hat thing either, although generally still easier than moving. I've been in the position of choosing a half hour drive or a two hour bus ride -- from experience I prefer the former.

This is partly up to differing values as well: Not all side projects are bus- portable, and for myself a consistent work schedule is a drawback. I'm also fortunate enough to covet few physical possessions, making moving easier for me than others, although it still took me a year to get around to moving right next to my current workplace.

Similarly, some people find some physical work vs personal life separation to be important, to better do the same separation emotionally -- they would find my 60 seconds by normal walking pace commute intolerably close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _3\. Move closer to work – a short commute is worth more than a big house_

I disagree with this one. It's possible to live _too_ close to work. If the commute is less than 15 minutes or so, or perhaps more to the point, if it isn't far enough to _feel_ like a separate place, I'm less happy. I need the separation.

I've experienced this both in college — I was happier when I moved across the river from most of my classes and classmates — and recently at a job, where it was about a 7 minute bike ride to work. You'd think that's ideal, but I felt trapped, like my home was nothing but an extension of the office.

One of my happiest times, in fact, was when I had an 11 mile bike commute (or an hour and 15 minutes on two trains). It wasn't very practical, and was logistically difficult (and I was often late), but I felt amazing.

I've never owned a car, though, so maybe the guideline about shorter commutes is correct if you drive. I've always either walked, biked (exercise) or taken the train (opportunity to read, meditate, relax).

<comment><USER17> >> I disagree with this one. It's possible to live too close to work. If the commute is less than 15 minutes or so, or perhaps more to the point, if it isn't far enough to feel like a separate place, I'm less happy. I need the separation.

I totally agree with this. I once lived a 20 minute walk from work and that was great. When I moved closer and as a 2-3 minute walk I really didn't like it. I'm not too sure why, possibly it didn't give my brain time to adjust to the two modes.

The brain 'down time' is quite enjoyable and very important to forming thoughts and plans I think.

<comment><USER18> Even if there is a route that takes 2-3 minutes to walk, what is to stop you deliberately taking a longer route?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A little bit related, but taking public transport has improved my life quite a bit. I now have 25 minutes a day where I do nothing but read. It's been terrific.

</comment><comment><USER20> Lukeprog wrote a great and well researched blog post on being happy:

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Sleep more – you'll be less sensitive to negative emotions

For individuals with depression that might not be the case: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Treatment_for...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Treatment_for_depression)

<comment><USER22> As someone with depression, lack of sleep is pretty much a symptom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Plan a trip – but don't take one"

Advice like that makes me doubt the science a bit. As well as the famous result that people are happier without children. It's certainly interesting to measure such things and ponder what it means, but perhaps the results should make them wonder if they have been measuring the wrong thing.

Dan Ariely pointed out that for example mountaineering seems to be all misery, but people seek out the experience again and again. I wouldn't be surprised that with their technology, the happiness researchers would conclude that mountaineering does not bring happiness at all. Like if they ping the mountaineer every ten minutes to ask "how happy are you right now on a scale of 1 to 10" all they would see might be misery.

Also Nassim Taleb noted in "antifragile" that a happiness researcher he knows who is famous for the "more money doesn't bring more happiness" result is himself very keen on being paid well for his speaking gigs.

</comment><comment><USER24> Some hits, some misses

Obvious miss - "8\. Plan a trip – but don't take one" ??

"Don't regret it on your deathbed" \- this is a lame feel good idea that directly contradicts most theory.

Live in the moment not (totally) for the future, aka your death bed. You're alive today, live now.

What makes you happy on your death bed doesn't make you happy today.

The point goes on to make a kinda miss. Friends top family for happiness and are more commonly what people have more control over.

<comment><USER25> > Obvious miss - "8\. Plan a trip – but don't take one" ??

The "but don't take one" part seems unfounded. This is closer to the point:

"One study found that people who just thought about watching their favorite movie actually raised their endorphin levels by 27 percent."

I've found myself feeling good just thinking about something fun or exciting I plan to do. Little things, even just a particularly interesting book I was going to read. Or thinking about parts of a fun side project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It is not clear that exercise is an effective treatment for depression.

[http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004366/exercise-for- depressi...](http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004366/exercise-for-depression)

> Exercise is moderately more effective than no therapy for reducing symptoms > of depression.

> Exercise is no more effective than antidepressants for reducing symptoms of > depression, although this conclusion is based on a small number of studies.

> Exercise is no more effective than psychological therapies for reducing > symptoms of depression, although this conclusion is based on small number of > studies.

> The reviewers also note that when only high-quality studies were included, > the difference between exercise and no therapy is less conclusive.

> Attendance rates for exercise treatments ranged from 50% to 100%.

> The evidence about whether exercise for depression improves quality of life > is inconclusive.

EDIT: Exercise is good. Don't stop exercising. But don't tell people that exercise alone is a treatment for depression.

<comment><USER27> Had it been, I'd have known by now, but it does help, especially I'd say long runs (>10km).

Interestingly, while sleep depravity makes me more irritable and more prone to feel anger as the article says, it also increases my positive emotions by a substantial amount, purely anecdotal of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "as we get older, particularly past middle age, we tend to grow happier naturally." Sounds like literal survivorship bias.

<comment><USER29> Indeed. I have the theory of middle aged madness. Around that point in life the responsibilities are huge and stress mounts up. Kids, career, mortgage, and so on. Loads of things seems like threats to all that, and the middle aged get all finger pointy and scared. Once you get past that, as you say, you survived and relax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What is happiness? There are hundreds of things that count as happiness. Release of endorphins? Connection with others? Work/life balance? Sense of purpose? Sense of community? Satisfaction? Calmness? Serenity? Being in the zone? Joy? I tend to use happiness as a catch-all word for positive experiences.

</comment><comment><USER31> Actually commuting with the bicycle makes me more happy. Because it combines several of his positive points (exercise, be outside etc.) and avoids the stress of driving a car in heavy traffic.

</comment><comment><USER32> In my opinion the most important thing you can do for happiness is to have purpose. If you don't have a cause you are willing to dedicate your life to, something that you will give it your all to see realized, then you are not really living, you are just surviving, and when you reflect upon your life you'll feel emptiness.

</comment><comment><USER33> 10\. Practice gratitude – increase both happiness and life satisfaction

This is true. A lot of us ungrateful in life sometimes and we forgot the little things like family, friends and having some basic things we need in life to survive.

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://i.imgur.com/5Tzwgtb.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/5Tzwgtb.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER35> Stop reading HN and go outside :)

</comment><comment><USER36> glad to see meditation on the list - adding it to may daily routine has had a subtle yet profound impact on the quality of my life.

<comment><USER33> I've always wanted to try this any tips?

<comment><USER37> Find a good set of audio tracks (I like bodhipaksa, but there are many) and set aside some time.

Even if it doesn't seem to have much effect on the first try, keep going, it takes time to learn.

The key is that you're learning a new skill, like running, catching a ball, or riding a bike. When you learn those sorts of things you create a mostly sub- conscious mental association between certain triggers and the response to them. When you learn to meditate you create an association between some sort of trigger and a state of relaxation. The trigger can be anything, often people use a combination of posture and some sort of chant to help. For myself it tends to be some combo of breathing out and relaxing my shoulders.

You can use the same technique to tap into other mental states but it may be more difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> HN today seems all brain trainy and happinessy..</comment>