How I Built a $5k/mo Side Project in 5 Months | Hacker News Reader

How I Built a $5k/mo Side Project in 5 Months

getsimpledata.com

89 pointsmike247724 comments

I have really mixed feelings.

On one hand, I want to congratulate them on getting their dream....on the other hand, as someone who regularly has to tell the receptionist to screen my calls....

Yeah. This is really a tool to collect prospects to spam and cold call. I'm sure it will last the OP awhile, possibly it'll be a project that survives forever with different data sources, but at the end of the day "lead generation" is really just a way to collect people's information to pester them. This sort of marketing is, frankly, invasive and for every person you get from this...you've also likely convinced a dozen or more people never to have anything to do with you.

Some people want to be contacted. If I need something and you have it, I'd much rather you contacted me than I spend hours searching for it.

That's the point of targeted email/communications: don't waste time contacting people who don't want what you're selling.

Yet, oddly, of the hundreds of people that contact me this way a year...

0 of them have something I want to buy.

hahahah this comment is absurd

How so?

> Our team scrapes the web

> Once we identify your ideal prospect we'll search LinkedIn and our internal database for prospects that match your ideal customer profile.

> First name

> Last name

> Email address

> Company name

> Job title

> Company phone number

> Company address (including street, state, zip code and country)

For a $1/person.

This is purely for cold calling/emails.

I found each point illuminating; this one stood out, for me, as a good description of market positioning: "When you hear Volvo what comes to mind? Scandanavians, but more importantly you probably think “Safe car.” How about Honda? Odds are “Reliable car” came to mind. This is the basic idea of positioning. What comes to mind when people hear {company name}?"

Thanks iokevins! Glad that was useful :)

Congratulations, this is great.

"Whether you’re working on a startup, side project or contributing to a larger company, the place where you work should be a place where you go to grow, interact with people, and have fun. It should never be a place where you derive unhealthy stress, anxiety or fear. "

Good perspective as well, hopefully once your side project grows into a real company you'll recall this line for your own employees.

Somewhere between 80-99% of people do not have that luxury.

Great point, metalliqaz! Definitely something I think about a lot. I don't intend to suggest that everyone in the world should be doing this. I realize that's not possible. But for those who do have the opportunity I encourage them to.

All the more reason the rest of us starting businesses should consider it a goal.

Is the statistic that 90% of small buinsses fail? Odds are even worse, for even more effort.

100% of us die. Why bother doing anything at all, then?

Thanks theworstshill! I absolutely plan on keeping this cultural value as the company grows!

Great read.

I found it very interesting in how this might scale for you. Is it possible to continuously source, say 2000 leads/month for your clients?

Some further questions.

1. What process do you go through to both source the contacts, and to verify their quality (e.g UpWork team to scrape etc.)

2. Have you any feedback on how successful this has been for clients (e.g response rates)

Good luck with this, and really hope it works for you.

That whole post is duplicated about five times - in entirety - in various <meta> tags. Kinda weird.

The email he sent to the founder of Growth Geeks also appears to be missing (after this sentence: "After receiving a couple marketing emails from the company I sent this email to the founder:")

Hey Pavel, the author here -- thanks for catching that! What do you mean by the meta tags?

View the source of your blog post, and ctrl-f for (e.g.) "Monetize your brain" - you'll see that there's a bunch of meta tags in your <head> where the entire blog post is duplicated.

I'm kind of assuming that whatever blog engine/templating system you're using just copies the entire blog post into those.

Passive income is the epitome of privilege.

Do you mean this how-to guide probably isn't useful?

Maybe it's that I'm not confident enough, but "First, find a skill of yours you can monetize..." sounds an awful lot like "First, find oil in your backyard...".

I like what the author wrote about the subsequent advice -- pick a niche, go with established competitoin, etc -- but it still feels like it's meant for someone who has found the thing they do which is Special, and I don't yet feel that yet about myself.

If you have a job and get paid for it then you already have a skill that you are monetising, just as active income.

Exactly. People who've always been employees often forget that they're actually being paid for doing something very special that brings value to the company. And that this value has a cost, which is why they're been paid in the first place. Not because your boss likes you, or that you've got a great resume.

I would recommend everyone to spend some time freelancing, even on the side. It completely changes your relation to your work and your client/boss. In a very positive way ( less thinking about affect, more about skills and value).

gknoy thanks for commenting! i bet you have a talent that you can turn into a business. it's not always the most obvious thing and sometimes it takes some searching. shoot me an email at michael@getsimpledata.com if you want to chat about it!

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