$100,000 Revenues in last 12 months - wow | Hacker News Reader

$100,000 Revenues in last 12 months - wow

startupdesi.com

85 pointsnhebb35 comments

Hmm... I may be blind or crazy, but I had to actually use your search function on your excel site ( http://chandoo.org ) for "excel school" to find the actual product that is bringing you the most revenue!

Here is the sign up page for those of you that are curious: http://chandoo.org/wp/excel-school/

Call me crazy, but shouldn't you make that prominent somewhere on your homepage and each article... or am I missing something? (again, I could be completely blind or missing it, but if I am missing it... that's still an issue for your highest generating product)

I have a feeling that what seems to be almost a secret (the school) on your site which is generating the majority of your $100,000 could be GREATLY increased with higher visibility of the school. If my assumptions are correct and you implement my suggestion (which anyone here probably would), let us know when you hit $500k -- I have a feeling in 6 months.

You are right and wrong. Not many people go to that page. My home page is http://chandoo.org/wp/ where most of my readers and search audience end up. And I open Excel School once every three months. I am doing this as it gives me opportunity to spend time with students and learn / teach better.

You would see lot more links and publicity the next time it opens.

I will also be editing the home page HTML to add link ES and other product pages. Thanks for your suggestion.

"I think the market where I operate (Microsoft Excel users) will change drastically in the next 10 years." . . . "What I am doing for living will be obsolete by then."

Who is going to train all your customers in these new technologies they're going to move away to? Grow your business as much as you can before Excel becomes obsolete but that point doesn't need to coincide with your business becoming obsolete.

I agree. If you read my thoughts under "sustainability", this is what I talk about.

"I love spending time with my customers and community and learning new things. I like teaching and enjoy writing. I also want my business to have meaningful social presence. There is tremendous scope for doing all this while making decent money ($100k-$200k per year). While technologies may change, I can adopt and continue to be passionate about data, analytics, visualization in future and share what I learn with my audience. This is more sustainable."

And this is what I am going to do

I love Excel and wish more people would actually spend the time to learn the nuts and bolts behind it. Most people think of it as a band-aid solution used by people who don't know databases but to me doing things without coding using Excel's built-in functions is like those 1k/5k competitions - how much can you do with so little?

Here's my favorite problem that I'd like someone else to take a stab at:

Sheet1:A1-A999 (source) is an unsorted list of alphanumeric strings, with lots of repeats. Without using macros/VBA/scripting code, put all the unique strings in Sheet2:A1-A### (destination) such that any changes in source list is reflected in the destination automatically (auto calculate option is enabled). Destination list should have no more than 1 blank row. You cannot use any sorting/grouping functions manually. It has to be completely automatic. I want to delete the entire source worksheet, paste 399 items, insert 400 more, paste in another 300, and delete 100 of the rows randomly, and when I switch to the destination, it should have my list ready.

Bonus points if the destination list is sorted. Double bonus if you don't use any {array} functions.

Hint: You would be using functions like VLOOKUP/MATCH/ADDRESS/INDIRECT and similar.

So why is a problem like this useful? Because if destination is generated completely dynamically using items from the source, you can pull in dynamic web data into the source and have your Excel work reliably even if macros/scripting are disabled. Also, you can have users log in manual data into the source and you can generate the summary of their data in the destination without having to rely on any code or external service.

> I love Excel and wish more people would actually spend the time to learn the nuts and bolts behind it. Most people think of it as a band-aid solution used by people who don't know databases

Excel is a powerful tool and it is super useful when you use it within its domain.

At the same time it is used as a band-aid solution by those who don't know how to use a database. I recently had a fellow employee come and ask me if I knew how to expand excel beyond the 70,000 row limit. After asking him a few questions I came to the conclusion that his issue was not that excel doesn't support more than 70,000 rows but he needed a database and wasn't using one.

What was the reason you thought he needed a database?

To support more rows than 70000?

That isn't the case with xslx files. Only the old binary xls files have that problem.

  Excel 2007+ ------- 1,048,576 x 16,384 (rows x columns)
  Excel old-2003 ----    65,536 x    256

Excel formation and consulting looks like an interesting niche. It is really business oriented, quite large, with a lot of people probably willing to improve. How did you reached your initial customers ?

This very good start seems to prove it. I wish you good luck.

I have been writing about Excel for last 3 years at my blog - http://chandoo.org/wp/ Once the blog gained momentum, naturally I made it a business by offering few products and training programs.I use my blog as sole marketing platform for finding new customers and convert existing readers to customers (apart from offering kickass content...)

Great job! You found a niche and ran with it.

So really, this result has been 3 years in the making, not just 1 year since you launched your product.

Congratulations! Love to hear such great stories. Well earned.

And that's $100,000 for someone in India, right?

I wonder what the relative purchasing power of that $100k is for his part of India, compared to, say, someone with $100k in San Francisco.

I guess around x10

More like 4x-6x depending on what kind of goods you consume regularly. Source: personal estimate from last year.

4x-6x sound about right.

Also: "Ask HN: Cost of living across the world" - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1778185

Thats just the revenue, surely there are some costs that offset that number. Still quite nice.

$100k has roughly 5x ppp in India.

And yes, you are right. 100k is revenues. Costs are there. Mainly rent, affiliate commissions, blog hosting expenses, site maintenance, outsourcing fees (to contractors). While I do not have audited figures yet, the expenses should be less than 20% of revenues. May be even less.

If you would take a salary fit to live on (for some value of fit!) what would the numbers look like?

There doesn't seem to be a link to excel school on this page.

Its here - http://chandoo.org/wp/excel-school/

And people say startups don't lead anywhere in India. Great going!

Nice! It's great to see the entrepreneurial virus run across the earth to every country like this. Chandoo is a nice business and I am sure you can adapt it to the new tools that emerge after Excel. Won't there always be a need for some sort of tabulator like Excel? Do Google docs accept most of the same formulas and charting logic from the most advanced worksheets?

Google docs, zoho and office web apps provide most of Excel's basic functionality. I am sure they will evolve to be more usable, functional during next 5 years.

This shows how you get an idea in your mind, think of it, apply it and stick to making it successful. Then read HN and some entrepreneurial blogs, get the idea of monetizing your audience, launch a better product, charge for it and make good enough not to take a job.

Congrats and good luck!

so what exactly does this business do .. online training ?

yes, online training is one part of what I do. This itself is quite big market with lots of potential. I have a set of excel templates for project management that I sell thru my site. These are my main products.

You are an inspiration specially for budding 1 person entrepreneurs in India like me. :) Good luck !!

Congrats Chandoo. This is a gr8t achievement. Interested in breakdown of type of customers (Students, Small Business Owners, Financial Consultants etc)?

Very impressive. Congratulations on the growth.

I'd also like to add that chandoo.org loads very quickly. Nice work.

Amazing stuff. Good Luck!!

Thank you...

Awesome!

Dude, way to rock a "boring" business helping people with a real, everyday problem instead of trying to boil the ocean. Congratulations on your success -- you deserve it! (Especially because you don't seem like the type to sit on your laurels. Well done.)

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