Comment by snoonan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snoonan | Hacker News Reader

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This is not accurate. A lot of people fail, that's true. So do a lot of people drop out of CS programs and never achieve their goal of becoming a lawyer or doctor.

On the "all the stories" part, there are a couple of things here worth teasoing out. First, it is worth separating out the information marketers, affiliate marketers and SaaS, etc. They're different businesses. Second, the public success stories go through a spin cycle, but there are many more quiet successes that never get above the radar. Why? Niches are small and take a single human's effort to capture. No need to publicize that you're pulling in $300k/yr doing this specific thing in this specific way 1000 other people here could do. Many are a winner take all and you'd have to be a complete idiot to share. That's like posting your credit card number on the web. I am not going to tell anyone here what I do, but I will be happy to share how it impacts my life.

So that's why it feels that way. The actual reality is very different.

You are absolutely right about the small niches. What the public hears about is a tiny fraction of the successes (and failures) that are actually out there. If you are lucky enough to find a profitable niche then you don't invite competition to take it away from you. There are several examples that I personally know about that have never been shared with the public.

One example is a personal friend of mine. He developed a B2C software product for a particular niche that you wouldn't think was very large or profitable. He doesn't talk about what he does publicly or even read entrepreneur sites like Hacker News. If someone were to show me his app and ask me how long it would take for me to develop it I would say "three weeks: two to code it and one more to make it that ugly". And yet this guy makes a ton of money (much more than a typical software engineer) essentially for just handling the occasional support or billing issue.

Another example was a guy I worked for in college in the early 2000s. He got in early in the business sending out e-mail newsletters for professional organizations. He bought a license of a high-end e-mail program for about $15k, bought about $5k in server hardware and spent about $750/mo. in co-location fees. Then he hired me and another college student to work remotely part-time at $15-$20/hr. to handle the server administration and support. Add all that up and his total costs were about $20k up front and $2500/mo. The only work he would do is go to conferences a couple times a year and do a couple of sales calls a month. He generally kept the details of his financials hidden from me, but I know that at least a couple of his clients were paying over $5000/mo. each. When you consider he had a couple dozen organizations as customers, that is very impressive for something that is almost completely passive with no technical skills required.

In affiliate marketing, the only time methods are shared is if they have been dried up for months or years before by the author. I never shared any of my methods until I knew they were no longer valid.

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