In 2007 I created a WordPress plugin to add some features to one of my sites, and threw it up on my blog as a free download for anyone else that could make use of it.
There were so many downloads, comments, feature and support requests I couldn't keep up. I started from scratch and created a premium version that did more and was better designed, front-end and back, and tossed a link to that on my blog as well.
I sold about $200,000 in licenses to that plugin before selling the rights to it for another $90,000 1.5 years later.
I wrote a payment system called 'webpay', and sold individual licenses. One day some guy calls up and asks about a source license. I didn't feel like selling so I asked an outrageous price, $100,000, and jokingly I added 'in small bills'. Three days later (Christmas eve, no less) some guy shows up at my house with a suitcase full of fifties... he'd been on 3 flights from Minot, North Dakota with a bunch of lay-overs. We waited for the banks to open so the money could be deposited and I burned him a CD.
If this is a true story, wow. Without any confirmation, he just shows up with a suitcase? That's quite a lot of effort without first confirming the transaction — good thing it worked out.
The guy used the software to found DMR, one of the largest IPSPs of the time. Afterwards they contracted me for 3 months to modify the system to their liking, so I got to visit Minot in the middle of the winter, to work together with their programmers. Interesting times.
Turns out he knew me indirectly because another customer of mine was a friend of his, but I didn't know that at the time, to me he was a stranger.
I have blogged for the last four years. Apparently some of what I wrote was interesting enough that people remember my name. Some of them have large amounts of other people's money to spend on outside consultants. This is a fortuitous and totally unplanned coincidence.
I love it when this happens. I've had a similar experience with blogging and owe everything to it. It moved me from Nebraska to California, has won me big clients, and even provides significant passive revenue.
Well, when I lived in Nebraska, there was a startup that discovered me (one of the founders met a guy from the company where I worked at a restaurant). I had them as a client and then they hired me and moved me. Having the blog with online portfolio really helped - not to mention that I learned the technology side of web design from managing my blog.
When I was tired of CA, I moved to Chicago. I still love the Silicon Valley way of business though. Someone working at oDesk found me through a blog post around that time and then I started working with them as a client - remotely. They've been a great client, and having them didn't hurt in winning new clients.
I have the top hit on Google for "lump in mouth." The page gets about 25k hits a month, plus spun off into a forum, http://lumpinmouth.com I make some okay ad revenue from that.
I also have one of the top hits for "transfer itunes" from a blog post I wrote about a method for transferring songs, ratings, playlists from one computer to another. That also gets a lot of traffic, and I sell affiliate iPod utilities through a separate site I created. Additionally, I have been able to sign up direct advertisers.
Its funny when I think back to all of my friends who were confused when I started blogging "are you getting paid for it? Why are you doing this?" (you have to understand the Nebraska mentality) They couldn't understand doing something for pure enjoyment. Of course, I did end up getting paid.
Is it more profitable to work for people instead of continuing to build products? What do they hire you for - SEO expertise or programming ability?
And how much of your name-recognition is due to your blog, and how much is due to how much you comment on social websites like this? It seems to me your comment output far exceeds your blog output.
Is it more profitable to work for people instead of continuing to build products?
I would do fairly decently for myself if I did consulting full time, or at any appreciable fraction of full time, but that isn't where I want to be in my life.
What do they hire you for - SEO expertise or programming ability?
Most frequently, to do my "how you can use engineering to market software" shtick. Sometimes that involves SEO, sometimes it involves me programming, sometimes it involves me being a human being who is capable of talking to engineers and marketers without either side being unduly offended. 90% of programmers think they're in the top 10% of the profession -- I have no such illusions, so I typically tell folks that using me to program is probably not the most efficient use of their dollars.
As to the last question, I don't know. My professional life is sort of a package deal. Some portion of it is BCC, some portion blogging, some portion knowing people from around, etc.
Back in 1995, I started dabbling with the web design in my final year of engineering. Back then, the web was a brand new world and I was having a lot of fun trying out new thing - as my first project, I created a fan site for the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip (Cool Calvin & Hobbes Collection - http://www.nivmedia.com/calvin).
After a few years, I moved state, degrees, jobs and stopped maintaining it. In 2005 I happened to check the web logs and noticed that it was still getting several hits a day. In a fit of nostalgia, I redesigned the whole site using the knowledge I had gained in the past decade (web design was always a hobby, not a job), and in the process added some Amazon links and some Google adverts.
I've barely touched the site since 2006, but it still consistently gets several hits every day and generates around $1-1.5k in Google ad revenue and $400 in Amazon revenue a year.
Nothing to retire on - but as the first site I ever created and for something I don't maintain, it still brings a smile to my face when the ad revenue arrives in my bank account :)
I wrote about http://PeterAnswers.com on my blog and it became the #1 google result for "ask peter". The post got a ton of traffic and I built a clone called http://askjud.com
-- Redirected everyone, added Adsense, and now it gets 6k - 10K visits / day.
Remember the feature of the old iPods where you could add notes that used a subset of HTML? When I was in high school I wrote a little command-line program that would generate a bunch of notes linking to each other that in effect let you play blackjack on your iPod. It was a total hack, but I had a casino contact me asking to sponsor it. It didn't end up happening, but it's the closest I've come to accidentally making money.
I've written other open-source software since and had people offer money for new features, but I'm not sure that counts since it involves additional work.
When I was 15 I coded a basic WYSIWYG editor for WAP pages (early days mobile internet pages) as a freeware, and I got contacted by a company willing to acquire all the assets and hire me to work full time on a branded version of my editor.
They bailed out once they realized how young I was (and still in school).
Same story. When I was 14 I created PDFProducer (simple TXT to PDF creator) and released it as freeware. Some one contacted me and asked me to add ability to pass inputs as command line (instead of GUI). Trivial change but it made me my first $100.
Ah, but that's an ego trip. It goes like this - "Damn, he's 15 and did that - how did he manage to do that? I didn't do that when I was his age, etc..." Because it is hard for someone to figure how something could have happened such as this scenario, it stokes them and hence the ego trip.
in the US, at least, you can, but there are a bunch of limitations and rules. You (the kid) have to get a 'work permit' and can only work certain hours.
I got my first long term job at 14, and I had to go through rigmarole. it was pretty irritating; my mom made me quit my first job before summer was up because they didn't have the right paperwork and workmans comp, etc... Sure, i was being "exploited" as she said, but it was a very positive experience... and I got cheap used computer parts from that place for the next three years.
I did some work for a comedy writer / actor a few years back that ran a company called Talking Panda, where they sold software that was basically iPods hacked to work as info decks & translation tools. At their peak I heard they were pulling in between $500k - $1m a year. Pretty sure the App Store squashed them out of existence, but pretty amazing story since I think it was originally an 'accident' as well
Haha - very interesting sounding game! Too bad that sponsorship fell through - that sounds like it really could have worked. You could have contacted more casinos and started a bidding war!
In Fall 08, I wanted an iPhone app to track up-to-date poll results between Obama and McCain and...as it turned out, there wasn't an app for that. So I wrote one in a week and sold ~50,000 copies (http://structlab.com/iphone/polltracker/)
A few years ago I started helping out making user generated content for a HL2 mod in my spare time.
The mod got quite popular and a couple of us got invited on an all expenses trip to the US to visit Valve's HQ and meet Gabe etc along with the mod's creator.
Helped re-write the entire thing from scratch to eliminate the myriad of bugs which had gradually crept into each subsequent update, still in my spare time.
A few months later started selling the mod on Steam.
I think so far it's sold in excess of 500k copies.
In case you haven't guessed, the game was Garry's mod.
I didn't make anywhere near as much as Garry the mods original author, who's pretty much set up his own fully funded game dev studio with the proceeds, but it was a fun summer nonetheless.
In 2007 I had been working as a network engineer for a big networking vendor for 6 years, making close to 6 figures. I had also been preparing for 6 months to pass a very hard networking certification (CCIE), when my boss decided that he could hire a cheaper engineer and fired me. I had no idea what to do next but I had lots of free time on my hands. So, when my gf, who was into handmade crafts, asked me to set up a wordpress blog for her, I immediately decided to help her (even though I knew nothing of HTML or web development) because my self-confidence was going down in a spiral to the ground.
The blog made $500 in the first month from Adsense. A year later, close to $1000 a month. I created a few more websites around the same concept and now I make close to $2500 a month in passive income, which allowed me to spend a year studying Python full time (and web development in general) and also lets me work full time on my startup. I'm not rich, but I make my own time, work on my own projects and it's a nice sum of money for someone living in Brazil.
This one hasn't been update in ages, but it used to have a lot of traffic. We rewrote it in Rails and a few weeks later, for some reason, Google penalised it.
I don't read portuguese, but it looks like its a gossip aggregator? Would be interested to know how you juiced a wordpress blog about handmade crafts to bring in $500/mo.
I juggle as a hobby, and someone invited me to give a talk about the structures and theory behind it. I make a lot of money giving that talk multiple times every year.
I wrote 10MinuteMail.com in order to teach myself the JBoss Seam framework. I hadn't looked to see if there were other sites doing the same thing (there were), with more features (there were), etc... and never intended to make any money with it. It got pretty popular and I make a bit on Google Ads. Not enough to retire on or anything, but it makes low five figures annually.
I cried because I realized snakes are just tails with faces. That high.
Wow, that's funny. And you just have Google ads and stickers? Seems like you could make much more off of direct advertisers, or even find something on CJ.com
Glad you like it. I honestly have very little experience, I'm learning as I go. I'd never heard of CJ.com. I was thinking of contacting local businesses, dispensaries, and doctors (heh) to see if they'd like to advertise on the site. Not sure of the legality of that though...
I'm having trouble thinking of what offers on CJ would be right for this. There are Marijuana delivery services in SF, right? You could sign them up and serve ads locally using Google Ad Manager.
What about HighTimes.com? Maybe they would advertise. Better yet, see who advertises on HighTimes, and contact those companies.
Do you have a newsletter? You could collect email addresses and send out a weekly digest or something. Put in a little more time, and offer articles and tips (?) on smoking weed. Email lists are extremely valuable.
You can definitely make way more than you are already. AdSense ("Webmaster Welfare") has pathetic CPMs. The ads its serving up on your site are irrelevant. I know creatives like to smoke weed, but Adobe Creative Suite? Seriously?
Those are great tips, thanks. I actually have some high profile people following @thathigh on twitter, namely, Snoop Dogg, Sarah Silverman, Doug Benson, Bill Maher, and Guy Kawasaki. Not sure how to capitalize on those, as twitter doesn't send a ton of traffic to the site. Any ideas? :-)
Wow, that's interesting. I guess I would start by just trying to have a conversation with them on Twitter or something. A retweet from Snoop would be great!
Or, you could create a little badge on your site for social proof. "We're followed by..." Keeping it up to date would be a challenge, but they probably won't unfollow you.
Seriously, e-mail those advertisers though, it will be the easiest money you ever made. They would love to advertise on your site.
Step 1: send a message. "Hi, I operate ThatHigh.com, which gets 720k pageviews a month. I saw that you advertise on HighTimes.com and thought my audience would also love your product. I'm currently looking for an advertiser for the 728x60 leaderboard on the home page. I'll split the traffic between you and one other advertiser, so you'll get about 360k impressions a month. I can offer it at $3000/month [try for about $10 CPM]. Let me know if that works for you."
Step 2: Send an invoice using Freshbooks or Blinksale.
Step 3: Install the creative using Google Ad Manager.
You can also try setting up zones through BuySellAds.com, and advertisers can buy directly when they visit your site. They take a cut, though.
Just a small quip: There's a tiny bit of side scrolling for me . I'm running 1024x768. If you change the margin on your #wrap div to margin: -10px auto 0 auto; it'll center it.
Earlier this year somebody contacted me about selling a domain name called "timemanagementclass.com". It was vaguely related to some other projects we were doing and we thought it might be useful.
I negotiated hard with the seller and got him down to $200.
Then a week later somebody else called and said he'd wanted the domain and was too late in responding to the original seller. He WAS really in the time management space and really wanted the domain. So I sold it to him for $900.
There's a moral to this story:
1. Always negotiate hard and be willing to walk away if you don't get what you want. This takes a lot of emotion out of the process.
2. Don't dither around like the other buyer did. He was part of a large organization and to actually sell him the domain took almost 6 weeks.
I wrote a small Facebook application that let friends send me text messages from my facebook page for free (using email=>sms that my provider offers). 0 => 3,000,000 users in a couple of weeks.
Used advertising for a while, also switched to paying for messages since it was still very profitable with the income from advertising (the reason for getting so many users).
Eventually the cost grew above the income from advertising and I had to cut it off before making a loss. Still made quite a hefty profit out of the things, and did use the user base to launch another 3-4 applications.
The whole thing happened while I was traveling on a gap year post high-school. I know I could have made a lot more out of it if I had decent resources. With a decent advertiser (one that also paid for a small text advert at the end of each sms - even a tiny bit for them), I believe I would have earned 5x-10x the amount I did.
Later sold the thing which was a big mistake, although once the users are no longer active - they had no value. Few days after I sold it Facebook added methods to message all users with the application installed (a bit spammy - but sorry :/). Still regret selling it - big mistake.
Either way, used all the income from the application to launch the startup I'm busy with now :)
I started blogging for enjoyment long before the word entered the popular lexicon. That never made a ton of money directly (though it did make some) but it did indirectly help me land a book deal and start a couple related businesses that made a lot of money.
It also gave me a chance to figure out how to write and communicate well, which I think is why we got into Y Combinator. I'd say that writing is probably the second most valuable life skill (behind understanding the concept of expected value) that I've picked up to date, and I was abysmal at it before I started that first Movable Type blog.
So in a roundabout way, blogging has made me a fortune, though I never could have anticipated it. When I started nobody had made much off of it.
Agreed. 90% of the accomplishments on my resume are thanks to writing good essays in applications and receiving fellowships, internships, and admission to Stanford. I'd say I'm a competent engineer but nothing extraordinary. Writing made all the difference.
I hacked a Linux driver to make a slightly obscure hardware device work in Ubuntu (to scratch an itch). I spoke to the hardware manufacturer on the way. I ended up doing some contracting on Linux compatibility for some of their other products.
I began playing video games... and in the last four years from that I've gone through a full time job as a journalist in that field (award-winning :P), gained a lot of experience running large (70,000 person) events, consulting for companies that create games / hardware / events, and now work in marketing/various other areas, all in that same industry.
I created a social networking software package, initially intended to be downloaded and used behind their firewall by small and medium companies for free (http://www.jouzz.com). I am currently in discussions with a large corporation that wants to implement it, paying licenses for all its employees!
I accidentally made more money than I planned on when I created a website to sell those Chronotebooks by Muji (http://www.coolhunting.com/design/muji-chronotebo.php). When they were first offered, the company only sold them in their store or over the phone. I guessed that there would be people who preferred to buy over the internet (as it was pretty popular with blogs when it was launched), so I did the dirty work of ordering in bulk over the phone, and then selling individually through a website.
I didn't think it would be that popular, but it was around Christmas time when I started it and I used the profits to buy myself a motorcycle. The funny thing is sales dropped sharply after Christmas, so I shut down the site. It was really a fluke that it worked out.
I built some hardware a few years ago for hobby projects.
Someone came onto a forum asking about a way to read a certain sensor so he could integrate it with his software. My circuit happened to do what he needed, so I made a few minor mods and became his hardware supplier for a few years.
This happened about 10 years ago. I was out in Chinatown and came upon a knock off of a Transformer I wanted for a long time (G2 Laser Rod Optimus Prime). I bought him on the spot for 4$ and took him home. When I got back, I wandered onto Ebay and noticed it was selling for quite a bit of money. I went ahead and listed it (with specific mention of it being a knockoff) and left it there.
7 days later, it was sold for USD 50$.
I later found the company that was importing them and bought 30 from them. I went ahead and made quite a bit of profit (for a University student anyway) before getting out of that game.
Oops - didn't think anyone would be too interested :)
Back in 2006, I was attending a residential high school, so inbetween classes I went back to my dorm and went on Digg to submit and comment. There was still a user ranking system back and I managed to enter the top 5 based on post success (yeah, I spent quite a bit of time on it). Even Jason Calacanis was wondering why anyone would spend so much time on a social bookmarking site: http://calacanis.com/2006/05/22/why-do-people-contribute-who... (that's me lol)
I immediately jumped at the opportunity of a job and fortunately, I was chosen to be one of the first Netscape "Scouts". I managed to somehow get interviews from the WSJ, Chicago Tribune, and some other media outlets in the Chicagoland area.
As a naive high schooler, I treated the whole thing as a fun situation with easy money and never really bothered to network with any big names and never considered social media a viable career option. In an ironic twist, I've switched majors in college (screw law school) and now I'm looking to come back. I never expected any of this to become a life-changing moment, but I'm definitely thankful for being able to experience it all.
There were so many downloads, comments, feature and support requests I couldn't keep up. I started from scratch and created a premium version that did more and was better designed, front-end and back, and tossed a link to that on my blog as well.
I sold about $200,000 in licenses to that plugin before selling the rights to it for another $90,000 1.5 years later.