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Comment by ambition | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure that the brand awareness of these cases is related to the company naming. For example, I think Bingo Card Creator is well-known mostly because everyone here loves patio11.

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I think in part it's the... well, "absurdity" (?) of bingo cards, of all things, being successful. Something like wheels' Directed Edge is very cool technology and sort of the classic hacker startup. Bingo cards, on the other hand, just seems like this left-field thing, so it sticks in your head a bit more, paradoxically. When you read about something like DE, you kind of nod your head and say yeah, that's pretty cool, and admire it. When you read 'bingo cards' for the first time the reaction is more like "say what?!".

Not to take anything away from patio11 of course - he's a bright guy and always full of good advice. It's just that he sticks out more by not fitting the mold.

Often the most mundane / everyday things are the most profitable. Online greeting cards, competitions, myspace layouts, avatars, ebooks etc etc.

It's interested that you look at it this way because I don't. I've always looked for product ideas like his that can bring in some nice cash but aren't going to make you rich. They are everywhere.

Before the wife, kids and mortgage show up, this seems to me to be the way to do it. Don't shoot for the fences. Look for the ideas that can get you enough cash in your pocket to move on to the next idea where you can shoot for the fences. You'll have the stability of the first income and the experience it brought.

(Hopefully this doesn't seem like I'm taking away from what Patrick has done but I think it's clear that this idea isn't making him a millionaire.)

I'm still getting over the shock of being a tens-of-thousandsaire, believe me. There is nothing like being in business as a training tool for being in business, though. I don't think there is any grad school which will teach you, e.g., how to run an AdWords campaign or how to think about SEO, but these are fairly generalizable skills that I get to keep even if catastrophe strikes the teaching bingo market tomorrow.

Plus, as opposed to grad schools, businesses pay you while you learn. (This has always been my excuse for being a Japanese salaryman instead of going to grad school for Japanese.)

I think Bingo Card Creator is well known because the author writes a lot of comments, and very often mentions his product in his comments.

Not because he's "loved".

I'm frequently surprised at the high relevance of his comments about BCC. He's not doing some stupid off-topic brand-name-dropping (spammy) like too many are doing everywhere all the time.

Conversely, everyone knows about Mibbit because axod is consistently annoying. And it's written in Java; somewhat unusual around these parts.

I think the take-away here is that "any publicity is good publicity".

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