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Comment by threetincans | Hacker News Reader

Remote freelance work is a race to the bottom. A better way to earn some extra money is to build a small service (SAAS) like OLark, or, Launchrock, and charge $10/month. Support your customers with a passion, add customers slowly, and before you know it, you will have 100 customers. That will earn you $12K every year forever. It is far better than doing odd programming jobs for others, there is no capital required, and, it is a far more certain way to make extra money than developing an App for iOS or Android.

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If getting 12k/yr in annual in revenue is easy, then getting 1MM/yr is also easy (after going from 0->100, just make two more hops: 100->1000 and 1000->10000). Since we know that building a MM/yr business is anything but easy, one of our assumptions must be wrong. Which one is it?:

a) 0 -> 100 users is easy

b) 100 -> 1000 users is easy

c) 1000 -> 10000 users is easy

My gut feeling is that a) is actually the hardest step.

No. 0->100 is not easy (I know from my own experience), but it is a realistic goal and you can get there slowly. Adding even one user every weekday, you will get to 100 in six months. But, and this is a big one, if you support your users well, you will get referrals -- which is the best way to grow.

My whole point is to go for recurring revenues, and, aim for slow, sustainable growth. If you want to go for 10K users, you will need funding. And, that will be a much, much riskier path.

There are plenty of niches where the total market is smaller than a thousand users. It simply isn't worth a startup or existing businesses time.

For example I know a guy who sells detailed study guides for software engineering subjects tailored to his university. Even if he captured 100% of the market he would have maybe 300 paying customers.

Last time I spoke with him he was earning around 20k from the guides and another 30k from tutoring the students. An extra $50k on the side as an individual is massive but it's not really worth it to a growth focused business.

Yes a) as that requires the largest amount of new skills that you likely did not have before (ignoring repeat successful founders).

e.g. customer development, sales, marketing.

Once you have 100 there will be new challenges like recruiting, managing people etc. But it won't be as hard as going from 0 - 100.

That's by far the best response

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