The smallest profitable project you have ever done
I'm just curious. I have done my first product, and although it is not huge, it takes a considerable number of hours and resources, and I'm starting to be stressed.
How did you manage to make a small profitable product?
I got real lucky with one of my first iOS apps. I made a Pokemon browser with all the monster stats and weaknesses. Took me 3 weeks to 1.0 and it blew up. Made a ton of money off ads.
http://mikezornek.com/projects/dex/
I eventually had to remove it because of Nintendo legal.
The big things to observe was taking advantage that people were actively searching the app store with that term and it was niche enough where I could compete.
I had some friends who used that same mind set to release a async dominos game with ads. They did very well.
This was many years ago of course and the app store has changed a lot -- but that basic idea of identifying what people are already searching for one possible key to a successful project.
Now ask me about the project I sunk 18 months of my life into and never made any real money from. :P
Did Nintendo asked you to remove it or you decided that it is against the laws?
Nintendo sent a Cease and Desist to Apple, since Apple is the one legally distributing the software. At that point Apple tells me to work it out with Nintendo and Nintendo never even answers an email so after a few months of stalemate it was taken down by Apple.
Back when the gaming platform "Steam" was new, it was not easy to figure out what your Steam ID was. Your gaming ID was required if you wanted to apply for clan access etc. So I created mysteamid.com (now under new ownership) which was barely a handful of lines of code on a single html webpage that revealed your steam ID. Sold it for $500 I think it was a few months later. Smallest one.
I think that's what the thread is really about. Small idea, execution & profit! Awesome!
I just turned on payments for my newsletter. It is small and profitable! :)
But you just turned on payments, don't you? What are you offering to subscribers to convert?
@amyhoy wrote and shipped a book in 24 hours, using the principles in the book about shipping tiny products: https://stackingthebricks.com/24-hour-product-challenge/
It's been profitable on its own, both as a standalone product (thousands of copies sold, well over $100k in revenue since launch) but also as a piece of our business that leads to more and bigger sales. https://stackingthebricks.com/i-wrote-an-ebook-in-24-hours-now-what/
The best tiny products require very little in terms of ongoing maintenance - and its not just information products! Some examples that I've seen include code templates and debugging tools/profilers, plugins and presets for video and photography software (this guy makes a few hundred thousand per year selling lightroom plugins), and even spreadsheets built for a business specific use case.
Tiny products rule!
My newsletter has made $296.10 since I launched it in May, and $170.34 of that is recurring monthly (the rest recurs yearly). From affiliate links.
https://bloggingfordevs.com
The free email course driving those "sales" took me about 4 weeks to write and test.
Pretty interesting. It's awesome all the people that are making money with their newsletter. It must be challenging to grow the list of subscribers.
I made nocodeblackfriday.com paid $8 for domain. Made $50 from 1 ad. $42 profit. Small ball!
Do you remember how many visits/sessions you had? Affiliate links would have worked better, don't you think so?
Yes affiliate links could have added profits. but I made it in 24 hours and launched and didn't really find any affiliate links.
Maybe if someone else does it this year they can take a few weeks to create more traffic and add in affiliate links.