Chris Oliver, GoRails, $15k/month
What is the product?
Education site for Ruby on Rails developers.
What is its current revenue?
$15k a month.
What is the business model?
Subscription.
How did the founder come up with their idea?
- Was working as a Ruby on Rails consultant for many businesses and startups. Got tired of trading my time for money then decided to document Rails practices and turned them into a product.
- Published content for a year before launching paid courses.
- Collected email addresses along the way. Also built a forum to ask/answer questions publicly.
How did they know it was the right one?
- Generated thousand visitors the first month by documenting some free guides on the blog, then decided to keep going because there was need.
What did it take to get the initial product out the door?
- Took 5 month to plan, record, edit screencasts for the first 2 courses.
- Setup Stripe and Wistia himself.
How did they get their first paying customers?
- Launched and got 1 sale a week, 9 sales after 2 months.
- Decided to use subscription model with weekly screencasts instead. Got 14 subscribers the second day.
References:
Tagged: #early-days, #indiehackers