PageBlox (https://www.pageblox.com/) earns about $300 a month and is growing steadily... The hardest part has been SEO and marketing, something I am still quite new at.
I created a simple SaaS app, https://www.pageblox.com/ that makes $300 dollars a month. I think that in a year or slightly more it could break a thousand a month if I market aggressively. I think I was able to pull it off by targeting a very specific problem and its accompanying keyword phrase: "css layout generator". Over-simplifying, the steps are: 1. find a problem that people and have and its niche, low competition keyword that get about 5000-8000 searches a month 2. build a web based app that solves that problem 3. grow your traffic 4. a/b test and iterate
It is more difficult to forge a stamped receipt, true. As to whether it proves that you purchased the item is debatable because both a receipt and a stamped receipt can be easily forged. The question is: is it necessary? Tally up all the man-hours a country spends stamping receipts. Could that time be put to better use? North America seems to function fine without them. Perhaps we've come to realize them as redundant - or are we too gullible to not demand rubber stamped receipts in the first place?
Can anyone explain European rubber stamp-fetishism? Has there ever been a study done showing that rubber stamping practically everything (20 euro purchase at an electronics store) is effective in preventing forging of documents? To an outsider visiting continental Europe the practice looks redundant and almost comical.
I was working on my niche web app, http://www.pageblox.com for many months and was at times (when feeling overly optimistic) extremely delusional about how much I would make when I turned on payments. The truth is, you have _no idea_ what your conversion rates will be until you actually turn on payment processing. I thought it would be around 2% but in fact was less than .1%
Even though I only made $95 my first month (a lot less then what I had hoped) I now have a clear idea of where I stand and what needs to be improved and tweaked. It'll be a slow and at times painful process (SEO, A/B testing, blog posts, re-design, features) to make the profitability worth all the hours put in so far...
We have an extensive JavaScript codebase at the large corporation I work at and by simply enforcing the use of ECMAScript 5 Strict Mode and verifying with JSLint we are able to catch most potential issues but then again, nobody there is writing large systems in JavaScript, only flourishes of browser-side interactivity...
Seems like an attempt to drive traffic to the Jelastic site through content farming (blog posts targeting keywords, etc.). As least they could use authors who know what they are writing about. Doesn't cast Jelastic in a good light...
Impressive, but be very careful going up against established players such as Balsamiq because you will have a difficult time competing. I am not sure if you want to one day make this a paid app, but if you do, think about developing and marketing it to the needs of a specific niche. Remember, there are thousands of similar "projects" and clones of existing software that died a very slow and painful death because they were not profitable enough to continue developing.
Interesting. How many unique views a month does your site get now and what kind of conversion rates are you seeing? I am planning to launch a paid version of my app, http://www.pageblox.com and my potential customers are also developers/designers.
Thanks for the feedback, PageBlox is not meant to be a tool for professional or even novice web developers. It allows someone who has no experience with html/css to create a functioning cross-browser compatible layout and build on top of that with their own css, which is trivial to learn.
I created https://www.pageblox.com, a layout tool for web designers. I've been getting between 1500-2000 uniques a month, so when I turn on the paid version, I should be making at least a few hundred a month depending on how the conversion rate turns out...
I have to admit that more than anyone else, Amy and Patrick inspired me to create my minimum viable product, https://www.pageblox.com which is currently an html/css layout creator. It may end up turning into a CMS, or evolve into a feature-rich web design tool.
I launched several months ago and am putting in time every day (except Sundays). It hasn't been easy, but once you establish momentum, it's hard to stop. I, however have not quit my job (I am very risk averse). The podcast Startups for the Rest of Us and the book "Start Small, Stay Small" are probably the best resources for learning how to build your own products...
My advice to someone looking to start something on the side: don't quit your job, but find a low-stress job at a large corporation with normal 8 hour workdays and a short commute.
The should seem obvious to most, but the problem with countries that have laws that "protect" workers (as in Poland, where I've been working for the past several years) is that such laws dramatically suppress wages and job creation.
You can't get laid off for no reason (only so-called "mass" lay-offs where a minimum of 20% of staff has to go due to restructuring reasons - or, of course, disciplinary action) but the salary you employer pays you (much lower if such laws didn't exist) has to take into account that there can can be long periods of time where there is no work for you to do and they can't get rid of you legally.
Thanks for checking out the code. I am aware that JavaScript's "bad parts" are used throughout. This is of course a prototype built rather quickly. In the end all of this will be done using backbone.js (and will be much faster). If I approached this pedantically, it would have taken me much longer.