I'm extremely open about my business. I've thought about writing this type of article to share on HN before, but it always comes across as bragging instead of sharing so I can the idea soon after starting.
This is not an overnight success story. I earned my first paycheck on the internet when I was 15 or so, 10 years ago. I've had a long time to build my skill at development and marketing, try ideas, and build up my user base across the websites.
Some of the sites took a year or two to break even on up front costs and hardware. But since I build services that require almost no ongoing development or support beyond basic "how do I sign up, where do I find feature X" questions, each customer added in the following years is almost pure profit.
Very incremental, steady growth, and sometimes a leveling off. A bigger business wouldn't want a site to level off at a couple thousand a month in revenue, but if it's only supporting and supported by one person, a couple of those and yes, you hit 6 figure annual profit.
I also sell websites from time to time, if they level off and it seems like it'll require more work than I'm willing to put in to reverse that trend. Here's a site I sold on Flippa for $90,000 earlier this month. It generated over $200,000 in sales in the 18 months leading up:
http://flippa.com/auctions/84185/11000month-Revenue-No--1-In...
Personally, I'm always interested in such stories about running businesses on the side or full time. Businesses, mind you, not startups aiming to sell in a year. Those are very different in terms of decisions taken and work style and such.
Plus, if you've got it, flaunt it.
I'm trying to do something similar with http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/ - hopefully I will also be able to join the "5-hour workweek" club.
Thanks for replying. Yup, I am committed to the product and thankfully it has been positioned as one of the easiest website optimization products available. What I meant by the comment was that I was quite impressed by W3ROI as a product and thought it was a consistent effort. But when I realized it is a "5 hour" effort, I was really surprised.
Rest assured the product isn't going anywhere. I have built a team (not a single man effort anymore) and is a serious startup now. What I said was a bit like hyperbole, sorry if it came across as I am abandoning the product :)
I realize that HN doesn't encourage heavy self-promotion, but what is this business? Where is its website? Your story sounds wildly implausible, though it obviously isn't impossible.
Still, it reminds me of the comments I got on my post about "You’re Not Going to be a Professional Blogger, Regardless of What the Wall Street Journal Tells You:" http://blog.seliger.com/2009/06/17/youre-not-going-to-be-a-p... . People would say things like, "I run a group of online entrepreneurs, and am a member of another, and between the two groups there are well over 200 people, a majority of whom are pulling down 6 to 7 figure incomes based primarily on the advertising on their blogs, not by “selling ancillary services.”" But they wouldn't link to the sites in question! To me, such claims smell bad.