Ask HN:How practical is the goal to earn about 40K US$ in a year

[vineet7kumar]

Last year I wasn't able to join grad school because I couldn't arrange for enough money. I don't want to miss the chance this year for the same reason and my only take is to earn some money (Other ways are just not possible for me in my country :( ... Trust me I have tried a lot.) I have started working on two webapps in my free time (about 15 hrs a week) - Atleast this is the positive outcome, after 2 years of thinking I have finally taken a plunge in the startup sea - Leaving exceptions apart how practical is my goal of earning this much in a year ? Any suggestions are more than welcome :)

[DirtyAndy]

How much can you expect to earn from a startup? Zero. Most startups fail, or are just not viable as businesses. There is no "build it and they will come". Even if it worked ramping up to post tax post living costs personal profit of US$40K in one year would be difficult. Obviously thousands of people achieve it every year, but that is out of millions that try and get something started.

Also, if in one year you built a business that achieved that, you'd have to imagine it would continue to grow and make exponential amounts of money, so lets say year 2 you make $200K - why would you want to go to grad school then!?

Unless you've developed a minimum viable product and proven that people are willing to pay, if you really want to go to grad school, this would have to be the worst way about it. Get a normal job, a loan or whatever else. If it takes longer to get there then it takes longer.

[streamline]

I guess you are in India, here is my advice, if you wish to do a Graduate degree in USA with full scholarship: Rather than working on startup full time, you can try doing research under some good professor, at IIT or IIIT maybe. Try getting few conference publications. Plus try getting a good GRE score. If you can do that then getting fully funded PhD or MS in Computer Science wont be too difficult. WWW 2011 conference is slated to be in India, though the deadline for papers in around 40 days away, by doing interesting research you can try getting at least a poster accepted. That will help significantly in your applications.

There are several ways to fund your education in US, you can try to go to a universities where TA and RA positions are easier, these colleges are tougher to get into, but with good research they wont be that difficult. Also you are allowed to work 20hours on campus, you can try for CO OP jobs they pay around 10 -25 $ per hour, they may not cover your entire living costs but would cover substantial portion of it.

I saw your current twitter app, even though it is a nice implementation, professors and admission committees are looking for creative and research oriented endeavors, rather than skills for creating web apps. An MS student at a good company such as Google, MSFT, Amazon, Oracle, or Yahoo makes around 75 - 90 K a year in base salary and additional 25-30 k in stocks, options or bonuses. And then you would be much better equipped to launch your startup. a good PhD candidate earns even more. if you end up as a Quant on wall street you would earn significantly higher amounts.

Which universities did you get into? A good idea would be to work on a broader research subjects, which many professors in that university study. that will increase your chances for an RA position.

[skowmunk]

I having been working with a contractor for a while who does website development for me. He is based in India. On one of our discussions he said he makes around Rs. 18 - 20 lakhs per year. That would equate to about $40,000 per year. It took him around 2 - 3 years to reach that position and he was a school teacher before that. I am sure, his intelligence, hardwork and professionalism played a good part in his growth. Now, almost all his revenues come from Odesk and Elance from customers outside India, though he started off on small projects in India.

I am assuming you have completed your undergrad in CS or a related field. You should be able to grow faster if you give it a serious try. It can also allow you to add practical skills while getting paid and when you are waiting for your big idea to come up.

Good luck.

[elbrodeur]

Vineet, it might be helpful to provide some more info:

- What kind of apps your making - How big your target market is - How much you will be able to spend on marketing/sales

Because, on the surface, the goal of earning $40k is within reach, especially if you're targeting western markets.

[joelmichael]

Keep in mind that you will have to earn $40k after taxes, so you will have to actually earn about $60k.

[coryl]

Depends on his country's tax brackets/laws?

[imp]

Are your projects making any money yet? Without any other details, I would say that no, it's not practical. Possible, yes, but not practical. If you're at zero dollars today, and you actually have one decent product, I would guess three years to get to 40K. You may get there in 6 months, or you may never get there. Hard to predict. My best estimate though would be 3 years.

My only suggestion would be to start making money ASAP. As soon as you have three months worth of actual revenue data then you'll be MUCH better prepared to make financial projections. They'll still be sketchy, but you at least need a baseline to work from. Every app and website is unique.

[curlyque5000]

Probably not. It is easy to think that making $40K right away is easy when reading sites like Techcrunch because all you see are successful startups. But like others have said, most startups fail. For a normal startup, it's not easy to get a lot of traffic right away, especially without much money to put out for marketing.

But, it's possible. It depends on your idea, execution, connections, etc. If you can establish some great partnerships, you will have a better chance at success. Good luck!

[seltzered]

your question is really how long it will take you to gain traction. And it varies upon what you're making, and who your market is.. Whenever I ask myself such things for my idea, one reference I look at is Patrick's sales states for bcc: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month

Search HN, there's other examples people have posted out there.

The question you want to be asking: Why do you want to go to grad school? Why not save money while working for a year for it? Are you able to "gain traction" with professors yet? i.e. get them to vouch for you, and possibly help you get into a TA program to help cover costs?

My opinion: given the time constraints you've defined, no, and you'd be better off working a job and contracting on the side.

[streamline]

he is in India with yearly salary of 14K$ at best, even if saves his entire salary he would need 3-4 years to pay for an MS degree in USA. also professors cant help much since they are flooded by emails from students.

Loan is an option, one can get loan for around 40k$ but it requires some property to be mortgaged.

[il]

It's not hard if you can get traffic, either with a good product or good marketing or SEO. Think of it as a numbers game, get as much traffic as you can and monetize. About a million pageviews a month will probably get you to $40K a year.

[alassehz]

By grad school do you mean a master or PhD? Mostly in technical fields, you get stipends once you are in a PhD program; however, for masters is a whole different story. Have also looked into applying to scholarships or fellowships?

[donohoe]

Assuming its applicable, it may also help to tell us the expected target market (or the market you're somehow restricted too): global, country specific?

[lutorm]

If you have to pay to go to grad school, have you determined that it's actually worth it? What field is it?

[streamline]

an MS in CS probably, and its worth it for Indian students, Assuming you get admitted to a descent school, you need to pay ~ 50 k$ [lesser if you get TA or RA ship] for a year or two, and then you can get jobs that pay around 75k+. also you are assured an employment status for at least 29 months post graduation.

Note: I am assuming a Good School [GATECH, Columbia, Cornell, TAMU, UT Austin, NCSU] and a good student.

you can pay back entire loan in at most three years, even earlier if you end up at MSFT, or similar places. Parents generally pay a significant portion of the tuition using their savings.

Also undergraduate education is damn cheap in India, Tuition is around 2K - 8K$ for four years. Hence most of the students are debt free.