[tavavex]

> Keep in mind that HN is packed with people with salaries above $1M/yr and entrepreneurs with way higher income levels.

Is it really packed with those people? I know there's some, but I imagined that the average user here is probably some senior engineer in his 40s making six figures - not an executive or some industry-leading employee, and not the top <1% entrepreneur who manages to walk away with multimillion dollar profits. If that really is the common audience here, then I'm living in a whole different universe from what the average would work out to.

[SoftTalker]

Not that those people aren't here, but I don't think they are the average. I think the average person here is an un/under-employed tech enthusiast who dreams of startups but spends his time here instead of actually working to make it happen. I'm not in that group by the way, I stopped dreaming about startups 10 years ago.

Bored developers are probably another large fraction.

[walletdrainer]

You don’t have to be “industry leading” to reach that kind of comp working for big tech.

I could be totally wrong, but in a world where plumbers and the likes can walk away with multimillion dollar profits you probably don’t have to be top <1% to pull that off either. Not taking shots at plumbers, but the point is that even something boring can and will pay off if you work hard at it.

My own work couldn’t be more boring, I’m not particularly smart or talented. I just grind out many little varyingly useful websites with card payment forms.

[astrange]

$1M/year in big tech is like director level? That's not "industry leading" but there aren't that many of them.

[bradlys]

Senior manager can hit $1m depending on division and/or a little bit of stock appreciation.

[pseudalopex]

Most people don't work for big tech. Most people who work for big tech don't make so much. And not most plumbers.

Many people under estimate their skills and luck.

[brailsafe]

> My own work couldn’t be more boring, I’m not particularly smart or talented. I just grind out many little varyingly useful websites with card payment forms.

Are you talking like one-off niche utilities/services that another busy person would happily pay a small amount to solve an immediate problem with and don't necessarily require a ton of backend scaling/maintenance, or subscription type stuff? When you say "many", is that >100?

[walletdrainer]

100+ sites, most took less than a day to build.

So far the most profitable category has been sites which simplify some government processes, e.g. helping you fill a form or even just basically selling a PDF version of a form that a government only provides on paper (with a nice web UI to help you easily fill it).

Little scaling or maintenance, I can host everything on a single dedicated server but have a few so I don’t have to worry about things breaking.

Most of the work is just locating these niches, but honestly it’s easy to find at least one a week even if I’m being lazy. If I was really trying very hard I’d probably be at 1000+ sites right now.

One simple example would be helping people change their name in the UK with a deed poll, which basically amounts to a pdf saying “hey my name is now [enter name here]”. I didn’t do this particular one even though I probably should, I found out about it pretty early on and I was (wrongly!) dissuaded by the competition.

Edit: I specifically should not have been dissuaded by the competition because it’d take an hour or two to build a decent website with the necessary information, and despite the competition there’s a decent chance my page would start ranking pretty well within a couple of years. I’ll probably do this one tomorrow.

[brailsafe]

Heh, this is a nearly identical idea to what I've been considering trying in the past week, since I have some experience with the PDF spec and Acroforms from my time working on a commercial PDF SDK, and I personally have both struggled and watched people struggle with certain forms. Also seems like a straightforward value prop.

It's nice to hear that it's a viable niche and you're doing well with it! Thanks for sharing

[walletdrainer]

Do it! The best part here is that the work you do will be super reusable and you can easily crank out a new website every day if you feel like it.

It’s important to be patient though, I’ve had websites not earn a cent for the first year and grow to tens of thousands a year with zero intervention from me.