from Hacker News

My boring icon search website making $4k per month

by mddanishyusuf on 4/4/24, 8:38 AM with 11 comments

Hi, My name is Danish(b. 1992, India) is an Entrepreneur & building things for the Internet since 2012.

6 months back I acquire a project with $0 revenue, no traffic, but I like the idea and I believe that this will fun to work on that. So, I had no idea how to make money with this icon search website. I can't sell these icons because these are open source. So, I just keep the website free and launch on some communities like ProductHunt, Hackernews, My twitter.

It's become #1 product of the day, on front page of HN for 20 hours. So, this was validated that people love the idea. i grow the website traffic and got some email leads via sign in.

In starting, onboard some sponsors and work with 6 companies and made around $2k in 3 months but this was not good idea because I have to find new sponsors each month.

So, I got the idea to monetise features of the website, and launched Figma Plugin. So, i launched one time subscription fee $49 to access unlimited search, Figma Plugin, & icon manager.

Yes, I made good sales and people was happy to pay, because this is just one time. So, I increase the price from $49 to $69.

Still people buying the lifetime deals, and this is all organic with $0 marketing.

So, here is the website url https://iconbuddy.com And you know this week I acquire .com for $3999 because .com feel great and I have big plans with this. When I acquire this project this was iconbuddy.app

This project generated $4k in march and I'm expecting $7k+ in this month.

this is my story of first acquisition. I hope you like this.

  • by Pete-Codes on 4/4/24, 10:10 AM

    Nicely done! Glad you found a way to monetize it (I wasn't sure how you would from looking at it earlier on)

  • by mtmail on 4/4/24, 8:42 AM

    Congrats. I often wonder with similar posts: why share the revenue numbers. Won't that attract people starting to compete with you?

    > and this is all organic with $0 marketing.

    Might be $0 but with posts like this you do active marketing.

  • by BilalBudhani on 4/4/24, 11:03 AM

    Awesome! So great to see Iconbuddy starting to generate revenue, kudos :)

  • by fayazara on 4/4/24, 8:45 AM

    Awesome work on it, glad to see the app not die. More power to you!

  • by mtmail on 4/4/24, 8:45 AM

    Feedback on the website: I see 'cc-by-4.0' license on https://iconbuddy.com/twemoji but I can just copy or download an icon without getting prompted informing me of my attribution obligation.