Making $10k in a weekend selling emoji email addresses - Ben Stokes, Tiny Projects

06/14/21 • 16 min

Ben Stokes a full stack developer and entrepreneur based in Bristol in the UK, who's started an ice cream business and cookie dough business amongst other things. Ben, like many indie hackers, has a bunch of small side project ideas, but not enough time to do them. So he started Tiny Projects. Tiny Projects documents his progress with these small ideas, launching 6 projects since May last year, including One Item Store, which he sold, and his most recent, Mailoji, which has just crossed $10k in revenue.

Sponsor

Thank you to today's sponsor, VEED.io, who are hiring developers, designers, product people and more. So if you're looking to join a growing bootstrapper-friendly business, reach out to their CEO, Sabba ([email protected]), or take a look at their published roles here.

Get ad-free and extended conversations of the podcast with Indie Feast membership, for just £4 a month.

What we covered in this episode:

Why Ben started an ice cream business
Buying an ice cream machine for £700 after a few pints
Growing a cookie dough business to £13k a month
Why Ben started Tiny Projects
The six projects he's worked on
How to sell a project for $5,000, that only made $2
Selling $10k of emoji domain names
How to go viral on hacker news

Recommendations

Book: Shoe Dog
Podcast: Product Journey
Indie Hacker: Alex West

Follow Ben

Follow Me

Sponsor

Get ad-free and extended conversations of the podcast with Indie Feast membership, for just £4 a month.

What we covered in this episode:

Why Ben started an ice cream business
Buying an ice cream machine for £700 after a few pints
Growing a cookie dough business to £13k a month
Why Ben started Tiny Projects
The six projects he's worked on
How to sell a project for $5,000, that only made $2
Selling $10k of emoji domain names
How to go viral on hacker news

Recommendations

Book: Shoe Dog
Podcast: Product Journey
Indie Hacker: Alex West

Follow Ben

Follow Me

Previous Episode

Struggling with my own mental health

I've never really understood mental health, or those who have had these challenges in the past. So when I've had my own challenges, I've struggled to comprehend what has been happening to me. This episode is hopefully an interesting insight into how I've been feeling over the past few months to hopefully help others who might be going through a similar thing.

Here's some things I talk about:

Where I've been
Overworking
What went wrong
Why I didn't notice a problem
Why family and friends are so important
The supportive indie hacker community
YouTube videos are hard
Burnout / depression are real shitty
My future plans
How I'm going to get out of this mess

I mentioned in the pod I'd been making videos about my motorbike, here's a few links if you'd like to watch:

and here's how to contact / support me:

Next Episode

Bootstrapping Transistor.fm to 13,000+ podcasts - Justin Jackson, Transistor.fm

Justin Jackson is the co-founder of Transistor.fm, a successful bootstrapped podcast hosting company. The journey building Transistor were documented on the Build Your SaaS podcast, which is a must listen. Justin is the founder of the MegaMaker community which he started in 2013, so if you're part of the maker sphere - you'll probably have heard of him.

In this episode we cover:

What is Transistor and why did they start it
Why work in podcast hosting? Was it not already a solved problem?
How did they get the first few customers?
What's next for Transistor?
What's it like having "made it" as an indie hacker?
What challenges does Justin run into?
Should you just get a job at a tech company or run your bootstrapped co?
Why bootstrapping is not a level playing field
When you should quit your job
Addressing mental health as an entreprenuer

Recommendations

Follow Justin

Follow Me

Sponsor

Thank you to Dan Rowden for sponsoring this episode with his product, ilo which helps you easily see which kind of tweets get more impressions, likes, profile clicks and more so you can get grow your Twitter audience. Use the code "INDIEBITES27" for 25% off your plan for life.