原文：https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/park-io

你是谁，正在做什么项目？

我是迈克·卡森，一名计算机程序员，也自认为是一名黑客。我创办了一家公司叫 humb.ly，作为我所有项目的母公司。有趣的是，随着年岁渐长，你会更了解自己。对我来说，这又回到了我十几岁时就知道的事情——我喜欢构建项目，这就是我想用时间去做的事。尤其是那些人们觉得有用的东西。

file.io 是我一年多前推出的一个项目。很多人使用它，觉得它很有用，但 park.io 持续快速增长，目前赚的钱最多。park.io 是一项服务，允许人们预订域名——特别是”黑客型”域名（如 .io、.ly、.me 等）——我们仅在成功为用户获取域名时才收取费用。

你是怎么开始做 park.io 的？

当时有一个域名过期了，我想要它用于一个项目——smile.io。我知道它不久后就会开放注册，但不知道确切时间，所以我写了一个脚本，每秒检查一次该域名，如果可用就给我发邮件。

有一天，我和妻子正准备吃晚饭，我看了看手机，发现收到一封邮件，说那个域名不到一分钟前可以注册了。我冲到电脑前想注册它，但它已经被注册了。这很令人沮丧，并促使我去深入了解整个系统，改进我的脚本。最终，它们变得非常高效，总能拿到我想要的域名，所以我决定把它作为一项服务出售。

大约花了一周左右的繁琐工作——搭建用户界面、允许用户注册、处理支付等等……这不像抢注删除域名的脚本那么有趣，但它让我和其他人能够以自动化的方式使用这个系统。我从未做过任何初始营销——我做的唯一一件事，并且至今仍在做，就是默认在我们获得的域名上放一个停放页面。你可以去这里看看例子。通过这种方式，那些对域名感兴趣的人从域名的落地页找到了 park.io，然后更多人通过口口相传了解到它。

推出服务的第一天，我就收到了几个订单，从那以后基本上每天都有人下单。

你是如何找到时间和资金来建立你的业务的？

这更像是一个爱好——我只是在业余时间做。我告诉我认识的其他黑客，甚至不要从一个”想法”开始。似乎每次我带着一个想法开始一个项目，它 never really 成功。但对于 park.io，它只是一种 flow——行动/反应——我甚至不能说在我开始之前它就是一个真正的想法。当某件事是 fun 和一个 hobby 时，你不会真正把它看作一个”想法”，你会投入更多时间和心思。我认为这在产品中体现出来了。

从运营 park.io 中，我学到的另一件事是适应变化的能力的力量。我认为这句话可以应用于商业竞争：
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“生存下来的不是最强大的物种，也不是最聪明的物种，而是最能适应变化的物种。” ——达尔文

我认为初创公司比大公司有巨大优势，因为它们能更快地适应。在过去的几年里，有几次巨大的变化对业务来说是相当大的障碍，但我认为我很好地适应了这些变化，这使得业务得以增长和繁荣。

对程序员来说，另一个巨大优势是我们自动化流程的能力。任何时候我发现自己反复做某件事，我都会尝试写一段代码来自动化它。我现在运行着这么多自动化流程，感觉就像有一个 50 人的团队在夜以继日地、持续、准确地在后台工作。park.io 今年有望突破 100 万美元的收入，而我是唯一的员工，但这只是因为我能够利用所有能为我工作的自动化流程。

你是如何吸引用户并发展业务的？

我从未为任何营销付过费，除了一次我付费给一位域名博主，在他网站的侧边栏放了一个广告，但主要是为了与这位博主（他也是 park.io 的 happy 用户）建立关系。

我认为吸引用户的最佳方式是提供好的服务和产品，然后它会通过口口相传传播开来。我之前提到的域名停放页面可能吸引了最多的用户——我无需做任何事来获得第一批用户——他们 just 从这些页面而来。

除此之外，有助于吸引用户的东西还包括每周通讯、博客文章、我做的采访，以及我做的域名捐赠（例如，将 angular.io 捐赠给 AngularJS，perl.io 捐赠给 Perl 基金会，gnome.io 捐赠给 Gnome 基金会）。

你收入背后的故事是什么？

我 immediately 开始收费，并在推出后的头 24 小时内就收到了几个订单和付款。我不确定定价，但觉得 99 美元似乎是个好数字，因为它不到一百美元，而且足够覆盖开支。

我使用 Stripe 处理支付，因为它简单。我的目标是单年收入突破 100 万美元，今年应该能实现。这是我的目标，因为我听说只有 5% 的软件公司能达到这个里程碑，而且我认为这也是进入 Philly 100 榜单的下限，我想再次做到这一点。（我以前用 wizehive.com 做到过）。

你对 park.io 的未来有什么目标？

我的目标是保持它成为一个 great 的产品，并增加一些功能，使其在域名行业中进一步脱颖而出。例如，我想让用户能够拍卖他们自己的域名。有一些现有平台可以做到这一点，但它们有很多问题。我思考这些问题已经有一段时间了，并且认为我可能有一个有趣的解决方案。

如果必须重新开始，你会有什么不同的做法？

我不知道我是否会做得有多大不同，因为事情进展得相当顺利。我 competitive 的一面会想到我错过给竞争对手的域名——我想我会修复这些具体问题。但与其思考我会改变什么，不如说几件我认为我做得好的事情：
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适应。无论遇到什么，都要顺应它，并努力让它成功。无论发生什么，很可能总有办法让它成功。
保持简单。用户说他们想要很多功能，但我没有添加，因为我认为这会偏离我的主要目标，而且我认为这种 simplicity 真的对公司有帮助。此外，我一直想改进应用程序的设计（它 just 使用了 Twitter bootstrap），但这种 simplicity 似乎让用户满意，我不愿意为了改变而改变。它现在有效，所以我没有理由改变它。

还有什么对你特别有利的因素？

我认为我最大的两个优势是：

我规模小（只有我一人），所以我很容易适应变化并快速行动。这给了我相对于大公司的巨大优势。
作为一名开发者，我可以自动化很多任务。我以前对别人提到过——我觉得我就像有一个庞大的员工团队在夜以继日地工作。

你对有抱负的独立黑客有什么建议？

我想我的建议是，甚至不要从一个”想法”开始—— just 做你觉得有趣的事，并记住也许你可以把它变成一门生意。我个人 also 喜欢只有我一个人作为员工，我认为适应的能力可能是最重要的属性，而作为唯一的创始人，这 makes it really easy。而且，就像我之前提到的，如果你是一名开发者，利用这项技能来自动化任何你能做到的事情。

另一件我会建议的事，仅基于我自己的历史和经验，是如果事情不顺利，就迅速 move on。当它不顺利时，你会知道，当它顺利时，你也会知道，当它不顺利时，最好迅速转向下一件事。

标题：How Automating Tasks Helped Me Grow Revenue to Over $125k/mo

Who are you and what are you working on?

My name is Mike Carson, and I’m a computer programmer and consider myself a hacker. I started a company called humb.ly that’s a parent company for all of my projects. It’s funny, as you get older you realize and understand yourself better. For me, it comes back to things I already knew when I was a teenager — I love building projects, and that’s what I want to do with my time. Especially things that people find useful.

file.io is a project I launched a little over a year ago. A lot of people use it and find it useful, but park.io continues to grow quickly and is making the most money. park.io is a service that allows people to backorder domain names — specifically “hacker-type” domains (e.g. .io, .ly, .me, etc) — for a fee that we charge only if we are successful in getting the domain for the user.

How’d you get started with park.io?

There was a domain that had expired, and I wanted it for a project — smile.io. I knew that it would become available for registration sometime soon, but not exactly when, so I wrote a script that checked the domain every second and sent me an email if it was available.

One day I was sitting down to dinner with my wife when I checked my phone and saw that I got an email that the domain was available less than a minute ago. I rushed to my computer to register it, but it was already registered. This was frustrating, and led me to learn more about the whole system and to improve my scripts. Eventually they got very efficient, and always were able to get the domains I wanted, so I decided to sell this as a service.

There was a week or so of grunt work — setting up a UI, allowing user signups, payments, etc… It wasn’t as fun as the scripts to catch the dropping domains, but it allowed myself and others to use the system in an automated way. I never did any initial marketing — the only thing I did and continue to do today is put a parked page up by default on the domains that we get. You can see an example if you go here. In this way, those interested in the domains found park.io from the domains’ landing pages, and from there more people found out about it via word of mouth.

The first day I launched the service I got a few orders, and I have basically had orders every day since.

How’d you find the time and funding to build your business?

It was more like a hobby — I just worked on it in my spare time. I’ve told other hackers I know not to even start with an idea. It seems like every time I started a project with an idea, it never really worked out. But with park.io it was just kind of a flow — action/reaction — I can’t even claim it was a real idea before I started it. When something is fun and a hobby, you don’t really think of it as an idea, and you put more time and care into it. And I think it shows in the product.

Another thing I’ve learned from running park.io is the power of being able to adapt to changes. I think this quote can be applied to business competition:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” —Darwin

I think startups have a huge advantage over bigger companies, because they can adapt more quickly. There were times in the last couple of years where there were big changes that were pretty large obstacles to the business, but I think I was able to adapt to these changes pretty well, which enabled the business to grow and thrive.

Another thing that is a huge advantage to programmers is our ability to automate processes. Any time I find myself doing something over and over, I try to write a piece of code that will automate it. I have so many automated processes running now that I feel like I have a team of 50 employees working around the clock, constantly and accurately, always in the background. park.io is set to break over $1M in revenue this year and I am the only employee, but only because I am able to leverage all of the automated processes that are able to do the work for me.

How have you attracted users and grown your business?

I have never paid for any marketing, except on one occasion when I paid a domain blogger to put an ad in the sidebar of his website, but mostly it was to establish a relationship with this blogger (who is also a happy park.io user).

I think the best way to attract users is with a good service and product, and it will spread from word of mouth from there. The domain parking pages I mentioned previously have probably attracted the most users — I didn’t have to do anything to get the first users — they just came from these pages.

Other than that, things that have helped attract users are a weekly newsletter, blog posts, interviews I have done, and domain donations I have made (e.g. angular.io to AngularJS, perl.io to the Perl Foundation, and gnome.io to the Gnome Foundation).

What’s the story behind your revenue?

I started charging right away and got a few orders and payments in the first 24 hours after launching. I wasn’t sure about pricing, but I thought $99 seemed like a good number since it is less than a hundred and more than covers expenses.

I use Stripe for payment processing, because it’s easy. My goal was to break $1M in revenue in a single year, and that should happen this year. This was my goal, because I heard that only 5% of software companies reach this milestone, and also I think it is the lower limit on getting on the Philly 100 list, which I would like to do again. (I have before with wizehive.com).

What are your goals for park.io’s future?

My goal is to keep it as a great product, and to add some features that could further make it stand out in the domain industry. For example, I would like to make it so that users can auction their own domains. There are some existing platforms that do this, but they have a lot of issues. I have been thinking about those issues for a while, and think I may have an interesting solution.
If you had to start over, what would you do differently?

I don’t know if I would do much differently, since things have worked out pretty well. The competitive side of me thinks of the domains that I missed to competitors — I guess I would fix these specific issues. But instead of thinking of things I would change, here are a couple of things I think I did well:

Adapt. Just roll with whatever comes your way and try to make it work. There is most likely a way to make it work, no matter what happens.
Keep it simple. There are a lot of features that users say they want that I haven’t added because I thought it would stray from my main goal, and I think this simplicity has really helped the company. Also, I always meant to improve the design of the app (it just uses Twitter bootstrap), but this simplicity seems to make users happy, and I am reluctant to change things just for the sake of changing things. It’s working now, so I don’t see a reason to change it.

What else has really worked in your favor?

I think the two biggest advantages I have are:

I am small (just me), so it’s easy for me to adapt to changes and move quickly. This gives me a huge advantage over larger companies.
Being a developer, I can automate so many tasks. I’ve mentioned before to others — I feel like I have a huge team of employees working around the clock.

What’s your advice for aspiring indie hackers?

I guess my advice would be to not even start with an idea — just do what you find interesting, and keep in mind that maybe you could make it into a business. I personally also like having me be the only employee, I think the ability to adapt is probably the most important attribute, and as the sole founder, this makes it really easy. And, as I mentioned before, if you are a developer, leverage this skill to automate whatever you can.

Another thing I would advise, just from my own history and experience, is to move on quickly if it isn’t working. You will know when it is isn’t working and when it is, and it is best to just move on to the next thing quickly when it isn’t .