I Acquired An Online Card Game And Solo Run It [$4K/Month Revenue]
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Hi there! I'm Holger, a designer-turned-programmer from Copenhagen, Denmark.
About 6 months ago I acquired a multiplayer card game website called World of Card Games, a website where people can play Hearts, Spades, Gin Rummy, and many more classic card games. People can either play by themselves against bots, with other people on the platform, or they can invite friends to play on a private table.
I've only run the website for about a year, but luckily I've been able to increase the revenue from the site, so now it makes around $4000/month.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
If my name rings a bell, it might be because I've written about my journey building up a solitaire site called Online Solitaire. Having experience in the online card game landscape, I jumped at the opportunity to acquire World of Card Games, even though a multiplayer game site is somewhat more complex from a technical point of view.
I had been in talks with the previous owner of the site for quite a while. Since we both owned similar sites, we emailed each other from time to time, exchanging tips and giving each other advice.
After a while, I asked whether she'd be willing to sell for the price. I didn't get a straightforward answer, but I didn't get a no either. We discussed a bit more and looked at some numbers until we finally agreed on a price.
Once a price was agreed upon, the acquisition process itself was relatively straightforward. We had a lawyer draw up a contract, I transferred the money, she transferred the assets and that was about it. Neither of us had bought or sold anything like this before, so I think we both were a bit nervous, but luckily everything went quite smoothly.
So now I'm the lucky owner of two card game websites, which is a lot of fun, but also a lot of hard work. Luckily, my success with Online Solitaire has allowed me to go full-time on my websites, which means that I can dedicate a lot of my time to World of Card Games.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
World of Card Games was built 10+ years ago, so I can't say much about building the first version. I can talk about how it's been diving into a codebase of that age, though. The technologies that websites are built with have changed incredibly fast, which is great since it means that improvements are made all the time.
The flip side of that is that when looking at a codebase that is 10+ years old, it can be hard to get an overview of how things are put together and how they work. I'm learning as I'm going along.
The good thing is that the codebase is quite stable, so I haven't managed to break things too much yet. The website runs on Node and uses Redis as its database and SockJS for concurrent connections, which works surprisingly well.
Something as simple as getting the site set up locally on my computer, so I could implement changes to the site, took me several days. In the end, I managed, and I've been familiarizing myself with the codebase ever since.
The best thing I could do to retain old users was not to make too many changes. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, as the saying goes.
Describe the process of launching the business.
It wasn't so much of a launch as it was a hand-over. After the assets were transferred, the former owner and I wrote a blog post together where she explained why she had sold them and introduced me as the new owner.
In the blog post, I wrote a section about what I intended to do with the site and what they could expect going forward and that was pretty much it. Luckily, people mostly had a positive attitude.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
The best thing I could do to retain old users was not to make too many changes. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, as the saying goes. I did my best to keep the site working as well as it has in the past for old users.
To retain new users, I know that I had to improve on the SEO. The first thing I did was to make an on-page SEO analysis of the site to see which changes I needed to make to improve the rankings in Google. I knew that there was an opportunity to improve the technical aspect of SEO, but I wasn't sure exactly what needed to be done.
After I had made my list of changes, I implemented them on the site, which took a good deal longer than I initially imagined. Partly because the codebase is old and a bit cumbersome to make changes to, partly because I had to learn how the codebase worked while making the changes, and partly because I'm overly optimistic when it comes to time estimates.
In the end, it paid off. I pushed the update sometime in March and the traffic has steadily increased since then as you can see from the Ahrefs screenshot below.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
I've slowly been adding new features and solving old issues and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I'd like to add new games and maybe even do a complete makeover of the design, but the site has a bit of technical debt I'll have to go through first. So I'll have to solve some of those things before I start on excitingting features and games.
Saying that the site is doing very well. New users are slowly coming in, and I think that I'm doing a good job retaining old users. The revenue also increased to about doublee of what it was before I bought the site.
The revenue model is ad-based, like most websites on the internet, but with the option for users to subscribe to the site for a small fee. I only recently implemented the subscription system, but people seem to make use of it. The vast majority of the revenue still comes from ads though.
My next big project is figuring out how I can update site's designsite, so it looks a bit more modern while keeping it in a style that'll keep loyal users of the site happy. One thing that I've learned through my time running game sites is that your current users don't necessarily appreciate the changes you make.
Once that's done, I have a couple of card games that I'd love to code, but that's a big job that I won't have time for, for at least a couple of months.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
You have to listen and stay in contact with your users. Doing that can be difficult if you, like me, are a one-man shop. Communicating back and forth can be distracting, and if there's one thing you don't need if you're programming, it's distractions.
I mainly communicate with users over email and I try to time-box my answers, so I'll go through new emails in the morning and then again at the end of the workday. By doing that, I can still get things done, and I get to keep up with user feedback.
When users write me, it isn't always positive, but I've learned to accept that and not take it personally. After all, it's the same users who write me when something doesn't work properly on the site, and I very much appreciate that.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
I recently switched from the Atom code editor, which is being shut down, to VSCode. It might not sound like a big change, but changing coding editors for a programmer is a big deal!
The change has gone surprisingly well though, and I'm very happy with the new code editor.
Another tool that I've started to make great use of is GPT4 (mostly through ChatGPT). I don't think that it's the wonder tool that certain people are making it out to be and I certainly don't think that it'll replace programmers anytime soon, but it works brilliantly as a code buddy.
Especially in my case, where I'm working on a codebase with a lot of outdated libraries and technologies that I haven't got much experience with. When working in a language, library, or technology I'm not familiar with, I simply ask ChatGPT and more often than it come up with a very good answer. At least good enough to get me unstuck with the issue I'm working on.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I recently became a father, so I haven't got much time for anything that doesn't directly relate to work, but I've been a long-time fan of Indie Hackers and their podcast, where they interview all types of indie hackers on their journey on becoming an indie hacker.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
The best advice is probably just to get going with whatever idea you have. The hardest part, at least for me, is to start. Once you've started on your project, you'll most likely be faced with a bunch of things that'll change how you initially thought your project would turn out.
Even if the project doesn't turn out well, you have kind of developed some inertia that you can use to get going with a second project.
Another great piece of advice is to think about your revenue model before you start your project. When I was young, I did a lot of smaller projects where I didn't think about how it would make money before or after I made it.
If you're doing the project for fun, that's fine, but you'll likely have to justify spending time on the project at some point, and earning money from your project is the best justification you can get for working on it.
Where can we go to learn more?
- World of Card Games
- YouTube
- You can reach me at [email protected]
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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