9 ms·
Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?
Let's do this again. It can be a SaaS app, a mobile app, or any side project that is netting you recurring revenue.
- kkt262 10y agoWe make more than that with VYPER -- http://vyper.io http://vyper.io
- nullcipher 10y agoIs this actually a side project? That's a lot of work you have done there for a side project.
- kkt262 10y agoYup. We both have full-time jobs.
- qntty 10y agoYou should change your table for free/pro/enterprise so entries about the same thing are in the same row, e.g. "100 emails per contest" should be in the same row as "Unlimited emails per contest".
- mountaineer22 10y agoOver $8k/mo?
- gaelow 10y agoyou took the ponzi scheme and applied it to marketing. That's glorious. I am starting to believe what I once read about the brightest minds of our era being too busy trying to devise new effective ways to make us click on the ads.
- kkt262 10y agoHaha thanks man. We try.
- brighta 10y agoHello to anyone! I am making it and use it for travelling. It has occurred to me that no one could doubt that vacation plays one of the leading roles in our life. It is really true. So, you have to make it bright. This platform offers you a full range of unique hotels worldwide you can stay at with pleasure. So you are adding new colors to your trip and make it vivid. It is way much better than choose what you got used to! http://www.hotelyouwant.com/ http://www.hotelyouwant.com/
- hemezh 10y agoIs there a common place on the internet for such discussions? A site where people can share ideas and find people to work together.
- azdle 10y agoI think that kind of the idea with http://barnacl.es/ http://barnacl.es/, it's more about people trying to bootstrap and/or run a lifestyle business, but I'd say that overlaps with the 'side-project that makes money' crowd pretty well. I have been reading it for the past few months, the traffic is pretty low and it's a bit marketing guide heavy at times, but overall an interesting community IMHO.
- sha256md5 10y agor/entrepreneur and r/webdev on reddit, but you have to weed through the crap.
- whamlastxmas 10y agoI find the entrepreneur subreddit to be pretty terrible, honestly. My biggest problem is that to the less experienced, reading it can give you a false sense of being productive. Many years ago, I was reading it constantly because I was convinced one day I would find the secret to having a successful business. However, it's overwhelmingly filled with people who have pretty low ambitions. It's mostly projects that are better suited for an etsy store than they are as a stand-alone startup. The ones with more ambition are usually something like "Uber for dogs" or "Facebook for dogs" and lack any real possibility of ever becoming a meaningful product.
- sha256md5 10y agoI totally agree, but occasionally there are posts that are worthwhile. Some people have done great write ups about how they've scaled their small businesses to a point where they make a living, but like I said... have to weed through a lot of junk to see something good.
- percept 10y ago
- Jake232 10y agoI run AdsXposed (https://adsxposed.com https://adsxposed.com) on the side. It's a project that scrapes online ads (specifically popups and redirects) and provides intelligence on them. Which publishers they popped on, which countries, to which devices, etc. It brings in pretty reasonable $$$.
- _jdams 10y agoCongratulations on your success. Curious who is purchasing that kind of info, though..
- Jake232 10y agoIt's actually super valuable to the affiliates/advertisers purchasing popups. They can look at the competition and get a head start on what works. It's pulling in low 5 figures/month with very little advertising, so there's definitely a demand for it.
- _jdams 10y agoSmart. In that context, I can see the value. If I was going to create an ad campaign or something, I would want to start with a base that I knew was working.
- geuis 10y agoInteresting. I can see how that kind of data is valuable to advertisers. Have you thought about ways to get value from the data about spam ads? The ones that target mobile devices are especially bad these days.
- Jake232 10y agoWell, we essentially just sell the data to affiliates, who then get value out of it. They either copy what their competition is doing, or expand / work on it and use it as a starting point.
- lifeisstillgood 10y ago
- andersthue 10y agoDownloadable watermarking tool (now with a mac beta :) Been at it for 5+ years, makes a few $K a month http://www.watermark-image.com http://www.watermark-image.com
- vatotemking 10y agoHow do you market your product? Google ads? Word of mouth?
- devsno 10y agoa dumb greeting card site ( hey.sick.af ) and a dumb mug site ( meanmugs.af )
- Splendor 10y agoCongrats. Your "squad" is a little unusual. http://www.sick.af/squad http://www.sick.af/squad
- nerdy 10y agoMy wife is making high 4 figures a month (record was 13k+) selling educational PDFs on a 3rd party website. Anything is possible if there's a demand and you market to that audience. Differentiating "cool" from real demand is the hard part. That said, she makes me feel completely inadequate with her side project ;) Money isn't everything. How sustainable your business is, your required level of commitment on an ongoing basis, and how happy you are doing what you do are also very important.
- jerrickhoang 10y agowhat kind of website is that if you don't mind sharing
- chimpnuggets 10y agoI would guess Teachers Pay teachers
- nerdy 10y agoYou win the prize!
- nerdy 10y agoShe sells (exclusively) on TeachersPayTeachers.com. Educators create resources and list them online for others to download/buy. Each seller is required to have at least one free resource so somewhere around 5%~10% are free. The payment structure is basically 70% to the seller, or the seller can pay a flat fee of $60/yr to become a "premium" seller and then keep 85% of sales. What's nice about their platform is that the customers are highly qualified and support is mostly offloaded to their support staff. When a customer makes a direct inquiry (to a seller like my wife) about a product there's a very high chance they will actually convert, so time answering questions is well-spent. If a customer wants a refund they contact TPT directly, so it can be a very hands-off kind of thing. We've discussed selling off-site to recover a piece of the 15% but it hardly seems worthwhile because of their infrastructure and how it allows her to focus on creating new products. TPT has posted engineering job openings on HN in the past and seems like it'd be a great place to work in NYC if anyone is looking. I don't represent or know them personally but get a strong positive impression from their virtual meetings with sellers and people who I know who work closely with them. As I understand it they have a bit of cross-pollination with the team at Etsy, which is another interesting marketplace similar to TPT but for arts & crafts products. You might know Etsy from their blog at codeascraft.com, presentations they openly host, or because Rasmus Lerdorf (creator of PHP) works there. If not, their blog is worth checking out.
- TheHideout 10y agoI write retro indie videogames and averaged 1k/mo for the first year and a half after my last release [1]. That dies off pretty quickly if you don't constantly promote though. I have a couple new games launching later this year, one of which is by contract - a 7th guest style puzzle game, and another Action RPG. I've been supplementing my gamedev income with WooCommerce clients, such as [2]. These are purely side projects outside my normal day job as an aerospace engineer. [1] http://www.TheHideoutGames.com http://www.TheHideoutGames.com [2] http://shop.bikestripper.com http://shop.bikestripper.com
- mountaineer22 10y ago7th Guest is excellent.
- nettulfsen 10y agoI do 2-4 k a month on adult oriented webcam sites. Running on autopilot updating every 60 sec. Have a normal job and nobody really knows about this side project..... no work required just paying for hosting and domains. My big secret, my family would kill me if they saw the sites.
- ratchetratchet 10y agoI'll bite. How exactly do you make the money? Signups, affiliate fees linking through to other sites?
- andegre 10y agoI run a college wrestling website, http://www.wrestlestats.com http://www.wrestlestats.com. I'm right at about the break-even point with the site through the ads I have on the site, but hopefully it will get better. Trying to find some people willing to donate/invest so I can get my new version of the site completed.
- rwmurrayVT 10y agoThis is pretty cool. One of my favourite websites when I was in high school was MileStat/MileSplit. It was specifically geared towards high school runners in each of the states. I assume it started out specifically at the national level, but they've bought up state specific sites to merge under 1 banner. I don't know much about wrestling, but perhaps consider taking on the high school level.
- andegre 10y agoI've thought about doing that (actually, my one helper WANTS me to open it up to New Jersey High School, which is where he's from). It would require some decent architecture changes, but the majority of those I'm working on this summer....so maybe in the future.
- jlgaddis 10y agoDiscussion from the last time this question was asked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11214497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11214497 And the time before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9508528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9508528 And the time before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884552
- _jdams 10y agoUpvoting for visibility. Not because the question has been asked to death, but because reading those threads are so damn fun.
- mino 10y agoAlso: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9423592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9423592 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5903868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5903868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387789
- gp10 10y agoHow about RF hardware? I make user-friendly RF analog electronics: http://www.ebay.com/sch/iseeabluewhale/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from= http://www.ebay.com/sch/iseeabluewhale/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1... http://gpio.com http://gpio.com
- sherlockian 10y agoInteresting twist. Are you an EE?
- kelu124 10y agoInteresting to see this ! Any way to contact you?
- Osiris 10y agoMy project: https://batterybarpro.com https://batterybarpro.com Freemium model, $4 for a Pro license, ~$1500/mn consistently for the last 6 years.
- garrypettet 10y agoMy revision website for radiologists in training brings in about £1-2K per month: https://reviseradiology.com https://reviseradiology.com
- pentesterlab 10y agohttps://pentesterLab.com/ https://pentesterLab.com/. I started a paid version with additional content and videos in December. It's bring more and more revenue every month.
- mahadazad 10y agoI sell my script qrunched.com, I sell this script between $650 - $800.