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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2019 – Show and tell
It seems this question hasn't been asked for some time, so I'd be interested hear what new (and old) ideas have come up.
- synack 7y agoRunning https://diskprices.com https://diskprices.com and https://battprices.com https://battprices.com, I've been consistently making >$500 in Amazon affiliate fees each month for the last couple of years. It's still growing, slowly. I'm working on some improvements to the software to add more metadata about the drives like warranty and advertised performance numbers.
- sp332 7y agoHas Amazon made it more difficult to make money with affiliate fees in the time you've been running the site?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- synack 7y agoThey added new "efficiency guidelines" that require you to make at least one sale a month or the account gets dropped. This hasn't been a problem for me, but definitely adds a barrier to entry that wasn't there when I started.
- WheelsAtLarge 7y agoVery impressive. Simple yet functional. Proof that a site does not have to have all kinds of bells to be useful. Nice...
- toomuchtodo 7y agoHave you considered using Backblaze drive reliability reports at all for reliability metadata? https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html
- synack 7y agoYeah, I've got all of the Backblaze data in BigQuery and can JOIN it with the diskprices data... It's only marginally useful as Backblaze only uses a small number of drive models and Amazon's pricing for them isn't great.
- thekevan 7y agoWhat do you use on the back end to sort the items?
- synack 7y agoA Python script with a whole lot of regexes.
- mikeirvinenews 7y agoThe domain name RefreshSale.com is for sale. Can be used similarly or different ecom biz.
- anotheryou 7y agoDo you know how to jump-start a partner account? I want to play with the product data but have to sell 3 referrals before they let me in...
- synack 7y agoNope. They didn't have that rule when I started.
- anaxag0ras 7y agoHow did you market your websites?
- synack 7y agoWord of mouth, mostly. Sometimes I comment on threads like this and people tell their friends. I see Slack and Facebook Messenger in my referer logs pretty frequently.
- baccredited 7y agoCool! Have you thought about doing RAM prices too?
- synack 7y agoYeah, I've looked into it a bit, but there are relatively few RAM variants for any given size and speed that your motherboard might support, and there are plenty of other sites that do that well already.
- zakki 7y agoYour faq on battprices is linked to diskprices
- synack 7y agoThere is no separate FAQ... They're both doing essentially the same thing. See also: the giant red BETA in the top right corner.
- folli 7y agoI'll start: I'm still actively working on my Android app, Sun Locator, that helps photographers and outdoorsy people to predict the position of the sun and the shadows caused by mountains and hills. It helped me to learn quite a lot about Android programming, the app ecosphere and costumer support, and it makes a bit of spending money on the side. More info: http://www.sunlocator.com http://www.sunlocator.com
- arel 7y agoGreat job! I'd love to hear more about the calculations involved for the sun and moon paths and the implementation of the shadow maps. If you have the time and haven't already perhaps it would be worthy of a blog?
- throwaway13000 7y agoAlso, does anyone want to sell their side project?
- crudmachine 7y agoCheckout orderflow, its inventory management and order management for small businesses. Let me know what you think
- throwaway13000 7y agoA link would be appreciated.
- jozi9 7y agohttps://www.apilope.com/ https://www.apilope.com/ - 0 revenue, 0 users, 0 traffic
- js4ever 7y agoMake it open source and sell consulting / customizations around it :)
- quickthrower2 7y ago> 0 revenue, 0 users, 0 traffic Not as bad as it seems. You can ignore the first two for now and fix the "0 traffic". How are you marketing it? Maybe try some SEO, paid ads, speak at a conference. Maybe convince some friends to get their companies to buy a license. $49/m is reasonable. If I get it correctly this is a more sophisticated pingdom? Definitely a need for that I'm sure?
- MattLeBlanc001 7y agoDo you have a price in mind? Ping me on my email (see profile).
- segmondy 7y agoGo to indie hackers https://www.indiehackers.com/products?minRevenue=500&sorting=lowest-revenue https://www.indiehackers.com/products?minRevenue=500&sorting...
- andreygrehov 7y agoI'm sure OP knows how to google. Nothing against IH, but HN is a medium that allows you to talk to authors directly, which is an invaluable experience.
- QueensGambit 7y agoDownload Amazon product categories as a CSV file - https://www.browsenodes.com https://www.browsenodes.com . Interestingly, I bought this domain with all the backlinks for $500 and made more than $500 in the first month itself.
- visionerdy 7y agoThat's really smart! Curious why did the original owner sold it to you?
- throwaway13000 7y agoMan. This is a wonderful little niche product. How did you stumble upon the website to buy?
- QueensGambit 7y agoThanks! Actually, I was a user of that website. The previous owner put a notice on the landing page that he is selling it. I saw it and bought it immediately because, I didn't want it to go away. But I didn't expect to recover the money in the first month itself! Since then, I have expanded it to Amazon product data as well - https://www.commercedna.com https://www.commercedna.com . But, haven't started charging for it yet.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoBrilliant. Kudos.
- jazoom 7y agoInteresting. Any reason why you don't have amazon.com.au?
- QueensGambit 7y agoI need Amazon Australia API key or someone with that API key to use my shared cache. Only then, will I be able to collect that data. As of now, no one from au has used it. So I don't have any data on that.
- erulabs 7y agoWere making about that - but as we have recently quit our jobs, it’s no longer a side project :P
- scottjg 7y agoi run https://zeromac.com https://zeromac.com , a hosting service for Mac VMs. i charge by the hour. the margins aren't as lucrative as a traditional software startup. i'm considering two new offerings: 1. lower-priced option where the servers would be overcommitted. 2. bringing up a SAN (VMs currently run on local storage) and charging for storage and compute time separately. this would also enable things like spinning up VM based on a custom disk images.
- marktucker 7y agohttps://amazingmarvin.com/ https://amazingmarvin.com/ has been my side project since 2016 (wow!). I will finally quit my job at the end of the year to go full-time on it (co-founder is already full-time). I worried a lot about doing something that had already been done 1000 times (a productivity tool), but now that it's working out I realized there's always room for a better mousetrap! Another surprising learning: it's still possible to have a product that people will pay for in 2019 with a mediocre phone app.
- rapdev 7y agoDang, this looks so close to being what I’ve been looking for (and failing) in terms of an “organizational” manager. I find that not a lot of tools let you go from macro to micro planning and back very easily and efficiently and are either long term focused or daily/weekly focused. If I purchase lifetime access will that include future updates? Will I be able to retrieve all my data if you stop offering the product?
- dangrossman 7y agoI opened an Etsy store selling laser-cut crafts. http://ligninandlight.com http://ligninandlight.com
- auxym 7y agoNeat stuff, I've also made a few things (nursery wall decoration for my son) using my job's Trotec cutter. The machine was bought for around 30k USD I believe, so buying one for a small etsy operation sounds like a long ROI! Do you own your own laser machine?
- dangrossman 7y agoI'm using a Glowforge Pro which was only $5500. It paid for itself in about two months.
- thedangler 7y agoLove your store. contact me at matthebs [at] gmail dot com
- dangrossman 7y agoWhy do you want me to email you?
- entrepre1999 7y agoAdpexity.com - $200,000 a month , AMA
- gingabriska 7y agoWow man! Didn't know this niche even exists. Any tips, how you find such niches?
- anotheryou 7y agoyou mean https://adplexity.com/ https://adplexity.com/ ?
- DarrenDev 7y agoSmartEdit — https://www.smart-edit.com/ https://www.smart-edit.com/ — A Microsoft Word Add-In for creative writers. It’s been around for a few years now, brings in a good bit more than $500 a month, but nowhere near enough to quit the day job. Doesn’t require much upkeep either. It just keeps rolling on...
- anmolparashar 7y agouseCastup.com — Professional Podcast Editing services, starting at 40¢ per published minute. I have been running this for a while, along with my full-time job.
- matt_the_bass 7y agoI’m almost there. Hopefully that will be the case by 2020. But mine is not a Saas or app. I actually make things as a hobby and sell them in low volume. A few years ago, I started making word clocks as presents for people. After a while I started teaching a workshop on how to make a simple clock at a local maker space. Now I have a refined design that my wife and I are producing in our basement and starting to sell at low volume: www.finewordclocks.com Making clocks is also a great excuse to buy cool tools. We have a probotix asteroid cnc in the basement. I have a 3yo and 6yo. It’s been fun getting them involved in making things. Most of the presents for their friends’ birthday parties are home made (mostly by me but with the kids’ participation) and are REALLY well received.
- blisterpeanuts 7y agoYour clocks are beautiful, and a very clever idea.
- matt_the_bass 7y agoThank you! I appreciate you taking the time to look.
- seanwilson 7y agoCheckbot for Chrome: https://www.checkbot.io https://www.checkbot.io :) It checks 100s of pages on your website at a time for SEO, speed and security problems like broken links, duplicate content, invalid HTML/CSS/JavaScript, insecure pages, redirect chains and 50+ other issues.
- shrutipathak 7y agohttps://trafficticker.com https://trafficticker.com Husband doesn’t talk about it a lot.
- AwesomeFaic 7y agoManaging the tech/business side of wanderandponder.com, making about 30/mo between Brave tips and nanoinfluencer gigs. Looking to increase traffic and find more influencer opportunities right now.
- flignats 7y agohttps://reqloot.com https://reqloot.com - an online cryptocurrency game that is close to generating that per month. ~100-150 daily active players.
- blisterpeanuts 7y agoPlaying in a band! It's a side project, earns me between $4K and $6K per year, depending how many gigs of course. Last year was huge for me, around $8K, and this year is slow, probably will be about $4K. I'm just about to upgrade my sound equipment to probably the Electro-Voice Evolve system, which has bluetooth, can be operated by a phone app, sets up easily, and sounds incredible. This is an investment which will make my band more marketable but also set me up to do more paid sound gigs. The day job will always be my main gig but this is a great side project.
- andy42 7y agoComment créer une entreprise d'affiliation en ligne?