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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

• glax 2y ago
  I help people mod their motorcycles. I wanted to do something not related to tech or coding in general. People consult me for doing performace mods, parts sourcing. The sports bike scene is emerging in my country. I'm planning to build a dyno from scratch, if it's a success. I'm hoping to recoup the cost from proving it as a service.
• vintageclothldn 2y ago
  Clicky: Earlier in 2024 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39110194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39110194 2023 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38467691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38467691 2022 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34190421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34190421 2021 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667095 2020 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24947167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24947167 2019 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20899863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20899863 2018 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17790306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17790306 2017 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148804
  • cvbox 2y ago
    thanks
• anotheracc88 2y ago
  It is work work not passive, but I write dev docs for $80/h. But it is simple work, you just go research and write. No Racoon calling out to Wingman to get user info provider services.
  • keen-keen 2y ago
    I am also very interested in this kind of work.
  • Crier1002 2y ago
    do you have examples i can refer to? i’d love to learn to write better docs
    • nicbou 2y ago
      I write documentation for a living (a different, non-tech kind). The best resources in my opinion are the writing guides of various governments. Gov.uk leads the way, but the Australian government puts out great guides too. Steve Krug's "Don't make me think" is old but still applies to the modern web.
  • toldyouso2022 2y ago
    How does one even find tech writing jobs?
• heliographe 2y ago
  I'm making photography software: https://heliographe.net https://heliographe.net Right now my work is Apple platforms only (revenue through App Store), but I'm actively looking into ways to expand to other platforms. As a long time photographer, my philosophy is to make tools that are useful to me first and foremost, and to build smaller scope things that compose well (UNIX philosophy). I've got some exciting new things planned for 2025. These are all side projects right now, as my official full time occupation is Japanese language school student (I moved to Japan at the end of 2023 year after almost 15 years in SF Bay Area tech companies/startups, becoming a full time student at 34 surrounded by 21 year olds from a very different background has been an interesting experience on its own). Since the revenue has been increasing the last few months, I incorporated to keep things organized, but for now these projects are still "side projects". It'd be cool if I could justify financially to do this full time after I finish language school in 2026.
  • keen-keen 2y ago
    I'm happy for you. You are so smart and capable, so I hope you won't have bad luck in the end.
  • ein0p 2y ago
    Trichromy reminds me of Prokudin-Gorsky's color photographs from the 19th century. Except of course he tried to get rid of the effect. Clever!
    • heliographe 2y ago
      Yes, it’s directly based on the trichromatic photographic process, which I learned about reading an article about Gorsky. And yeah, it’s super interesting how when a new recording technology is created, we seek to avoid its limitations; but later on, those limitations get embraced on their own merits for aesthetic value!
  • snackernews 2y ago
    These are great. Always a pleasure discovering a portfolio of apps from an indie developer that genuinely do one thing well, are well designed, and all have the coveted “Data Not Collected” app privacy card to boot.
• manuelmoreale 2y ago
  Not even halfway there with mine. Gonna make a reminder and look for this post in 2026!
• goenning 2y ago
  I did not like any Kubernetes UI so I built my own https://aptakube.com https://aptakube.com It went from side project to my primary job in less than 6 months. Everyone was saying that $99 was too much for “an API wrapper”, but here we are, 2 years later and with hundreds of small to enterprise companies using it :)
  • anonzzzies 2y ago
    You really shouldn't listen to too many people. The only thing that counts is paying customers; everything else is just jealous people.
    • archontes 2y ago
      Dismissing disagreement as jealousy always bothered me. To think a person is jealous of you requires a lot of ego, like... narcissistic amounts of ego in my opinion. Either that or a world view so small that it can't conceive of other world views that don't align with yours. Some folks just can't imagine buying what some folks are selling.
      • Loxicon 2y ago
        Sure but... what is there to "disagree" with? customers are paying for it. If you don't want it, don't pay. But why expend energy on "disagreeing"? weird.
        • IIsi50MHz 2y ago
          For me, a key point is "everybody _was_saying_". An implication is that early on, or before release, people thought the price seemed too high. Possibly some of those people no longer think so. Or possibly the price really is too high _for_them_. Could also be that some of those people just don't expect to get enough use (or some other kind of 'enough') out of a service for a given price point. There are loads of people who have no problem paying for YouTube Premium, while others find the price too high. Some people pay for the highest-end smartphones, getting them as soon as they come out. I think they're crazy. (-:
• 255kb 2y ago
  I maintain https://mockoon.com https://mockoon.com, an API mocking tool for developers. I created it in 2017 and initially worked on it during my free time. I started focusing on it full-time three years ago and introduced cloud options to make the project sustainable alongside donations. Revenue is growing slowly but steadily, and I’m proud to 1) start making a living from it, and 2) ensure the project’s open-source future.
  • LordHeini 2y ago
    That tool is nice. It saved my ass during covid where i had a customer with an API which could not be reached from home. My intern somehow managed to get it running inside docker for our dev systems.
  • Snacklive 2y ago
    omg, i have used mockoon in the past. Thank you for creating the app, it's very intuitive to use and useful. Incredible work
• stealthcopter 2y ago
  I made PortDroid, an Android Port Scanner and networking toolkit back in 2014 because I was learning programming and was curious to what was possible. I mainly wrote it for myself and I've done no marketing so have been quite surprised how popular it has become (~800k downloads). It's been a consistent passion project for me now over the years and I love getting feedback and suggestions from people using it. It'll never have ads (I hate them) and only data collection is optional crash reports. https://portdroid.net https://portdroid.net
  • nischalsamji 2y ago
    Wow... happy to see portdroid :) Had used your app for debugging an android app that I built some 6-7 years ago
    • stealthcopter 2y ago
      It sure has a way of making you feel old right? Thanks for using PortDroid :)
• epaga 2y ago
  I made SmoothTrack, a no-equipment head tracking app for iOS and Android which lets you control the game camera in sim games (like MSFS 2024 for example) with your head - basically like TrackIR, just without any equipment and for $15 instead of $150. I originally made the app just for myself to save myself the money of buying a TrackIR system, but then /r/flightsim begged me to release it as a full app. Last month, I released SmoothTrack 2.0 which includes basic eye tracking and camera control gestures. https://smoothtrack.app https://smoothtrack.app
  • GaryNumanVevo 2y ago
    I love SmoothTrack!
    • epaga 2y ago
      Well, that's awesome to run into a SmoothTrack user here! Thanks for the kind words, all three of them. :)
  • catonmylap 2y ago
    I remember building my own track ir with ir leds and a floppy in front of an old webcam. This was more than a decade ago, but I would have assumed there is no more demand for this since VR headsets are a thing(I completely left gaming and everything about it since then). Anyway, great work!
    • DoingIsLearning 2y ago
      > and a floppy in front of an old webcam I think you meant to write 'an artisanal and bespoke infra-red bandpass filter in front of an old webcam'.
  • krageon 2y ago
    This is really cool, I think this may be the first time I watch one of these threads and be tempted to get something
  • M3L0NM4N 2y ago
• lucas03 2y ago
  I made dividend tracking website. I am a backend engineer, so the UI is simple bootstrap and I focus on having data I find valuable. I've been working on it since I finished University, so it's like 7 years, and current MRR at $740 isn't great, but at least I don't have to pay for hosting (and financial data sources are expensive). I believe that spare money should be invested in stocks, so I like that I work on something I use, and will be using in the following decades. The website is DIGRIN.com (DIvidend GRowth INvesting), good value for free users as well IMHO.
  • akudha 2y ago
    What service do you use to get financial data?
• leetcodewizard 2y ago
  https://leetcodewizard.io https://leetcodewizard.io I released this fairly simple ChatGPT/Claude wrapper a few months ago. Currently it’s doing about 15K/month. It’s an invisible Electron app that can be used to cheat in coding interviews / OA’s.
  • throwaway77385 2y ago
    I love this. I honestly want everyone to cheat on these leetcode style interviews. I want that process to be broken and for the whole system to become completely ineffective, so that companies are forced to go back to actually putting some thought into hiring. I doubt it'll happen and instead surveillance during these interviews will probably just increase instead, but perhaps you've kicked off a game of cat and mouse here, which may make some hiring managers reconsider leetcode.
    • disqard 2y ago
      This is, IMO the kind of "Accelerationism" that I can get behind :) System is broken, therefore let's make it 100% obvious that it's broken, so it can be totally rebuilt.
    • coldtrait 2y ago
      Thanks for echoing my thoughts. This is what I feel about the process to, and at the point in my life where I'm at I couldn't care less about this being unethical.
  • angoragoats 2y ago
    What a great idea! Honestly probably one of the better uses of LLMs that I’ve seen. Wishing you continued success.
  • dannydandan 2y ago
    How did you market this?
• tikotus 2y ago
  I'm making a physical product with my wife: an illustrated narrative puzzle magazine. It's similar to escape games, but it's more story driven and easy to do in short sessions and at your own pace. It started with my wife making the first magazine pretty much by herself. Since then we've made more magazines together and the business is slowly growing. We're selling them mainly on our custom lightweight online store. It's done with minimal JS and Node as backend, Stripe as payment provider. We have a Meta pixel to help us track our advertising conversion, but we've disabled cookies, they just felt somehow dirty... It's nice to have power over these things when running your own business. As a next step for the website I'm thinking of including a templating language in the workflow, now I'm still doing edits with search and replace, sometimes missing things... but I do enjoy the simplicity. The actual business has two main challenges: First is discoverability. It's a pretty unique product, an adventure escape game in a magazine. It doesn't sell well in physical game shops since it doesn't look like a game. We sell well in conventions where we get to explain what the product is, but we also want some weekends for ourselves! Meta ads for our online shop are working surprisingly well though. The second and bigger challenge is shipping. Our flat is filled with boxes, and the time I spend sorting magazines, enveloping them, printing address labels, carrying them to the post office... it's really not worth my hourly rate as an engineer (Nor my wife's, but I do it since my schedule is more flexible, and I've automated some parts of the process with a string of incredibly user hostile shell scripts). And the shipping costs are downputting to many, we're quite cornered here in Finland. We are slowly gaining some distribution partners in Europe, but we should also be looking into better shipping options, like perhaps some kind of shipping warehouse exist? Our volume is slowly getting big enough so that it might be feasible. I've only done some cursory googling on this but don't exactly know what I'm even looking for, and there's only so many hours in a day. A lot of work, small margins (ads+printing+misc takes a big slice), but around $500 profit per month. Feels absolutely fantastic to have an actual concrete business we own! https://cluehound.com https://cluehound.com
  • goenning 2y ago
    Dude this looks awesome! When I was a kid I used to read a lot of these "puzzle magazines", the ones we had were like: - Start on page 1, read the story and decide if you want to take path A or B - A = go to page 2, B = page 3 - then there was another decision making, and the story goes on... Until you either escape the dungeon, or die (different ways of dying lol). It was so cool!
• kebsup 2y ago
  I have two! https://gifmemes.io https://gifmemes.io, haven't touched the code for years, makes between 100-300$ a month, depending on the season. https://vocabuo.com https://vocabuo.com - a side project I hope to turn into a business, so I work on it around two days a week, made around $3.5k in revenue last month but most of it went back into ads.
  • ms7892 2y ago
    Wow! So both projects revenue come from ads?
    • xutopia 2y ago
      The vocabulary tool is from pay as you go on App Store.
    • kebsup 2y ago
      Neither is. Gifmemes - you can buy a 10 USD watermark removal Vocabuo - freemium and you can buy classic Appstore/Playstore subscription to unlock the other 80% of the features
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• PinkPigeon 2y ago
  https://pinkpigeon.co.uk https://pinkpigeon.co.uk Who'd have thought that a CMS could still make money in 2024, but this one is around £500 a month. It obviously doesn't pay the bills or the mortgage, but it works. All my clients are word of mouth, I do not advertise at all (a combination of costs and insanely opaque / fractured advertising models by Facebook and co...I don't have time to get a phd in your ad platform to see if any of my money is actually doing anything) I build it originally because I was fed up with Wordpress / Squarespace / Weebly / Wix, because all of their interfaces are slow and don't work on mobile. This CMS is fast and works on mobile. It's also pretty cheap nowadays, as I've not been raising prices like everyone else. It won't do super-flashy websites. It's mostly about having low-JS, good SEO, easy access to information, which can be managed by very inexperienced users (I live rurally and we have a fair few pensioners as clients, they all get along with the system very well). There are just about a billion things I want to do with it, but it never made enough money to become my full-time job, so it mostly just sits there and does its job.
  • rafram 2y ago
    The “Lea Hill Holiday Cottages” link is broken!
    • PinkPigeon 2y ago
      Thank you for pointing that out, fixed!
  • yard2010 2y ago
    Thank you for deliberately not cooperating with Satan!
    • PinkPigeon 2y ago
      One can but try, but it feels like that's getting harder and harder to do these days...
  • cdosborn 2y ago
    > It's mostly about having low-JS, good SEO, easy access to information, which can be managed by very inexperienced users Nice! I shared in the parent thread about my tool which spell checks sites, it found a few small issues: https://www.spl.ing/report-card?website=pinkpigeon.co.uk&uuid=da8abfdd-8e72-4c84-915f-c2da992af078 https://www.spl.ing/report-card?website=pinkpigeon.co.uk&uui...
• henrygabby 2y ago
  Unsexy tech business making roughly $6-7k/mo. I partnered with a local janitorial company that targets industrial clients with recurring nightly cleaning needs and I make roughly 7% of gross revenue as a recurring weekly payment as long as the client stays on w/o much work. I help do some client support, SEO, and pay for things like Apollo.AI to reach out to customers but other than that it is pretty hands off. I feel very fortunate.
  • MeetingsBrowser 2y ago
    But what does the business actually do?
    • qup 2y ago
      Sounds like brings leads to the janitorial company
      • busterarm 2y ago
        But also saves the janitorial company from having to hire people to do customer management/support.
        • henrygabby 2y ago
          Correct
    • henrygabby 2y ago
      Yes, it is a leads driven business. I have focused on improving SEO in three of their core markets. Any new customer that signs up as a result of my marketing efforts, as long as their base margin is met, I get paid for the lifetime of that account.
      • busterarm 2y ago
        I love everything about what you're doing here. There's a lot of opportunity in a lot of different niches and it's all just being slept on. Did you already have a relationship with this company somehow or did you have to go and sell them?
• benhowdle 2y ago
  https://reqres.in/ https://reqres.in/ - roughly that much in ads revenue. Would love to add a paid plan for more features, but....time.
• Jabbs 2y ago
  https://www.unlistedjobs.com/ https://www.unlistedjobs.com/ Scraper of job listings directly from company websites. I found my last day job by using a scraper that visits company websites in search of job listings. Now I've turned it into an app for others to use and access jobs that are posted on company websites (rather than paid employer ads on Indeed or wherever). This gives the job searcher an advantage to find jobs not listed on job search sites and show the company you have taken time/interest to visit their site.
  • dchuk 2y ago
    I’ve had a similar idea over the years. You should consider exploring whether competitive companies could be customers. As a competitor, getting alerts about roles another company is hiring for can be very interesting. Combine it with trends of postings over time…
    • Jabbs 2y ago
      Oh that's a really interesting idea. Yea I dislike the idea of charging the job seeker but have not found a good way to monetize companies (not that they even know about me anyway)
  • stuckkeys 2y ago
    What are you using to for the scraping? Playwright…selenium? I wanted to do something as a hobby but my IP kept getting reported lol. Also when you say companies…where are you getting the information from? Data brokers? Anyway, it is an interesting topic to me.
    • Jabbs 2y ago
      Selenium, although I'm using a wrapper library that uses it. I only query each company every few days or so which probably helps to not get banned IP-wise but also rotate them. But many of the company job links are through external sources too (lever, greenhouse, etc.) which don't seem to mind The company data was gathered online for a long time until I found https://www.thecompaniesapi.com/ https://www.thecompaniesapi.com/ (which now is the source for much of that data)
• hewmax 2y ago
  I started selling my own design templates and tutorials a few years back and ended up making a steady $2–3k/month from a single Medium post that ranked well on Google and some Product Hunt traction. This led me to build https://tapflow.co https://tapflow.co on the side (been 3 years). It's a simple platform where tech pros-designers, devs, marketers, PMs— turn internal docs, templates and workflows into paid products. I kept it lean since most don't have time to build a full course. The core idea: many pros have valuable knowledge sitting unused-too busy, unsure of their expertise, or find it too complicated to create full courses. I built a tool to help them quickly pack and sell what they know, creating passive income. Some friends and early adopters have made over $20k from their products (mainly courses). One French teacher even earned over $7k on the first day with just a promo page https://tapflow.co/p/du-b2-au-c1-4ebMhTxqJi https://tapflow.co/p/du-b2-au-c1-4ebMhTxqJi Since launch, I haven’t done any real marketing—just personal recommendations, Product Hunt and Reddit. Now it’s stable income. The platform takes a small cut and offers a pro tier.
• GaryNumanVevo 2y ago
  I made an AI chatbot for OnlyFans models. Their fans can speak to "them" via a third party messaging app. It's currently pulling ~15k USD MRR. I built my own GPU infra for inference and I run Llama 3 with a fewshot prompting to get the model to respond like a given OF model, typically using their actual DMs with fans. I don't have a website for obvious reasons, but if you're in the biz you've no doubt heard about my tool :)
  • j0hnyl 2y ago
    Your GPU infra is a local server?
    • GaryNumanVevo 2y ago
      not local, it's colocated, but I specced and built it specifically to do inference at scale
  • lbhdc 2y ago
    Can you describe your GPU setup? I have been super interested to get some coloc space, but have a ton of questions.
    • GaryNumanVevo 2y ago
      Nothing fancy, just bought a motherboard from SM, and a 4U case. I have a couple of boxes with 6 NVIDIA 3080s and recently upgraded to a used super micro with 8 A100s Colocation wise, you pretty much buy the space, show up with the server and rack it yourself into a locked cabinet, not much else
      • lbhdc 2y ago
        That is sick, I wanna build out something of a similar size (sans gpus). How much does colocation cost in your area?
  • munificent 2y ago
    I don't mean this in a critical way to you but, man, this makes me so sad to think about. Models making money from lonely people so desperate for a connection that they pay to chat with someone and then they don't even end up chatting with a human at all.
• joshstrange 2y ago
  It’s not really MMR but I have a side business when I provide software for online and in-person festival payments (entry/food/drinks). If you take the total revenue (or profit) for the year and divide by 12 I’m well over the $500/mo limit. I currently do 3 festivals a year which all pretty much fell in my lap, I’ve yet to start any sort of sales/marketing due to being busy with my day job/life and not wanting to grow too fast. I started back in 2021 when a local company I’ve worked with to make apps came to me looking for a solution for their food/music festival that didn’t require handing out and (almost as importantly) counting all the tickets/tokens that people bought to spend at the vendors. I did a quick turn around of a couple months to get a v1 out and working in time for the event. In the next year I essentially rewrote 90% of it and added in-person payment support (previously had just supported recording in-person payments made through a CC terminal. Each new festival has new needs but I’m starting to get fewer feature requests and less I need to build for each new client which is nice.
  • JamesSwift 2y ago
    Interesting. Are you comfortable sharing any architecture details? Im half wanting to do the same for a local fair that had a high friction ticket system. I wasnt happy with any designs I came up with though
    • joshstrange 2y ago
      Sure! It's QR-based, so customers create an account, load money onto their account, then show their QR code to vendors who scan it to charge their account. We also provide plastic cards (think: gift card) for people who don't want to use their phone but we see 80%+ of people interact completely on their phone/online. We have an app and website (same codebase, Quasar framework) and for in-person payment (entry, bar) we provide iPads with connected CC readers. My best advice is this: your hardest challenges will not be technical in nature. The hardest part is the equipment, dealing with customers, hand-holding the festival organizers. I don't say any of that as some gross thing or bad thing, just reality. In fact, I think I've succeeded larged based on the in-person aspect (We travel to the event and are on-site for the event) and being the "I have all the answers for your festival payments"-person. Rolling with the punches is a huge part of it. The whole thing runs on AWS Lambda with a postgres DB from Neon.tech. I'll be honest, it's incredibly over-architected, the whole thing could run a a couple (or even 1) servers as a traditional NodeJS app without issue (and with less complexity) but I used this project as learning experience and a chance to try our some technology I was interested in. Lambda is incredibly cool and I think I might have one of the best use-cases for it (incredibly spikey load: no traffic for 9 mo, tiny traffic for presales for 1-2 months, 1 month with higher sales, then 1-2 days of the event with crazy sales) but the debugging story isn't the best. SST makes it 10000x better than anything else I've tried and the developer experience is bar-none for writing lambdas but all the other crap (CloudFormation, logs, monitoring, etc) is so much overhead. If I was writing this again today I'd probably look at something like NestJS but I won't let myself re-write the code (again) without a pressing reason and if I need to spend time anywhere it's sales/marketing. Here is my, crappy, "marketing" website: https://grubbux.com/ https://grubbux.com/
• LarsDu88 2y ago
  https://roguestargun.com https://roguestargun.com Solo Developed VR starfighter combat sim for Quest, PCVR, and soon the PICO4 Meta, send me a free Quest 3, please. Would not recommend doing a game, let alone a VR game as a sideproject for anyone My day job is Machine Learning engineer, so I really should've picked an AI sideproject facepalm
  • ericol 2y ago
    Looks very cool. Will definitely give it a try.
• ssz 2y ago
  I'm making a little by sharing all my nonfiction book summaries/notes on https://littlerbooks.com https://littlerbooks.com.
  • werzum 2y ago
    Thank you for sharing, that is a neat side project and was actually just looking for something like this. Can you share how your summarisation process works and if you use any specific tools or approaches to generate them?
• encoderer 2y ago
  My SaaS Cronitor.io started here in 2014 as a side project. Left my job at Zillow 4 years ago and we are still going strong. Here’s my reply from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15150205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15150205
  • arnavpraneet 2y ago
    oh hey, love cronitor! it is a killer tool for my personal and work stuff both!
    • encoderer 2y ago
      Thank you!!!! As a founder and developer I usually look at our product with a critical eye. Encouragement like this is really nourishing.
  • ddgflorida 2y ago
    Excellent job and idea.
  • manoji 2y ago
    Hey i love cronitor! Happy user here , it has saved me from multiple disasters. Thank you for building it.
• guico 2y ago
  Just launched Story Treasure a way to create illustrated children's books, motivated by the fact that I'm a portuguese dad raising two bilingual girls in Germany... very hard to find portuguese books around here! https://www.storytreasure.ai/ https://www.storytreasure.ai/
  • m3nu 2y ago
    German speaker in Portugal. :-) That's awesome. Just did one.
    • guico 2y ago
      haha, it's the ultimate uno reverse card. Did it work? There are some known issues with German titles on the Cover page, sorry if you've encountered that. I'm trying to improve it.
  • gcanyon 2y ago
    How do you monetize?
    • guico 2y ago
      I have a margin on the credits for the models. So it's a credit model and I sell them for more than I buy them.
  • sunsetonsaturn 2y ago
    Can you provide some figures, in terms of profitability? How much did it cost to put together, what are the monthly costs to keep it afloat? I write a book and give it away for free on https://book.railean.net https://book.railean.net, but it wouldn't hurt to turn it into a revenue stream.
  • rsanek 2y ago
    This is impressive. I'm working in an adjacent space and one thing that has been a challenge is character consistency -- having characters in AI-generated art appear reasonably similar across different image generations. Your implementation looks to do a solid job -- any learnings that you're willing to share?
• rstupek 2y ago
  We made a couple apps to work better with Davinci Resolve after finding things it did or did inefficiently. One (SparkFX) is still a work in progress https://sparkfxstudio.com/ https://sparkfxstudio.com/
  • dowakin 2y ago
    Hi, I love your YouTube channel! I watched a bunch of videos from it last year! Thank you!
    • rstupek 2y ago
      Thanks! That's my business partner who makes the videos
• andygcook 2y ago
  I started a side project with my older brother called NanaGram.co that makes it easy to text message photos to a unique phone number, then once a month they get printed and shipped to your loved ones. If you have kids, it makes a good holiday gift for the grandparents if you're stumped on what to get them. I've since moved on from it, but my brother makes enough to work on NanaGram full-time now. It's also just been really cool to see the project grow over the years and bring happiness to thousands of grandparents all over the world.
  • aacook 2y ago
    Thanks to F5Bot I saw this comment. Thanks for sharing brother!
    • danvoell 2y ago
      I hope F5Bot is on this list. Been using for free for years. just works. Reached out a while back and owner is very responsive.
  • _caw 2y ago
    NanaGram is awesome, used it for a while back in the olden days of 2021. When I visit my grandma she still has pictures on her refrigerator delivered by this service. Cheers to you and your brother!
    • aacook 2y ago
      Seeing this comment a bit late... thank you so much for the kind words about the service!
  • kirso 2y ago
    Very cool! Always wondered how solo engineers deal with physical and shipping? I suppose there is some sort of API that allows prints and shipping on behalf?
    • aacook 2y ago
• cccybernetic 2y ago
  I built a web app that extracts data from documents, like PDFs, Word, etc. I've seen people say "GPT wrapper", but it consistently outperforms similar tools in the space. My main customer is a private equity fund that randomly reached out. I didn't know much at all about fintech, but it works and gets the job done. I don't have a proper marketing site yet since I've been focused on building the app, but it's coming soon (hopefully...)
  • gcanyon 2y ago
    I'd like to learn more -- please email me (link in profile).
  • giarc 2y ago
    How do you reduce errors or hallucinations? I recently uploaded a very clear PDF to meta.ai and asked it a few, very simple questions. It completely made up quotes, including page numbers, section numbers etc.
    • cccybernetic 2y ago
      I don't feed documents directly to an LLM. First, extract and process the data in a structured way that maintains the hierarchy and metadata of the content (this is important!). Then convert this into a scheme that you can control — it doesn’t really matter what it is (JSON, XML, markdown). From there, feed this to the LLM in chunks. This will get you most of the way there. There's different ways to validate, but that's why maintaining hierarchy and metadata is so important. If you track this information properly, you can cross-check responses across different LLMs!
  • acrooks 2y ago
    I'm interested, can you email me (address in profile)
  • laylower 2y ago
    Could you please link your website?
• thdxr 2y ago
  we sell coffee from the terminal ssh terminal.shop will do 6 figures in revenue the first year - not bad for a side thing!
  • itslennysfault 2y ago
    That's wild. I saw this when you(?) posted it a while back and assumed no one would want this. No offense, but it doesn't make the coffee taste any better...... unless it does............? Anyway, glad you're seeing success.
    • skottenborg 2y ago
      The people behind it are quite popular SWE YouTubers, so that might explain the reach :-)
    • joseppudev 2y ago
      it is like belle delphine's bath water, but for nerds
      • crusty 2y ago
        Considering I hadn't heard of Belle Delphine until she came up in an LTT video, I'd venture a guess that her bath water was also for nerds.
  • eigenhombre 2y ago
    I love the concept and the implementation. Do you have a write-up on the implementation anywhere, blog posts, anything? It's a pleasure to see an online store implementation that doesn't use the Web or rely on some mobile app.
    • hiatus 2y ago
      Might be using something like https://github.com/charmbracelet/wish https://github.com/charmbracelet/wish
  • 2y ago
• doctoboggan 2y ago
  I sell custom jewelry on Etsy and my Shopify website (lulimjewelry.com). I have a background in 3d printing and through that I realized that the sweet spot for 3d printed products is something that is small, high value, and custom. The jewelry industry fits this perfectly, and has already seen a large uptake in 3d printer adoption. I built a pipeline using fabric.js, flask, and blender that lets me take my customer's customizations (fingerprints, signatures, other engravings) and place them on a ring. I ultimately generate a STL file that I send over to my casting house in LA. They 3d print the STL in wax, and then cast that wax mould with precious metals using the traditional casting process. It's a fun side business as I get to tinker with new technologies (recently working on integrating a LLM into the ring design process). I have decent profits (enough to pay my mom and sister to help with customer support and shipping), so the workload I take on myself is relatively small.
  • scottishbee 2y ago
    Ornaments? Parents keep asking for my kid's to "create" an ornament. The fun of doing on paper is obviously great, but it'd be neat to convert it into something more durable too.
    • doctoboggan 2y ago
      I've definitely taken kids handwriting/drawings and put them on rings or pendants before. Nothing as large as a standard ornament though.
  • commieneko 2y ago
    Who is your casting house in LA?
    • doctoboggan 2y ago
      https://hightechcasting.com https://hightechcasting.com
  • bilinguliar 2y ago
    Then you should use my https://commercialinvoice.app https://commercialinvoice.app To generate, you got it, commercial invoices. To have a smooth customs clearance.
• JoeMattie 2y ago
  I built the frontend for https://rigged.ai https://rigged.ai We do statistical processing and breakdown of options sweep data, and generate realtime alerts that people can use to copy trade big Wall Street traders. We also have a strategy playground you can use to test different strategies that could be used for a trading bot.
  • connectsnk 2y ago
    Do you have a tutorial on how this tool can be used? Any backtest on how such alerts worked? Asking as a potential customer?
    • JoeMattie 2y ago
      Check out the docs section or any of the YouTube videos. And yes, I'm pretty proud of our backtesting tool (it's called strategy playground) that lets you set some bot parameters and filters for what alerts you want to trade based on (it has access to all the alerts we've generated historically, as well as symbol and option prices for all tracked options) and then does a full tick by tick simulation run and generates charts
      • windowshopping 2y ago
        The docs seem to be locked behind sign-up. The only option I see is "Get Started" which leads to sign up. :/
        • patrulek 2y ago
          It seems you can access this directly through the link: https://docs.rigged.ai/ https://docs.rigged.ai/
  • sunnybeetroot 2y ago
    I didn’t see a pricing page on the homepage, what’s your pricing model?
• yqiang 2y ago
  I'm building a better calorie/macro tracker called FitBee: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fitbee-calorie-counter/id6443979108 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fitbee-calorie-counter/id64439... Tracking my food has helped me get into much better shape but the leading apps in this space IMO are all quite clunky. I wanted to built something that was fast and lets you get on with your life. A few stand out features: - Nutrition label scanning if I don't have the food you're looking for - Photo Logging for restaurant meals or complex meals you don't want to manually track - It's light weight & fast - Interactive widgets for things like water tracking.
  • Jeremy1026 2y ago
    Feels weird that you hype up its ad free in the description, when you need to pay to have the app work (monthly, annually, or permanent). I'd not expect a paid application to have ads.
• giarc 2y ago
  I laser cut wall art and sell over Facebook marketplace. Making $2000-5000/month. I have a website, but most sales are done over FB and customers pick up at my house. I either purchase designs on Etsy, pay a designer to create dxf file or do it myself (if it's easy). To be honest, I don't like the position I'm in with this. It makes too much to give up, but not enough to be a "real thing". Plus, I'm still trading time for dollars.
  • strongpigeon 2y ago
    Mind sharing your website? Genuinely curious.
    • giarc 2y ago
      I can message it privately, don't really want to post publicly. 99% of orders are local pick up, shipping is just a hassle as most pieces don't fit in regular box (plus Canada Post is on strike right now). EDIT - messaged you on your IG.
      • strongpigeon 2y ago
        Please do! My email is on my profile.
      • hactually 2y ago
        I'd love to see it too if possible - based in Aus here, contact on bio
        • giarc 2y ago
          Sent an email.
          • prayerplant 2y ago
            Ditto, I’m curious to see the art.
      • 2y ago
• strongpigeon 2y ago
  I still make about ~$1000/month with my 5/3/1 app : https://fivethreeone.app/ https://fivethreeone.app/ Managed to raise some money from friends to work full-time on a successor that allows you to write your own workout programs with formulas.
  • wlamartin 2y ago
    I've been using your app for the last 3-4 months very successfully. There are a few niggles here and there but overall it's been exactly what I needed, and I'm very grateful for it!
  • cyrialize 2y ago
    This app looks great! I'll definitely try it out when I move onto 5/3/1.
• markowitz 2y ago
  [flagged]
• catchmeifyoucan 2y ago
  I built a Figma plugin that makes it easier to upload and host and manage images from Figma. https://figmage.com https://figmage.com
• pentacent_hq 2y ago
  https://www.keila.io https://www.keila.io I’m building an Open Source (AGPLv3) email marketing platform with Elixir/Phoenix and it's only just crossed that MRR threshold - three years since the first version.
• dowakin 2y ago
  I started a mini-SaaS focused on identifying what content/scripts are blocked on websites by AdBlockers, Firefox Tracking Protection, and similar tools. I initially aimed for an cheap monthly pricing plan and many clients, but that strategy hasn't been successful so far. However, in the process of finding clients, I found two 'enterprise' customers. I built a custom on-premise version for them and charging $300 per month for each, which technically sums to over $500. Not sure it is what I wanted )
  • iandanforth 2y ago
    Totally counts though!
• Bellspringsteen 2y ago
  https://blog.labsbell.com/blog/SkippiesPart2 https://blog.labsbell.com/blog/SkippiesPart2 selling 4.99$ shoes, strangely fun to see the inner workings of ecommerce. I dont understand how amazon sellers make any money.
  • stronglikedan 2y ago
    damn my wide feet. nice shoes tho. wish they'd fit me
    • gcanyon 2y ago
      Same here: I need like 3XW shoes
  • fidrelity 2y ago
    I love this and want to order a couple pairs! 1. Are the branded/not branded models the same cut? Since the angle on the pictures are different it's hard to judge. 2. Why do you not have more pictures of the shoes? Since those are probably impossible to try/return I want to try and avoid a wasted purchase. 3. What import taxes can one expect ordering to the EU?
  • libertine 2y ago
    Amazon is ruthless for some product categories, with a lot of competition and thin margins. For you a healthy margin might be 3$-6$, for others they're happy with 1$... and Amazon puts pressure for cheaper and cheaper prices to make their users happy, but they refuse to cut their margins :P
• duck 2y ago
  Still running https://hackernewsletter.com/ https://hackernewsletter.com/ after 15 years and 60k+ subscribers. It has been hard to put a lot of focus on it the past couple years, but been finally getting some time to spend on some improvements there. Income here has always been simple sponsors which I'm very grateful for.
  • ayewo 2y ago
    This is one of the few newsletters that are worth reading so thanks for your service for all these years. BTW, 15 years is really impressive!
    • duck 2y ago
      Thanks for the kind words and being a subscriber!
  • outime 2y ago
    Congrats! Time to update the © years? It may look abandoned to the newbies.
    • duck 2y ago
      Ha, good call.
      • outime 2y ago
        Another thing I've noticed is that the logo for this thing in Curpress is broken.
    • phildenhoff 2y ago
      Also, maybe update the "recent issue" to be more recent than 2021! Just subscribed though; I'm looking forward to receiving it wherever I read my emails.
      • duck 2y ago
• ramthehack 2y ago
  I wrote a small application for a Customer which enables File Transfer, Notifies Users about files that they should have uploaded and displays some progress. The Customer is a law firm. No Recurring Renevue, But yielded 10000€ in 6 months. Is More of a second Job than a side project tho
• nspeller 2y ago
  I built an interactive Music Theory course 8 years ago over a winter break and it continues to bring in enough to pay my rent each month. I just thought there had to be a more intuitive way to learn music theory than the very boring and jargon-heavy alternatives. It uses Tone.js to include little interactive pianos, guitars, and other demos. I've done no marketing, it hit the HN front page for a day, and after that initial spike in traffic has been fairly consistent over the past 8 years. It uses Stripe for payments and for the first few years it was only Stripe. 3 years in I decided to add PayPal support... revenue doubled overnight, mostly from international customers. https://www.lightnote.co/ https://www.lightnote.co/
  • DoingSomeThings 2y ago
    Fantastic landing page! Related thought - Is there a good way to search for projects like this? I know there are hundreds of these passion projects that never show up in google. Ex) This year I want to get better at playing piano. Reddit and google bring up a few consistent big name links. I'd love to support a well-produced course by a creator like this, but have no idea how to find it.
  • cpursley 2y ago
    This is really cool, wishing you the best of luck!
    • Rendello 2y ago
      It's been paying his rent for 8 years, I think fortune's on his side ;) The landing page got me too and I signed up
  • catchmeifyoucan 2y ago
    really cool! Can't wait to use this for my next musical learnings
  • jjcm 2y ago
    I wish I had this when I was learning. This is amazing - great work on all the interactive demos!
• Soupy 2y ago
  I run https://pastmaps.com https://pastmaps.com as a lil' solo bootstrapped labor of love. Think Google Maps, but for OLD maps. It has 185K+ fully georeferenced high-res maps covering all of America, as well as satellite, LiDAR, and 3D layers to enable exploration through space and time. History is cool yo. And apparently lucrative - it currently makes ~$5000/mo and is slowly but surely growing through word of mouth
  • gloflo 2y ago
    Where did you acquire those scans?
    • Soupy 2y ago
      Vast majority are currently from the USGS, but this is going to wildly shift and diversify soon as I've been working to bring a wider variety of sources. The next wave is coming mainly from public library systems from all across the globe (my background is in search so I literally am running a map crawler) I stand on the shoulders of these giants that have done amazing work to digitize the paper maps and I mainly am hoping to just aid in the ease of discoverability and exploration of these assets
  • registeredcorn 2y ago
    At a guess, you probably have a very large base of genealogists on there! Old maps are incredibly useful for genealogy because it helps you do lots of stuff. Say someone lived on "House #3 Country Road" in (county), but County Road no longer exists, and all that can be found is a brief description of "County Road is now Main Street, Bank Avenue, and Church Road" It would serve as a vital clue as to where their ancestors house used to be (or may still be!) It also helps to give a better narrative of how the community has expanded and changed over the years. Instead of just, "It was probably all forest land, then farm land, then suburbs or something?" Instead you can see stuff like if there were spikes/declines in populations in response to various events (gold rush, mining, factory work, railroads, war, highways bringing/diverting traffic, and so on). They can also show how the land may have changed from environmental factors (mud slides, earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes). Maybe you're from a "Military family" but never knew why, only to find out that a Military Depot opened up 2 minutes from their house just as great-grandpa turned 18. In a real sense, it describes not just the family and where they lived, but the type of place they knew, and community they grew up in. It hints at how they saw and experienced things over the years. "But why did great-great-grandpa insist on moving his entire family? He had lived in that beautiful house his entire life! Ah. They put the railroad 6 inches from his backdoor!"
• firefax 2y ago
  I play Texas Holdem. It's not enough $$$ to be a full time role, especially considering the costs of purchasing health insurance w/o a traditional W2 employer, but it's perfectly possible to buy in for the the table max (500) and leave with between between three hundred and a thousand dollars in profit in ~8 hours of play. (Real life, not online. "Caro's Book of Poker Tells"[1] will aid you more than fancy math, though knowing the basics of what is a good hand, what a check raise is, that sort of thing will help -- the biggest thing to remember is to play less hands, and be aggressive when you do. Fold or raise -- no calls!) [1] https://archive.org/details/carosbookofpoker00caro https://archive.org/details/carosbookofpoker00caro
  • pkkkzip 2y ago
    wrote a lengthy paragraph on the perils of online poker then i realized you were doing it offline! are you playing in the casinos? US I assume? tell me where the fishes are young man!
    • deaddodo 2y ago
      There are plenty of states were poker rooms or private poker is legal (California, for instance), here's a map of poker rooms: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTyeLgfGbpivBggR1qXDoTKwNnQrqnLX953Sw3UKh9QWEZwP7_pe-KJQbA&s=10 https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTyeLgf... Also, many people, who play poker semi-professionally, travel and play poker rooms in places like Mexico, Austria, Czechia, etc.
    • firefax 2y ago
      >tell me where the fishes are young man! It's hard, because the bad players tend to play what is termed "loose aggressive" -- so you have to play less hands, and often they get lucky with crap like catching a flush draw or three of a kind, and they only play 1/2 or 1/3. For privacy reasons I cannot give my specific location, but I've had good experiences at the Golden Nugget's 1/2. (Unfortunately there's not much of a wall from the casino and I'm sensitive to smoke, so I didn't last long before getting a migraine -- maybe they'l outfit themselves like a dutch hostel with one of those big air sucking machines oneday)
• I-M-S 2y ago
  I'm making a fiction podcast (that actually launched on HN) that is now earning ~$1100 USD monthly. I just wrote the latest report documenting how I got there, which you can find and discuss at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42380474
  • greenie_beans 2y ago
    wait you just talk about fiction? do you interview writers? i'm trying to understand how you built that audience, i've seen a lot of podcasts about fiction struggle to break past like 1k streams
    • I-M-S 2y ago
      No, it's an audio drama in a podcast format. Think radio dramas of the old but made for modern audiences! Here, hopefully https://programaudioseries.com/ https://programaudioseries.com/ paints a better picture.
• crazymoka 2y ago
  I run clearpayments.ca completely word of mouth and referrals only payment processing services and sytescope.com I give all clients the best rates possible because it doesn't matter as its not my primary source of income. However, business owners hate change so its hard to convince them lower fees and better products are better for them in the long run. I make between $3500/m - $5000/m maybe 10 support emails a month. I also build apps on the side for sytescope.com integrations.
• palsecam 2y ago
  https://FreeSolitaire.win https://FreeSolitaire.win brings around $500/mo in advertising revenue. It’s a Klondike Solitaire PWA (progressive web application). I started making it in 2016 and I’ve been slowly iterating on it over time. It has stayed minimal & lightweight, on purpose. No framework, no cruft, no obtrusive ads. Fun fact: because it’s so lightweight, it was included in 2020 in Moya (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nu.bi.moya https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nu.bi.moya), a popular messaging app in South Africa that is “data-free” for users (it does reverse-billing). Now ~40% of players are South Africans! Discussed on HN from to time, for instance: — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42026575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42026575 (38 days ago, 19 points) — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41971887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41971887 (43 days ago, 25 points) “Quick side-note. Thank you for freesolitaire.win. It's such a beautiful implementation of solitaire. Works so well as a PWA, I can enjoy it even without proper internet connection, it's simple, does the basics, but does it perfectly. There's nothing to add to it, but more importantly... nothing to take out.” (!) — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34483398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34483398 (2023, 4 points) Feedback always welcome, and happy to answer any question!
  • d--b 2y ago
    It should be forbidden to post a game of solitaire on hacker news. This has a direct impact on the world's GDP!
  • xz18r 2y ago
    This is neat! First off, the app itself is really nicely diesigned, props. Before the Moya thing, how did you lure people to your site? I assume there are literally hundreds of places where you can play Solitaire in the browser like this?
    • palsecam 2y ago
      Thanks! Wrt attracting visitors: Word of mouth, mainly. Posted it on Reddit back then, things like that. It grew organically from that. And, although it’s far from being on top results on SERP (search engine result pages), some people do find it that way. But yes, the Moya thing was a big boost!
• postatic 2y ago
  [dead]
• softienigga 2y ago
  [flagged]
• bengold14 2y ago
  RankPic (https://www.rankpic.info https://www.rankpic.info) is an app to help users crowdsource their best photo. I've been building over the past 3 years & just recently monetized and crossed the $500/m mark through a Pro subscription. It's grown into a lovely community of people who help each other pick their best pictures for dating apps, professional photos etc. I've seen some pretty fun novel use cases, such as (multiple!) people using it to pick out glasses, wedding invites & so on -- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rankpic-photo-ranking/id1602991264 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rankpic-photo-ranking/id160299... (ios) -- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.rankpic.rankpic https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.rankpic.ra... (android)
  • mettamage 2y ago
    Out of curiosity, why did you start this? I've always used photofeeler.
    • bengold14 2y ago
      Thanks for asking! I also used photofeeler and found the way it rated me 1-10 fairly harmful to my mental health. RankPic has users rank your photos best to worst, so it's just against yourself. Additionally it allows users to get more mileage out of each test, when you can do 2-6 photos instead of just one at a time. Anecdotally I've also heard it is a more fun experience for the rankers.
      • themdonuts 2y ago
        Very smart the best to worst ranking. Well done!
        • bengold14 2y ago
          Thank you! The ranking queue was a fun thing to implement.
      • mettamage 2y ago
        That answer is very inspiring, thanks :) Are you up for a digital coffee? If so, my email is in my profile. While I haven't been an entrepreneur, I did some side projects. Would be fun to chat about it.
• funksta 2y ago
  I've built a custom planner/calendar generator targeting e-ink tablets like the reMarkable, Supernote, and Kindle Scribe. Revenue is highly seasonal, but now consistently over the $500/mo threshold :) https://hyperpaper.me/ https://hyperpaper.me/
  • dewey 2y ago
    FWIW it took at least 30 seconds for the images to show up, first I thought it's a collection of white papers before it populated.
    • funksta 2y ago
      Thanks for the heads up! That page is normally very fast but I can reproduce those images loading slowly. Will investigate...
      • smikwily 2y ago
        Could be getting a little hug of death. I've been clicking through to check almost all of these projects out :)
  • RevertBusload 2y ago
    lol I bought this back in 2022 !
    • funksta 2y ago
      OP said old ideas were allowed :P
• jermaustin1 2y ago
  In 2023, I started selling solid wood rolling trays designed by my little sister and I on Etsy (The Stoned Craftsmen). Almost immediately I was making $1200-2000 per month. Some months can be big months (especially around Thanksgiving/Christmas) where I'm getting $75-200 a day in sales, but some months can be dogs (July and August this year were literally $0 months - the only 2 on record - I think an algorithm changed on Etsy and we got punished or something). When the sales were growing, the work was fun, when they plateaued then dipped, it made it hard to feel energized to do the work. The first year I spent a lot of time optimizing everything on the manufacturing side. Better tool paths, less tool changes, better speeds to not break everything, better use of materials, better use of disposables. I tried optimizing my Etsy store, but I couldn't get anything to increase sales, and moving to my own Shopify was a waste of $40/mo for 6 months because driving my own paid traffic from social media (which has rules against paraphernalia) was hard, so eventually I dropped that and stuck with Etsy and tried to wholesale to dispensaries and headshops around me, but my wholesale price is too high, and I don't want to offshore my manufacturing to get my price low enough. I had grand plans on growing the brand. I was in talk with major brands in the space for collaboration, but our wholesale price point was too high, and 1 celebrity brand said the gap was too large, the other never got back in touch after sending them our wholesale sheet. So I think I'm just going to have a nice side biz as a niche maker of solid wood rolling trays.
  • iandanforth 2y ago
    TIL a "rolling tray" is a tray designed specifically to aid in rolling joints.
    • dgan 2y ago
      Took me a couple of minutes, a google search, and then another couple of minutes to understand what a "rolling joint" is. (not native English speaker)
      • qup 2y ago
        I'm not sure you got it, because you referenced it as a noun, not a verb. Rolling is the verb, the joint is the noun. Rolling a joint is rolling a cigarette, except with marijuana.
• martin-adams 2y ago
  I'm currently making about $1K a month on my book/course Atomic Note-Taking which has sold in 69 countries—something I didn't anticipate! https://atomicnotetaking.com https://atomicnotetaking.com Along side this I'm build a note-taking app—flowtelic that aims to help you get into flow and have an autotelic experience. It's to put into software the goals of my note-taking book where I feel other apps are missing the mark. I have a waitlist if anyone is interested https://join.flowtelic.com https://join.flowtelic.com
• mrieck 2y ago
  Same as last year - still making between $500 and $1k on SnipCSS. Didn't work on it for 6 months, but recently added Tailwind conversion: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/snipcss/hbdnoadcmapfbngbodpppofgagiclicf https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/snipcss/hbdnoadcmap...
• AtticusTheGreat 2y ago
  https://SerpentineGame.com https://SerpentineGame.com brings in close to that with advertisements and premium subscriptions. It is a clone of a game called Tangleword that is itself a clone of Boggle. I originally wrote it in 2008 and am currently re-writing it from scratch because the technology stack is so old and cumbersome to maintain.
  • kethinov 2y ago
    What ad platforms do you like and dislike?
• yakhinvadim 2y ago
  I made News Minimalist — a news aggregator where all news is ranked by significance on a scale from 0 to 10. The ranking lets readers select a "significance threshold" and ignore all news below it. It's making close to $1000 MRR now with all money coming from premium subscriptions: users can personalize their feed with category/country filters, block topics and get access to news summaries. https://www.newsminimalist.com/ https://www.newsminimalist.com/
  • sunnybeetroot 2y ago
    Congrats on this, I’m a subscriber from the early days albeit not a paying one but it’s amazing to see you are bringing in revenue.
• markvdb 2y ago
  Silly related question... How much gross taxable do you need to make from your side gig to take home 500/m net from a side gig? Here, that's about 1360/m if itemising expenses, or 900€/m with the standard deduction for side income and doing your own taxes.
• darthcloud 2y ago
  I've build BlueRetro [1] an universal Bluetooth controller adapter for nearly all pre-USB gaming console. I guess I could update from my previous post in a similar thread. [2] Long story short, my open source firmware is used by product makers and they make a voluntary contribution often base on how many unit they sell. It is also widely used by Chinese company on AliExpress. I got one of those Chinese company to sponsor me a significant amount on GitHub sponsor since August 2022. I guess they forgot about it, still going ever since! I still make 1000 USD a month from the various HW makers. One new thing I made this year after 5 year of doing this hobby, is that I finally manufactured and sold one adapter base on this code myself for the OG Xbox console. [3] Factoring all the expenses I made 7K for a batch of 300. I plan to do a 2nd batch next year, which should yield double that since I will only incur raw materials & shipping expenses. It took me 48 hour of manual labor to assemble them and ship them. So it's doesn't make much sense TBH, but it's a good experience. Made me appreciate my desk job. [1] https://github.com/darthcloud/BlueRetro https://github.com/darthcloud/BlueRetro [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35568543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35568543 [3] https://blueretro.com https://blueretro.com
  • parski 2y ago
    I've heard great things about your stuff.
  • atlgator 2y ago
    Very cool. Did you source the individual components along with a printed PCB and assemble yourself?
    • darthcloud 2y ago
      No I got panels with multiple pcb fully assembled from china. But I still had to program them, solder the connector and assemble them into the case. A very long process.
• graphpapermaker 2y ago
  I'm building Virtual Graph Paper (https://virtual-graph-paper.com https://virtual-graph-paper.com) which is a web app for sketching on a grid. Basically a (limited) vector graphics editor that's trying to be very approachable, aimed at use-cases where something like Illustrator or a CAD package wouldn't be a great fit. I keep hearing about new things people use it for, which is something I truly enjoy. It's free and ad-free, but there's also a paid version in the form of a downloadable Electron app or a subscription.
  • xz18r 2y ago
    This is awesome. How is Excalidraw so huge in this space and you aren’t?
• kiru_io 2y ago
  I have been building a few apps, combined (+ with my saas sites/games) I manage to reach 500$: WhatDinner[0]: Basically Tinder to decide what to eat FleuntRead[1]: A new app I am working on to learn languages by learning sentences by heart [0] https://whatdinner.com/ https://whatdinner.com/ [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fluentread-language-learning/id6738277606 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fluentread-language-learning/i...
• janosch_123 2y ago
  I built custom electric cars, and now I am sharing my knowledge for free in a knowledge base and in a YouTube series: https://foxev.io/batteries https://foxev.io/batteries https://youtube.com/@foxev-content https://youtube.com/@foxev-content I hope this helps someone :) My knowledge is EV and renewable energy knowledge from first principles and for an open source tool. https://openinverter.org https://openinverter.org lets you re-purpose the drivetrain from any EV, like Toyota Prius or Tesla Model S and put it into another car. For this I offer paid support at $200/call and have about 2 of them per month. I am trying to turn this trickle of revenue into a more predictable stream, suggestions welcome. The videos are meant to give free help and at the same time serve as lead-gen.
  • webprofusion 2y ago
    Nice work!
    • janosch_123 2y ago
      Thank you!
  • atentaten 2y ago
    Are these custom cars and cars with re-purposed drivetrain ok to drive on the road from an NTSB perspective?
    • olyjohn 2y ago
      Safety and legality of this kind of work comes down to the owner and the jurisdiction. This guy is providing support for getting the drivetrain running, not auditing the safety of the vehicle. Besides, people probably aren't buying brand new 2025 cars and converting them to EVs, they're generally older cars which already don't meet modern safety standards, so it's a bit of a moot point.
  • mattbrewsbytes 2y ago
    I think you need more how-to video content vs theoretical explanation. How to source motors, how to source batteries, what batteries are best, what is a converter, etc. I think if you ramp up the video production, maybe find a local shop or other local youtube content creators working on cars to collaborate on a project car. Essentially you need to prove to the audience that you can help them on an EV conversion project. To make it scale, do what other content creators do and create a private, paid content area with more detailed videos or create a paid course people can go through that steps them through a conversion process.
• flashu 2y ago
  SpaceShout (https://spaceshout.com https://spaceshout.com) is Social Mapping Platform focused on our user's content and interaction. Project is in active development since 2 years, 10+ ppl engaged, iOS and Android apps published in the stores. We're not yet into making money but we're on the way to start with profits. iOS - https://apps.apple.com/app/spaceshout/id6475599807 https://apps.apple.com/app/spaceshout/id6475599807 Android - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spaceshout https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spaceshout
  • sunnybeetroot 2y ago
    Any reason for not making it available in all countries?
• andyfchen 2y ago
  I built my language learning app, which is helps learners to study common Chinese idioms. The website (https://everydaychengyu.com/ https://everydaychengyu.com/) has the content for free and a kid friendly app teaching the material with flash cards and spaced repetition is available on the app store
• jaflo 2y ago
  I have been working on Audjust (https://www.audjust.com/ https://www.audjust.com/) on and off in my spare time. It's a service to manipulate (shorten/lengthen/loop) audio for video editors and music producers. I had a Show HN a while back that was well-received and kicked things off (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36480687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36480687). Since launching I have changed the name and added paid accounts which have brought in enough money to cover costs and make some profit!
• jordanmorgan10 2y ago
  I develop a basketball coaching app called Elite Hoops, it makes $3.5k/month and thankfully growing: --> https://elitehoopsapp.com https://elitehoopsapp.com I wrote a book series over iOS development, self-published, made over $120k: --> https://bestinclassiosapp.com https://bestinclassiosapp.com I do one sponsored ad a year, which translates to over $500/month (i.e. your criteria): --> https://www.swiftjectivec.com https://www.swiftjectivec.com And launching another app soon to follow D2/D3 collegiate scores, hoping to get that up and over $500 MRR quickly: --> https://x.com/JordanMorgan10/status/1864796895396110737 https://x.com/JordanMorgan10/status/1864796895396110737
• rahilb 2y ago
  I just about qualify! My first side project that actually delivered anything: Reminder Sync for Obsidian! https://turquoisehexagon.co.uk/remindersync/ https://turquoisehexagon.co.uk/remindersync/ I built it for myself after I began using Obsidian for day to day note making. A simple idea: get reminders for tasks you create in Obsidian. People seem to like it. previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39764919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39764919
• timmit 2y ago
  I made a website to alert people about inside trading and congress trading, https://tradeinsight.info https://tradeinsight.info (updated) Not $500/month yet, but towards it, the work flow is quite simple, the infrastructure is a bit complicated, need quite amount of time to maintain.
  • passwordreset 2y ago
    Tradesinsight? Plural? Because tradesinsight is a DNS not found, but tradeinsight.info will notify me when Nancy pelosi and other Congress members trade. Always make sure you get that name right.
    • timmit 2y ago
      My bad, TradeInsight without s. :( Maybe this is why I didn't get customers, keeping typing it wrongly. :(
      • wartijn_ 2y ago
        The plural version is still available. Might be worth it to buy that one.
        • timmit 2y ago
          :) Yeah
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • akudha 2y ago
    https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/ https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/ for any commercial purpose, other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public Is your use case covered by this?
• jetter 2y ago
  I am running a web scraping API ScrapeNinja https://scrapeninja.net https://scrapeninja.net. 10K+ subscribers. It is a (rather messy) node.js codebase. Two rendering engines, including a hacked puppeteer package with stealth mode for better success rate. A big set of proxy providers under the hood. Bootstrapped.
  • DanielHB 2y ago
    What does "stealth mode" mean? Quite curious, I have been scraping some websites for my girlfriend with nodejs/puppeteer and put the content on an .epub file (she likes to read on her e-reader) and it can be quite annoying to bypass some anti-scraping techniques.
  • rsanek 2y ago
    Small piece of feedback, the main text "Smart Web Scraping API" looks pretty off-center to me. Using latest Chrome on Mac on a 4k screen.
• bdcravens 2y ago
  Pretty basic 3d printing. Right now I'm focusing on the usual kinds of products (either commercial-compatible CC licenses or models of those I've purchased licenses to), but I'm working towards learning Autodesk Fusion and creating my own products. (Probably focus more on functional items, since I'm definitely not artistic). Netting around $500-1000 a month (eBay, Etsy, Mercari, some FB marketplace)
  • Always42 2y ago
    I believe Amazon has price rules such that you cannot price gouge on Amazon. Do the vendors you list have any rules like that? Or do you just not care?
    • bdcravens 2y ago
      Everything I list is at fair market price, with fairly conservative margins if you consider materials, capital expenses, and labor time.
      • Always42 2y ago
        No, I mean like one price on one platform and another price on a different platform…
• greenie_beans 2y ago
  I just launched a website for buying organic Mississippi sweet potatoes online: https://sweetclay.net https://sweetclay.net. I've made $910 in revenue in the first three weeks. Does that count?
  • brundolf 2y ago
    Sounds lovely! Just fyi I tried clicking the link, and my work laptop flagged it as "malware". I'm not sure why, but thought I would let you know
    • greenie_beans 2y ago
      thank you for the heads up!!! hmmm...
      • fm2606 2y ago
        I went to it on my Android phone and it worked fine.
        • brundolf 2y ago
          Yeah, mine was via a corporate policy. God knows how it decides such things, but it's not a message I've ever seen before, so there could be something wrong with the site that other security software might flag
          • olyjohn 2y ago
            I'm convinced that the corporate web filter does this to make itself look like it actually does something.
  • fm2606 2y ago
    I think it does. How did you get your farmer network set up? Reminds me of https://www.vidaliaonions.com/ https://www.vidaliaonions.com/. The guy who started that bought the domain before he knew what he was going to do with it.
• pier25 2y ago
  Still not hitting $500 consistently but... Wavekit https://wavekit.app/ https://wavekit.app/ It's an audio hosting service with high quality audio and a customizable unbranded player. Embeds are done with iframes but we're starting to offer web components which offer some cool opportunities like interaction between components. Most of our customers are selling some kind of audio product or service. Think plugin developers, sound designers, media composers, etc. Currently working on a B2B integration with an API so that it would be trivial to add audio to any web app. Think chats, marketplaces, etc.
• wesvance 2y ago
  I built https://explorehere.app https://explorehere.app to help you learn about the history of the world around you by sending a push notification whenever you pass a new historical marker on your travels! It’s a freemium app with a pro subscription for advanced features; our revenue is just under $1k/month. We’re working towards ExploreHere being a passive adventure guide. As you go about your travels ExploreHere will nudge you about interesting information wherever you go; history, unique things to see, special food known only in the city you’re in, etc.
  • fm2606 2y ago
    Just a few weeks ago I was on a trip through back roads of NC and VA and saw a bunch of historical markers and wondered how to do something with them. And now I know. My thinking was to stop and get a gps coordinate and then what? How do I get them all across the states? And that is about how far my thinking got before a SQUIRREL ran through my brain. Glad to see some of my thoughts aren't to far out there. Now just have to work on DOING instead of THINKING.
    • awesome_dude 2y ago
      Start small, get the GPS co-ords of those markers, and create your visualisations, etc. Then share them with family/friends Then they'll start collecting marker co-ords for you THEN worry about how to get strangers involved (using/submitting/etc) Facebook started with a single University...
      • fm2606 2y ago
        Great point. Thanks for sharing. I admit I get the cart before the horse. I'm not looking for life changing money, but it would be nice to actually be able to submit a $500 mrr project here on HN. These are my favorite threads
    • PTOB 2y ago
      I too had this experience in Texas over the holidays. Sigh.
• marco-dev 2y ago
  I founded [Marin Labs](https://www.marinlabs.io https://www.marinlabs.io), a studio where I get to develop whatever comes to mind. Last Friday, I launched a mobile game on iOS and Android, it's a popular trivia game but tropicalized for Latin America. I'm currently sitting on a juicy $14.00 MRR. Gotta start somewhere, I guess.
• iamflimflam1 2y ago
  I guess if you spread this over 12 months it counts? https://www.esp32rainbow.com/ https://www.esp32rainbow.com/ I’d really like to build on this and start a hardware company.
  • codebje 2y ago
    That’s a great project, there seems to be a small but persistent market for well crafted retro systems.
• h317 2y ago
  I was tired of coming home after networking events and shift through pile of business cards, so I made an app to just scan cards and export them to csv. Pretty much just for fun app for myself, friends, and friends of friends, but other people started using it too. https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/krane-build-relationships/id6738585311 https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/krane-build-relationships/id67...
  • WillAdams 2y ago
    Have you ever looked at previous apps in that space? Esp. Simson Garfinkel's sbook? https://simson.net/ref/sbook5/ https://simson.net/ref/sbook5/ which was _way_ ahead of the whole "AI" thing... Still regretting not keeping a copy of the Windows binary...
• arahman4710 2y ago
  I built a tool called Canyon to help jobseekers land their dream job by helping them perfect their resume, be much faster at applying to jobs, and practicing with our mock interview tool. https://www.usecanyon.com/ https://www.usecanyon.com/
  • gcanyon 2y ago
    My last name is Canyon -- do I get free access? :-)
    • arahman4710 2y ago
      Haha please check out the product and if it'd be very helpful for you, we can do it!
• paulorlando 2y ago
  I wrote these two books based on work I had done in/with startups over the years. Why Now: How Good Timing Makes Great Products: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Now-Timing-Makes-Products/dp/B0CYXSNMT3/ https://www.amazon.com/Why-Now-Timing-Makes-Products/dp/B0CY... Growth Units: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GJVV8RJ/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GJVV8RJ/
• iamwil 2y ago
  We wrote a zine on System evals for LLM-driven apps. Lots of people building impressive demos with AIs, but to get it working well in production over time (maintainable), you need some kind of system eval. It's like some kind of open secret, since lots of people are still floating on vibes-based engineering and looks-good-to-me@K metrics. https://forestfriends.tech https://forestfriends.tech Sri and I wrote it as a way to collaborate after doing a podcast together, which made no money. Picked a topic that people seemed to be interested in. Did the whole customer dev thing, and honestly, we were unsure if it'd make any money at all. Representing the AI as a shoggoth is from that meme, and we merely thought juxtaposing it with some furry animals was funny. But it turns out people like it. It introduces system evals without jargon, and frames how to get started with evals for AI engineers that moved into the space from other kinds of engineering. It feels pretty good when people buy it and say they like it.
  • ajstiles 2y ago
    Awesome - subscribed!
• rolandpeelen 2y ago
  I made https://konfig.xyz/ https://konfig.xyz/ after making about 6500 images for a product configurator. Instead of using images, we use 3d models. Initially quite simple and for use with relatively flat scenes (ie - no tree like structure for options / scenes) but grown over time to sort of support those too. The main use case are fixed-in-size products that can be customize-able. So colours and materials, but also swapping one object for another, or turning one on or off (imagine rims on a car, or a bow thruster on a boat). We tried saas’in it completely, but the onboarding is proving to be quite hands-on. So we’ve partnered with a 3d firm that does the 3d work so we can focus ok building software
  • mclau156 2y ago
    reminds me of the Sims 3!
  • upcoming-sesame 2y ago
    Very cool, since there's no pricing, what's the ballpark cost of some of the demos on the website?
    • rolandpeelen 2y ago
      We so have pricing https://konfig.xyz/pricing https://konfig.xyz/pricing (perhaps I need to make it more visible). There is some upfront cost in the modeling, but we don’t really make / want to make money there. So everything essentially goes to the 3d party. We’ve partnered with a great company in the Ukraine but you can always also do it yourself We have some basic docs at docs.konfig.xyz - which need some love, but happy to help anyone get up and running :)
    • rolandpeelen 2y ago
      Ballpark is around 2k for the boat ones - give we have some cad models to work with. Depending on the complexity of the scene and options we usually have something online within a month after signing off
• Traubenfuchs 2y ago
  I don‘t know if I should really say it, but here I go. You can order certain pills that are meant for men for like 50c a piece online from India and sell them for 10€ a piece face to face to normies. Handing out a few freebies ALWAYS leads to the guys becoming frequent future customers. Because those damn pills, while not considered addictive, make things so, so much better. And not every country already has easy, cheap and low effort ways to order them normally… (I am talking about vitamin pills aimed at men and nothing else and I am not doing this, I heard someone tell me this story.)
  • wutwutwat 2y ago
    How many guns do you own to protect your territory and vitamin empire, and ensure the riches gained aren't taken by anyone? Do you have vitamin groupies? Do you recruit vitamin runners to distribute the small quantities and take most of the risk? Do you move vitamins by the kilo?
  • VectorLock 2y ago
    Off-label Viagra or something else?
    • Traubenfuchs 2y ago
      All of this is „open label“ and „on label“.
      • VectorLock 2y ago
        Viagra/Cialis or something else?
        • Traubenfuchs 2y ago
          The pde5 menagerie has a few more now but I feel like there is little difference between them. Permanent tadalafil if you can stand the side effects, any of the others if you are suffering and want them to be over faster.
• knowingathing 2y ago
  I run https://getloaf.io/ https://getloaf.io/ an app which lets you customise SVG animations that are built into the app. Constantly plugging away for 4ish years now!
• codeisawesome 2y ago
  It would be great if these questions also included a sub-question on distribution strategy, that's one of the hardest things to visualize as a developer from $0 to $500.
• mtw 2y ago
  I make between $3k to $6k from putting a log cabin on Airbnb. This started during period of boredom during the pandemic. I operate remotely with smart home devices and with a local cleaning team/handyman. I had a project to completely automate this with an AI agent but Airbnb doesn't offer a publicly available API. $3k seems high but the costs add up and the time as well (details here https://studiozenkai.com/post/airbnb-the-good-the-bad-the-profitable/ https://studiozenkai.com/post/airbnb-the-good-the-bad-the-pr... ). I always have a bit of profit at the end of year and the mortgage costs are entirely paid so no complaints here If I ever get fed up from tech projects, I can see myself getting a bigger vacation property and making this my own version of Barista FIRE
  • noAnswer 2y ago
    We should be able to claim our landlords as dependents on taxes.
  • carlosjobim 2y ago
    That's not really a side project. It's an income, but not a project.
    • rnewme 2y ago
      Definitely a side project. Did you read the post?
• laber 2y ago
  Created a simple and cute iOS app for tracking baby teeth — makes about 1-2k EUR (after Apple’s cut) per month since five years. getbabyteeth.app Last year a couple of copy cats showed up, but they missed the part that people actually value in the app: the visuals. It‘s a simple webapp, wrapped in Expo, but highly polished to make it look and feel native to iOS. Last year we added a second app, written in Swift and SwiftUI (great dev experience!): wobblyteeth.app What still makes me wonder: most sales are made in Germany, even though there is an English translation and the American market is huge. \o/ Do you have an idea why it‘s not interesting abroad?
  • conductr 2y ago
    > Do you have an idea why it‘s not interesting abroad? Is keeping kid’s baby teeth considered normal behavior in Germany? It’s considered a bit bizarre in US. I have a 6 year old and very much in this market but simply have zero interest in the entire premise of logging and keeping this info and the teeth themselves. The tooth fairy is our main tradition and I think most people are happy to dispose of the biohazard waste that’s collected
    • parasti 2y ago
      Isn't it for tracking baby teeth development? Nothing about physically collecting the teeth.
      • conductr 2y ago
        Maybe. The first line of the site says “Keep hold of your babies' first teeth.” Which to me sounds like storing them somewhere physically. Maybe the problem is how it’s worded?
• lpeancovschi 2y ago
  I made a plant care app for iOS and macOS. Making few hundreds $$$ on it - https://apps.apple.com/app/plant-care-identify-flowers/id1610611017 https://apps.apple.com/app/plant-care-identify-flowers/id161...
• ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  I built an agentic marketplace where people create agents which get a cut of the task price if their agents take part in doing something in the chain. Making more than $500 but it is a side project.
• ssiddharth 2y ago
  I’m building Sink It for Reddit (https://gosinkit.com https://gosinkit.com), a Safari/Chrome/Firefox/Edge extension to make Reddit usable on the web. It’s similar to RES (Reddit enhancement suite) but supports all of Reddit’s designs and is being actively developed with around 300k users, mainly on the Apple platforms. It was built during the Reddit API shenanigans last year and is making four figures a month. 99% of the app’s feature are free with the money coming from a premium (dark mode etc) for old Reddit and donations. Have a few high five figure/low six figure acquisition offers already but I’m afraid it’ll be turned into malware so haven’t gone through with it.
  • windowshopping 2y ago
    How did you design and build your homepage? I find that building the landing page and making it look like a professional, beautiful design is one of my biggest hurdles. I'm an experienced web developer but without a design to work off of - and especially accounting for mobile and dynamic sizing - I really struggle with this part of the work so I'm wondering what other people's workflows are for it.
    • ssiddharth 2y ago
      It's a premade design that I edited quite a bit. The landing page is important but at the start of a project, spending a ton of time on it isn't worth it. I used to work at an Australian (unofficial) unicorn where we sold these designs so I just bought one directly.
  • fraXis 2y ago
    Why is there only one review for the Chrome extension? Is the Apple app store version the most used version?
    • ssiddharth 2y ago
      Pretty much. The Chrome versions are only a few months old while the Apple platform ones are much older. Plus, honestly, I don’t nag users to leave ratings/reviews within the app.
• parski 2y ago
  I develop a modular media center compatible with Stremio addons for Apple platforms. It's called [Vidi](https://vidi.plomo.se/ https://vidi.plomo.se/). I've done zero marketing and have a few thousand users from organic growth alone since August. It's a one-time purchase type of deal and I'm overwhelmed by positive feedback.
• flixing 2y ago
  http://profileoptimizer.org/ http://profileoptimizer.org/ LinkedIn Profile Optimizer is an AI-driven service designed to enhance your LinkedIn profile, making it more appealing to recruiters and expanding your professional network. By analyzing each section of your profile, it provides personalized recommendations to help you stand out. Key Features: • AI-Powered Analysis: Thorough examination of your profile to identify areas for improvement. • Tailored Content Suggestions: Customized advice for posts and updates to engage your audience. • Optimized Headline and About Sections: Creation of compelling summaries that highlight your expertise. • Profile Visibility Boost: Strategies to increase your profile’s reach and attractiveness to recruiters. • CV Generation: Development of resumes tailored to specific LinkedIn job postings. • Content Strategy Development: Formulation of plans to effectively engage your network. By comparing your profile to industry leaders and staying updated with LinkedIn’s latest trends, LinkedIn Profile Optimizer offers actionable, prioritized recommendations to elevate your professional presence.
• AutoAPI 2y ago
  https://postalagent.com https://postalagent.com is my side project that lets you building mailing lists and send postcards online https://checkanyvin.com https://checkanyvin.com is a slightly older project that lets you run vehicle history reports cheaper than other services
  • akudha 2y ago
    PostgalAgent seems cheap, 0.72$ per card? Maybe I am wrong, I would've thought it might cost more! Where do you get the data from? census.gov? BTW, the demo link seems broken - https://checkanyvin.com/free-report/sample/1N4DL01AXYC165358 https://checkanyvin.com/free-report/sample/1N4DL01AXYC165358
    • AutoAPI 2y ago
      The data comes from a few different sources, like MelissaData. Thanks for noticing the broken link, I fixed it
  • lippihom 2y ago
    Postalagent seems like it's mostly targeting real estate agents? Seems like you have quite a few competitors there. I played around with editing the template graphic, it's a little hard to use but like the idea!
• lpeancovschi 2y ago
  I made an invoice maker app. Available for iOS and macOS. It's a document-based app with custom file format for invoices: https://apps.apple.com/app/invoice-maker-quote-builder/id1538355349 https://apps.apple.com/app/invoice-maker-quote-builder/id153...
• lpeancovschi 2y ago
  I made a Resume Builder app for iOS and macOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/professional-resume-builder/id1358430976 https://apps.apple.com/app/professional-resume-builder/id135...
• alpn 2y ago
  I made a simple service that lets you read Substack newsletters on your Kindle. https://substack2kindle.com https://substack2kindle.com
  • aembleton 2y ago
    Brilliant idea!
• gustavopezzi 2y ago
  I have created https://pikuma.com https://pikuma.com to teach computer science, retro programming, and mathematics.
  • kinow 2y ago
    On my wish list, maybe for christmas! (I think I added another recent course too, compilers?). Obrigado!
  • atan2 2y ago
    I've taken already four of your courses and they are not "one of" the best, but THE best programming educational content I've ever seen. Thank you!!!! And keep drinking mate. :DDD
    • gustavopezzi 2y ago
      Thank you for the kind words. Also, I just want to clarify to others reading the thread that I'm drinking "mate" in the lectures (as in the south american herb drink), and I'm not just a drinking mate (as in the british expression).
• mjomaa 2y ago
  https://achromatic.dev https://achromatic.dev - Next.js SaaS starter kit that is not crap. That's it in a nutshell haha It become the #3 selling one (after Shipfast and Makerkit) in under 3 month. I know the website itself is not the most descriptive, but I do prio feature and customer requests over website/marketing. Soon the starter kit will also have multi-organization support :) 2025 is gonna be interesting since I plan to add multiple boilerplates to the same package deal. Realized I'm not a business that needs to be greedy and grow, just helping others is enough.
• recroad 2y ago
  https://www.jumpcomedy.com https://www.jumpcomedy.com
• czhu12 2y ago
  Building https://canine.sh https://canine.sh, which is a platform to make any Kubernetes cluster as easy to use as Heroku for deploying web apps, cron jobs, etc. The >$500 is basically by offering it for free to everyone and having support to 3 small corporate customers. I found this is a really great way to get feedback and bootstrap the roadmap of a project. Little usability / quality of life features, that I never would've worked on myself, turned out to be sizable pain points for others. And since they're paying at least something for it, the few beta customers are a lot more committed to making the thing work.
  • hnaccount93 2y ago
    Did you fix the reported security issues yet?
• melvinmelih 2y ago
  Thanksgiving last year, after GPT-4 was released, I realized large language models were finally good enough to bring my idea to life: an AI book generator. Over the holiday weekend, I built the prototype for https://instabooks.ai https://instabooks.ai, to allow anyone to instantly generate 200+ page books on any topic. I sell them in pdf, epub and print form and they take about 30 minutes to complete. Since launch, over 10,000 books have been generated on topics ranging from niche hobbies to advanced research. The system runs almost entirely on its own, requiring only occasional updates and customer support. The best part of it: as new LLM models come out, the books get better written as well, so each year it improves without much effort on my end.
  • sofixa 2y ago
    This sounds cool, but why? Why would anyone generate a book ?
    • melvinmelih 2y ago
      Think of it as deep diving into a topic that you want to know everything about. For example quantum computing, you can generate a book that goes in depth in yesterday’s quantum chip announcement (https://instabooks.ai/products/df1ae367-e0c1-b749-9898-2744b64906f1 https://instabooks.ai/products/df1ae367-e0c1-b749-9898-2744b...). Or if you’re preparing for a job interview and need to brush up on your knowledge in that specific field (https://instabooks.ai/products/041ced4c-efed-92e4-7ae6-9ad2ba849f40?_pos=1&_psq=zscalr&_ss=e&_v=1.0 https://instabooks.ai/products/041ced4c-efed-92e4-7ae6-9ad2b...)
      • sofixa 2y ago
        Why wouldn't you buy a real book written by a real person who actually knows what they're talking about and is less likely to have hallucinated it all?
    • mickael-kerjean 2y ago
      Write a few dozens chat gpt powered books, and during your next interview you might say: "actually I wrote a book on xxxx, you can buy it on Amazon"
• Kkoala 2y ago
  https://produktly.com/ https://produktly.com/ - a suite of tools to improve onboarding, product adoption, and retention. Things like product tours, checklists, feedback widgets, changelogs etc. that help you proactively guide your users, listen to their feedback, and communicate progress and upcoming features. All manageable without any coding (after the initial copy-paste script integration), so e.g. product managers or customer success can build and add these from the web dashboard.
• mytestament 2y ago
  I have made https://mytestament.io/ https://mytestament.io/ To describe it: “Ever wondered what happens to all our digital memories, important information, and personal messages when we're gone? That's exactly the challenge I wanted to solve. MyTestament.io lets you securely store and designate digital inheritances - from heartfelt messages to important account information - to be shared with loved ones when the time comes.” It’s just been released, so technically it’s not yet made $500 , but the projections so far are for about that amount the first month.
• technolo-g 2y ago
  I began creating art a few years ago which is beginning to ramp up: https://matthew.bajor.art/ https://matthew.bajor.art/ In April of this year my fabrication business switched from side to primary and I traded Jenkins infra (https://cicd.life https://cicd.life) for small manufacturing: https://bostondigitalfab.com https://bostondigitalfab.com I’ll would prefer to never go back, but I do miss some aspects of the old job.
• Rinum 2y ago
  I've got a SQL card game https://rowsandtables.com https://rowsandtables.com
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• hot_town 2y ago
  I built https://coverLetterGPT.xyz https://coverLetterGPT.xyz -- super simple GPT wrapper that generates cover letters. Makes almost $600 a month now. It's also open-source. I wrote about it here: https://docs.opensaas.sh/blog/2024-12-16-my-gpt-wrapper/ https://docs.opensaas.sh/blog/2024-12-16-my-gpt-wrapper/
• nicksergeant 2y ago
  I started designing and building websites for locally-owned small businesses in my town, and have grown it to 45+ clients with a current MRR around $11k. I still work full-time and have built an awesome team over the years! https://flxwebsites.com https://flxwebsites.com
  • martyz 2y ago
    Cool! Kudos for finding success in a competitive market. How do you promote yourself?
    • nicksergeant 2y ago
      Thanks! Mostly Facebook honestly. Small business owners hang out there a ton because of all the community pages where folks ask for recommendations for certain types of businesses in the area.
  • abetusk 2y ago
    Do you mind going into what web stack you use? What about businesses that want online payments?
    • nicksergeant 2y ago
      Sure! When I started 5 years ago, I had a single Django + Wagtail app that hosted all websites on a single monorepo/deployable. For the few sites that needed interactivity I just used vanilla JS. We actually do have a few sites that we've done some custom Stripe integrations for so they can accept payments online, but it's very minimal/simple. About a year and a half ago I began moving everything to Next.js, and have migrated 30 sites from the Django platform and have built 20+ on the Next.js platform since building that out. Next has allowed us to create reusable but heavily-themeable functional components that we couldn't do with Django's templating language (without a lot of boilerplate and pain), and I'm extremely happy with the move (even though I might not reach for Next on my next side project). I do however wish I had given more attention to Astro when I was evaluating frameworks, because in hindsight it looks like a perfect fit for what we're doing. Not worth migrating now, though. Haha.
• protocolture 2y ago
  The gist I get from this thread is that if you have something on the cards you should just commit to it? How much is just survivorship bias? I have like 4-5 side hustles being worked on at any one time, but I rarely ship for various reasons. Lots of people in this thread seem to have just gone and done it without thinking. How often does that pay off?
  • alfalfasprout 2y ago
    Honestly more than you'd expect. Even my less successful ideas paid off at least a few hundred bucks. The more successful ones tens of thousands/yr.
  • pstorm 2y ago
    Less than 10% of my projects ever made anything. Check out indiehackers.com - tons of old posts of people starting things, but the domain is dead when you click through.
  • goodpoint 2y ago
    > How much is just survivorship bias? It's all pure survivorship bias.
  • s6af7ygt 2y ago
    > How much is just survivorship bias? 100%. The topic is to post side projects making $500/month. Not to post failed side projects, projects that generate little to no money, or that cost money.
  • _benj 2y ago
    I guess it is survivorship bias, but I’d never be one of the survivors if I don’t even try. I have an Etsy product, Christmas tree ornament, has made about $600 gross last year and another $400 or so this year… It’s not much but now I have an Etsy shop with 5 start reviews all across. Planning to make a few more non-seasonal products and see where I can take it. But, I also have a graveyard on my GitHub! I guess the stats are like 9/10 entrepreneurial projects fail… so if I try 20 things…
• nadermx 2y ago
  Made https://www.pdf.to https://www.pdf.to since one day I had an issue with a PDF and figured why not since the domain was available. But because previous owner had it as a book torrent site, only gets traffic via Bing as it seems to be blackballed in Google
  • giancarlostoro 2y ago
    Maybe buy pdfto.com if its not already taken
    • nadermx 2y ago
      And move the site over? Or buy it and 301 it to pdf.to in hopes it works?
      • rnewme 2y ago
        I would personally rather rebrand as competing service under better name and copy
        • nadermx 2y ago
          I think you may have in fact the best solution. Just launch another one, and keep pdf.to up in case the perma ban ever gets lifted. Thanks
  • qup 2y ago
    I believe this saved my ass once. Thanks!
  • tonixx 2y ago
    [dead]
• drchiu 2y ago
  Built https://sendbroadcast.net https://sendbroadcast.net for myself and started selling it too. Made about $1500 usd so far over the past 2 months and a bit.
• gordalina 2y ago
  I've built a SMS to Slack which enables two-way SMS messaging from your Slack channels. I had an annoying use case where when trying to login to a shared work account, the 2FA code was being sent to a colleague's phone number. Now being able to receive that code in Slack solved the problem. Customers now use it for their own customer support. End users really like SMS as a messaging platform, nobody wants to send an email or talk to a chatbot. It uses Elixir, Fly, GCP, Stripe, and a couple carriers. https://smstoslack.com https://smstoslack.com
  • t1tech 2y ago
    Cool project! Which carriers are you using and how do you get around things like A2P 10DLC?
  • DanielHB 2y ago
    In Brazil WhatsApp for Business completely ate this space. SMS is dying (granted, a very slow death) so milk it while you can :)
  • salomonk_mur 2y ago
    I really recommend adding WhatsApp as an option besides SMS
  • tonixx 2y ago
    [dead]
• stpn 2y ago
  I built a personal finance app (https://tender.run https://tender.run) in the style of mailbox (swiping, keyboard shortcut, inbox-based workflow for reviewing transactions). It's built on the automerge CRDT and sqlite running in the browser, which has been really fun to work with. I'd like to keep going, though honestly I've struggled with the marketing side (growth has been slow) and it's a pretty competitive space.
• algoghostf 2y ago
  I created this course about Data Integration around 2 years back following delivering some complex integrations https://www.udemy.com/course/data-integration-guide/?couponCode=FA75E6490059715C82E3 https://www.udemy.com/course/data-integration-guide/?couponC... (Link with coupon code) It brings around 300€/month, and is very much appreciated by professionals despite it not being very conventional. The reason to put it was to share some lessons learned in such projects I also published a book on Amazon (with some more detailed content) and it sells handful (sometimes more) copies every month.
• johnjungles 2y ago
  I built https://check.supply https://check.supply with a friend - it’s an iOS app that is like a cash app experience for mailing a check. Old school landlords, paying gardeners, or other people still only accepting checks. We use plaid to connect your account, then press send, then track the printing, mailing and delivery of the check. Only iOS App here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/check-supply/id6475490646 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/check-supply/id6475490646
  • vincefutr23 2y ago
    Do you have risk loss / fraud issues?
    • pfista 2y ago
      Not really. We don’t touch customer money- we just print and mail checks on their behalf. We do require bank verification via Plaid, which proves the user has a valid username and login to their bank. We perform further KYC checks for suspicious payments.
  • brianbreslin 2y ago
    are you using lob to print/mail everything?
    • pfista 2y ago
      Nope. Lob doesn’t have instant bank verification which was a deal breaker for us. In fact there are several providers that offer checks via api but none of them worked for us, so we rolled our own :)
  • brandonfro 2y ago
    Brilliant idea! I recently had a difficult time trying to get a cashiers check at a few nearby banks/credit unions I wasn’t a member of. It’s incomprehensible to me they weren’t willing to accept a fee in order to charge my debit card for the amount of the check + fee ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• aarreedd 2y ago
  I built thatsexquiz.com - a quiz for couples to improve their intimacy. Changed the pricing model and went from $5 to $50 per day
  • samteeeee 2y ago
    what did you change about the pricing model that improved sales so much?
• _hnlo 2y ago
  I've worked on and run [link redacted] and the related subreddit and forum for 15+ years. I've generally done everything alone as an exercise in scaling utility for others with constrained time on my part. Have used AI heavily in the last few years, which has been the greatest force multiplier of my career for sure: scraping, evaluating, summarizing, organizing, indexing, moderating, writing, ... I've coded so much alopecia related tech at this point it could probably be patented. I can recommend giving yourselves big, sprawling projects like this and working on it a few hours every weekend. It adds up!
  • jeanlucas 2y ago
    I wonder if the new medicines are a factor on your project (from sponsorship to new treatments)
  • saltcod 2y ago
    very cool — I assume you've monetized this past 500/mo?
    • _hnlo 2y ago
      I've got a bit of a meta game going where I try to just break even and cover hosting/compute costs. I'm a huge fan, proponent and dependent on Supabase by the way, I don't know what I'd do without you guys.
• mickael-kerjean 2y ago
  I built Filestash (https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash), an open source Dropbox like frontend for any cloud storage / protocols (S3, SFTP, FTP, SMB, NFS, etc...). This was made as a reflection of the Dropbox launch top comment with the infamous FTP guy as I was wondering what was missing from the FTP specs to be able to make a great interface to a protocol like FTP. The money come from customisation and enterprise plugins (SSO, audit plugins, etc..). The entire product was made so you can quickly build custom file management solution by assembling a bunch of lego blocks (aka plugins)
  • chickenbigmac 2y ago
    [dead]
• throwawayUS9 2y ago
  I made a dating/meetup app exclusively for Indians and for the NRI Indians (Non-resident Indians). https://www.nrimeet.app/ https://www.nrimeet.app/ Available on IOS and Android. Gets me around $250 per month. I've not done much marketing either. Started as a hobby project after Covid and continued after. I also built an Indian Version of Neighborhood app (like Nextdoor). But I am not making any money from it. https://neighar.com https://neighar.com PS: I am planning to scale up and also planning to spend some money on marketing. Investors are welcome!
• wtf242 2y ago
  The Greatest Books https://thegreatestbooks.org https://thegreatestbooks.org I created it in 2008 and have maintained and improved it over the years. I am trying to figure out how to monetize it more. I currently make around $2k a month. I just use adsense and have a paid membership feature through buymeacoffee. I get massive traffic and I'm pretty much the #1 result for anything related to best/greatest books. It's built with Rails and Postgresql and hosted on 3 linode servers. I get around 250k page visits a day.
  • vidyesh 2y ago
    Can you go into more details, when was it built and how much time have you spent (approx) on creating the content? or is it all generated? And the traffic's gradual organic increase? Interesting to see Adsense revenue still being so high, I imagined this category being so competitive and diluted the CPM would be very low! I noticed your purchase modal only shows Amazon pricing, are you using their API to get prices or its scraped data. If its scraped/stale data, I would look into the pricing display guidelines for affiliates. And why is it just Amazon and not other online bookstores too?
    • wtf242 2y ago
      I built it in 2008, and have rewritten it twice now since them. I have spent quite a bit of time adding new lists. It's definitely a labor of love and I do spend quite a bit of time on it. I do use Gen AI now to generate genres, descriptions, and to grab other data. Previously years ago i would just scrape it or manually set it. Amazon has a nice product API with up to date prices. I am working on bookshop.org integration. I used to also do barnes & noble. The problem is neither of them have APIs to programmatically search for books, so i have to do complicated scraping. example: https://github.com/ssherman/bookshop-search https://github.com/ssherman/bookshop-search
      • vidyesh 2y ago
        Thank you for replying. I am (on and off) building a regional price comparison website for various regional online bookstores. I do want to build a more fairer and honest monthly/yearly list something like yours and the price comparison as the main USP but more so I really like reading and enjoy exploring books even if I don't read all of the ones I wan to. Your website is quite inspiring to me and have given me more ideas to explore. Thank you for sharing your ranking algorithm, very fascinating (and still understanding the intricacies of it). I asked you about Amazon API because I noticed some of your prices are stale which is against their Pricing Display guidelines. Its been a challenge for me to work with Amazon as their API is not easy to get access to, I mean I have an affiliate tag for A website but from what I've read as per their TOS I am only allowed to use it for A website and not for B. And for B I have to apply again for a new tag with a new website (which is still under development!) I will end up working on a scraper or a few workers anyway as most online bookstores do not have an API, none have replied back to my emails inquiring the same.
• orkj 2y ago
  Built https://violinist.io https://violinist.io, a PHP / composer update service in 2017 and it passed that figure probably something like 2021?
• nick_pou 2y ago
  I built https://vpzen.io https://vpzen.io - dedicated VPN servers that are pay as you go. 79c per day and 10c per Gb. Great if you only need a VPN occasionally. Plus there's no VPN client to download... it works with the native VPN client on Windows, iOS, macOS and Android.
  • rootsu 2y ago
    VPN space has so many players. Did you use any advertising at the start to get first base of users?
  • dainiusse 2y ago
    What about legal stuff? Are you not worries of someone doing illegal stuff?
  • dansult 2y ago
    Really cool approach to running a VPN company
• lihaoyi 2y ago
  Not quite 500$/month, but my book https://www.handsonscala.com/ https://www.handsonscala.com/ is still making 300-400/month 4.5 years after releasing it. Not a lot of money compared to silicon valley FAANG salaries, especially given the amount of effort that went in, but it's a nice feeling to see the dollars trickling after so long
  • walterburns 2y ago
    Li Haoyi! Thank you for developing your scala ecosystem and Hands On Scala. I just started using Scala again after a few years' break, using Mill, thanks to your recent blog post on the last 12 years. I forgot how easy Scala can be if you don't make it hard, and how just darn pleasant it is to code in. Would love to see Scala rise from the ashes of the FP flame wars and become Python devs' second language. Or even their first. Thanks for leading the charge!
• erics32 2y ago
  I was laid off at the start of 2024 and built https://interviewsolver.com https://interviewsolver.com which is an AI copilot for helping you with your leetcode interviews. Doing about 6k/month, though the space is becoming fairly crowded.
  • sharmajai 2y ago
    Dude, that's cheating!
  • atlgator 2y ago
    Wow, incredible. I recently interviewed (as hiring manager) for 3 separate positions of varying seniority. Cheating is rampant now. I'd say at least 80% were using ChatGPT to lookup answers. One candidate had a 3rd party operate ChatGPT for her. Do you support Codility?
    • erics32 2y ago
      Yes, the nice thing about it being a desktop app is that all interview platforms are supported - browsers are unable to detect these desktop apps due to inherent limitations. There's a bunch of competing services so it's likely your candidates were running something.
  • vunderba 2y ago
    This is functionally identical to having someone off-screen feeding you the answers. Things like this will only make the interview process worse for applicants with even a shred of integrity. We need a "black book" for unethical developers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Book_(gambling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Book_(gambling)
    • swiftcoder 2y ago
      Eh, I fed our whole question bank to ChatGPT a while back, and it solves the leetcode-like problems better than any real candidates have. Maybe it's time we stopped interviewing people this way...
• idoma 2y ago
  I buy & sell pixels (hats) in a video-game - Team Fortress 2. I'm currently making $10k-15k per month; I'm one of the largest sellers on the game's main third-party marketplace (https://marketplace.tf https://marketplace.tf). Less of a side project and more of a part-time job, since it's ~4-6 hours of work per day.
  • n1c 2y ago
    Only TF2? Or do you also do other markets like CS? I'm curious to know how much actual knowledge about the game makes compared to just being a good "trader"?
    • idoma 2y ago
      Some CS, but TF2 is my main focus. Items are less liquid and the cash trading scene isn't as established. For example, my average margin on TF2 items is 6x higher than CS (~25% vs. ~4-5%). I'm able to buy for less & sell for more than I could in CS. Knowledge about the game isn't necessary at all - it's just the market itself. Understanding what people are interested in, what items can sell at, how long they take, etc.
  • soulofmischief 2y ago
    Really curious about what kind of alphas exist in this space, if you don't mind divulging.
    • idoma 2y ago
      The market is incredibly small & illiquid - the main alpha comes from: - a better knowledge & understanding of the market. What items are desirable? What will take a long time? How do you price them? etc. - trust/reputation, which takes form through cash trading (directly buying items from people at a discount). I also have a few automated trading bots & scripts that save time on buying items, but that's easily replicable.
  • rvrs 2y ago
    What does your dealflow look like? Do you usually trade smaller unusuals into larger ones or are you just flipping big-money unusuals? How do you get the deals?
• asaddhamani 2y ago
  I’ve built two AI based apps. Earlier this year, I wanted clarity on some issues. I knew several of my books held keys to the answers I was seeking, but finding those felt impossible. I wanted an AI based tool I could use to talk to my books. I built https://www.asklibrary.ai https://www.asklibrary.ai to enable this, implementing tons of RAG tech like query fanout, query understanding and breakdown, multi step retrieval, reranking, etc., and I pull in dozens of pages of text for each answer. Secondly I love Claude and also use TypingMind but missed the memory feature from ChatGPT. I made MemoryPlugin (https://www.memoryplugin.com https://www.memoryplugin.com) that adds long-term memory to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, TypingMind, and LibreChat on desktop and mobile browsers. This got me really interested in AI memory in general, I’ve played around with fine tuning AI models with memories (results = some data learned, way more hallucinations).
• kgthegreat 2y ago
  Made https://meeteffective.com/ https://meeteffective.com/ for useful 1 on 1 meetings. Not charging for it though right now
  • n1c 2y ago
    Sorry if this is unsolicited feedback, but reading: > Conduct your most crispest and productive 1 : 1s Feels awkward to me. > Conduct the most crisp and productive 1:1s Could be more organic?
• true_pk 2y ago
  https://blymp.ca https://blymp.ca is about $600/mo with two clients. Building an MVP took two weeks, and getting the first paying customers another two. I wrote about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42344002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42344002 It’s a B2B SaaS in out-of-home advertising. We found that buying ads outside the digital realm is hard and the only alternative are marketplaces that take away control over media owner’s inventory. So we did for those companies what Shopify did for small businesses — we gave them the tools to sell and to market.
  • xisthesqrtof9 2y ago
    .ca! very cool having a hard time figuring out what you do from your website, do you allow businesses to rent billboards?
• Tsarp 2y ago
  VoiceType: Mac Dictation tool. Running locally with WhisperLarge Turbo. So its fast accurate and can get a lot of Rust Library names correctly when I use with Cursor. Why I Built It? I ended up getting RSI over the last year and half. Despite lifting 3x a week and physio-therapy, circumstances had me working >12-15hours 6-7days a week for a few months straight. I’d read about folks using diction but never worked well for me or was pricey software. At the same time I started using ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor etc quite a bit. When the Whisper Large turbo model was released by OpenAI, I tried transcribing some technical terms and it got transcribed quite well. ( still makes errors, but its within tolerance of what ChatGPT et.all can understand). I mostly talk type to my Mac now. https://carelesswhisper.app/ https://carelesswhisper.app/
  • slashnode 2y ago
    I had similar RSI issues a couple years ago and explored text to speech as an option, but the solutions at the time were clunky and inaccurate. I gave up and went with more practical solutions (yoga, working less, using a split keyboard). I’m sure with the recent developments in LLMs and speech models the situation is much different now. I’ll have to check this out
• Tsarp 2y ago
  BrainDump: Apple Notes + VoiceMemos + ChatGpt in 1. What is it? - Apple Eco-system based voice note taking/journal. - Tried various note taking apps. Nothing stuck like Apple Notes. - Writing by hand was the best way to get clarity but seemed high friction. Talking about ideas with friends/colleagues was the second best to thought clarity. - Basically combined it. Voice -> Transcribe (whisper accuracy locally) -> Rewrite with COT LLMs. - Helped me maintain journal now ( life events, ideas, anxiety days etc ). Added some prompts to help me. ( researched what experts in the field recommend; as an example - How do I start? And what do i say if i want to gratitude journal ). Since launch, more than 50% end up using it for meeting notes. https://voicebraindump.com/ https://voicebraindump.com/
  • bitcoinmoney 2y ago
    Can I make this listen to a zoom call and have it transcribed and summarized
    • Tsarp 2y ago
      A lot of folks use it for this. But its not very straightforward like the tools that join calls and listen in. It only transcribes what it can listen to. So if you are on a zoom call on your computer it can listen to both the audio from the PC and you speaking and transcribe. Ive been looking into tapping in directly to both the audio out and mic in on apple devices. Im making progress but its not stable yet. Hoping to get it done during the holidays.
      • salomonk_mur 2y ago
        Why not... Let it join meetings?
  • fraXis 2y ago
    Great job on this!
    • Tsarp 2y ago
• kebob 2y ago
  I built a Figma to Bubble.io converter, basically Figma to code but for a nocode platform. Niche, but something that I personally needed so figured others may find value as well. I charge a flat $25/mo, and based on the Figma design it significantly speeds up my development in bubble. Been hovering around $1.4K MRR, only real spend is ~$15/day google ads which has yet to pay for itself, but I keep telling myself its a good excuse to learn google ads. https://www.deezign.io https://www.deezign.io.
  • dannydandan 2y ago
    How did you market this?
    • kebob 2y ago
      Twitter/X, bubble forum, bubblecon, etc. Bubble has a strong community, so I had a lot of support from other devs sharing it when I launched.
  • chundo 2y ago
    I used to work for a company that did Bubble.io development including custom plugins. A very... cheap community of devs haha. No one wanted to spend money on much of anything in our experience.
• aussieguy1234 2y ago
  Tunnelmole - https://tunnelmole.com/ https://tunnelmole.com/. This is an open source tunneling tool in the same category as ngrok. I have turned this into an actual company, it's just a one person one for now. While it is open source, I am trying to build a sustainable business around it. It is bootstrapped and there is no VC funding as of yet. Currently there are several thousand monthly users and just enough paid subscriptions to be making ~$500 (AUD) per month. Promoting it so far has not been too difficult with different strategies, but the conversion rate is quite low, so i'm planning to start doing some data science type analytics to find ways to optimise that.
• zulban 2y ago
  More like $400 a month the past couple months. Maybe that counts. www.chesscraft.ca I started this chess variant AI sandbox 5 years ago for myself to help with a brutal commute. Still working on it now and then. I've learned so much building and releasing a commercial product with a community, on Google Play and Steam. It's great to see the flexibility of the "good enough" AI I made has still held up after 5 years.
  • va3ndf 2y ago
    I saw you present this many years ago at MariHacks! Stuck with me as a really cool idea and project. Awesome to see it still going strong!
    • zulban 2y ago
      Neat! Hope you're doing well. As I recall, that was a nicely run hackathon.
• jerrygoyal 2y ago
  it's not consistent on a monthly basis but so far i have made $10k from my open source side project and I wrote about that in detail: https://gourav.io/blog/notion-boost https://gourav.io/blog/notion-boost
• wingerlang 2y ago
  I make macOS apps [0], the revenue is irregular but on average it fits the $500/m. The main driver is [1] ScreenMemory, which records your screens and allows you to navigate a timeline / calendar. Sort of a Rewind.ai alternative. [0] https://jontelang.com https://jontelang.com [1] https://screenmemory.app https://screenmemory.app
• habosa 2y ago
  I run CodeApprove (https://codeapprove.com https://codeapprove.com) which is a better code review interface for teams that work on GitHub. Know when it's your turn to review, what discussions/files need your attention, and do it all in a lightning-fast single-page interface with keyboard shortcuts. The UX and workflows are inspired by the excellent tool Critique which Googlers/Xooglers know and love. Doesn't make enough money to be my full-time job, but enough to keep me interested over the past 3+ years.
• vachina 2y ago
  I sell bike parts on the side (https://bike-parts.cc https://bike-parts.cc and a few others). Plugs into my cousin’s ERP system with a middleware that I wrote. Everything is hosted at home, integration, DB on a 500mbps home internet :).
• cperciva 2y ago
  Probably not exactly what OP means by "side project" but in 2006 I started working towards getting FreeBSD running on EC2, and I got it working in 2011; I've been the maintainer of the FreeBSD/EC2 platform ever since. This started because I wanted to use FreeBSD in EC2 for Tarsnap, but I'm now getting sponsorship from Amazon for my work on FreeBSD (EC2 and release engineering) as well as a much smaller amount from a Patreon I set up a few years ago.
• jfoster 2y ago
  Among some related tools, I run Batch Compress (https://batchcompress.com/en https://batchcompress.com/en), an online image compressor. It converts images to WebP or JPEG with a lot of compression applied in order to shrink file size by a lot. There is a lot of competitors, but usually they have limits requiring accounts & payment if the images are too large to begin with or if you want to compress a lot of images. Batch Compress is free for unlimited use. The concept of Batch Compress is to be a batch version of Google's Squoosh tool. Always very open to feedback or feature requests.
  • rcfox 2y ago
    How do you make money with this? I tried disabling uBlock Origin and didn't even see any ads on the landing page.
    • jfoster 2y ago
      There is ads. Perhaps they didn't load or uBlock Origin isn't actually disabled? I know that some people find ads distasteful, but I think they're the best way to make a tool like this sustainable without being annoying; limits, accounts, payments, etc. I figure that anyone who dislikes ads enough will be running an ad blocker anyway.
• crush_robo_1536 2y ago
  https://rockyai.me/ https://rockyai.me/ - a chrome extension that lets you chat with any webpage using LLMs. Just a simple side project that I wanted to build for me and my friends. Don't intent to monetize it
  • lisp2240 2y ago
    If you have not monetized it how does it have a $500/mo revenue?
• woutr_be 2y ago
  I have developed about 20 mobile apps for the KaiOS ecosystem, which does around $500-$750 a month. I also run https://monitorprices.org https://monitorprices.org, which is just a list of available monitors on Amazon, but provides a bit more filters. Does about $125 a month, maybe double if there’s a creator reward campaign running. Nothing splashy or exciting really, but it gives me motivation to keep trying things.
  • akudha 2y ago
    This is interesting. Why did you pick KaiOS? If money was the goal, I guess iOS and Android would make more, isn't it? How does the development process feel like?
    • woutr_be 2y ago
      I did some work for a client who wanted to build an app for it. After that I ended up building a few apps just for fun, and once they started bringing in some ad money, I just ended up building more. I think their ecosystem is still small enough that good apps do well, whereas with iOS/Android you really have to build super polished apps and market them to thrive. KaiOS is just HTML/JavaScript, I ended up using Vue and building my own component library that I could re-use in every app.
• dietervds 2y ago
  I write a newsletter on cybersecurity every week. Usually a summary of interesting articles and a list of known breaches and software issues. It's been going for seven years now I think? It makes about 25k in sponsorships each year, although it could be more if I actually got myself to sell a bit more. Either way, it's been a great way for me to keep learning. Nothing beats having to summarize a thing to thousands of people to make sure you really understand it :-) https://securitynewsletter.co https://securitynewsletter.co
  • funny_name 2y ago
    Cool site. I'll probably check it out every now and then. How do you source all of the articles? And have you done any marketing for it?
    • dietervds 2y ago
      Thanks :-) I have a bunch of news websites bookmarked over the years that I scour through every week. And once and a while I pick something up through social media or friends and colleagues. Marketing: I tried. I did some cross-promotion with other newsletters, some paid marketing, but that was ages ago. I don't take to marketing well so it tends to fall by the wayside ^^
  • mkvoid 2y ago
    Awesome! I love news-related ideas like this since I'm interested in several industries. Had an idea similar to this a few years ago (in a different industry though) but didn't follow-through because I got bogged down in hosting/email infrastructure decisions. Keep it up!
    • dietervds 2y ago
      Thanks! If it helps, I ended up using Curated for hosting and email infrastructure. Been meaning to self-host something for ages but until then I'm happy to use them.
• Xixi 2y ago
  I've been running a Japanese green tea-of-the-month club on the side, with a friend and a (very part-time) employee in Japan [1]. It's bringing about $2000/month gross, and slightly under $500/month net. [1] https://tomotcha.com https://tomotcha.com
• Ave 2y ago
  Built this back during COVID, still chugging along at a few hundred $/month. Sales tend to pick up around the holidays, it makes for a nice xmas gift. https://cadenceprints.com https://cadenceprints.com Use your strava / fitness data to create beautiful wall art
  • darkstar_16 2y ago
    I've come across this before. It's a beautiful site/concept.
• burningChrome 2y ago
  My side project is managing several clients websites on a subscription based service. My buddy and I started a web design agency for small companies. It was just us two and we bootstrapped everything and were in the process of building several apps for the dozen or so architectural firms we were working with when he died suddenly of an aortic aneurism. It was such a shock to me and so I just shut the company down. Several clients begged me to keep going because we did such a good job doing the SEO, their sites were generating a ton of great leads and we had built a way to track the leads and send out first response emails with a phone call follow-up with 2 hours of the firm getting the email. Because of the fast turn around, they were beating other firms to the punch and we unknowingly had created a significant business advantage for them. Those 4 clients pay me for 8 hours of work a month at $65.00/hour. If you do the math, I'm clearing about 2K/month just to manage their sites, send out analytics and make content suggestions. It was a nice side hustle to have a few years back when I was laid off and was able to lean on this income until I got hired again.
  • lifeisstillgood 2y ago
    Can you clarify what you mean by “leads” here - is this the sort of “we found fifty names and emails that might be interested”, or is it a landing page that collects a email and phone number for when someone enters them? I am not trying to accuse you of something weird - it’s I hear a lot of lead generation as a basic business need and I never quite understood the real mechanisms - I only get the slightly passive landing site approach or cold calling
    • meiraleal 2y ago
      > Can you clarify what you mean by “leads” here Not GP but leads in this case were people that found their websites on Google and showed interest in buying their product. > I only get the slightly passive landing site approach or cold calling what would you expect to be a lead that would be different than that? A lead goes through steps of qualification until it becomes a customer.
    • burningChrome 2y ago
      >> Can you clarify what you mean by “leads” here They were what sales people would refer to as "qualified leads". We had two simple questions they would answer before submitting the contact form. It really helped to define what clients were looking for and their expectations. This made first contact a lot more productive, and allowed the firms to get clients into their design process and get a commitment a lot faster. For many of the firms we were working with, this meant better leads than the ones they getting on various other platforms like Houzz and then they started investing more in their content as a marketing approach then they did before.
• elieskilled 2y ago
  Inbox Zero - https://getinboxzero.com https://getinboxzero.com - your ai personal assistant for email. Spend 50% less time on email.
• apapli 2y ago
  My wife built https://www.jummbo.ai https://www.jummbo.ai but she doesn't have an HN account so I'll share for her. Jummbo takes the "umm" out of prospecting in B2B sales. It makes it really quick to find and prospect new customers, as it googles them, researches them, and writes custom emails and call scripts that are highly targeted to each of them. The app is in the $hundreds per month, getting a lot of interest in a niche vertical which is quite promising so a lot of extra features will be added in the new year. We're always up for feedback on how to make it better so if you set up a trial don't be shy with any suggestions you might have :)
  • henrygabby 2y ago
    I am interested in learning more. Is it available in the US?
• cdosborn 2y ago
  I created a website spellchecker/proofreader (https://spl.ing https://spl.ing). We use aws step functions for the actual processing, it's very cool tech! Reply with your websites, and I'll run a few checks!
  • mdaniel 2y ago
    > Reply with your websites, and I'll run a few checks! Or your could go with the "triplechecker spam" approach and just reply to every comment that contains a URL to shill your wares https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TripleChecker https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TripleChecker In some sense I'm being /s but the other side of that coin is I'm sure for every 8 people that it makes angry there are 2 who actually convert so :shrug:
• ronyfadel 2y ago
  My 2 Mac Apps bring about $700/mo each: Tubbie [1] is a simple and clean Mac YouTube downloader. Mission Control Plus [2] fixes something stupidly simple: it adds closing, minimizing and quitting apps functionality to macOS' Mission Control. [1] https://www.fadel.io/tubbie https://www.fadel.io/tubbie [2] https://www.fadel.io/missioncontrolplus https://www.fadel.io/missioncontrolplus
  • szszrk 2y ago
    > it adds closing, minimizing and quitting How is that not a thing is beyond me. I tried to do exactly what your app does multiple times and didn't understood how it's not a thing. Recently I'm trying to start using an old mac. Never used it before and almost none of my friends and colleagues did. It's a journey of multiple awe and teeth grinding moments, one after another.
    • ronyfadel 2y ago
      Right? and the app has existed for 5 years already. Plenty of time for Apple to Sherlock it.
• motyar 2y ago
  Launched ZenMic: AI Podcast Generator few months ago. Crossed 400 free users so far. Zero MRR but it makes money indirectly. We still have to add pricing and paid plans but it attracted enough freelancing client who need related custom solution. https://zenmic.com https://zenmic.com
  • sunnybeetroot 2y ago
    Is this similar to Google’s offering?
• dc0848 2y ago
  I do a couple of bucks on digital marketing
• t1tech 2y ago
  I've built https://cophone.io https://cophone.io - your online smartphone, complete with a phone number. It is an Android system running in the cloud that you can access via a browser, even on mobiles. Things like microphone and webcam work nicely, so you can even have meetings on cophone. After iterating on it for a while, customers seem very happy and now growing day by day. No marketing so far, just being out there and posting on various channels once in a while.
  • fluxeb 2y ago
    I would love a local-run version of this on my windows machine! Same subscription price is fine.
    • t1tech 2y ago
      On my TODO list! Might take a while though!
    • udev4096 2y ago
      https://github.com/remote-android/redroid-doc https://github.com/remote-android/redroid-doc
  • frankacter 2y ago
    You mention national and international phone calls. Do these virtual devices appear local to the customers region, to where your servers are located or are there options? Could someone use your service to run an Android device that behaves as if in the United States, for example, to use Android apps or web services that are region blocked and restrict use of VPN/Proxy?
    • t1tech 2y ago
      US for now, but without any guarantee.
  • dot 2y ago
    Wow, I've been looking for something like this. Can I bring my own esim?
• trubalca 2y ago
  I sell 3D laser manufactured maps - themapsguy.com
  • aembleton 2y ago
    What laser cutter do you use to make these? I assume you're just cutting out wood.
• audiala 2y ago
  I have built https://audiala.com https://audiala.com which creates audioguides for historical and touristic places in cities all over the world. It brings a bit over $500/month in in-app purchases. I got the idea in 2023 as I was solo traveling Florence, Italy and thought it would be much nicer to listen to stories about the monuments around me instead of having to read a guide. There is also so much more to be done: next, my plan is to create personalised itineraries based on your preferences, starting point, etc. I tried paid marketing but found much more effective the SEO I have done on the website, and users seem to share with their friends and come back, which makes me happy.
  • nicbou 2y ago
    How is the content created and curated?
    • audiala 2y ago
      It’s a RAG pipeline based on content from wikipedia and relevant websites. Getting the list of relevant places might the trickiest part of the pipeline but for this I settled with a not-perfect solution where users can manually request missing places.
      • lippihom 2y ago
        Interesting - how heavily are you utilizing AI generated content? Pages like this for example: https://audiala.com/en/germany https://audiala.com/en/germany
        • audiala 2y ago
          We rely on AI for most of the content and correct if mistakes are spotted, but they seem quite rare. 99% of the content is directly coming from our AI pipeline.
    • audiala 2y ago
      I just noticed that you run https://allaboutberlin.com https://allaboutberlin.com. My first website was https://toutsurprague.fr https://toutsurprague.fr in 2008, similar ideas :)
• simonswords82 2y ago
  Running https://minute-master.com https://minute-master.com as a side project, landed a couple of clients this year and a good pipeline of new clients for next year. It's a board governance and minutes generation tool for fund administrators, trust companies etc. The types of firms that need to have regular meetings with directors and need those minutes formally captured. But isn't there co-pilot for that? Yes, but no. Copilot can summarize a meeting - this is more regulatory orientated. So the agenda is set out, participants sent a pack before the meeting, and then minutes generated almost in real time to draft level of 80% accuracy. Ultimately means the process for managing and minuting a meeting is reduced from hours to minutes. If we carry on doing well I suspect this will become more than a side project in 2025...
• cmenge 2y ago
  Not exactly a new idea, but as a fun side project, I built an AI photo generator (i.e., an SD/FLUX wrapper) https://www.photovortex.com https://www.photovortex.com which has crossed $500MRR last month. I also just launched a spin-off of it, https://www.portrayya.com https://www.portrayya.com which is more focused on generating a set of portraits of a single person (i.e. headshots for linkedin etc.) instead of prompting individual images. Overall this is a very crowded space now because it's so easy to build, but there is still a learning curve around landing page design, conversion, ads etc. and potentially some niches to explore.
• babuskov 2y ago
  I built a Home Inventory software back in 2006 called Attic Manager: https://guacosoft.com/attic/ https://guacosoft.com/attic/ In the first few years it only sold a couple of copies per quarter, but then Intuit decided to discontinue support for their Quicken Home Inventory programs and users got stuck. I added the ability to import that data and then the sales started doing well. It has tapered off in the past three years but I still get some months over $500 during the year. I haven't really done any marketing, as it's just a Home Inventory program I made for myself, to keep track of stuff when we were moving to a new home. As far as I know, Attic Manager is still the only program which can load QHI data.
• kavyaj 2y ago
  We launched a Markdown resume builder called ResumeyPro (https://resumey.pro/ https://resumey.pro/) as a side project in 2020. It has been consistently generating revenue with barely any active marketing from our side. Most of the revenue is via organic search.
• chr15m 2y ago
  The combination of https://hostedgitea.com https://hostedgitea.com and https://dopeloop.ai https://dopeloop.ai brings in over $500 per month. In 2025 I'm going to focus on shipping a bunch of new online music apps on dopeloop.
• gamebak 2y ago
  My side project is about market making in a very particular way / or niched between decentralised exchanges and centralised one. The good thing is that this industry is so big that even as a small competitor I can do a lot. I don't have a product, just a basic page that's broken here and there https://asset.plus/ https://asset.plus/, my actual revenue comes from my bots trading. I am currently expanding my infrastructure, but I really have to take care of costs because servers for low latency are expensive.
• kimchidude 2y ago
  https://ieltsielts.com/ https://ieltsielts.com/ I build simple speech shadowing exercises that help people train for IELTS Speaking. The project makes more than $500/month.
• predictand 2y ago
  I have been working on Heuristica for the last 1.5 years, which pays for my rent. It is a subscription-based, AI-powered concept mapping tool that helps visualize learning and research. As I started to make money, I was able to start hiring freelancers to help with certain aspects of the site, like the design, SEO, and some independent coding tasks. It is rewarding, but due to the pace of developments in the AI space, it feels like I need to improve the product constantly to remain competitive, which can get a bit burdensome. https://www.heuristi.ca/ https://www.heuristi.ca/
  • lippihom 2y ago
    Looks cool! Have any SEO / dev freelancers with extra capacity you've liked working with that you can recommend?
• rozenmd 2y ago
  I built a service that tells you whether your team's website/API or cron jobs are online, or not. It's called OnlineOrNot: https://onlineornot.com https://onlineornot.com Coming close to 4 years of operation!
  • rsanek 2y ago
    Started using this to check Namecheap hosting uptime claims, has worked well for me. Keep up the good work!
• ruzig 2y ago
  I wrote scrapers to scrape data from Google, Bing, Walmart, eBay... I work with clients, support them to integrate all data into their workflows. Basically, I'll provide private APIs, specific to their use-cases. Not many clients, only 2, about 600 USD/month cause clients are testing the market. It's fun cause I can debug and get feedback directly, in real-time, from clients about the results.
• jonkratz 2y ago
  I built a service that makes sure your forms are always working — no more lost leads due to something breaking. Currently bringing in over 1k/mo: https://formtester365.com https://formtester365.com It fills out the form as a human would (daily or on whatever weekly schedule you want) and then confirms it was received. It currently supports Gravity Forms on Wordpress due to their API for confirming submissions, but a new version that supports all web forms is nearly ready. One of the main use cases is for agencies that want to make sure clients sites are always working.
  • qup 2y ago
    Does this spam their inbox? How do you mitigate that?
    • jonkratz 2y ago
      The input data is predictable, so it can easily be filtered out by a rule.
• ragularuban 2y ago
  I built ClickConnector - a customer support platform for SaaS products. Customer support and customer success are interconnected functions, especially for SaaS products. We took it upon ourselves to build a platform with HelpDesk, Knowledge Base Portals, Feature Requests, Bug Reports, Changelogs, Email Drip Campaigns, Product Tours, NPS, Testimonial Collection, Checklists, and everything a SaaS team needs to win over their customers. Initially, my focus was on travel agencies. I then started building tools that I needed to support my customers (since I couldn't use another product to assist them—it would have been a shame to use an external product if we were marketing our solution as a customer support platform for travel agencies). Fast forward, with all the tools that we built, it was a no-brainer for me to pivot our product. I thought this would be a great fit since this niche has a better founder fit for me. https://clickconnector.com/ https://clickconnector.com/
• soheilpro 2y ago
  https://volt.fm https://volt.fm Can't really call it a side project, though, as I'm working on it full-time.
• lukehaas 2y ago
  I built https://runjs.app https://runjs.app because I wanted an easy way to run JavaScript and test out ideas. It turned out that a lot of other people wanted the same thing. The first version was free and very basic. After getting a lot of suggestions and feedback from the people using it, I added more features and introduced a freemium pricing model.
• outcoldman 2y ago
  Mac/iOS apps https://loshadki.app https://loshadki.app Stable between 1000-1500 monthly, depends on the month.
• iximiuz 2y ago
  Hey there! I built a learning-by-doing platform for DevOps, SRE, and all other types of infra engineers - https://labs.iximiuz.com https://labs.iximiuz.com. Started working on the project exactly two years ago, and about 12 months ago added a Premium membership, which immediately took off! Still mind-blown by the results, and it's something I build only in my free (from the main job) time. The labs were making ~$3K MRR for a few months before the Black Friday sale and then doubled the annual revenue in a week by making another ~25K at the end of this November.
• vfulco2 2y ago
  This was a terrific back and forth between the community with a lot of genuine insights. Kudos!
• vlucas 2y ago
  I built a Google Sheets Add-on that imports bank transactions via Plaid into Google Sheets. It formats transactions, auto-categorizes them, has custom category rules, and can automate data imports nightly. It's called BudgetSheet ( https://www.budgetsheet.com https://www.budgetsheet.com ) and has been my side hustle for almost 5 years now. Revenue is just over $5,000/month. Growing well. Targeting $9k MRR for 2025. Expenses are high because Plaid is expensive (last invoice was over $1,600), but still good margins and will get better with scale. It's good software and I've put a lot into it, but the user experience really just comes down to how well Plaid supports your bank. Folks with really well supported banks love it, and folks with banks not well supported by Plaid tend to churn quickly.
  • lippihom 2y ago
    This is great. Just paid for a year of Copilot Money, but if I'd seen this would have subscribed.
• snapplebobapple 2y ago
  My side project is not spending money. For every 100k i dont spend i can generate 500 to 1500 a month just by buying an s&p 500 tracking etf.
• denz88 2y ago
  I built an online course catalog / aggregator many years ago. It's my first web project after learning how to code using courses from edX and Treehouse. My goal was to build something that I'd want to use myself. It's undergone a few iterations since then. The site gained initial traction on Reddit where I shared my experience learning and building in the r/learnprogramming subreddit. That was enough momentum to get me ranking on search engines. I eventually set up affiliate relationships with several of the major online course platforms. Although I've built a handful of apps using React, Vue, etc. this one's a classic Flask app using Jinja templating. There's just a few tiny JS scripts I wrote for basic interactivity (like updating the state of the "Save" button). Feedback is most welcome! https://opencourser.com https://opencourser.com
• kasperkamperman 2y ago
  I created a site (https://zwemindex.nl https://zwemindex.nl) with all the pools and open water places in The Netherlands (it's in Dutch). It started off with the idea that I wanted to do a places search but without Google Places. I learned about GIS, build a lookup array with placenames, slugs and latlon. Just simple PHP and autocomplete.js. I started out with some Open Data from the Dutch governent on all open water swimpots. I thought the current site (still is) not user-friendly on mobile. I also added all the public pools. I got some traction because I got interviewed as an example project and I reached out to news sites. Actually my backend is a Google sheet, which I sync to MongoDB (works nice with geo). Did a write up on that: https://www.kasperkamperman.com/blog/web/import-csv-in-mongodb/ https://www.kasperkamperman.com/blog/web/import-csv-in-mongo... Rest is all vanilla PHP, cached to HTML, Bulma css. Running on shared hosting, with Cloudflare cache in front. I really worked on accessibility too, allowing keyboard navigation (press TAB) and making sure everything is readable and with good contrast (Bulma 2.0 fixed that). I make about $500 with some affiliate links (waterparks with hotels, wellness) which really fit with the search intent of the user. The last thing I want is stuffing the site full with Google ads.
• PrimaryAlibi 2y ago
  I have been making youtube videos for a long time on many different accounts. I don't know what else to say except try to choose topics that youtube won't give you trouble over so avoid things like privacy, crypto, politics. Then you just keep making videos and one day you win the lottery when the algorithm finally shines the light on you.
• JP_Watts 2y ago
  Last August I bought 6 small work platforms/mast lifts at an equipment auction and sold them in FB Marketplace for an extra $1000 each after expenses. Cleaned them up a bit, but that was it! I’m bidding on 5 more this week, should be an easy $5k arbitrage.
• ddaying 2y ago
  ㄹㄹ
• ddaying 2y ago
  I am currently running an application in Korea that analyzes the results of sports Toto matches. I earn approximately $500–550 per month through in-app purchases. This business model is somewhat limited, so I am considering other services. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tistory.ddaying.pm https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tistory.dd...
• dpcan 2y ago
  I own an escape room business with one, two-part, room and it does about this or much more in some months. The problem is, unlike so many examples in these threads, this business requires every available minute of my time so it’s a little more than I bargained for. Plus there is a brick and mortar location, city regulations, etc. You gotta REALLY love the hell out of this business to do it at all, let alone as a side project.
• addy999 2y ago
  I'm building an AI web agent to fetch detailed information. Looks up and browses sites just like you. Have just over 500 developers signed up and releasing our client library soon. https://www.onequery.app https://www.onequery.app
• jacksonLiu89 2y ago
  Earlier this year, NYT launched a new puzzle game called Strands, which gained a lot of popularity. I created a website, https://strands.today https://strands.today, monetized with AdSense. It allows users to check daily puzzle answers and play previous games in the https://www.strands.today/strands-archive/ https://www.strands.today/strands-archive/ . It generates about $600 per month.
  • rishikeshs 2y ago
    How do you get the data and how do you publish the content? Is it automated?
• wolftickets 2y ago
  I've finally made it to the $500/month mark! I built https://wolftickets.ai https://wolftickets.ai , it is a collection of AI predictions for upcoming UFC fights. The predictions for the future events are private but all past results are public. I get to keep iterating on new models, new approaches for using gen-ai tech to write better analysis of fights and fighters, along with exploring stats and tendencies that matter. A good example of the writeups: https://wolftickets.ai/events/ufc-310-pantoja-vs-asakura/1398636328219261226/movsar-evloev-vs-aljamain-sterling/1387/ https://wolftickets.ai/events/ufc-310-pantoja-vs-asakura/139... This project isn't yet allowing me to retire but I'm passionate about the AIML space and combat sports, I get to explore whatever ideas I find interesting, and get a ton of feedback and ideas from members without having to do advertising.
• fsn4dN69ey 2y ago
  I opened a board game/trading card store in May. We host events and sell products. Takes up a lot of my time but ultimately it's a passion project that actually makes money.
  • mdaniel 2y ago
    I dunno if it's in your wheelhouse, but I recently discovered a "game cafe" locally that allows folks to check out games by the hour (like a very specialized library), but they also sell beer/wine/coffee/pastries plus running the events like you said. I am so incredibly sad I didn't think of that first - that forehead slapping moment is my definition of a "good idea"
    • fsn4dN69ey 2y ago
      We've let people rent on and off - the issue with renting is there's not much we can do scalably about verifying missing components, rules, good working condition (when non-board game people are running the store) - I charge about $10/wk for a game rented but it's definitely not a service we advertise actively.
• henrygrew 2y ago
  https://kenyanlist.net https://kenyanlist.net local Kenyan forum
• punitvara 2y ago
  https://loankundli.com/ https://loankundli.com/ I built this for my personal usecase to estimate savings by prepayments done during my home loan tenure. I didn’t find this feature where you can select choice to reduce emi or tenure for each prepayment. Not making any revenue but hopefully trying to make it helpful
• th3owner 2y ago
  I created https://reddit-saved.com https://reddit-saved.com to search and organize reddit saves that I wanted to come back later. 10K+ sign ups, mainly through word of mouth and Google search. Still not monetized but hoping to in the near future.
• yanneves 2y ago
  I built https://gadabout.ai https://gadabout.ai through experimentation with multimodal LLMs / computer use to reduce the burden of user testing side projects. I can't recall the last time I was this excited by a new technology. Following conversations with others, I've since positioned the tool for marketing teams to run deep competitor analysis and monitoring. Two pilot customers through word of mouth expected to double next month. Invite-only building in tandem with customer feedback, I haven't even put together a landing page yet. I'm currently designing a ranking algorithm, working name UAC (Usability, Accessibility, Conversion) score.
• thip 2y ago
  I'm making and selling a couple of LED pin badges on my site https://hortus.dev https://hortus.dev. I wrote about my experience doing these last year (previous hn post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38904255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38904255) and since then it has really taken off! Not enough to live off, but certainly enough to sustain itself and fund some more projects in the future. I never expected it to turn into anything more serious than a novelty and I've learned a tonne about running a small business as a result. I'm really looking forward to (hopefully) learning how to grow this into something bigger over 2025!
  • schappim 2y ago
    How will you address the product safety issues related to coin cell batteries? We also manufacture STEM/edu electronics and have encountered product safety regulations concerning coin cell batteries in Australia. Similar laws were introduced in the US and Europe in 2023.
    • rnewme 2y ago
      What are the regulations about exactly?
• digest 2y ago
  I built Digest, which allows you to create a personalized daily digest containing all of the content you already read. Add content sources like Reddit, Google Calendar, Instagram, X, TikTok, Stripe, Hacker News, Weather, YouTube, Product Hunt, RSS, Google News, Stocks, Crypto and more. Content is summarized from sources using AI. Each day (week or month) you will get a newsletter containing updates from all of the sources that you added to your digest. I also recently added a newsletter reader to it, so you can get an email address that you use to signup to all newsletters with, and then Digest becomes your newsletter reader (and even emails you a list of all your new newsletters). https://usedigest.com https://usedigest.com
• logotype 2y ago
  I built FIXParser https://fixparser.dev https://fixparser.dev initially because I wanted to learn HFT. This was over 10 years ago, but I still maintain and build it to this day. Turns out several companies find it useful too! It doesn’t make much money, but I’m more stubborn than smart so I’m quitting my day job and will work full-time on FIXParser next year.
  • Shocka1 2y ago
    As someone who has been using APIs for automated retail trading the last few years now, this is highly interesting to me. I've heard of FIX protocol before, but never thought to use it as a retail trader - would this be practical for someone like me? APIs from the popular brokerages have done the job, but I've experienced more than my fair share of request failures. This sometimes can be the trades themselves, which includes opening/closing higher risk < 1 DTE option positions. This doesn't give the warm and fuzzies if you know what I mean. I have quite a bit of coding experience and feel good about the limit/failure checks in my code, but there is no walking away from the trading terminal when the code is running. I realize your software is a parser and I may have went on a bit of a tangent, but I'm always open to new ideas and ways to make my project more efficient. Edit: Also, nice use of the linear gradient on a couple of your buttons in dark mode. I feel like I remember that css trick on HN one day and thought it was clever.
• mnfrmcddlykrnl 2y ago
  Building this on the side with a few ex colleagues. I’m making the $500/month but it’s obviously not via revenue. https://pathapp.co.uk https://pathapp.co.uk
• _563m 2y ago
  I started [name redacted] to design, manufacture and sell cool, tough products that I like to use and carry daily. Average monthly income is $2K–3K. This is thanks to repeat buyers as much as first-timers. Although some months are slow with no more than 15 orders, the bigger months when a Kickstarter campaign pays out a lump sum (followed by an influx of orders from being new on the KS page) help raise the average. Sales also pick up before Christmas, and whenever I run a promotion. Occasional wholesale partnerships with online retailers (in Japan, USA) also bring in a lump sum payout. 70% orders are from the USA. For shipping I use Australia Post (terrible) and NextSmartShip China (superb). I should mention that the first couple products I designed did not work at all. Hardly anyone placed orders and I didn't recover my investment... at a time when I didn't have money to 'waste' (I had quit my PhD in the USA and moved to Australia, I was broke so first had to get a full-time job). But of course the experience wasn't a waste, it taught me couple things I really needed to know for this journey. Things only picked up when I discovered Kickstarter. The hit product that changed things (now sold out and discontinued) was a bolt action tactical pen priced at AUD45 (USD~30) and made of reinforced polymer instead of metal. The metal ones at the time cost 3X–7X my price, were heavy, plain-looking, sharp and slippery for tactical use as a glass-breaker. Additionally, I provide the kind of customer service I wish I could get : First, I provide lifetime guarantees on all my products (there are only two products in stock now but I had a dozen; planning more in future). Second, if there's any issue — even if your cousin sneezes on your pen and you therefore want a different one — I'll ship a free pen. The rare issue has been a package getting lost in transit, I try to fix that quickly by shipping a second package and then providing a refund for the disappointing experience. I don't ask for returns and it's a hassle anyway, so nobody has ever returned a product. Only one person asked for a refund in six years which I provided in about ten seconds. Among loads of positive feedback and sometimes multi-page emails that I'm very grateful for, customers also sometimes email me to say their pens were stolen after they showed it off to curious coworkers or something — when I hear this, I send them free replacement pens because it makes me happy to flip their memory of the incident from negative to positive.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• ikliuger 2y ago
  I'm a bit late to the game, but I still want to share my side project Olympiad Math Exercises for Kids https://mathclub.ai/math-exercises https://mathclub.ai/math-exercises. For $50 a month, students get two sets of problems from past math contests every week. We've added nice features like an AI helper that can check answers and answer questions about the problems. Plus, for those looking to put their skills to the test, we host both online and in-person math olympiads in the Bay Area.
• lambrospetrou 2y ago
  I have built a managed platform automating HTTP API testing, at https://www.skybear.net https://www.skybear.net. The core basis is to run your Hurl files. Automatic report persistence, scheduled runs, and multiple files supported with hundreds of requests per "run/execution". Soon, I will be adding analytics, insights, and automatic test generation features. I have been working for a year on it, and will keep working on it for many years to come, since I am using it myself a lot anyway.
• com-adm 2y ago
  https://www.comicsmaker.ai https://www.comicsmaker.ai Its a service where users can create comics using AI generated artwork. Love creating art and writing software so it's a passion project for me. Haven't done any marketing yet, its mostly organic search traffic.
  • high_byte 2y ago
    this is really nice. what's your MRR? do you know anifusion?
• raptorraver 2y ago
  Started selling pasture raised eggs last summer. First we had a flock of 150 but soon we ordered 150 more. We kept them in the Susckovich style chicken tractors[1] and sold directly to customers through Reko-rings (Facebook based farmers market). We gross around 3k€ per month with around 2000 euros profit per month. The chores take 1-2h per day and the deliverys around 3h per week. Our web page is at www.paivarinne.farm It's in Finnish but at least the pictures are nice :) 1: https://farmmarketingsolutions.com/stress-free-chicken-tractor-plans https://farmmarketingsolutions.com/stress-free-chicken-tract...
  • samteeeee 2y ago
    but how much does it cost to feed 300 chickens?
    • raptorraver 2y ago
      Around 25€ per day + VAT. They lay 240 eggs during day now thay it’s winter. We sell them 50snt/each (VAT included). We feed them soyfree organic feed.