
Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them? - whoisret
One night in 2013 I had this stupid idea that people would start searching google for &quot;who is retargeting me&quot; just like they do with &quot;what&#x27;s my ip&quot; — I&#x27;ve created in 30 minutes, bought the domain whoisretargeting.me and put Google Ads. It&#x27;s made €7000 in 7 years. (1)
Do you have projects like this?<p>(1) https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pasteboard.co&#x2F;JbPKJRs.png
======
awillen
I really don't like talking about my side projects, so I guess they all
qualify, but I'm particularly excited about one at the moment.

Right now I'm working on a dog treat business - I make a treat mix that you
add water to and freeze for a meat-based frozen treat. I feel really good
about the product and the packaging design (and this is the first time I've
ever worked on any kind of a physical product, so it's really cool to see the
boxes), and I've sold a few boxes so far. Trying out some advertising now and
working on building a presence on Instagram, since that seems like a great
place to reach dog people, and the product is pretty photogenic.

[https://coopersdogtreats.com/](https://coopersdogtreats.com/)

~~~
biztos
I had a look and this might be a completely ignorant suggestion (I don’t have
a dog) but to me it was very surprising that dogs would like frozen food, so
maybe you should explain that/why they do. Just seemed counterintuitive, I’ve
never seen anybody give anything frozen to their dog.

~~~
ixwt
Anecdata: many dogs I know of really enjoy ice cubes. A meat flavored ice cube
would probably make them quite excited.

~~~
poulsbohemian
Anecdata: my cat loves ice cubes too. You can roll them all over the floor,
lick them, carry them around - super fun.

------
abc126589
My app Twitter Archive Eraser ([https://martani.github.io/Twitter-Archive-
Eraser](https://martani.github.io/Twitter-Archive-Eraser)) used to be free,
then I added a donation button and people, while barely donated, used to say
that this is something they would have paid for!

I worked on a paid tier (learnt a tremendous amount about actually selling an
app, integration with payment processors, licensing, more legal stuff than I
wanted to etc.)

Almost from the get go, it started making +$3k/mo. With more changes and
offering a Mac version along a Windows version, it averages around +$7k/mo of
revenue consistently. I'm the only person on it and have a full time job.
Barely need to make code changes and it requires minimal effort for customer
support.

~~~
heed
I really like the UI - is this an Electron app, or what is the stack you use?

~~~
abc126589
Indeed. The original version was C#/WPF and worked on windows only. I got so
many requests for a Mac version and knew it was decent demand. So I switched
to electron: 1 code base works for Mac and windows plus has automatic updates
for when bug fixes are released etc.

And sure enough Mac users account for 30% for the revenue today.

Another advantage is that it runs completely on the user's computer. So I have
no database or back-end to maintain. There is only a small server to generate
licenses + handle some analytics the app emits both built on ASP.NET. The only
data I store is in a Microsoft Azure table. I pay around $2 a month for all
azure costs.

~~~
Datsundere
how does a license server work? did you build it yourself?

~~~
abc126589
It's in-house. A license has some info tied to the user (which ultimately has
to be the Twitter user connected via Twitter). Then all that is signed with a
private key ECDSA. The app has the public key and can verify the signature.
Many libraries are available for handling cryptographic signatures.

So basically a license is public info, the app enforces that the logged in
user must match the user in the license.

------
snird
It's probably not what you meant, but I recently created a weekend project bot
that scans facebook for apartments rental ads. Thanks to this bot, I landed an
opportunity I wouldn't have catch otherwise, saving me 6,000$ a year. Assuming
I will hold my new apartment for 3 years, this is a net savings of 18,000$. I
haven't sold anything, but yet I created something that "generated money" for
me.

My code is open source by the way, and I wrote about it here:
[https://snir.dev/blog/apartments-bot/](https://snir.dev/blog/apartments-bot/)

~~~
HaloZero
Interesting. I've never heard of apartment posts in facebook groups but I'm in
the bay area.

Do other people here in the US have this experience as well? I was thinking
it'd be Facebook marketplace, craigslist, and apartment sites (like
apartments.com)

~~~
snird
I can say that people in Israel prefer facebook groups for many reasons:

1\. It allows for "team search". My friends knew I'm looking, so they tagged
me in relevant posts they saw. Can't do it anywhere else (including
marketplace by facebook themselves)

2\. It allows for group communication with the publisher of the post. One asks
- everybody sees.

3\. It gives a sense of power to those who seek to rent. Many posts with high
prices have comments like "You are crazy", "You are a pig", "whoever pays this
much is as sucker". It almost warms the heart, we fight the greedy landlords.
It almost make it fun, like a witch hunt.

~~~
bradlys
As a landlord though, what’s the reason to use Facebook then? Is there no
alternative like craigslist in Israel?

I’ve only seen posts of apartments for rent in Facebook groups that are aimed
at college students. (In the US)

Otherwise, Craigslist is basically king.

~~~
snird
Young people use facebook to find apartments.

So if your apartments target young couples or room mates, facebook is your
place. For families we have craiglist-like solutions.

------
econcon
In this virus season alone I've made $8000 in sales.

You'll find various subreddits where people are buying around 5-10spools a
month. Imagine how much virgin plastic is being added like that to the
environment.

I've been creating filament and selling it:

[https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-
ho...](https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for-
cheap-6c908bb09922)

This activity also help recycle waste plastic.

Production cost of filament is $7.5 per 5kg and filament roll has 850 gram
filament and can be sold for $20-30 per spool

It's trivial to get the quality right.

You can sell rolls on Amazon, eBay and Etsy or your own Shopify store and use
Facebook ads/Google Ads to advertise your website.

That said I didn't use any ads to sell filament! Only few days ago I started
Shopify store and paid $5-10 in Facebook ads. Since we accept credit card,
it's not too much of a risk for buyer to buy it from us (even when are new)

I work from home so I take 5 minute break and walk to my garage and check if
the filament machine successfully is running on auto pilot

Thing is filament doesn't have huge demand, neither it has very less demand.
So you can dominate local demand by creating quality filament.

I focus on fulfilling local demand, I've gained customers who need large
supply of filament of ABS, TPU and Nylon12.

If people do actually come to compete with me, it's a win win. More plastic
recycled = less plastic entering landfill.

~~~
mrfusion
Wow awesome idea. How many rolls do you produce a day?

How about recycling plastic waste ground on the beach?

~~~
dh-g
Recycling plastic is hard because it will be degraded to various levels, will
be of different plastic types, will be dirty, will have custom additives, etc.

If you are interested in plastic recycling:
[https://preciousplastic.com/](https://preciousplastic.com/)

~~~
econcon
We need more research into it I guess also see:
[https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/greek-researchers-
determ...](https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/greek-researchers-determine-
the-effect-of-recycling-on-abs-filament-171938/)

Here they report improved ABS properties on recycling

~~~
dh-g
This test does not simulate actual product recycling where the plastic is
exposed to sunlight and liquids. Its environmental iterations that cause the
degradation.

Interesting findings though.

------
bemmu
I wanted to learn iOS dev, so made the simplest game I could think of: a card
game where you just draw a random card and win if it's between two values.
Then I made another app that just transliterates your name into Japanese
characters and displays that. That one made $33 / year.

Together they almost covered the Apple Developer fee :-)

Things continued like this for years, until one day Apple started getting
harsher on gambling. While my game has no other players, and the "money" you
win doesn't save anywhere or get you anything, it was still gambly enough that
I could no longer have it in the store as an individual developer. Then the
Japanese name app was also removed because it wasn't substantive enough (I
don't disagree).

I don't mention them usually, because the loss didn't mean much to me and I'm
still fine with developing for iOS in the future. But here you asked
especially for projects that made money but that we wouldn't usually talk
about.

~~~
cableshaft
> While my game has no other players, and the "money" you win doesn't save
> anywhere or get you anything, it was still gambly enough that I could no
> longer have it in the store as an individual developer.

Uh oh. I am developing a single player game that's somewhat similar to yours
and was planning to release it on iOS. It doesn't involve money, just points,
but it is push your luck. Do you know what I should be looking for to see
Apple's new guidelines for this?

~~~
bemmu
I'm not sure, the message I got didn't refer to any particular definition of
gambling.

"In order to reduce fraudulent activity on the App Store and comply with
government requests to address illegal online gambling activity, we are no
longer allowing gambling apps submitted by individual developers. This
includes both real money gambling apps as well as apps that simulate a
gambling experience."

~~~
cableshaft
Thanks. I think I'm okay. I'm not having players bet anything, or doing loot
boxes or anything like that, so I think I'll be okay.

That being said, I do have a board game design where you do bet chips that I
would have liked to make a software version of. Guess I'm not releasing that
one on iOS.

------
Scoundreller
I made a grainy and poor-quality but useful video on how to fix a specific
issue for Macs which didn’t have a video anywhere else.

Spent 5 minutes to make the video and upload it.

Was making $2-3/month, which is a great ROI for 5 minutes of work.

All positive comments and upvotes because the video is useful.

Then YouTube demonetized all small publishers because they can somehow block
spam, but not identify “offensive” content.

Fuck you Youtube.

~~~
petecooper
I'll bite - can you post a link?

------
mattkevan
I sell prints of public domain artwork on Etsy [0]. I’ve automated the print
production and fulfillment, so all I need to do is set up the artwork and
maintain the product listings.

It consistently brings in around £100-300 per month and if I put any time at
all into marketing it could probably do a lot better.

I also maintain a directory of UX tools, resources and information [1]. It
currently doesn’t bring in anything but it’s more of a repository for stuff I
find interesting than a commercial venture.

[0]
[https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheDoveAndTheSeagull](https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheDoveAndTheSeagull)

[1] [https://www.uxlift.org/](https://www.uxlift.org/)

~~~
XCSme
The uxlift directory is pretty cool. Any way to submit more tools/articles to
it? I am working on a side-project that's like a self-hosted hotjar (
[https://www.usertrack.net](https://www.usertrack.net) ), which might be
helpful for the readers.

~~~
mattkevan
Oh that’s cool, thanks for sharing. I’ll post it when I’ve got a moment.

There’s a form on the site, but if you’ve got anything else you want to share
just send it to uxlift@kevan.tv.

I’m really interested in self-hosted, privacy-respecting alternatives to the
big tracking platforms so this is right up my street. (Having said that, I do
use GA, but I’m not happy about it.)

------
fxtentacle
I used to sell extra naughty bikinis online, in addition to being a consultant
for distributed real-time machine learning.

People had a hard time combining the image of a nerd in the basement with that
of a flashy sales guy surrounded by models. So I usually didn't mention the
bikinis to allow me to charge full nerd pricing for my coding.

This site project brought in roughly €500 monthly with almost no work, because
I was renting space in a fulfillment center combined with shopify and a
marketing contractor.

~~~
docuru
That’s quite interesting combination.

How did you charge the marketing contractor?

I wanted to reached out to marketing contractor but haven’t had much
information

Thank you!

~~~
fxtentacle
The marketing contractor charged me. The way it worked was that if a new email
or WhatsApp message or Instagram PM came in, he would get notified and work on
it. And he measured the time for each task and then billed me for his time.
Since it was usually only a few minutes for each work task, that only summed
up to a few hundred $ per month.

As one example of the kind of tasks he handled:

Prospective customers could send in their measurements via WhatsApp and he
would then look up into our internal measurement tables to determine which
bikini size to order.

Or we would get collaboration invites from Instagram Influencers via PM or
E-Mail. He would check their follower counts, bot ratio, etc. and then use an
(internal secret) Google Docs to calculate the estimated value for us. He'd
then use that to either decline or determine how generous our promotional gift
would be.

Nowadays, the concept is called VA = Virtual Assistant, for example like what
[https://timesvr.com/](https://timesvr.com/) offers.

~~~
docuru
Thanks for your detailed answer! That really helped me learn about it.

All the best with your side business (and all)!

~~~
fxtentacle
Glad to help :)

I got started with my endeavors from people explaining things to me on
programming IRC channels, so despite its bad reputation, advice from random
strangers on the internet can be good advice.

As for this particular project, I stopped it when I ran out of bikinis and
couldn't buy more at the same conditions anymore. At the same time,
competition from China was also arriving in the form of dropshipping. I could
have switched suppliers to reduce my purchase costs and remain competitive,
but selling a high volume of cheap products is a lot more work than selling a
low volume of high priced items.

~~~
docuru
Oh well, since it was your side-project so I guess letting it go wasn't hard.
But you got the core idea of selling online :)

------
tunesmith
I have a creative writing site that lets authors write branching fiction
novels together. It's stupid fun, we have Discord/Zoom writing events Sunday
nights where we try to write chapters together (usually around 500 words) and
read them to each other. It existed years ago and made some advertising money,
and then I shut it down because of spam problems (since solved). I brought it
back to live because of COVID. I'm petrified to launch the site live because
it's on a 10-year-old php stack, the website design looks like it's from the
late 90's, and my IP policy sucks (on submit, I own all copyrights, my current
authors don't mind but it's always bugged me) and I have no other compliance
things going on like coppa or privacy policies because I don't know how to do
that and do I really want to hire a lawyer if I have no ambitious revenue
plans? If I keep advertising turned off (my preference), my only other current
revenue path is publishing books when all threads get concluded, and the
writing quality, while better than most similar sites, is not really
publication quality. So for now it just sits behind an apache password prompt
and gets very little traffic, and that's ok for now. Although if anyone here
likes the idea of writing silly creative writing stories on a private website,
feel free to message me. Main story right now is a girl who is invited to mage
school except she accidentally kills her boyfriend. Well, that's just one
thread. In another thread he's a firemoose.

~~~
sfink
Is it a branching tree or a dag? I was just thinking it might be a fun
challenge to combine branches occasionally.

As in: now he's a dead firemoose.

~~~
tunesmith
Absolutely. I discourage cyclic, but dag is ok. It can be hard to write a
downstream chapter (and keep the plot consistent) when there are two upstream
paths, so we don't do it a lot, but we have a few examples. I think in our
current story of about 110 chapters, we have three crosslinks, and two of them
have a major impact on the story. I wrote a pretty snazzy react/cytoscape
thing to visualize and explore the maps.

------
AznHisoka
I made almost 6 figures a year on an affiliate website promoting natural
health products, when they were extremely popular back in 2006.

I would stay awake some nights and jot down every product mentioned in
overnight infomercials (before I knew what TiVo was). then write a review on
them the next day.

Thousands of people would search for “X review” in the days after watching
those infomercials and I would rank #1 because some of them were brand new
products.

~~~
wetmore
Sounds unethical

~~~
XCSme
Isn't this what this post is all about?

~~~
akudha
How did you reach this conclusion? OP never asked for unethical ideas. I
interpreted "but you'd not talk about them" as "not to attract competition",
not "unethical or illegal"

BTW, writing fictional reviews for money is not only unethical, it can be
illegal too

~~~
AznHisoka
I decided to put it out there because it was exactly what the OP asked. It’s
something I would rather not talk about. Whether you think it’s
unethical/illegal is up to you of course.

For what it’s worth, i am no longer involved with this today.

------
ikeboy
This was more of a one-time launch, but I made around 25k off it. Half of that
went to affiliates.

Bit of background - lots of Amazon sellers use a software called tactical
arbitrage that scrapes retailers to get prices and compares prices to Amazon.
It comes with a couple hundred sites built in, and the ability to add new
sites using custom xpaths. I made a chrome extension that lets you point and
click on arbitrary sites to automatically create an xpath file that would be
compatible with this software. Charged $199 for it, although I had some launch
specials at $149 and above.

Still have a handful of organic sales a year, although it's not really worth
the time spent in support anymore. In retrospect I should have made it $99
upfront plus $10/month or something and provided ongoing support.

~~~
_tom_
What's the name of the extension?

Thanks.

~~~
ikeboy
It's called "TA Xpath Builder" and easily found on Google. But I haven't
updated it in years and it doesn't work on all sites, haven't actively
promoted it since the initial launch. I do have a 30 day money back guarantee
though.

------
CrackpotGonzo
It’s very small at the moment, but I built a simple way to stand up a landing
page, collect payment, and send out a link.

Primarily have yoga instructors using this as a better way to collect payment
for Zoom classes compared to collecting payment on Venmo or using another tool
they’re not comfortable with such as Gumroad.

Only charging .6% on top of Stripe’s fees and no monthly. Only making a little
money at the moment but it’s scaling and seeing interest from lots of random
online instructors.

ClassUp - [https://www.classup.io](https://www.classup.io)

~~~
mrfusion
Why is it better than gumroad?

~~~
CrackpotGonzo
Yogis and fitness instructors I've spoken to see Gumroad as being too "techie"
and the few that have tried it felt it was more geared towards selling online
assets, rather than live classes.

For now it's very basic, but I'm working on a few features that are
specifically geared to helping live class creators sell more easily, primarily
calendar integration, support for multiple classes being sold, and support for
monthly subscriptions to all classes from an instructor.

~~~
yowlingcat
Wow, fascinating how important branding is with payment collection. I wonder
if the same is true for other kinds of small businesses outside of the fitness
vertical.

------
Stevvo
I work ~4 hours a week making aircraft add-ons for X-Plane, releasing one
product every 3 months, net profit ~$5k a month total.

It's fairly simple: 1) Commission Russian 3D artist to make model of aircraft
-$1000 2) Commission Audio Engineer to do sound - $500 3) Tweak model to work
well with simulator + animation - 12 hours 4) Paint model in Substance - 12
hours 5) Set up flight model in X-Plane's "Plane Maker" \- 8 hours 6) Coding -
12 hours 7) Misc loose ends & testing - 12 hours

I don't talk about it because I don't want too much competition figuring out
what an easy way this is to make money.

~~~
zerr
It's not a zero-sum game, and it doesn't easy at all :)

~~~
zerr
*sound

------
dguo
I got tired of reading bad READMEs and made
[https://www.makeareadme.com/](https://www.makeareadme.com/) on a whim. Over
the past few years, it has climbed up the Google search rankings. It's usually
in the top three hits for "readme" now.

I serve developer-focused ads with CodeFund (and Carbon as a backup when
CodeFund doesn't have an ad available). I get about $45 in revenue per month.
Hosting costs are $0 because it's just a static site served from Netlify, so
the only cost is the domain.

I never intended to make any money off of it, and I care much more that it's
hopefully a helpful resource for some people. But it is nice to get a little
bit of passive income.

~~~
gkoberger
Ah, my SEO nemesis!

Really, though, your site is awesome. I just emailed you about sponsoring it,
if you're interested :)

~~~
dguo
Haha thanks! As soon as I read the first line of your comment, I knew you must
be from ReadMe.

------
FailMore
The closest thing I've had to that is my side project Taaalk
([https://taaalk.co](https://taaalk.co)) - it's a platform for online
interviews.

After the success of one of our interviews on HN [1], someone contacted me and
suggest that I interview a highly successful value investor. We had a great
'Taaalk' [2] and he then put me in touch with an investing friend of his in
London who runs a fund. We met for lunch and he taught me all about how he
invests in shares, it was very straight forward, so I started following his
guidance and made 50% on my money last year [nothing magical, just solid and
practical value investing advice] - meaning I could take the year off and do a
masters in Psychology of Mental Health - which is (slowly) helping change my
career into a direction I love.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300017)[the](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300017\)\[the)
link to our site wont work, to see the interview go here:
[https://taaalk.co/t/how-to-think-about-chess](https://taaalk.co/t/how-to-
think-about-chess)]

[2] [https://taaalk.co/t/value-investing](https://taaalk.co/t/value-investing)

P.S. Anyone can make their own interview, so if you have a friend you think
should be interviewed - please keep Taaalk in mind :)

~~~
jcun4128
Kind of curious if you had problems with the triple a's in the name?

~~~
FailMore
Not really no. It's all goood :)

------
xkozn
[https://timeshift.xkozn.co/](https://timeshift.xkozn.co/)

This allows you change the start time of a Strava (Garmin, etc.) activity.
Useful for WFH situations where you really just want a nice midday run or
bike, but don't want to deal with the potential judgement from coworkers who
follow you. Might be overthinking things, but oh well :)

------
ryannevius
I don't typically talk about my side projects, but I made a simple Montessori
materials website for use while teachers/students have been stuck at home the
past few months: [https://montessori.tools](https://montessori.tools)

It has grown organically to 1,000 visits per day and ~$1,000/month. I have a
couple of additional materials in the pipeline. Of course, I've already seen
everything from the site shamelessly copied and posted elsewhere. That's fine;
I never built it for the money (I built it for my wife, who is a teacher).

~~~
akudha
I guess I am dumb, but I can't understand how to use the tools :( Maybe an
instructions page will help

~~~
lesinski
Part of the point of the Montessori method is that there aren't instructions.
If you played with these items for hours (like a child) you would start to
understand the fundamentals of addition, multiplication and even calculus
without deliberately trying.

~~~
poutrathor
funny how both responses are exact opposite

------
robodale
I own a swimming pool and do most of my own maintenance and water chemistry. I
created [https://poolforthought.com](https://poolforthought.com) as a place to
organize my knowledge. I later realized other people want the same info, and
now 7 years later it's made about $20k USD. Ads and affiliate links drive site
revenue. I have about 12k email signups of people who want a pool maintenance
ebook I'm creating (for a price). I should finish that thing. It's money just
sitting there waiting for me to capture.

~~~
sjg007
I use your site!

------
matt_the_bass
My side projects are primarily for myself meaning:

\- intellectually stimulating

\- excuse to acquire toys (cnc, miter saw, linoblocks and inking supplies,
etc)

\- can be used a fun projects/learning experiences for my kids.

My project that has generated the most revenues has been selling (in very low
quantities) a limited edition wordclock that I designed and build. Except for
the Qlock2 all the wordclocks I’ve seen are diy or compete on cost. Mine is
(imho) a high quality art piece. And I price it similarLy to Qlock2 but with a
totally different aesthetic. My wordclock making started as presents for
friends and family then evolved to a workshop I taught at a local maker space.
Some discussion on my Show HN a few years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18950130](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18950130)

Website: finewordclocks.com

Etsy: finewordclocks.etsy.com

I bought a cnc machine for the clocks but most of my cnc work currently is
making projects with the kids. Some of them have been refined into other
products (Like custom engraved magic marker holders) on my Etsy site.

Lately As a side project to my side project I’ve been making wooden sneeze
guard stands. These started by my neighbor who’s a dentist asking me to help
him make some. Then I made a few for friends that own a local bakery. Last
week I received an order for $1000 worth from an urgent care provider. Feels
good to help small businesses reopen post lockdown. Even cooler if they are
willing to pay me to help. It also serves as a teaching moment with my kids.

Next is to figure out how to use my maker skills to help BLM movement. I’m
still trying to figure that out. Ideas welcome!

~~~
textgel
I don't know if you'd be willing to say or not but roughly how many of the
clocks do you/have you sold? And does the website/online promotion bring you
customers or is it more of a word of mouth/knowing the right people effort?

I'm always curious about the limited run, higher-quality, higher-cost items
because it's so outside the typical buying habits I see and I imagine would be
closer almost to art dealing than the usual business paths we see on HN.

~~~
matt_the_bass
Great question! I’ve sold 5 clocks so far with essentially no marketing effort
other than very limited social media posts. The plan was for my spouse to
spend about 1 day a week marketing them but for various reasons, we haven’t
had the chance to do that. We promote the website, but all of our sales have
been through Etsy (which was a surprise for me). 2 sales were people we knew.
Hopefully, by years end we’ll be able to spend more time marketing. It would
be great to get to 1-2 units a month.

I’ve paid for the cnc I bought and all the other miscellaneous tools so far.
I’m not yet accounting for My time spent. But currently that’s still
intellectually interesting since I’m learning how to fabricate things better
and still experimenting. I’d say that if I sell 2 more I’d be at break even
even if including my time.

More importantly my kids 4 and 7 are really excited about making things and
are constantly coming up with projects that use the cnc machine (I obviously
design the thing and run the machine) but my oldest “helps” me set up and even
made a video explaining to their kindergarten class how the machine works. I
found that ad a big win.

I also REALY like making various presents for family and friends as I wrote in
this blog post: [https://www.finewordclocks.com/blog/2019/10/10/what-is-
the-m...](https://www.finewordclocks.com/blog/2019/10/10/what-is-the-meaning-
of-a-gift). To me that is worth a lot and nearly all kids birthday party
presents for the last 2 years have been home made and VERY highly received.

I agree this is very different that what most side projects posted here are.
Atm I’m not really focused on making money as I am doing something
interesting. If I was optimizing on money, I’d have a different day job.
Though I’d certainly love to have more money, I don’t need it and my quality
of life would likely be much different (worse).

------
lpellis
I built an Android app a few years back as a project to learn native Android
coding, its been making around $300/month from sales/adsense. Its fun to read
and reply to reviews every now and then.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lpellis.se...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lpellis.sensorlab&hl=en_ZA)

~~~
jcun4128
Sounds like an Android app would be hard to maintain no? With regard to how
many devices/os versions come out... not sure if you bother with that?

~~~
lpellis
I've only had to update it two times to fix bugs with android upgrades,so all
in all not too bad. Google did once randomly pulled my app without warning
(just an email after they pulled it) for violating some terms, without stating
what terms. I couldnt get any useful feedback, eventually I just bumped the
version number and rewrote the description, that got met back on the store.
But it did make me very weary of building anything their platform.

~~~
jcun4128
wow that's messed up pro/cons of centralized app stores

------
podbites
I made a voicemail service for podcasters using WebRTC. It's a widget you add
to your website. I spent about 3 weeks building it. So far I have 1 active
user paying around $13 a month. Its been great, my user has been telling me
how to build the product he wants.

[https://www.podbites.fm](https://www.podbites.fm)

~~~
sunsetSamurai
This is so cool, that guy basically has a developer(you) working for him,
since he's' the only customer.

------
petercooper
Not now, but I _did_. Back in the 00s I blogged a lot and had AdSense on my
there. I'd done a quick review of a popular route planner in the UK (back when
Google Maps hadn't taken over) and thought little of it until it started
making hundreds of dollars per day. So then I did a quick review of several
other popular route planners in the UK..

For about 18 months, I was making $2-10k a month from people typing in
"whatever route planner", reaching my blog post, then clicking straight out to
the real planner on the AdSense unit. It died off after a while as the real
route planners improved their SEO but it paid for my wedding and more besides,
so I couldn't complain :-)

------
badideaprojects
[https://sendnoodz.io](https://sendnoodz.io) | Spam your friends with MMS of
noodles

Strangely not because of the content, rather because there are lots of
inconsistencies/imperfections in the design and it doesn't make enough to
justify fixing them.

~~~
julianeon
This seems like the kind of thing that could go viral on Twitter or Instagram.
Maybe advertise there.

------
phreack
I had an affiliate marketing website when I was a kid, mostly for fun and
learning with some friends, that made some money off backpack recommendations
and Amazon links. We didn't feel too good about it after a while so we shut it
down. I now hate SEO powered advice blogs.

More recently, I've started making adult videogames, one of which being an
interactive fiction that had a lot of traction, but is now on hiatus due to
Covid related reasons. One unintended effect of this, is that I learned
personally how much both Apple and credit card providers have a chilling
effect on freedom of nudity in entertainment - it's appalling.

~~~
jcun4128
> how much both Apple and credit card providers have a chilling effect on
> freedom of nudity in entertainment - it's appalling

As in good or bad? they're blocking/enabling?

~~~
phreack
Really bad. For example, if you want to have push notifications on an iOS app,
there's no way to do it via a website or a PWA. And there's no way of
sideloading an app at all for nearly all users. So then the App Store is your
only way, which means you must not ever dare have any kind of nudity in your
app, since that's an instant rejection during reviews, particularly if you're
an indie dev. So I was basically forced to drop iPhone support, to the dismay
of some users who would have liked to pay for it (and mine).

~~~
jcun4128
Dang wasn't aware, thanks for the info

------
dm03514
I created an opensource tool to generate performance reports based on Github
pull requests (think gitprime, codeclimate, gitclear).

I've made $250 in a single year on a single consultation.

The first iteration was a service that listened to build and repository
actions. I switched it up to generate static reports. It queries github at a
point in time for raw PR data. Then it generates a basic PR report based on
that data. It generates CSV so visualization falls on the end user :p

\-
[https://github.com/ImpactInsights/valuestream](https://github.com/ImpactInsights/valuestream)

\- [https://medium.com/valuestream-by-operational-analytics-
inc/...](https://medium.com/valuestream-by-operational-analytics-
inc/valuestream-introducing-github-pull-request-metric-reports-a159e9bef754)

------
winrid
I don't talk about my side projects at work hours, even if someone asks.

However, I built Pixmap for Android to learn Android dev. It makes a couple
dollars a month... :)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.winricklab...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.winricklabs.pixmap_client)

I built FastComments as a tool for myself, but it's starting to gather bigger
and bigger customers.

[https://FastComments.com](https://FastComments.com)

~~~
zatel
FastComments is really cool looking and so simple (it reminds me of brutalist
web design).

Could you explain a little on how you do limiting of page loads? I've been
trying to add this kind of functionality to my own projects but can't think of
a way to track it without storing in a db which seems like a bottleneck
process if every page load is a write

~~~
winrid
Store an object representing the namespace (customer+month) and use whatever
your DB's increment operator is to increment the count for that month. Keep a
map, or use an LRU cache, to check the DB periodically to see who has gone
past their limit. You can also fire off this write to the DB asynchronously
since you don't care that much if it fails and you don't want to create back
pressure in your application.

For example an object like {tenant, month, year, count}. Then you can reuse
this for reporting etc which is what I do. We also track other metrics per
customer + month like commenter sign ups, votes, etc.

Also - I'm open to new opportunities right now if anyone's interested in
hiring me. :)

~~~
zatel
Thank you. this is very useful and will certainly work for my use case.

------
seanwilson
I built a Chrome extension that checks websites for SEO, speed and security
best practices:

[https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/)

Most of the growth has been organic but I post it in forums when it seems
relevant. I haven't had much luck with ads but writing articles has been
worthwhile.

~~~
docuru
There was one guy refer about your checkbot somewhere on this thread and I
installed. Will start using it very soon :)

~~~
seanwilson
Thanks! Let me know if you've got any questions or you need tips on how to fix
any of the problems it finds.

~~~
135792468
I'm a paid user. I like it but it's got some quirks that sort of drive me
towards screaming frog

------
jventura
My astrology charts app for android [1] brings me about 5€/month. I earned
more by doing some consulting with the technology I use for this app (Pybridge
[2]) than with the app itself.

My web app [3] earned only 50€ since 2016. My other projects (ex: mockrest.com
[4]) don’t make me any money at all. I have to use other strategy.. :/

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flatangle....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flatangle.charts&hl=en_US)

[2]
[https://github.com/joaoventura/pybridge](https://github.com/joaoventura/pybridge)

[3] [http://elements.flatangle.com/](http://elements.flatangle.com/)

[4] [http://mockrest.com/](http://mockrest.com/)

------
shireboy
I built [https://rootshirechess.glitch.me/](https://rootshirechess.glitch.me/)
for my kids to play chess with cousins and grandparents during the epidemic. I
put “buy me a coffee” on and posted a couple places about it. Made ~24$ on it
;)

~~~
jvilalta
Nice to see this available for chess. I built something just like this but for
rummikub. Same basic idea... jitsi conference embedded in a web page.

------
koinexpert
I spent many hours building
[https://www.koinexpert.com](https://www.koinexpert.com). It started as a tool
to compare prices across exchanges. But now it has a portfolio feature where
you can grab data from crypto exchanges and get a summary with pretty graphs.
That and the forum is free, as well as the free Signals group on Telegram (
[https://t.me/koinexpert_signals](https://t.me/koinexpert_signals) ) which is
integrated with the website.

Never really made any profit despite many hours spent on it, but now with the
VIP channels group, we are starting to see some traction. We are trying to be
different than typical signal channels by automating most of it, so that our
statistics are really accurate. If we don't get a high accuracy rate, we won't
charge you for that month either. Plus we are working on a bot that
automatically executes the signals so that anyone can execute the signals with
zero experience.

It's been a fun project. It's showing some fruit. Time will tell how we do! :)

------
smacke
I built a small library for synchronizing subtitles with video
([https://github.com/smacke/ffsubsync](https://github.com/smacke/ffsubsync))
at a hackathon, and a couple of users appreciate it enough to sponsor me for
$11 / month, which comes to $22 / month after Github matches contributions :)

~~~
lance_klusener
So, if i have a video in VLC player and subtitles arent syncing, i can use
your service?

------
dehrmann
Like everyone here, I get ideas for side projects that might be profitable. At
some point, I started looking at the likelihood of success, the time I'd
invest, and how much I'd make. The answer is almost always that I'm better off
dedicating the time to my day job, or even just relaxing so I'm better at my
job.

That said, I get it. You get some financial freedom, you get to explore a
project that interests you for you, you get to learn something new, and this
is from the perspective of someone who's got a job he's happy with.

~~~
benhurmarcel
There's also that many people have pretty fixed salary and evolution in their
company.

I won't make more money by dedicating more time or energy at my day job. It's
fixed.

~~~
dehrmann
I'm in the same boat in that my next big increase will be from a promotion,
but it's the time and energy that will make that happen. Another commenter was
talking about a review site where they'd _stay up all night_ watching
infomercials to get a list of products to review, and then post the reviews on
a site with ads. I respect the drive, but not getting a full night's sleep
would definitely impact my performance at my day job.

~~~
benhurmarcel
In my experience, past a minimum acceptable performance level, networking
matters a lot more for promotions than any additional job performance. And
that minimum performance is fairly low.

------
johnsmith88
My work place (startup) uses Google Spreadsheets as our weekly metrics
dashboard. I'm the person who has run a ruby script to generate the data and
copy them into the spreadsheet. I finally got around to building a simple API
that would allow me to send it directly to the spreadsheet. Now tthe data gets
updated automatically with Cron.

Its a very narrow use case, maybe others will find it useful. I'm no designer.
Would love some feedback.

[https://sheetsapi.co/](https://sheetsapi.co/)

------
cdiamand
I've probably been promoting it too much lately, especially on here.

I'll pass on this one, but just wanted to say thank you to everyone who shares
a project. It really does help others to see what is possible.

Sidequestion: Does anyone have any recommendations on simple guides to SEO?
I'm realizing the power of search traffic to bring in visitors to
sideprojects.

~~~
seanwilson
> Sidequestion: Does anyone have any recommendations on simple guides to SEO?

I run a Chrome extension that will crawl your site and give on-page/technical
SEO suggestions: [https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/).

The SEO best practices it checks for are explained + justified in a simple
fashion here:
[https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/](https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/)

I know a lot of developers are skeptical about SEO advice (e.g. keyword
density stuff, experiments that try to reverse engineer how Google does
ranking), but the rules from the guide above are linked to things Google have
directly recommended. Most on-page SEO best practices align with what would
benefit a regular user also.

~~~
jedberg
> Most on-page SEO best practices align with what would benefit a regular user
> also.

Because good SEO is indistinguishable from good UX. :)

The best SEO advice you can give someone is "make the page easy for a blind
person to read".

Just doing that one thing will get you about 99% of the way there.

~~~
seanwilson
> The best SEO advice you can give someone is "make the page easy for a blind
> person to read".

Yep, makes sense when you consider most search bots "see" webpages in the same
way a screen reader will. Anything that helps a screen reader understand the
content of a page better is going to help a search bot and vice versa -
they're both bots. :)

------
t0mislav
Yes, I have. 3000€ since the ads are there. Also from 6, 7 years ago, I was
learning to code.

[https://random.country/](https://random.country/)

~~~
mkl
I do this kind of browsing on Wikipedia, but totally random is kind of fun. I
spotted a character encoding error, visible on Bangladesh, I think UTF-8 may
be being interpreted as Latin-1? "Chickenâ€™s Neck"

~~~
t0mislav
Thanks, will check it.

------
Judson
[http://askjud.com](http://askjud.com) — I made it when I was 15. It’s pretty
terrible, but has made $30k+ over its lifetime.

~~~
mylons
from what exactly? the ads? how long is lifetime? $30k's nothing to scoff at!

~~~
Judson
Yep, the ads. Monetized for maybe 10 years. Some years are much higher $$$
than others.

Search YouTube for askjud to see how it works. It’s been the subject of a few
viral videos.

------
lettergram
Easy A - [https://easy-a.net/](https://easy-a.net/)

Shows the grade distributions per class and if you add in your prior
coursework we can predict the workload and grades per class.

Haven’t updated it in 5 years (recently updated the data). Still pulls in
slightly more than it costs to host with thousands of students adding grades a
year. Probably a thousand a year.

Currently supports UIUC, UT-Austin, university of Washington and quite a few
others.

I don’t really talk about it because it was built for a few friends over a
weekend right before I left school. The advisors for CS at UIUC we’re always
swamped so I figured I’d make a basic one with some data science. Turns out
everyone liked it and participated in making it way better

~~~
lance_klusener
You get the data behind grades from students themselves?

------
andreasduess
I started up a botanical brewery. We make non alcoholic drinks from medicinal
mushrooms and we’re about three weeks away from launching our chaga based
drink. We were supposed to launch in March, but COVID threw a spanner into the
works. You can check it here:
[https://borealbrewing.ca](https://borealbrewing.ca)

Putting out a real product has been an insane amount of work, from getting the
brand designed to finding somebody to actually help with production, but it’s
been a fantastic learning experience. I’m really hoping that we’ll get the
product out with no further delays, as it’s full of, amongst other good
things, antioxidants which are great immune boosters.

~~~
fufmaya
First off, it looks like you've really worked hard at this, and it looks
really interesting. It's something that I would try if I saw it in a store. I
would expect to find it at any of the health food stores locally.

I mean the following constructively:

Why the focus on ditching alcohol? It's a big turn-off and I'm not even a
regular drinker.

Seems like the wrong messaging immediately.

Sell your product on its own merit, not with an up-front negative message that
judges people's alcohol intake.

~~~
wastedhours
Non and low alcohol is a massively growing market - it's not about judgement,
but about creating an adult drink that doesn't have alcohol. Whether that's
for people on medication, designated drivers, recovers, or those who just want
something else.

It's very common to market these sorts of drinks as non/low alcohol as that's
part of the appeal.

~~~
codeadict
Very true, I'm a frequent person to Kava/Kratom bars where I live and there
are several of them with lots of regular clients so non-alcoholic beverages
seem to be a good market.

------
gh123man
I wrote a game engine to learn more about how they work and it ended up
evolving into "Portal meets Doom" iOS game
([https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gate-
escape/id1449377239](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gate-escape/id1449377239))

I've talked a little about the technical details, but not much of the game
itself. It makes about $40/month - not exactly motivating money. It's been
very difficult to market so I have lost most motivation to acquire more users.

I dream to open source the level editor and allow community made maps, but I
can't really judge the demand for such a large feature investment.

------
xwdv
My side project at the moment is day/swing trading. I started sometime in
early March when I pulled my money out from the stock market and cashed in on
some capital gains. Things went to hell shortly after that but I was safe
waiting in cash waiting to buy back in.

Because I was sitting on about 220k in cash I decided to look into other ways
to put my money to use. I realized I could probably buy massive positions in
large cap stocks and scalp small 20 to 50 cents moves that happen all the time
and make about $100-$300 on each trade fairly quickly.

What has also helped kicked this off for me was 0 commissions on trades.
Before I would have to pay like 7 bucks per trade and even though I can still
profit it’s amazing how that small cost each time created resistance in my
mind.

Since March, I’ve had $12540 in winning trades and -$4476 in losses, for a
total profit of $8063.77, however, probably like 90% of that has been made in
the past month alone since I started out cautiously with small trades to see
how my win/loss ratio was, and in the past week alone I made a $2620 profit. I
am now making bigger trades with $100k+ size positions. On top of that, I’ve
already reinvested my $220k cash into long term holdings so I borrow that
$100k from my broker (I only have to pay interest if I hold overnight which I
never do), this gives me the best of both worlds.

To be honest it all seems too easy. If I just make about $400 dollars profit a
day, which is like maybe 2 or 3 successful trades, 5 days a week, that’s
$2000k a week, about $96k a year, for something that only takes an hour of my
time (I only focus on the first hour the market opens)

For now, I just keep reinvesting these profits into buying more stocks and as
my account builds more capital I’ll feel comfortable gradually increasing my
position size for day trades to make either quicker more successful trades off
of smaller spreads or more profitable ones with the same size spread. We’ll
see.

I don’t talk about this because no one would believe it and all the advice I
find out there is stuff like “it works until it doesn’t” or “you’ll lose it
all...” etc. Fuck it. When I die put my money in the grave.

~~~
z023bs
would you be willing to discuss your strategy for evaluating trades/picking
stocks? this is something I've been trying to get into, mostly through the
options market but haven't been able to come up with a solid strategy for
picking stocks

~~~
xwdv
I trade very few stocks, most of the FAANG types.

For example, on Friday I made good money on FB with several 50 cent moves. I
buy 500 shares at a time, so a profit target of about $250.

I would use a sequential order to buy at a certain entry point and then it
immediately submits a sell order for 50 cents higher when it fills.

My strategy is basically the poor man’s HFT.

The key is picking a good entry point. I generally watch the price action for
a bit and try to spot where there’s good support and the price keeps bouncing
off of. I then set my orders for that price and get as many wins as I can.

No need to take my word for it, with commission free brokers you can try it
out with a single share and see how you do. Avoid paper trading IMO except for
learning your trading platform UI. The fills are not realistic.

Also, avoid options. They’re garbage, low liquidity and everything is usually
priced in making it more difficult to make profits. If you want to trade with
leverage just throw down money in your account and use the margin power your
broker gives you. In theory I can trade with up to $500k in borrowed money but
I stick to about $110k or so to keep about 77% equity in my account at all
times.

One thing I haven’t mastered is how to set useful stop losses. There’s time
the price dips and I sell too early but if I had waiting maybe 30 minutes for
things to calm down I would have made profit. Not sure what to do, I just use
my best judgement. And at the end of the day, worst case I have to hold for a
while at least I’m holding stock in a decent company like FB and not some
worthless penny stock. That’s why I maintain the 77% equity, to avoid margin
calls.

~~~
z023bs
thanks so much for divulging details about your strategy!

I was thinking about trading options since your losses are capped, it seems
like your strategy of trading quality stocks caps your losses

~~~
xwdv
Your losses may be capped but you have to risk a lot more money more often
with options to make decent profit. No thanks.

------
nickjj
I started a podcast to talk with folks about their tech stack choices. It's at
[https://runninginproduction.com/](https://runninginproduction.com/).

Since October 2019 it's made $200 in the form of 1 episode having a sponsor.

As a side topic, I would be very happy to have anyone on who wants to talk
about their tech stack for their side projects.

~~~
CallMeMarc
I like the clean buttons for all the podcast platforms but I must admit I
searched through your website for like 5 minutes before I saw them because I
searched for the logos of the platforms.

Subscribed in pocket casts and will tune in later!

~~~
nickjj
Thanks. I tried to go with the platform's primary color. It's slim pickings in
terms of size to fit icons in the buttons but maybe I can relocate them above
that area to get a bit of extra room.

------
sareiodata
I built [https://markdownbin.com/](https://markdownbin.com/) because a friend
was complaining something like this doesn't exist.

Nobody uses it and probably that's why it doesn't exist.

~~~
stevekemp
I created [https://markdownshare.com/](https://markdownshare.com/) for the
same purpose; but due to abuse I've retired it.

Shame really, because I liked the service and it was quick/simple to build.

~~~
colecut
It's funny how building the functionality can take a couple hours but human
proofing it is a never ending task

------
thibautg
I made around 2 k€ with a celebrity pics website, in the late 90s, just before
the explosion of the internet bubble.

I misspelled the celeb's name and my site was the 3rd result on Altavista when
other people made the same spelling error. I put a counter and saw a lot of
visits, so I added some banner ads.

A few weeks later I got a nice paper check that I converted from French Francs
to Belgian Francs in the bank. It was before the EUR!

It was nice to have some pocket money, but I've always been ashamed of this
site. 20 years later, I'm starting to think that it was kind of cool... It's
still on archive.org!

------
Xt-6
I made a tool to detect which user account can be safely remove from
PagerDuty. It also provide simple weekly report emails. I got a few
subscribers by doing nothing else that putting it on the PagerDuty
marketplace.

[https://www.pagerinsights.com/](https://www.pagerinsights.com/)

~~~
yowlingcat
Very cool. I get the sense that with these kinds of Micro-SaaS type products,
it's really important to leverage marketplaces. I've seen this with Shopify
and AWS but I must admit, I wasn't even aware PagerDuty had a marketplace.
Have you put your product into any other marketplaces besides PagerDuty?

------
adam_fallon_
I copied an app from the App Store. Their business model was free desktop
application but $20 for the iOS client and I really wanted it so I made a
'clean-room' implementation with CloudKit and charged $0.99 for a one-off
cross platform sale.

Bit brazen, but the idea isn't entirely unique.

Edit: P.s email me at adam@adamfallon.com if you would like a promo code to
get the app for free :).

* [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nitronotes/id1502080216](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nitronotes/id1502080216)

~~~
omk
Simplicity. I love it when < 1MB apps provide utility.

~~~
adam_fallon_
Unfortunately can't take credit on iOS here - the same app is 1.4mb on iOS - I
assume because it isn't statically linking some part of the CloudKit syncing
framework on macOS whereas it does on iOS? Or maybe SwiftUI framework is
dynamic on macOS due to Catalyst - not really sure.

~~~
mrzool
That's still way smaller than your average iOS app.

------
sideproject
I launched my project a few weeks ago. It’s called Newsy
([https://www.newsy.co](https://www.newsy.co))

I got tired of many of my un-used domain names and this was the best way for
me to make use of them without spending much time on them.

------
dwelch2344
Partner and I built a service to do sales attribution and commissions,
ingesting data from Shopify / WooCommerce / etc. Works great for any sort of
sales organization w hierarchy, but we’ve had success with network marketing /
direct sales.

Spending nights and weekends, we scaled enough that we banked about $67k on
the side in the first 8 months and then took used that as seed to go full
time. 3 years later we’re still at it with a decent team and a ton of fun and
cool tech

------
FigmentEngine
I created an AWS poster, like the periodic table but for services:

[https://moca.computingarchitectures.com/en/~hello-
world/](https://moca.computingarchitectures.com/en/~hello-world/)

it was something to do after i left AWS, and also a way to test a model for
computing i wanted to build.

Unfortunately with Covid 19 few people need a poster for their office at the
moment, so focusing on tooling etc using the underlying model.

------
mostlyghostly
I build websites and manage them for cash-flow (and have been doing this for a
decade). Started with SAAS affiliate sites and moved onto a more ambitious
vision of cleaning up content categories on Google that are loaded with bad
advice. (So build a better site that replaces self-serving junk and amateur
nut-job sites with real content)

My latest project (un-monetized) is an attempt to raise the bar in the
business opportunities vertical; I aim to research and lay out (in non-
promotional terms) paths to earning a living wage in the gig economy. There's
a lot of bad advice pushing courses / e-books / etc with a high rate of
failure. Most of these gig economy roles are fairly simple businesses to
manage; the idea is if you can instill some self-employment literacy, you can
even the odds for new freelancers and side hustlers.

I'm working on a publishing model which delivers legitimate advice with a
decent chance of success (for the reader) and a fair return for the publisher.
[https://highestpayinggigs.com/](https://highestpayinggigs.com/)

------
mavsman
Started making videos on YouTube of topics that I lookup over and over or that
I would like to learn more. I prefer not to monetize my videos with YouTube
ads but I've already been contracted by several major software companies to
make videos for them.

Definitely not passive income but I enjoy it as a different work from normal
programming where I can explore stuff I am interested or even just practice
talking through interview questions out loud.

It's interesting to see which videos get traction. My most viewed video
([https://youtu.be/8eyfmp7dtYk](https://youtu.be/8eyfmp7dtYk)) is one that I
just made on a whim, like many of my videos, and has a bad like/dislike ratio
but I've gotten constructive feedback on it in case I decide to redo it.

I've learned a ton from having this channel and have made about $2k from
contracting a handful of videos so far this year.

------
dheera
I made a web-based graphing calculator
([http://fooplot.com](http://fooplot.com)) in 2007 that runs on ad revenue and
is still delivering about 5X its hosting costs. It only makes enough profit
for about a few dinners a month so nothing I can live off of but hey I'll take
anything more than $0. It used to make an order of magnitude more back when I
had 250K MAU and that was a meaningful addition to my meager PhD salary. But
times have changed and (a) people started using mobile apps to graph functions
and (b) AdSense somehow decreased the CPC I was getting and I then stopped
putting effort into it.

You can put arbitrary equations into the URL, e.g.

[http://fooplot.com/1+sin(x)/2](http://fooplot.com/1+sin\(x\)/2)

~~~
jcun4128
Kind of curious how that works, the url does not match what you land on so I'm
guessing something intercepts it but it outputs a unique url? It's not just
urlencode anyway.

Are they precomputed to save resources or something? Pretty neat

~~~
dheera
Oh it's just a base64-encoded JSON that contains other parameters like the
view limits and such. You can base64 decode itself and see.

~~~
jcun4128
Oh yeah that's neat, what does the type: 0 mean?

I guess as an aside did you write the plotting part or used some library?

~~~
dheera
I wrote the whole thing from ground up. I don't think I remember seeing any
libraries back then. It actually initially used 1-pixel DIVs, then SVG, then
later changed to canvas.

type:0 just means a regular y=f(x) function

~~~
jcun4128
wow well that's really impressive, the 1px divs sounds interesting

------
pseudozach
I run a send free text app that lets users watch ads to send sms, I rarely
need to update and provide customer support and it makes 60$/month from
ads+iap.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pseudozach...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pseudozach.sendfreetextsms)

And then another app that converts play store balance to 1/2 bitcoin but I
actually like to talk about this one, if I can find anyone interested
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pseudozach...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pseudozach.rewardstobitcoin)

~~~
jcun4128
> watch ads to send sms

hmm... interesting though, it does work haha

that's so interesting, I mean I remember when I didn't have a phone, not even
a burner, sometimes you have to deal with those "get code texted" and use
those online sites that allow free sms... interesting being able to make that
stuff now vs. using them

~~~
pseudozach
You can also receive texts on that one but it's just one virtual number shared
by everyone so I doubt it will work for any activation codes...

------
Implicated
Generally when I want to learn something new I'll build a new side project (or
re-build an existing one) to support the learning process. This time I wanted
to include my partner in the project so I built something that would require
some manual moderation of content.

I built a 'hookup' website and have monetized it with a single affiliate
offer/link.

It's made a few thousand in the last 18 months or so, with almost no promotion
(posted something about it on reddit once).

Like someone else in this post commented, the way that the 'adult' industry is
pushed out of the banking/credit card world makes it pretty tough to monetize
sites of this nature.

~~~
jcun4128
I was curious about this, I suppose if you're taking direct payments vs. say
adsense, if you separate your name from the business. So if someone tried to
track who ads belong to, wouldn't find the owner/operator of the site. Maybe
that's just standard practice. I've been thinking about that myself eg.
privately registering domains and somehow not having my name tied to ssl
certs, etc...

~~~
Implicated
Even adsense is tough with adult content sites (last I checked, which was
probably over a decade ago).

Specific affiliate offers that are relevent to the audience are far more
profitable.

~~~
jcun4128
Hmm that's a good idea(affiliate offers)

------
harveytoro
I recently built [https://grapiture.com](https://grapiture.com) An API for
sending charts / panels to Slack.

Still have a bunch of features in the works but hoping it will make some money
eventually.

------
ralgozino
I'm the only dev behind qr-tools, a python library to work with QR codes, and
QtQR a GUI that uses the lib and let's you create and different types of QR
codes and decode QR codes easily from images, the web or your webcam. Both
projects are OpenSource and mainly targeted to Ubuntu users. I haven't been
actively developing them, just some maintenance. They seem to have a pretty
good use base but is hard to tell with this type of projects. I've never talk
about it because is not a usual conversation topic, QR codes are not use that
much where I'm from and less on the desktop.

------
caogecym
I created a HTTP request scheduler that allow people to setup rule based
notifications: [https://ihook.us](https://ihook.us). Not making money yet, all
free plan users right now :)

~~~
sliam
For me the font on your landing page doesn't load because of a CORS issue,
thought i'd let you know!

~~~
caogecym
wow, thank you so much for spending time to post the issue, really appreciate
it! I thought this issue had been resolved months back by adding CORS rules on
the CDN (S3). I wonder the error is due to the updated policy somewhat not
pushed to some edge. Just tried to push the policy again and hope that helps.

------
dawnerd
I’ve been doing a lot of eBay reselling and it’s been quite profitable despite
minimal effort. Forces me away from the computer so that’s a plus. I also like
shopping and spending money so it fills that need while making money.

Guess that counts as a side project? I’ve got some scripts to manage my eBay
store like auto relisting to help boost the items once the fall off of the
eBay algorithm. Been thinking about packaging the scripts up as a product but
I don’t really want to support it.

------
manonthemat
I started Yomi.ai just two months ago. It made a few hundred dollars so far. I
am trying to develop the number one resource for Japanese language learners
who want to improve their reading skills.

My ideal customer is has a good command of the English language and is trying
to pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test on the level N1 or N2.

Since it's such a niche, I don't talk too much about it.

------
wunderflix
I started many unsuccessful side projects, making me almost no or no money at
all. The latest one (WunderFlix) is different though. It starts making a
modest amount of money. But since I never made any money with the other
projects I still don't like to talk about it.

But, now that you've asked... I always wanted to have an app that can help me
creating short films of my kids with my iPhone. I searched the App Store and
found many, but they were all so complicated to use. I wanted simplicity.
After all, I have kids, and thus no time to fiddle around with a complicated
and long process to create the films. Since I could not find the app I was
looking for, I decided to create it myself :-)

[1]
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wunderflix/id1484705777](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wunderflix/id1484705777)

[2] [https://www.wunderflix.com](https://www.wunderflix.com)

~~~
zladuric
Hey that's cool! Btw, I see the developer is listed as WunderFlix GmbH. You
really registered a company just for side project, does that mean it makes
enough money to justify the costs of a proper company?

------
jkhdigital
Started making a high-quality version of a niche but expensive board game in
Tabletop Simulator, and the IP owner contacted me and offered a 50/50 split if
I want to try and monetize it. Looks like our best option at this point is
Patreon, but assuming at least one person donates then this will be the first
dollar I ever make on a side project.

------
Taurenking
Built a Slack bot to get notified whenever someone schedules or cancels a
Calendly event.

Received lots of feedback initially, and the project is roughly feature
complete.

Should invest in marketing but haven't been doing that at all ...Does that
qualify as not talking about it? :)

[https://calenduck.co/](https://calenduck.co/)

------
caviv
Hi, When saying a project "you'd not talk about" and then talking about it -
it's kind of taking the point out of it :-) But I guess I understand what you
mean. I have created [https://yabs.io](https://yabs.io) just for me and let
other people use it for free for now. It is a copy of del.icio.us for saving
bookmarks with tags and then searching them easily. I have also created
[https://www.gematrix.org](https://www.gematrix.org) for calculating Gematria
values of words and phrases.

------
haileris
I have a twitter bot, that I've monetized through the sale of T-Shirts and I'm
now working on a YouTube channel. Generates enough revenue to pay the rent so
that's cool.

[https://twitter.com/schumannbot](https://twitter.com/schumannbot)

------
crobertsbmw
For a while I wrote a bot that would scrape ebay for textbooks and send me an
email when it found a textbook that I could buy and resell to a third party
(chegg, amazon, whoever) and make more than $10. At one point I was buying
like 5 textbooks a day, many of them I sold for $20-$30 more than I purchased
them for. And I had it all automated to the point where if the all the
parameters were met the code would actually buy the item for me (although most
of the books were just emailed to me for me to review). I stopped doing it
because it got pretty stressful for me, and became a bit of a distraction from
my regular job. I was going to try to bring in my 16 year old brother to
manage it, but he didn't have the hustle in him...

~~~
mod
I've tried to make a buy-script for amazon and failed. Now you've got me
wanting to try on eBay.

I did a similar thing to what you're saying, buying (not textbooks) on amazon,
selling elsewhere.

------
welanes
I started building Lanes ([https://lanes.io](https://lanes.io)) in 2016 as a
way to learn how to code. Don't talk about it because it's way overdue for an
update.

But it plods along, earning enough to cover the bills for my second project,
Simplescraper ([https://simplescraper.io](https://simplescraper.io)).

With Wunderlist shut down this year it was the perfect time to relaunch Lanes
2.0 to try capture some of those task-manager migrants. But if there's a
single thing building side-projects has taught me it's that if you try and
chase two rabbits, you'll catch neither.

~~~
emptysea
lanes.io has a firebase error for me on Safari 13.1

> FirebaseError: Messaging: This browser doesn't support the API's required to
> use the firebase SDK. (messaging/unsupported-browser).

~~~
welanes
Case in point! Thanks, I'll dust off the project folder and get on this soon.

------
onetime4096
Neural net for soft porn (tasteful nudes). Android app, 3 years old:

[http://driftwheeler.com](http://driftwheeler.com)

More than 800 users per day, on average. Continuously growing user base.
Profit through Met-Art affiliation.

~~~
caviv
Why is it a native app and not PWA / Website ? I couldn't install it.

------
mylons
i've made $20 off of [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simple-and-
sinister/id15132753...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simple-and-
sinister/id1513275382?ls=1) in the last 3 weeks. sales plummeted though for
some reason and just stopped after release. going free for now until i release
some new features that will be in-app purchase upgrades.

this is the first time i've actually made something to solve _my_ problem
though. i started using kettlebells due to covid lockdowns, etc, and thought
the apps out there were way too bloated and shitty.

------
jordiee
I always make side projects to learn new things and they periodically make me
a small amount of money.

From most recent to oldest:

Https://brand-kit.net

Have not made money yet but just launched last month. Basically it is starter
business branding at a very affordable price wrapped into a service.

Https://scrape.email

Launched at the beginning of the year and making around 100/month now. I used
common crawl to index emails across the web monthly making it easy to find all
emails for a given website.

Https://appdoctor.io

My most ambitious project from 2 years ago. Appdoctor is an app monitoring
platform with automated tests, status page and a bunch of extra stuff..makes
around 150/m now.

~~~
pknerd
Where do you host your sites. Are they on cloud?

~~~
jordiee
DigitalOcean managed kubernetes

------
paulorlando
I created a series to help me learn about systems. I didn't tell anyone I knew
I was working on this and just posted on HN (thanks for the support!) that
first year. I put a paid option that I hid on a secondary page. Revenue is
very small (in the hundreds) but soon I'll focus on building it into a
business. Now that I talk about it with people, around 90% have encouraged me
to monetize, but I am figuring out how.
[https://unintendedconsequenc.es/](https://unintendedconsequenc.es/)

------
herbi
During corona quarantine a built a web tool to support the Scrum Retrospective
Session for (distributed) Scrum Teams. I use it with my team, even though we
are back in the office again: [https://retrospective.scrum-
tips.com/](https://retrospective.scrum-tips.com/)

For now, it is completely free, not even registration required. I am thinking
of making a paid professional version, as I see that it is useful and used by
other teams despite the lack of marketing. But still, need to work on better
marketing as well as adding more features...

------
teon
We have been building on the side for quite some time a image enlarge/upscale
service based on convolutional neural networks algorithms:

[https://deep-image.ai](https://deep-image.ai)

More details about the technology side:

[https://teonite.com/blog/deep-image-thanks-to-machine-
learni...](https://teonite.com/blog/deep-image-thanks-to-machine-learning-we-
get-a-larger-image-with-a-much-better-quality-2/)

Now we’ve just launched payments - so we have to see some time about the
results.

~~~
latchkey
Interesting, do you need gpu compute on the backend?

~~~
teon
Yes - all AI/ML is done on Nvidia GPU

~~~
latchkey
Interesting. How much work to port it to AMD?

------
robomartin
Won't be a customer for this product...we have three German Shepherds..too
much work...and they will swallow them up in a microsecond.

I will, however, give you an idea for another product. Don't know if it has an
audience, but it is along the lines of what you are doing.

When large dogs are small you can buy pre-made treats and they'll spend a good
amount of time working on them. Past a certain age/size they'll instantly
crack them into pieces and it's the end of the story.

It would be interesting to have healthy protein-based edible treats of
different sizes (2 to 12 inches?) that are hard or resilient enough to keep a
dog busy for a while while they grind away while providing nutritional treat.

One of the options for dogs like ours seems to be to buy cooked bones like
this one:

[https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/good-
lovin-...](https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/good-lovin-
hickory-smoked-mammoth-bone-dog-chew-2-lbs-2729962)

They will work on something like this for days. The problem is that they are
not really nutritious and they will eventually fracture them and they will
splinter. The dogs won't get hurt but it's always of concern having bone
fragments on the floor. Also, I don't think you necessarily need something
that will last weeks. If it's good for a day or a few days (depending on cost)
it's probably OK.

There's are other options in the market:

[https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/dog/dog-
tre...](https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/dog/dog-treats-and-
chews/dog-natural-chews-bones/nylabone-healthy-edibles-turkey-and-apple-
flavor-combo-dog-bone-chews)

Read the ingredients and think about whether or not dogs evolved to eat this
stuff. I don't think so. They can get sick and have intestinal problems from
these kinds of treats.

Also, read some of the comments on that particular product for a view into
what I am generally talking about.

Good luck.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I hadn't thought of it before, but when our horses get their feet trimmed, the
dogs (a 100lb Shepherd and a smaller Shepherd mix) love to gnaw on the
trimmings. Hoof trimmings are basically really thick fingernails.

They'll gnaw on them for hours. Wonder if there would be a market for it.

~~~
robomartin
Dogs will eat anything. One of my GSD's almost died after eating about a third
of a blanket. His xray looked down-right scary, with this ball in his stomach.
We were very close to having to have surgery to cut him open to remove it
(which would have been very dangerous and very expensive). Somehow he managed
to vomit the thing out in large chunks. We all dodged a bullet on that one.

So, yeah, it doesn't surprise me that they would eat horse hoof trimmings.

If you were to productize something like that you'd have to make sure you run
through some testing to ensure dogs won't be harmed. The product liability
element in products that people and pets eat should not be ignored,
particularly in a litigious society like the US.

------
sawaali
I made Metaset ([https://metaset.io](https://metaset.io)) to quickly do visual
analysis on data sets. Started from my own needs for a project that spit out
large CSV files. Excel or Tableau were too cumbersome and I didn't bother
doing pandas and matplotlib.

Later I found someone with a similar need but for Postgres databases. It's
been pulling in a decent side income.

I am embarrassed by the amateur UI. There is so much I want to do around
"smart" visualization, but haven't had time.

------
soheilpro
[https://pikaso.me](https://pikaso.me) – Lets you get a clutter-free
screenshot of any tweet. (Also has browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox)

------
julee04
I made a logo game for iOS ([https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-logo-
game/id1473784939](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-logo-game/id1473784939))
and and android
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.logomobile](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.logomobile))

So far it’s made $25. All from iOS

------
iddan
I maintain Cayley, a knowledge graph database and built a web UI on top of it
[https://cayley.io](https://cayley.io)

~~~
nickmancol
Really like the project. Thanks.

------
ainasurfs
I started selling clothes through print-on -demand platforms. Didn't earn much
yet, but didn't put much effort into it either. I even got featured on the
Modsly platform blog as a success story which is kind of cool :)

[https://blog.modsly.com/how-i-made-my-first-sale-
after-2-day...](https://blog.modsly.com/how-i-made-my-first-sale-after-2-days-
of-using-modsly/)

------
andreasduess
I’ve launched a Botanical Brewery, making non alcoholic tonics from medicinal
mushrooms. Right now, we are 3 weeks away from launching our chaga drink. We
were supposed to launch weeks ago, but COVID threw a spanner in the works.
It’s my first time putting out a real product and the amount of work involved
is huge - but it’s also a ton of fun. You can check it out at borealbrewing.ca

------
par
My side project, meta meme, makes around $5k a month.

~~~
samteeeee
How does it make money, seems to be a free app?

~~~
par
there is a subscription that can be purchased to unlock pro features.

------
aj3
Algotrading options. Some initial investment is needed in order to open margin
account, but otherwise it's basically passive income.

~~~
organicfigs
I wanted to add a response here for every aspirational algotrader: you can
lose a lot of money very quickly. I hobbied in algotrading through my
twenties, learned a lot more than I expected too, worked out the math, and
made $600 in a matter of 15 minutes on my first day before losing $1000 the
same day. That's when I decided to pull the plug. I already knew that it would
be more profitable finding contracting gigs then inevitably writing off 100s
of hours I spent researching, doing the math, and coding over the years, but
decided I would regret it if I never tried.

~~~
aj3
That's right, I don't advise anyone to invest more than what you're
comfortable losing: besides making dumb decisions even such things as an
innocuous gap in your test coverage can lead to losing everything you have in
a zap. In my opinion there's also no need for margin account right away. Focus
on paper trading and only invest a few hundred bucks in real account just to
get the feeling of it and to realize what are the little things that paper
trading misses.

------
mNovak
Anymore too busy for it, but in college my roommate and I had a side-hustle
selling computer monitors on Amazon.

Basically there was a company that cleared out defunct call centers and such,
who would call us up to offload monitors for $5 a piece. These would sell
consistently on Amazon for $40. Not much effort involved, and made a few
thousand that way to supply our other hobbies.

------
joelrunyon
I built [https://startablog.com](https://startablog.com) \- we set up free
blogs for people.

I also have a mobility/coaching app that I've actually done an interview or
two about but it's started to take off this year -
[https://movewellapp.com](https://movewellapp.com)

~~~
gabrielrdz
I think I recognize your name. You had a motivational website or blog,
Impossible things or something like that?

------
treyfitty
Skincare for men. Business was OK pre covid, but with Google Merchant screwing
me with no explanation as to why Google Shopping is banned from my account,
business dried up.

I don’t like talking about it with friends anymore because it sucks to talk
about failing. I wish I could learn from this failure... but covid + Google
Shopping really aren’t things in my control.

www.mendskin.co

------
niftylettuce
[https://forwardemail.net](https://forwardemail.net)

------
muzani
My wife sells lasagna. It makes really good money, could potentially make more
than a good job, but I'm not sure if we'd like to commit to that. Profit
margins are pretty good, but it's still poor $ per effort. COVID makes it a
bad time too.

~~~
mdorazio
There are usually a lot of food regulations, fees, kitchen requirements, etc.
if you're selling food in any kind of quantity. Is the lasagna venture
profitable with all of that factored in? A couple friends of mine have
attempted various food-oriented businesses and the margins have consistently
been pretty awful.

~~~
muzani
It does, and I say this from someone who has sold various food-oriented
businesses before. It's not the case with most other food types, but lasagna
is in the sweet spot for us.

It's not a "luxury" item like a latte. It has enough nutrition for people to
justify buying it whenever they're too lazy to cook for their kids. It's not
something everyone's mom knows how to cook. It can be done with cheap
ingredients. It probably wouldn't be the case in a Western country.

------
posedge
Off-topic but I'm looking to launch a side project myself, and I like the
inspiration in this thread. Does anyone have some advice on how to 'get out of
your bubble' and find an interesting problem someone has that is worth
solving?

~~~
matt_the_bass
Solve problems for yourself. Then see if it’s valuable for others.

------
osapy
My side project osapy.com can be used for testing APIs, webhooks,etc. It
doesn't make money yet, but as an indie hacker I would assume it can take a
couple of years to get the product right and make any money. Great job on
getting 7k EUR!

------
zakokor
I built [https://pegao.co](https://pegao.co) (to learn Django and React) an
open source tool for save my temporary links and I added a donation button but
honestly I'm the only active user.

------
astrikos
[https://artres.xyz](https://artres.xyz) and the tumblr it's connected to
makes a little bit of money like $1000 total over a few years. I mainly make
money off of selling PDFs or tips!

------
allie1
I made [https://gotmemo.net](https://gotmemo.net) thinking many people needed
Asana notifications delivered on Skype. Turns out, not many. 70-80$ AAR.

------
cornellwright
I made [http://backseatbarber.com/](http://backseatbarber.com/) mostly just
for humor. I get a few 10s of dollars per year in shirt sales though.

------
depressedCorgi
Right now I have things for sale on Society6 and make an extra $200 a month.
It’s not much but I don’t have to put in much effort.

------
aabbcc1241
Your website is fun to view. It doesn't work under my normal setting. I've to
disable the dns proxy and brave shield to see the ads. Surprisingly, it's not
random ads, they are coherently related to marketing service.

------
Ravitezu
Where do you host this site?

------
rengate
cool

------
Quastra
Actually Brilliant!

------
enjoyitasus
I have one. Id rather not talk about it

------
master_yoda_1
By the way this is not a project. Please don’t call it a side project you are
misleading people.

