
Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell - folli
It seems this question hasn&#x27;t been asked for some time, so I&#x27;d be interested hear what new (and old) ideas have come up.
======
roybarberuk
I’m a full time developer but own a gym. By accident! I went to take over a
building as office space that was a liquidated gym. Signed the lease and the
day before we moved in the owner called and said we can’t remove the equipment
as it was all put in before the stairs. I asked a lot of questions about why
the gym didn’t work, had already seen the equipment in there and did some
negotiating on purchasing the kit, knowing I could still convert an area to
offices. The gyms main failure was due to the cost of staff. So I fully
automated everything, door access, lights, aircon, TVs etc etc. Built a
membership system. Making it a fully automated unmanned gym! We then recruited
a freelance personal trainer who does all the inductions in return for
advertising and doing PT in our facility with no charge. 2 years in and it’s
making £4,000 profit a month with minimal costs. Now looking to buy the
building. Gym: [https://180fitness.co.uk](https://180fitness.co.uk) Me:
[https://roybarber.com](https://roybarber.com)

~~~
jimmydddd
Congrats. I generally understand that you made lemons from lemonade. But am
confused about the machines problem. Was it a misunderstanding by the owner,
who thought you wanted to run a gym? Was he trying to scam you? Does that mean
you can't bring equipement into the building also? So you can never, say,
replace an outdated treadmill with a newer treadmill?

~~~
roybarberuk
If you go in the website and look at the gallery you will see a U shaped
staircase. That was fitted after the equipment was hoisted up there.
Replacement removal is possible but not without removing the staircase.
Luckily the Technogym kit was only 4 months old. So we won’t be replacing
anytime soon. Most of the kit upstairs are weight stacks anyway so require
little maintenance.

------
marianattestad
[http://omgenomics.com/circa](http://omgenomics.com/circa) Circa is an easy-
to-use tool for building circos plots with genomics data. I built the
visualization piece (and most of the UI) with D3.js and made it into a desktop
app with Electron. Initially sold it for $25 per user (one-time cost), which
made about $750 a month. Then some professors told me it was way too cheap, so
I increased the price to $100. Since then, it has made about $1,500 every
month for the last year. This week I started to add some new features and will
soon make some more demo videos to see if I can increase that number. :) I
think it has worked this well so far because building circos plots is a well-
known painful problem in the genomics field. And it was one that I had
experienced myself during my PhD work. I was surprised at how many academics
actually are willing to pay for software, but still unsure how big that market
actually is and how much of it I am already covering. The nice thing about a
tiny niche like this is that when you Google "circos", Circa's tutorial and
demo videos show up on the first page.

~~~
westoncb
That's pretty cool—congrats. Especially interesting for me to see, because
it's the kind of tool and business model that interests me. One thing I wonder
though is how it can be sustainable using the one time cost model. I suppose
if the market were large enough, then you could just charge for new major
versions every couple years and that might be sufficient. But maybe some kind
of more expensive licensing for specific types of customers?

~~~
marianattestad
I chose the one-time cost model for several reasons: 1) the way scientists get
reimbursed from grants is difficult for recurring purchases, 2) one-time
pricing is easy to do and fits well with desktop software, 3) Circa is a
product scientists only use occasionally, maybe a few times a year, so with a
monthly model they would probably just cancel and resubscribe when they need
it, which is more of a hassle for both them and me. Circa does lend itself
well to desktop software because it allows saving the visualizations they are
building straight to their computer instead of me trying to manage user
accounts and storage in the cloud -- again, less hassle on both sides!

On the topic of more expensive licensing for some customers, I forgot to
mention that for commercial entities it costs $200, but that accounts only for
something like 5% of sales, since it's mostly academics who want to make
pretty plots for their publications.

------
_august
[https://fitloop.co/](https://fitloop.co/)

A site I built to teach myself bodyweight fitness (from a routine I found on
reddit) -- grew a userbase and built up more detailed tracking, configuration,
and usability.

The MRR is a bit hard to calculate right now (since I charge annually), but
somewhere in the $500 - $1000 range.

Edit: This app grew from feelings of being stuck / burned out / almost
depressed that can come from being in front of the computer too much. I was
trying to build another startup out of college from my parents' house, and was
having little progress or social interaction. There's been a number of threads
about depression on HN recently, I felt the same. I realized I needed to be
able to work out, but had no good gym accessible at the time, thus this little
project was born (and went on to be more successful than the app I was
initially trying to work on).

~~~
Pimpus
Awesome. I would love to start bodyweight training, but your routine requires
things like gymnastics rings and pull-up bars and I'm traveling at the moment.
Are these absolutely necessary?

------
conorpp
This is a hardware project I started when I was a senior in college. U2F Zero,
a open source U2F token / two factor authentication device.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L9DUPK6](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L9DUPK6)
[https://conorpp.com/designing-and-producing-2fa-tokens-to-
se...](https://conorpp.com/designing-and-producing-2fa-tokens-to-sell-on-
amazon)

Brings in around $500-$1000 per month of revenue (when in stock haha). I
started just to learn how to lay out a circuit board and make my own embedded
device, just kind of took off.

Using the U2F protocol is nice, since it's a standard and the PC side
infrastructure is all there for the users to use it. I just have to do the
hardware development :)

Also, I'm working on a new U2F token. It supports FIDO2 (password replacement
protocol, upgrade to U2F), NFC, USB-C, and will have a nice case. If you're
interested, sign up here, we'll be releasing more news soon :)

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

~~~
leetbulb
I have a few U2F Zero's, they're really cool!

------
bwb
Down For Everyone Or Just Me
[https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/](https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/)

Makes ~$1,000 a month gross, lot less after AWS costs.

I've had it for a long time, but haven't done much with it because of my
primary business. After I sold that I spent the last year playing with some
ideas and testing. I am working to get a new design up and just partnered with
a friend to redo the arch and let him see what ideas he has to better monetize
it.

~~~
r0rbit
I use Down For Everyone Or Just Me a lot, it is a great little purposeful site
:)

~~~
bwb
Thanks, we are trying to clean it up a bit now, both in look and simplicity as
it has just been the same for a long time. The other owner is working on
moving it to AWS and lambda stuff :). I bet he will publish something about it
too.

------
osrec
I started [https://usebx.com/app](https://usebx.com/app) just under a year
ago. We now do a few hundred thousand GBP per month in revenue. Nothing fancy,
just a solid accounting and project management app, solid service, and good
sales to corporate customers (we look after the smaller customers too, but
only actively market to larger corporate clients, where the returns are
significantly better).

We've just invested more in the code base to offer more features within our
app, but kept things pretty simple at the start. Releasing in a couple of
weeks!

~~~
iamgopal
Looks amazing and fast, congratulations. If you don't mind sharing, What is
your tech stack ? How many developer hour were consumed developing it and how
many to maintain it ?

~~~
osrec
Thank you :)

We wrote our own JavaScript framework called alive.js. We're going to open
source it once we've got it documented properly. It's similar to Vue, but
without the virtual DOM. Instead we keep track of "update" functions. It also
has some nice async lazy loading capabilities which helps keep the experience
fast.

Development time was about 4 months to an MVP. 2 developers, but one was an
absolute rockstar. Maintained by 2 guys now (1 of whom is an original
developer). Also have a small sales team, composed of 5 contractors.

------
300bps
Probably not what you're asking, but my side project is working on software
projects for a couple local businesses. I work about 12 hours per week on the
side at $150 per hour so I make about $7,200 per month.

Having W2 and 1099 income like this is advantageous as well. First, I max out
my social security tax at my main employer which means my side income is
social security tax free. Second, I max out my 401k employee contribution of
$18,500 at my main employer. I then have an Individual 401k with Vanguard
where I take about 20% of my profits and deposit that as the employer portion
which lowers my federal taxes substantially. I take a good portion of what's
left and deposit that in a 529 account for my kids which my state gives a tax
deduction for that on state taxes.

My smaller client was just a friend that I met through my kids' school. My
larger client I met while studying for a programming certification at a
baseball clinic my oldest son attended. A guy who owned a local business saw
me with a thick book and approached me with, "Are you in IT?"

~~~
gremlinsinc
I'm a php dev (5 years laravel), and vue+vuex (1-2 years)... primarily, is
150/hour really do-able for someone in php/vue stack? Is there a specific type
of coding you do?

I've got some imposter syndrome/esteem issues I find it hard to pitch >
$50/hour for my services... (I'm in utah)..

Average pay around here is also like $70-80k which I think is something like
$35-40/hour, so again $150/hr just seems really high... I'd love to get
$100/hour freelancing..

~~~
FlyingAvatar
The cost to a company of an $80k/yr employee is well more than $40/hr.

You need to account for time not working, such as paid holidays, vacation and
sick time. Also, you need to factor the amount the company pays in addition to
the salary such as payroll tax, benefits, cost of the space, tools and
amenities to let the employee do their job. These are all costs that will be
absorbed by the freelancer.

All said and done, a company pays probably $60/hr, minimum, to hire an
employee at $80k per year.

Doubling or tripling your salaried employment rate is not uncommon when
freelancing in order to maintain the SAME level of income to account for non-
billed time. This can be adjusted for longer term contracts.

My point is $150/hr is not too hard to justify as a consulting rate for an
equivalent employee making in the salary range you specify.

The other consideration is the role you're in with the company who hires you.
Are they hiring you to interface with an existing tech team, or is it a solo
gig, where you also will be playing business analyst and project manager. The
latter, IMO, would also justify a higher rate, assuming one is competent at it
and is providing that additional value.

------
vinrob92
[https://www.manypixels.co](https://www.manypixels.co)

I started Manypixels as a side project while being a digital nomad in Bangkok.

After a few weeks it grew to $5000/month then $10,000 month and we're now at
$40,000/month after 8 months.

Wrote about that story from the early beginning here:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/@Vinrob/bootstrapping-a-
product...](https://www.indiehackers.com/@Vinrob/bootstrapping-a-productized-
service-to-40-000-mrr-in-6-months-964127afc3)

~~~
olingern
I saw your comment, liked the idea / design of your site, and signed up since
we're in need of designers.

Some feedback:

\- There's no way to see full resolution designs. Looking through the blog
where your portfolio links to, there are _some_ samples, but some are
pixelated and low-res.

\- After signing up there's only a link to the customer portal via email, but
there's no way to submit a design order nor are there any instructions on how
to do so.

\- I've been billed for a subscription, but no services have been or began to
be rendered. Since I haven't submitted any design requests or any services
have started, this is disappointing.

\- The billing invoice is really confusing. I signed up for one month, but see
two line items and "MANYPIXELS SPECIAL OFFER (2 for 1)" and two invoice line
items for "PAID" and "ATTEMPTING"

I assume that since this is still a young product and you're still building
the business out; however, I would expect the main site, manypixels.co, to
know I've registered, be able to show me some information about my design
request, and to download completed assets from it.

Looking forward to using the product!

~~~
vinrob92
Thanks for the feedbacks! We are rolling out a v3 soon and will incorporate
all of this!

Finally - feel free to dm on Twitter (@Vinrob) I'll happily give you my
WhatsApp + email in case you need me to pick up the ball for your projects :)

~~~
olingern
Sure. Would love to chat. You're Twitter account is set to only allow DM's
from people you follow. I'm @olingern

------
ramijames
It sounds ridiculous, but I started a YouTube channel
([https://www.youtube.com/c/ClickClackClunk](https://www.youtube.com/c/ClickClackClunk))
a few months ago that focuses on my woodworking hobby. This was the first
month that I made >$500 from amazon affiliate links (mostly from the
instructables
([https://www.instructables.com/member/clickclackclunk/instruc...](https://www.instructables.com/member/clickclackclunk/instructables/))
related portion of the project).

It's been a lot of fun and I enjoy focusing on something which is less about
computers and more about working with my hands.

------
aabajian
wwww.cronote.com

Simple website for sending reminders. It didn't make any money for 4 years
until I added commonly-requested features (templates, recurring reminders, and
variables for recipient names). Now I have about 60 paying customers and it
makes about $600 per month after all expenses paid. It's been running
essentially autonomously for the past five months.

The iOS app is still difficult to use. I'm slowly rebuilding it. I'd say the
main claim to fame at this point is if you Google "text message reminders"
it's the first or second result.

~~~
harel
Chrome has issues with your certificate...

~~~
howlett
It's because there are 4 "w" in the link - try
[https://www.cronote.com/](https://www.cronote.com/)

------
jasdeepsingh
[https://servicehq.ca](https://servicehq.ca) Built this over about 2-3 months
with the help from a Beta customer satisfying their requirements slowly, but
still ensuring that the platform is generic and modular enough.

It’s now averaging about $1000/month with 2 customers. I’m now planning to
slowly rebuild the mobile app (need to improve UX and add offline
functionality). Once ready, I can start selling to more customers, Also
thinking of adding a few integrations with tools like Google Drive, Office 365
& Slack to improve market visibility.

Our stack is Ruby/Rails/React/React Native.

~~~
nautical
Hey Jasdeep, How did you went about doing marketing for your product? Direct
mails ? Adwords ?

~~~
jasdeepsingh
hey! Our first customer was acquired through a personal contact and second
customer came in as a referral from our first customer :)

We plan to better the product now before going in with full blown
marketing/sales.

------
freediver
Built WooRender to allow easy access to GPU compute. Basically leasing my deep
learning server with 10x 1080ti cards for $100/day.

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

~~~
amuresan
Pretty cool! How about turning this into a service where other people can
lease their own GPU hardware? Either through your website or by offering it as
a sort of turnkey solution.

~~~
kahoon
Already exists: [https://vast.ai/](https://vast.ai/)

~~~
sourcepath
Yes if it already exists lets certainly not make it

------
tananaev
[https://www.traccar.org/](https://www.traccar.org/)

It's an open source GPS tracking solution. We make money on SaaS, support and
customisation services. Some of it basically passive income from
subscriptions, some is new development.

~~~
nojvek
This is pretty cool. Extra liquid nitro cool because you’ve found a way to
make a living from open source.

------
siquick
[https://www.soundshelter.net](https://www.soundshelter.net)

Sound Shelter is a vinyl marketplace that connects records buyers with small
independent record stores.

Revenue comes from a mixture of affiliate sales and subscriptions from records
stores listing their inventory.

Building a two-sided marketplace is a lot more challenging than I had expected
but definitely rewarding when the users find the rare record they probably
wouldn't have ever found.

------
Lukin
I believe that in Poland you cannot get a normal programmer's job after
studies at universities. New programmers have such big lacks of knowledge that
it cost really great amount of money and time to employers to teach them how
to code properly. I started teaching people C++ in January 2018. I choose only
those, who have basics of programming. I do not teach from scratch, because
there are many such companies. I teach programmers tools (git, make, cmake,
vim), scrum, exceptions, objective C++, STL, memory management, testing and
TDD, Modern C++ (C++11/14/17), good programming practices, templates,
recruitment tips. After the second edition of my course, I started earning
over 8k PLN/month, which is over 2k USD/month. I spend only about 10h a week
on teaching and running my business as a side project. I teach in Wroclaw,
Poland. From the next year, I plan to make it a full-time job (it means 20h a
week for me ;)) and prepare some good online courses.
[http://coders.school](http://coders.school)

------
fiatjaf
[https://teams.cardsync.xyz/](https://teams.cardsync.xyz/), a Trello Power-Up
I started as a Trello bot some years ago (I actually "invented" the concept of
Trello bots as there were no one doing that at the time, but now all bots are
banned).

I just made it because I thought it was a cool feature that was missing. As I
started to develop it I realized it was much more complicated to implemente
than it seemed, that was probably the reason the feature was missing. Anyway I
accepted the challenge, put it live for free on Heroku and forgot about it.

One year later I got back to check it out and thousands of people were using
it.

Still, I'm bad at market and monetization, and it's still a side-project to
this day, but makes about $1200/mo.

------
marketgod
I was trading options for a while and a lot of people kept asking me how I did
it, just never had the time to describe everything. Finally decided to setup a
website, www.marketgodfathers.com and a Discord channel. Automated reading my
entries and exists from my brokerage and posting to discord allowing everyone
to enter and exit the trades when I do. Now I just wait for people to sign up
and I pay someone to chat with the customers/answer their questions on
Discord.

Need to work on automatically posting my plans to other locations, or maybe
find a service that does it for me, if anyone has recommendations. Looking to
private message Discord users, Facebook friends, Facebook groups, Instagram
posts, and Reddit subreddits/daily threads.

~~~
santa_boy
Interesting! Given the uncertainty in options markets and a rather tough job
of following trades of others ... are you able to keep users going?

Also, your pricing seems quite steep ... just curious how many active users
you have and revenue / month? (a single user on your monthly package gets you
too $500! :))

~~~
marketgod
The pricing is steep because I believe in my system. I don't believe there is
an uncertainty if you have an edge. My system was designed with an edge in
mind and was able to make profits in 2016 February and 2018 January while
everyone was running away. Generally, if you start with a $30K account, the
trial alone should pay out a years of subscription.

The subscriptions are growing, also I think I will raise it to $1,500 soon as
I don't want too many clients ;) I've noticed the people who pay the $500
right away are happy, the ones asking for a discount drain too much time and
cause this to be a real business. It's only $250 the first month, then $500
after that. Many people do the $250, then cancel, but really, the people who
cancel are the ones who don't get into all the trades/are just curious.

Most the other services charge $99 or something, but they aren't half as good
as me also they get into hundreds and thousands of trades. Mine can be done by
someone at work that's the big part. The following the plans is rather easy
because I tell the customers something like, if AAPL crosses $220, but the Jan
2019 $220 Options. Then an alert gets sent to Discord when I get in, so either
they can setup a conditional order, or wait for my order to execute. At the
start, I was not posting my exits, now I am posting my exits, so it can be
easier for people and that's making the retention/marketing huge because most
the other competitors don't get into all their trades, that's what makes me
unique.

The one negative right now, I don't have my stats posted as to the win/loss
rate to make people believe, however, I have a plan for January 1.

The part that is really flying is the "account management for larger accounts"
as I have gotten people out of a few bad stocks and into a few more great
stocks. I just don't know how to automate this and I am not sure which way
it's going to grow, i.e. people will want to deposit in my account, or want me
to trade from their account, plus I'm not licensed so I might be doing a CSC
soon.

$SPY to $300 this year.

~~~
montypython12
Can you please explain a bit about how you get this edge?

~~~
marketgod
We built a proprietary system which listens to the market using technical
analysis, fundamentals, and news gathering. It looks for stocks which are
trading with a higher than usual volume pattern, or fast price movement
depending on our scanning. Also, eliminates a lot of stocks which don't fit
the system requirements, in order to increase the rate of return using rules
that we have been adding. Does that make sense?

There are lots of ways to beat the market, many people are doing it, you can
look in /r/algotrading on reddit as there some good discussions there if you
are interested in getting started. The easy part is the implementing the
strategy, the hard part is coming up with one. You can look into the Wheel
Strategy as well if you own stocks.

You can look at our Discord, it's open until Wednesday. There are a few
historical entries/plans/exits [1].

[1] [https://discord.gg/n3dqVk4](https://discord.gg/n3dqVk4)

~~~
montypython12
Thank you! I am a newbie in options area. Shall go through the reddit and find
more about the Wheel Strategy.

~~~
marketgod
Hey, I just found the user again, check out
[https://www.reddit.com/user/ScottishTrader](https://www.reddit.com/user/ScottishTrader)

He posts about Wheel Strategies a lot.

------
dpcan
I don't think many people are going to share their idea unless they are sure
it's not something that can be hacked together in a week.

It would be interesting to also see people simply saying "I do" and maybe the
"space" it's in?

That too would be encouraging I think.

~~~
rootusrootus
If you can hack it together in a week then there are probably already a bunch
of competitors. As has routinely been pointed out, many of the most popular
apps can be readily copied in a fairly short time. The app is the easiest
part.

~~~
fipple
Great niche markets are valuable secrets. I bought a house in Silicon Valley
with money that I make with a side project. It has no competitors because
people don’t know how easy it is to make money in this space. Someone with a
tech background looking for project ideas would never find it. I’d never say
what it is because then my shitty app would immediately be fighting for market
share against competitors. Someone may discover the market eventually and kill
my app but I’m not going to help anyone do it.

~~~
justaj
It's interesting to see a counter-example to the otherwise ever-present HN
credo of "Ideas are cheap, execution is everything".

On one hand you have execution that can get you an advantage of a difficult-
to-reproduce technology stack for solving a problem, but on the other hand,
information that other players might not have discovered (yet) also can get
you an advantage in the market. Although I find the latter to be less rigid
and prone to disruption.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you have found a niche that is not at all
in the tech sector, but through technology gets augmented into a proven
market-fit? Can I ask you what your process was in finding that niche? You can
leave out the specifics of course.

~~~
fipple
I basically have a shitty Rails app that solves a particular problem for a
completely non tech industry (there are millions of such problems). It’s easy
for me to find the people who need it. But if I ever had to compete with high
quality software my app would probably die.

~~~
nloa
How are you monetizing your app?

------
farseer
No one wants to advertise their money making niche ideas, especially if they
are easy to copy.

~~~
harel
Ideas are not worth much. Only execution matters.

~~~
ransom1538
I love this terrible sentence. But no (unfortunately). The idea is everything.
A great idea and terrible team usually succeeds. An amazing team and terrible
idea almost always fails.

VCs can only control the team. That is why they push this idea really hard.

~~~
harel
They idea is not worth much in the sense that if you thought of it, there is a
98% chance someone else has thought of it before you, and 95% chance a few
others are already doing it. The remaining few percents on both cases
determine that the idea is not worth much. Great ideas with done badly can
succeed, but those successes are usually short term and fade away, in
particular when someone else copies the idea and does it better. Ideas are a
dime a dozen. Really. Not that hard to come up with them. Coming through with
one to a launch and running a business with it - that's the hard part.

~~~
ransom1538
"Ideas are a dime a dozen. Really. "

Really? Pitch me one.

~~~
harel
Find an industry you are familiar with, or perhaps a friend or family member.
Find their pain points. Find how technology can help. Then see if it is
something that they will pay for. Look around your daily life. Find problems
to fix. Most likely someone else is already fixing them and if not, they will
once you start if your idea is good enough.

Two ideas for you off the top of my head:

Do CRM right for SMBs. (Sounds simple, but it's not, because of the S and the
M in SMB).

Do time tracking right (timesheet management for contractors etc.). Never saw
a single solution that didn't suck to the extreme.

Bonus tip: Here's a thing though: non techies won't have the advantage a
technical person (i.e., adventurous software developer) has: The tech can do
it with minimal resources and overheads. If you also have a business sense -
that's great. Otherwise break existing market by offering a superior service
dirt cheap (but not free!). Once you reach a critical mass, grandfather the
existing accounts in their original early bird price and nudge the cost for
new customers up a bit. Automate as much as you can and you have a side income
with potential to be main income.

------
hapabrah
I'm a mechanical design engineer. I "accidentally" ended up as the solo owner
and operator of a CNC machine shop. Instead of buying gifts for friends, i
would design and machine some sort of a trinket. I was constantly told I
should sell these trinkets. It never occured to me that people would buy
something I made. I started SmallBatchMade.com a little over a year ago. To my
suprise, I sold $700 worth of product the first month. I now pAy my shop rent
with this "side" income

------
goatherders
I started ChatterBox as a side project to the actual business I started.
www.heychatterbox.com

Clients are all lawyers or medical/health services like Spas and
Chiropractors. Marketing is all done by email. Everything in the service
delivery is outsourced or automated. All I do is send some cold-outreach
campaigns each month and process the client invoices at the end of the month.
Just about past $500. If I focused on it more I'm sure it would grow a lot.

------
caviv
I have created [https://www.gematrix.org](https://www.gematrix.org) \- it is
an English and Hebrew Gematria calculator to calculate Gimatria values for
words and phrases. It's making more the $500 a month with Google Ads and a
some more for selling the Database directly.

------
fakeElonMusk
I have an iOS glitch camera app making around $500/mo most months
[https://itunes.apple.com/app/defqt/id817026377](https://itunes.apple.com/app/defqt/id817026377)
\- app is featured in some China photography lists and Apple recently
requested promo assets for a feature, although they have not featured it yet.
The only marketing is on IG, just posting images from the app and from other
Defqt users. Been in the app store since 2014. My main income is as a
freelance iOS and Android app developer. It's really a niche app so unless we
get featured by Apple it will stay small. Ranking in the app store is a
nightmare and outside of spending your way into rankings, you are left with
the coveted Gold Standard of getting Editor's Pick from the Cupertino gang.

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wheresvic1
checkout indiehackers.com!

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tonyjstark
[https://wokabulary.com/](https://wokabulary.com/)

Wokabulary is a vocabulary trainer for macOS and iOS. We started many years
ago when we were still studying and published various projects (like a text
editor with syntax coloring) but Wokabulary is the only one left, that is
actively developed. It grew out of a personal need and at first you could use
it for free, only later we thought that we could also sell it. At some point
we rewrote it and since then it's low maintenance, basically no known bugs.
People a generally very happy with the apps and we still have a lot of feature
ideas that would improve the whole platform. Time is our limiting factor, and
of course there is a lot of competition out there.

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mr4k
[https://netho.me/](https://netho.me/) \- website traffic estimator. Now there
are tons of sites like this, but when i started it the niche was not so
crowded. I made this website while learning basic programming (php, html, css,
js). It makes a bit under $500/month from ads. For now the main feature is to
estimate website traffic, but pretty often it is not very accurate. Last
feature i plugged is voting that allows tagging sites as legit or scam.
Another one - showing free domain name alternatives. The system is buggy and
from time to time i'm still fixing bugs and js\css issues when i have time.
i've learned a lot building this thing.

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joewee
[http://www.meetkaori.com](http://www.meetkaori.com) multilingual virtual
assistants. Right now the focus is Japanese / English but plans to add other
tough to hire languages like Chinese.

~~~
h1d
I thought this was a little more than $500/mo class?

~~~
joewee
Well technically it’s a side project that generates more than $500 a month.
Though I really should focus on this business or sell it.

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rfc
Bit on the weirder submissions for YC but our family genome sequencing
facility is generating more than $500/mo on the side.

Currently growing at over 100% YOY (somewhere around 26% QOQ), closed out our
last month at over $23k, and on pace to do somewhere between $350-400k. This
is not an easy side project and there's been an insane amount of learnings on
both the wet lab and informatics side. We've had some set backs but it's worth
it when we get to hear what sort of life changing (literally) work we get to
contribute.

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

~~~
angelmass
At first I read human WGS and I was like uhhh...

But it’s good to see those machines go to good use! That last core lab I was
in was still processing the same types of samples through Sanger (of course
not WGS), so I’m glad that the research community is using the smaller NGS
instruments for what I feel like they were meant for. Good on ya :)

~~~
rfc
Thanks! We're working on scaling up to human WGS but it will take time. We do
have some ideas on how to reduce the price a ton but it requires more capital
than we have currently - so either patience or VC.

So for now we're sticking with bacterial and targeted human as our primary
market.

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czue
I make about $800/month selling place card templates and formatting at
[https://www.placecard.me/](https://www.placecard.me/).

I started the project last year and made $3 in my first six months. But have
seen pretty decent slow and steady growth since then.

I've written extensively about the process on my website
([http://www.coryzue.com/writing/](http://www.coryzue.com/writing/)) and on
indie hackers in case interesting to anyone.

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imhoguy
I don't know why I have read $500k/month. The weekend bbq effect probably.

Anyone?

But then it wouldn't be a side project I guess.

~~~
aclsid
The Hunt for the Red October was Tom Clancy's side project and look where that
took him.

~~~
codewritinfool
Yeah, he's dead.

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ddgflorida
ConvertCsv.com - converts delimited data to/from JSON, XML, SQL, HTML Table,
XML, and more. I built it because I work with data every day and need these
tools. API coming soon.

~~~
Puchaczov
Can you say something more? How you earn moneys here? What's your business
model?

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nickpsecurity
wheresvic1 mentioned indiehackers.com. Ill add Barnacl.es also has lots of
examples and advice for executing on the idea. Lots of articles on reaching
customers, too.

[https://barnacl.es](https://barnacl.es)

