
Ask HN: How do you make money from your side projects? - _6cj7
Sure enough, not all side projects are meant to make money. But among those that do, what is your business model?
======
david_shaw
Google Adsense + organic (non-paid) traffic == "passive" money.

Not an insane amount of money, of course, but enough that you can consider the
project successful if you're getting a solid amount of views.

My largest project, [http://sleepyti.me](http://sleepyti.me), gets about 1.5
million unique views per month. The revenue Google Adsense brings in is not
nearly enough support myself, but it's enough to make the effort feel solidly
"worth it" in terms of development time and hosting costs (which are very low
at this point).

How (or if) you should be monetizing depends on the nature of your side
project. If your "side project" is a business -- say, designing WordPress
themes -- then you should sell your product! If it's something that gets 50
views per month, maybe it's not the best candidate for monetization (and is
instead a portfolio/resume builder). Either way, gaining experience building
things is almost always a good thing.

~~~
yeukhon
Sorry, but I don't see any ads displayed. Am I missing something?

~~~
always_good
Check the console. The Google script throws an error related to
availableWidth=0.

~~~
david_shaw
Wow, weird -- the ads display on my end. Thanks for the heads up, I'll check
it out!

------
tedmiston
There's a great book called _Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer 's Guide to
Launching a Startup_ by Rob Walling [1]. It's by far my favorite book I've
read on this subject and made me reconsider my approach of trying to monetize
a side project. It was written in 2010 but is still highly relevant and
recommended here from time to time. (There's similar free content on his blog
as well.)

One important idea from the book is the distinction of side project/product
confusion:

> A project is a software application that you build as a fun side project.
> The code is fun to write because you’re not concerned about quality and
> performance, and the end result is a neat little application that likely
> isn’t of use to many people.

> A product is a project that people will pay money for. In other words, it’s
> a project that has a market (a group of people who want to buy it). Without
> a market, a software application is just a project.

I think it's important to start in the right place here. Both approaches are
fun but they have opposing goals. If you want to build a product that makes
money, start with the market. If you want to build a side project... that's
great, just keep in mind that when a side project tries to tack on "and make
money" later, it mostly doesn't work.

[1]: [http://www.startupbook.net/](http://www.startupbook.net/)

~~~
egfx
Hmm, sounds just like that silly college hobby project Facemash ;)

~~~
tedmiston
And that started with the market of students at Harvard. Even if they weren't
the ones to ultimately "buy" it in dollars, they did buy with their time and
attention. That said, most of the book's advice is geared toward SaaS
products.

------
AtheistOfFail
1) I write side project.

2) I put side project technologies on my resume.

3) I put side project link on my resume.

4) I put my resume on LinkedIn.

5) I get a raise during my next performance review (or next job)

I write side projects when I want to try a new technology in order to
integrate it into my flow. I don't make money from putting a couple of JS
libraries and generating an automatic ping pong game from Bitcoin transactions
([https://writecodeeveryday.github.io/projects/bitpong/](https://writecodeeveryday.github.io/projects/bitpong/))
but I do get the experience on Websockets for clients.

~~~
ryandvm
Nothing beats a little LinkedIn profile polishing when it comes to passive
salary renegotiation.

~~~
AtheistOfFail
> passive salary renegotiation

Is that what we call it now? I always called it "emoragequitting". Basically
when stress + work > current_paycheck and you decide to shop around.

------
kbyatnal
Currently a student in college and I'm working on
[https://www.60secondseveryday.com](https://www.60secondseveryday.com), the
fastest way of daily journaling.

I charge a subscription fee - either $5.99 or $9.99 a month. One of the
hardest things for me to learn is that as developers, we tend to price things
too low and don't really value our work enough.

60 Seconds Everyday is currently trending on Product Hunt too!

~~~
frikk
cool idea. how has the response been? i've had ideas for similar micro
projects for personal workflow and task management but haven't pulled the
trigger.

~~~
kbyatnal
People really love it! I think slowly forgetting our memories over time is a
problem everyone can relate to, which is why most people immediately "get it"
when they see it.

The challenge is reducing churn because it's trying to change habits (which is
very, very difficult). I'm still working on implementing things to make the
product more sticky like Flashback emails (ex. "Here's what you were doing on
this day last week/month/year") and integrating your journal entries with your
photos.

What sorts of ideas are you thinking about? And what's stopping you?

~~~
lukaszkups
I was writing about solving the problem of forgetting memories over time (or
trying to memorize them and clunky own brain with unnecessary noise):
[http://lukaszkups.net/2017/01/29/In-search-of-the-Golden-
Gra...](http://lukaszkups.net/2017/01/29/In-search-of-the-Golden-Grail-of-
productivity/)

(IMHO it is somehow related about general productivity, to that's why I've
named it as it is).

tldr;

I try to write short notes every day that sums whole day in 1-2 simple
sentences. Everything is stored in my small notebook (moleskine-like, which
You can take everywhere with You in the pocket).

In the same place, I also moderate two lists: TODOs and TODON'Ts - one gather
things that helps me to be productive and the other that doesn't work for me
and should be avoided in the future.

------
caseysoftware
About 18 months ago, I launched
[https://techeventsnetwork.com/cities](https://techeventsnetwork.com/cities)

It aggregates tech events (mostly meetups, conferences, workshops, etc) across
~50 US cities and tweets them out and broadcasts a weekly mailing list.
Hashtags, time of day of messages, including/filtering submissions, etc are
driven by some simple machine learning. It's grown from basically nothing to
~13M+ impressions last year and is on track to generate ~30M this year.

The business model is affiliate links to the conferences and workshops. It
turns out when you find 5-10k tech people in a given geography who are trying
to improve their skills and network, event organizers come to you.

I do _not_ include jobs, job fairs, etc though I know that would make more.

~~~
caseysoftware
Also, I don't clear things with Meetup organizers before including their
events. The system finds, classifies, and includes them itself anyway.

But I have gotten exactly one complaint from an organizer who ended up with 2x
the expected attendees. Many other organizers have written thank you notes and
spread the word.

~~~
manuelschipper
Awesome project.

How does the system find and classifies the event?

------
fuball63
I have been reading this site for a bit; there's a lot of good info here:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses)

~~~
gschier
Indeed, IndieHackers is a great place for this kind of information. I just did
an interview there[1] for the desktop app I'm working on called Insomnia.

Insomnia[2] started as a small side-project to help software developers
communicate with REST APIs. It gradually got more and more popular – to the
point where I left my job to pursue it full-time. The business model is fairly
simple, with an add-on subscription model to access cloud sync and team
features, but it's worked well so far! I've been full-time for 8 months and
made $800 last month.

I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any.

[1]:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/insomnia](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/insomnia)

[2]: [https://insomnia.rest](https://insomnia.rest)

~~~
egfx
Nice one. Out of coincidence I had your Indie Hackers interview open in
another tab. This blog is really high quality with a lot of attention to
design detail. Courtland does really good podcasts too. I was reluctant to
sign up for yet another email list, but it's one of the few emails I really
look forward to receiving every week. A really good resource. My only
complaint is that the podcasts won't play on my Nexus. Need to download them,
but that's no big deal. Would be really great if that was fixed though.

~~~
tmaly
I play them on my Nexus using Pocket Casts, but it does require download. You
can also open the link from feedburner and stream the mp3 directly in a
browser

------
amorphic
An industrial design friend of mine and I started
[https://enstaved.com](https://enstaved.com) after I had a really positive
reaction to the Pythonic Staff of Enlightenment ([https://jimter.net/pythonic-
staff/](https://jimter.net/pythonic-staff/)) at PyCon AU 2016 (more than one
person asked me "where can I buy one?").

We've just started selling customised modular staves to people who use them as
props, novelties or promo items. We've become good at 3D printing via much
learning at our makerspace ([http://sparkcc.org](http://sparkcc.org)) and so
with a couple of printers we can basically run our own small-scale
manufacturing business.

Currently we just take orders via email and word of mouth but we're building a
website that allows people to customise their own staff (like in a video
game).

~~~
raverbashing
Oh I love this ;)

Will there be a Django one? [http://avalonstar.com/journal/2008/the-web-
framework-for-pon...](http://avalonstar.com/journal/2008/the-web-framework-
for-ponies/)

~~~
amorphic
Wow, the pony might be tricky but we have a great designer. Send us an email
via the address on the website and we'll see what we can do!

------
mattkevan
Not much. I use side projects to try out ideas and learn new skills - and if
they cover their costs or make a bit of money, then great.

Of course I'd love to hit on something that meant I could quit the day job,
but I think that unlikely.

In 2011 I built www.illustrators.co, a multi-vendor marketplace for artists to
sell their work. I met some cool people and learned web development and UX in
the process, completely changing my career trajectory. It just about covers
costs, despite languishing for the last few years. I'd love to work on it full
time.

In addition make and sell prints of public domain images. A chance to
experiment further with online marketing and selling and building sites with
static generators. I also make and sell cyanotype prints of my photographs.
Mostly to experiment with photography processes.

I'm currently building a compendium of UX concepts, methods, tools, books and
events. Mostly to help me better understand the subject, but it may also be
useful to others.

------
napoleond
I am partial to the business model of asking people to pay me for my services
or for things that I've made.

My latest side project is
[https://www.smsinbox.net](https://www.smsinbox.net), which provides a drop-in
chat interface for Twilio apps. It's targeted at developers who use Twilio in
their apps, and want to easily expose a two-way messaging interface to their
users. It doesn't make a ton of money right now, but definitely covers costs.

~~~
ryanckulp
thanks for sharing -- i have a perfect use case for this.

built a twilio app, sorta like "mailchimp for texting," and was dreading
building a back/forth reply system.

trying this out in the next few days, you'll see my signup come through with a
domain that starts with 'G' if you want to chat.

~~~
napoleond
Fantastic! I'll send you an email shortly.

------
unit91
For me, side projects are about cash, not fun. I try to find contract jobs
that look easy, bid really high knowing I won't get the vast majority of them,
and do a good job for the people who actually hire me.

~~~
loxias
Any suggestions on how you find contract jobs?

[I write C, C++, do algorithm development, and also automation -- anything
from embedded firmware to large optimized math for HPC, to even the (non-UI
side of) mobile apps. I've done some amount of contract work in the past but
am in the middle of a long (and annoying) dry spell and looking for new
sources.]

~~~
ArturT
It's pretty popular problem. I recently got this book "The Positioning Manual
for Technical Firm" by Philip Morgan from my friend and it's basically about
how to move from generalist to in-demand specialist. The book has exercises
how to determine for who and what service you could provide to position
yourself as specialist. Maybe you will find this useful.

------
bsilvereagle
I tried an Amazon affiliate link (similar to
[https://kenrockwell.com](https://kenrockwell.com)) on my blog
([https://frdmtoplay.com](https://frdmtoplay.com)). 6000 views over 4 months
has lead to 2 conversions for $12. For my level of traffic that's better than
ads, but still not covering hosting costs.

~~~
arthurjj
I feel like Amazon affiliate money is "swingy" I have affiliate links when I
review or recommend books on my blog (arthur-johnston.com) I won't make any
money for a few months and then I'll make $50 in a month.

The only consistent earnings I get is every summer my article "3 books
developers should read when they graduate"(1) makes me some money. My
assumption is there are a lot of CS grads who need the advice :)

1\. [https://medium.com/@the_ajohnston/three-books-developers-
sho...](https://medium.com/@the_ajohnston/three-books-developers-should-read-
when-they-graduate-5ee228251dd2)

~~~
futuretro
Might want to include an affiliate disclaimer in your post. Amazon is quite
picky about disclosures.

------
bananaboy
I sell a Unity plugin for live inspecting and update of game objects and
properties on a build deployed to a device:
[http://u3d.as/sHr](http://u3d.as/sHr). Ordinarily you can't do this; once
your game is on your device you can debug it with VS or MonoDevelop but you
can't inspect any of the game objects on there and tweak settings. I think
it's a really useful tool and something that should be built into Unity.

It's averaged US$340 gross per month since last May but it's been hard to grow
it. I think in some ways it's quite a technical tool and you need to be
interested in actually debugging issues on device, but there are a lot of
people using Unity who aren't super technical. Also it doesn't lend itself to
sexy screenshots. I've noticed some of the successful plugins are those which
are about creating things, and they get a lot of people sharing screenshots of
things they've created on the forums.

~~~
eelkefolmer
Pretty cool, I'm in the same boat as you (see my other reply VR-step Unity
plugin). Decent revenue but can't really grow it much more....

~~~
bananaboy
Thanks! Yeah I'm struggling to think of ways to market Unity plugins. It seems
like the main thing most people do is post on the Unity forums, and tweet
about the product. There aren't many other places to advertise since the
products are so tied to Unity.

Some plugins solve major pain points for Unity users who are not super
technical, like the Prime31 mobile plugins, so they are very popular. I think
if you can build something like that then you have a good shot at success.

------
shanecleveland
Not a novel idea, or necessarily easy, but solve a problem for a business. A
niche calculator, a pdf template, a better way to view publicly available
date, a site widget, etc.

If you gain some traction, there is ad revenue to be gained. I have found even
100 to 300 page views a day is enough to start seeing a few dollars each day.
B2B ads pay out more. I've seen single clicks bring in $5+. Once built, not
usually much you have to do after that, and they will typically grow slowly
over time. And I feel good about them, because I know businesses are getting
actual value out of them.

I have not struck the right chord with affiliate revenue yet. But I know there
is money to be made with the right niche. I think you need to be a little more
invested in affiliate sites, and have a real interest. These sites seem to
require a steady flow of new content, though you may be able to automate some
of it.

~~~
futuretro
I agree. I started on an affiliate site and while i consider it passive
income, there is some level of involvement on a regular basic. I realised that
frequent updates keep Google's indexing bots happy. Stagnating content tends
to drop in rank after a while.

------
matbram
I personally use niche websites and affiliate marketing for generating pretty
passive income. If you can drive traffic using keyword research, it's becomes
really passive after the articles go up.

Google Adsense + Amazon Associates can bring in quite a good bit if done
correctly.

Sidenote: If you guys are interested in passive income discussions, you should
probably join the live chat on IRC.

[http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23%23passiveincome&ui...](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23%23passiveincome&uio=MTY9dHJ1ZSYyPXRydWUac)

------
leandot
Amazon affiliate program -
[http://hackernewsbooks.com/](http://hackernewsbooks.com/). With enough
visitors you can make some serious money with it.

------
franciscop
I made [https://comments.network/](https://comments.network/) to integrate HN
comments into your static page. If it takes off I hope to get money either
through subscriptions or from advertising (it is clearly explained there). So
far a couple of sites used it that got into the front-page and it handles them
a lot better than expected, so there's a really low cost associated to it.

~~~
wingerlang
Regarding paying for this service.

From HN users perspective: Can you really charge money for displaying my
comment?

From a website perspective: Am I paying for the redirection? If HN goes
down/closes shop - are the comments lost? I assume you cannot scrape HN and
essentially "sell" the comments.

I haven't thought too much into this (nor did I read your kinda long website).

------
ArturT
I created ruby gem knapsack to speed up testing and I built a Pro version
which is SaaS [https://knapsackpro.com](https://knapsackpro.com)

I definitely learned a lot during last year while emailing with people
interested in the product. Thanks to that I improved my tool iteratively while
the early adopters discovered new areas or edge cases about testing I didn't
even think about.

This week I published success story about running tests across 100 parallel CI
nodes with my tool: [http://docs.knapsackpro.com/2017/auto-balancing-7-hours-
test...](http://docs.knapsackpro.com/2017/auto-balancing-7-hours-tests-
between-100-parallel-jobs-on-ci-buildkite-example)

------
simon_weber
I sell productivity tools - Chrome Extensions and a SaaS - that solve my own
problems in a niche. All of them run subscriptions with varying kinds of
free/trial access, depending on the audience and the cost to me.

If you're curious on the details, I wrote a post recently about getting to
$100/month with them: [https://www.simonmweber.com/2017/01/09/side-project-
income-2...](https://www.simonmweber.com/2017/01/09/side-project-
income-2016-0-to-100.html).

------
fancyham
I have a lot of little side projects. My greatest monetary success helps solve
a real problem so I'd suggest that. It's not about making a living — I love
when people use my stuff. Here's my experience:

> I made a stamp calculator for any postage for my own use then shared it
> online. It's all organic traffic via google searches and lots of repeat
> users. One google ad that pays for my server and a few meals a month. A
> Pennsylvania post office uses it to help the Amish! I love that.
> [http://fancyham.com/stamp_calculator](http://fancyham.com/stamp_calculator)

> Just released a music notation iMessage sticker set For a music teacher
> friend. My goal for this one: long tail. We'll see!
> [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/music-notation-sticker-
> pack/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/music-notation-sticker-
> pack/id1216360339?mt=8&ct=hackernews&at=1001l574&ls=1)
> [http://fancyham.com/#notation](http://fancyham.com/#notation)

> Helvetica shirts for font nerds like myself: Lots of sales at first through
> Twitter, but nothing now that the fed has passed. Other folks copied the
> idea, too. [http://fancyham.com/shirts](http://fancyham.com/shirts)

> Geiger counter app, secretly controlled by pressure on the screen, that
> always drops jaws but just a few sales a month.
> [http://fancyham.com/#detecto](http://fancyham.com/#detecto)

I do UX design for a living and while these are fun creative outlets and an
opportunity to try some programming, I think of these as play, not work.

Though I'd like to say these projects bring in money via boosting my day job,
I don't know if that's true. These are such quick and dirty projects that I
haven't mentioned them on my resume.

Though, I have been inspired recently by Nadja Buttendorf's 'brutalist' HTML
site: [http://nadjabuttendorf.com/](http://nadjabuttendorf.com/) I'm going to
embrace the ugly.

------
eelkefolmer
I sell a Unity plugin that lets people navigate mobile VR using walking-in-
place:
[https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/60450](https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/60450)

Not a huge money maker (>300 copies sold) but I also filed a patent on it in
2015, so hopefully a larger VR company will see our locomotion technique as an
essential step (no pun) to bring VR to the masses, since it reduces
cybersickness.

~~~
madamelic
I'd continue to innovate. A patent is super-resting-on-your-laurels in my
opinion.

This may work for the next few months but you are going to face really tough
competition when pucks come out, not to mention other VR components.

------
parametrek
Amazon affiliate links. (Yeah, yeah, I need to diversify. Ain't easy making
opportunities.) It works well if your site is designed to improve the shopping
experience.

------
joshwcomeau
I recently started [https://uncover.cc](https://uncover.cc), an aggregator to
help you stay on-top of new releases from your favourite authors.

To monetize it, I use Amazon affiliate links. When Uncover tells you about new
books, it presents links to buy those books on Amazon, for which I earn a
commission.

So far, it has not been a huge moneymaker; I have made exactly $2.10 USD.

Still, if it can make ~$10 a month, it covers its cost, which is good enough
for me.

~~~
tenkabuto
I don't really follow individual authors, but I'd be interested in being able
to follow the market of "books like A Song of Fire and Ice/Fooled by
Randomness". The market for related books might be much hotter for you and
lead to more conversions, if you could figure out a way to figure out similar
books.

------
throw2bit
I initially charged 9$ for my desktop shareware product. This was 7 years
back. I thought the app was worth only 9$ that time. But when I understood
many people purchased it, I increased to 19$, then 40$ now, but with many more
features over the time. I make an average of 800$/month. Stopped using Stripe
because of their heavy chargeback fees and bad dispute mechanism. Uses only
PayPal to accept payment.

------
wushupork
I had a serious side hobby which was performance art related. I took gigs when
and if they came. If that was my full-time job like most aspiring artists, I
would have been a starving artist.

Also while being fully employed as an engineer, I would take side projects,
contracts etc that I would work on during the evenings and weekends.
Eventually that became my full time job. I now run a small consultancy.

------
henrypray
I mine social media data and in turn, find over/under reactions in the stock
market and employ an options based trading strategy on it.

~~~
jnunoferreira
Very curious to know, what kind of figures do you pull up?

------
stevesearer
My now full-time work
[https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com) started out as a
side project while teaching history ~10 years ago and the main source of
revenue was and continues to be advertising.

~~~
futuretro
Neat site. When did you launch? I had a similar idea like this a few months
ago. Glad to know someone actually did it!

~~~
stevesearer
I started the site in 2007 but it wasn't really what I would consider a
"launch" in today's thinking. Just seemed like something fun to do and it's
been growing ever since.

------
geuis
[https://jsonip.com](https://jsonip.com) serves something north of 10 million
requests a day last time I checked. It's a free service I've run for years.
I'm open to suggestions.

~~~
whitef0x
Your "Pro" version [http://getjsonip.com](http://getjsonip.com) isn't working
fyi. Just shows me a blank page.

~~~
geuis
Weird me too. Then reloaded and it appeared.

~~~
mclemme
Seems to be the HTTPS Everywhere browser plugin that results in a blank page
for me, debug console says:

    
    
      platform.launchrock.com/v1/getLaunchedSiteInfo:1 POST https://platform.launchrock.com/v1/getLaunchedSiteInfo net::ERR_INSECURE_RESPONSE
      platform.launchrock.com/v1/getClientIP:1 POST https://platform.launchrock.com/v1/getClientIP net::ERR_INSECURE_RESPONSE
    

Which makes sense, since the certificate for
[https://platform.launchrock.com](https://platform.launchrock.com) has
expired, if I disable HTTPS Everywhere, the site loads just fine.

------
NicoJuicy
Webshop with 1 product, just went into the newspaper today ( quite pleased
about this)

Getting projects from personal connections is pretty easy ( eg websites,
shops, ... ), got some money on a webapp ( not much though) and hosting off
course.

------
pryelluw
I charge a one time fee. No recurring revenue here because people tend to shy
away from it in my markets. Its ok because no overhead and I get a bigger lump
sum.

------
skynode
Currently building something in the data science space myself. Mostly for the
Enterprise though.

------
kruhft
Sales through the macOS App Store.

------
nullundefined
I built a SaaS product that makes decent passive income ($3500~/month) and
continues to grow.

I'm working on a second SaaS product at the moment.

~~~
tomtomau
Able to give any context of what the SaaS product is, industries it targets,
average monthly user revenue or even how long you've been running it?

~~~
nullundefined
I'd rather leave the industry and product out, but I'll tell you it's an
industry every one of you have been a apart of at one point or another, it's
nothing special. I'd also like to say there were/are many competitors in the
market.

The current pricing is about $10 per-seat/month. I experimented with a few
pricing points, it's not optimal by any standards but it works so I left it
alone. I wanted to make it as accessible as possible.

The product has been running since last November (2016). It was profitable
within the first week and has been growing ever since.

I did no paid ads and no content marketing or anything like that. I basically
cold emailed people I thought would be interested in it. It grew organically
from there. Now there's a lot of blogs and people at conferences talking about
it and I get traffic from all over.

As for how much maintenance/time I spend on it?

At this point I spend between 0-60 minutes a week on technical/code
maintenance.

I spend 0-20 minutes a day (in the morning) on answering support/feedback
questions and cold emailing potential customers.

It's not something I have to do every day, but it works well for me.

~~~
sinhpham
How many emails did you send to get your first paying customer? What was the
respond rate of your emails?

~~~
nullundefined
I didn't keep track, but the response rate wasn't great.

------
Johagan
Where would I find someone with a good knowledge of Deep learning to do some
coding?

------
Johagan
Where would I find a coder with good knowledge of NN and reinforcement
learning for a paid project?

~~~
samirparikh
contact me - you can check one of my submissions, it has my email.

