

Ask HN: How did you 'accidentally' make money? - kadavy

What's one thing you did purely for the enjoyment, that later made you money?
======
dangrossman
In 2007 I created a WordPress plugin to add some features to one of my sites,
and threw it up on my blog as a free download for anyone else that could make
use of it.

There were so many downloads, comments, feature and support requests I
couldn't keep up. I started from scratch and created a premium version that
did more and was better designed, front-end and back, and tossed a link to
that on my blog as well.

I sold about $200,000 in licenses to that plugin before selling the rights to
it for another $90,000 1.5 years later.

------
jacquesm
I wrote a payment system called 'webpay', and sold individual licenses. One
day some guy calls up and asks about a source license. I didn't feel like
selling so I asked an outrageous price, $100,000, and jokingly I added 'in
small bills'. Three days later (Christmas eve, no less) some guy shows up at
my house with a suitcase full of fifties... he'd been on 3 flights from Minot,
North Dakota with a bunch of lay-overs. We waited for the banks to open so the
money could be deposited and I burned him a CD.

~~~
limedaring
If this is a true story, wow. Without any confirmation, he just shows up with
a suitcase? That's quite a lot of effort without first confirming the
transaction — good thing it worked out.

~~~
jacquesm
Yep, it's a true story.

The guy used the software to found DMR, one of the largest IPSPs of the time.
Afterwards they contracted me for 3 months to modify the system to their
liking, so I got to visit Minot in the middle of the winter, to work together
with their programmers. Interesting times.

Turns out he knew me indirectly because another customer of mine was a friend
of his, but I didn't know that at the time, to me he was a stranger.

------
patio11
I have blogged for the last four years. Apparently some of what I wrote was
interesting enough that people remember my name. Some of them have large
amounts of other people's money to spend on outside consultants. This is a
fortuitous and totally unplanned coincidence.

~~~
kadavy
I love it when this happens. I've had a similar experience with blogging and
owe everything to it. It moved me from Nebraska to California, has won me big
clients, and even provides significant passive revenue.

~~~
tocomment
Can you tell us more?

~~~
kadavy
Well, when I lived in Nebraska, there was a startup that discovered me (one of
the founders met a guy from the company where I worked at a restaurant). I had
them as a client and then they hired me and moved me. Having the blog with
online portfolio really helped - not to mention that I learned the technology
side of web design from managing my blog.

When I was tired of CA, I moved to Chicago. I still love the Silicon Valley
way of business though. Someone working at oDesk found me through a blog post
around that time and then I started working with them as a client - remotely.
They've been a great client, and having them didn't hurt in winning new
clients.

I have the top hit on Google for "lump in mouth." The page gets about 25k hits
a month, plus spun off into a forum, <http://lumpinmouth.com> I make some okay
ad revenue from that.

I also have one of the top hits for "transfer itunes" from a blog post I wrote
about a method for transferring songs, ratings, playlists from one computer to
another. That also gets a lot of traffic, and I sell affiliate iPod utilities
through a separate site I created. Additionally, I have been able to sign up
direct advertisers.

Its funny when I think back to all of my friends who were confused when I
started blogging "are you getting paid for it? Why are you doing this?" (you
have to understand the Nebraska mentality) They couldn't understand doing
something for pure enjoyment. Of course, I did end up getting paid.

~~~
mikelbring
What area in Nebraska? I live in Hastings :(

~~~
secos
First off, Hey kadavy, its been a while, when you coming by Omaha again? :)

Mike, I'm in Omaha now. You should come check out our scene sometime. Feel
free to email me at matt@nimblelogic.com

~~~
kadavy
Hey Matt! Good to see you. I'll be heading to Omaha as soon as I get a good
reason to. No family there anymore :(

~~~
secos
Damn. Never got you here for BarCamp. Maybe BigOmaha next year?

------
tobtoh
Back in 1995, I started dabbling with the web design in my final year of
engineering. Back then, the web was a brand new world and I was having a lot
of fun trying out new thing - as my first project, I created a fan site for
the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip (Cool Calvin & Hobbes Collection -
<http://www.nivmedia.com/calvin>).

After a few years, I moved state, degrees, jobs and stopped maintaining it. In
2005 I happened to check the web logs and noticed that it was still getting
several hits a day. In a fit of nostalgia, I redesigned the whole site using
the knowledge I had gained in the past decade (web design was always a hobby,
not a job), and in the process added some Amazon links and some Google
adverts.

I've barely touched the site since 2006, but it still consistently gets
several hits every day and generates around $1-1.5k in Google ad revenue and
$400 in Amazon revenue a year.

Nothing to retire on - but as the first site I ever created and for something
I don't maintain, it still brings a smile to my face when the ad revenue
arrives in my bank account :)

------
Judson
I wrote about <http://PeterAnswers.com> on my blog and it became the #1 google
result for "ask peter". The post got a ton of traffic and I built a clone
called <http://askjud.com>

\-- Redirected everyone, added Adsense, and now it gets 6k - 10K visits / day.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
ive seen you talk about this before. Would love to see a post on more of the
story behind all of this.

------
DEADBEEF
A few years ago I started helping out making user generated content for a HL2
mod in my spare time.

The mod got quite popular and a couple of us got invited on an all expenses
trip to the US to visit Valve's HQ and meet Gabe etc along with the mod's
creator.

Helped re-write the entire thing from scratch to eliminate the myriad of bugs
which had gradually crept into each subsequent update, still in my spare time.

A few months later started selling the mod on Steam. I think so far it's sold
in excess of 500k copies.

In case you haven't guessed, the game was Garry's mod.

I didn't make anywhere near as much as Garry the mods original author, who's
pretty much set up his own fully funded game dev studio with the proceeds, but
it was a fun summer nonetheless.

------
paulgb
Remember the feature of the old iPods where you could add notes that used a
subset of HTML? When I was in high school I wrote a little command-line
program that would generate a bunch of notes linking to each other that in
effect let you play blackjack on your iPod. It was a total hack, but I had a
casino contact me asking to sponsor it. It didn't end up happening, but it's
the closest I've come to accidentally making money.

I've written other open-source software since and had people offer money for
new features, but I'm not sure that counts since it involves additional work.

~~~
fbnt
When I was 15 I coded a basic WYSIWYG editor for WAP pages (early days mobile
internet pages) as a freeware, and I got contacted by a company willing to
acquire all the assets and hire me to work full time on a branded version of
my editor. They bailed out once they realized how young I was (and still in
school).

~~~
rick_2047
I just hate when this happens. People look at you and they say "ah, he's just
a kid" and don't take into account the amount of knowledge you have.

~~~
tomjen3
I agree, that is stupid.

However, in this case it is properly the only course of action:

Can you even legally hire a 15? (no matter if he is still in school, we all
know how valuable hs is).

~~~
anamax
> Can you even legally hire a 15? (no matter if he is still in school, we all
> know how valuable hs is).

It's possible to hire child actors, so why is hiring child programmers
unreasonable?

Yes, there are restrictions on the number of hours that they can work and so
on, but ....

------
aaronbrethorst
In Fall 08, I wanted an iPhone app to track up-to-date poll results between
Obama and McCain and...as it turned out, there wasn't an app for that. So I
wrote one in a week and sold ~50,000 copies
(<http://structlab.com/iphone/polltracker/>)

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Juggling.

I juggle as a hobby, and someone invited me to give a talk about the
structures and theory behind it. I make a lot of money giving that talk
multiple times every year.

For the last 25 years - about 1800 talks.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Cool, ever considered publishing your talk in book form? That might make you
some more money.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
In progress ...

------
rlander
In 2007 I had been working as a network engineer for a big networking vendor
for 6 years, making close to 6 figures. I had also been preparing for 6 months
to pass a very hard networking certification (CCIE), when my boss decided that
he could hire a cheaper engineer and fired me. I had no idea what to do next
but I had lots of free time on my hands. So, when my gf, who was into handmade
crafts, asked me to set up a wordpress blog for her, I immediately decided to
help her (even though I knew nothing of HTML or web development) because my
self-confidence was going down in a spiral to the ground.

The blog made $500 in the first month from Adsense. A year later, close to
$1000 a month. I created a few more websites around the same concept and now I
make close to $2500 a month in passive income, which allowed me to spend a
year studying Python full time (and web development in general) and also lets
me work full time on my startup. I'm not rich, but I make my own time, work on
my own projects and it's a nice sum of money for someone living in Brazil.

~~~
abbacd
would you mind giving an example of one such website ?

~~~
rlander
Not at all. It's in portuguese, tough.

chiclette.com.br

This one hasn't been update in ages, but it used to have a lot of traffic. We
rewrote it in Rails and a few weeks later, for some reason, Google penalised
it.

~~~
djb_hackernews
I don't read portuguese, but it looks like its a gossip aggregator? Would be
interested to know how you juiced a wordpress blog about handmade crafts to
bring in $500/mo.

------
modoc
I wrote 10MinuteMail.com in order to teach myself the JBoss Seam framework. I
hadn't looked to see if there were other sites doing the same thing (there
were), with more features (there were), etc... and never intended to make any
money with it. It got pretty popular and I make a bit on Google Ads. Not
enough to retire on or anything, but it makes low five figures annually.

~~~
hajrice
God! I'd love to talk to you much about this. Please shoot me an email at
hajrice@gmail.com.

------
keltex
Earlier this year somebody contacted me about selling a domain name called
"timemanagementclass.com". It was vaguely related to some other projects we
were doing and we thought it might be useful.

I negotiated hard with the seller and got him down to $200.

Then a week later somebody else called and said he'd wanted the domain and was
too late in responding to the original seller. He WAS really in the time
management space and really wanted the domain. So I sold it to him for $900.

There's a moral to this story:

1\. Always negotiate hard and be willing to walk away if you don't get what
you want. This takes a lot of emotion out of the process.

2\. Don't dither around like the other buyer did. He was part of a large
organization and to actually sell him the domain took almost 6 weeks.

~~~
JshWright
It took a company that teaches people how to manage time 6 weeks to buy one
domain?

------
endlessvoid94
<http://www.ThatHigh.com> \- started in college as a bit of a joke and now
pays my rent in downtown San Francisco.

~~~
kadavy
_I cried because I realized snakes are just tails with faces. That high._

Wow, that's funny. And you just have Google ads and stickers? Seems like you
could make much more off of direct advertisers, or even find something on
CJ.com

EDIT: had to add this link. Haven't laughed this hard in weeks!
<http://www.thathigh.com/stickiest/>

~~~
endlessvoid94
Glad you like it. I honestly have very little experience, I'm learning as I
go. I'd never heard of CJ.com. I was thinking of contacting local businesses,
dispensaries, and doctors (heh) to see if they'd like to advertise on the
site. Not sure of the legality of that though...

~~~
kadavy
I'm having trouble thinking of what offers on CJ would be right for this.
There are Marijuana delivery services in SF, right? You could sign them up and
serve ads locally using Google Ad Manager.

What about HighTimes.com? Maybe they would advertise. Better yet, see who
advertises on HighTimes, and contact those companies.

Do you have a newsletter? You could collect email addresses and send out a
weekly digest or something. Put in a little more time, and offer articles and
tips (?) on smoking weed. Email lists are extremely valuable.

You can definitely make way more than you are already. AdSense ("Webmaster
Welfare") has pathetic CPMs. The ads its serving up on your site are
irrelevant. I know creatives like to smoke weed, but Adobe Creative Suite?
Seriously?

~~~
endlessvoid94
Those are great tips, thanks. I actually have some high profile people
following @thathigh on twitter, namely, Snoop Dogg, Sarah Silverman, Doug
Benson, Bill Maher, and Guy Kawasaki. Not sure how to capitalize on those, as
twitter doesn't send a ton of traffic to the site. Any ideas? :-)

~~~
kadavy
Wow, that's interesting. I guess I would start by just trying to have a
conversation with them on Twitter or something. A retweet from Snoop would be
great!

Or, you could create a little badge on your site for social proof. "We're
followed by..." Keeping it up to date would be a challenge, but they probably
won't unfollow you.

Seriously, e-mail those advertisers though, it will be the easiest money you
ever made. They would love to advertise on your site.

------
qixxiq
I wrote a small Facebook application that let friends send me text messages
from my facebook page for free (using email=>sms that my provider offers). 0
=> 3,000,000 users in a couple of weeks.

~~~
kadavy
Very cool - how did you monetize this?

~~~
maushu
He probably didn't or used ads. He can always use the user base later on for
other projects.

~~~
qixxiq
Used advertising for a while, also switched to paying for messages since it
was still very profitable with the income from advertising (the reason for
getting so many users).

Eventually the cost grew above the income from advertising and I had to cut it
off before making a loss. Still made quite a hefty profit out of the things,
and did use the user base to launch another 3-4 applications.

The whole thing happened while I was traveling on a gap year post high-school.
I know I could have made _a lot_ more out of it if I had decent resources.
With a decent advertiser (one that also paid for a small text advert at the
end of each sms - even a tiny bit for them), I believe I would have earned
5x-10x the amount I did.

Later sold the thing which was a big mistake, although once the users are no
longer active - they had no value. Few days after I sold it Facebook added
methods to message all users with the application installed (a bit spammy -
but sorry :/). Still regret selling it - big mistake.

Either way, used all the income from the application to launch the startup I'm
busy with now :)

~~~
aymeric
Do you know if it is still possible to contact inactive users?

~~~
qixxiq
Not sure, the best way to find out is to install a bunch of spammy
applications and see what they do.

------
mattmaroon
I started blogging for enjoyment long before the word entered the popular
lexicon. That never made a ton of money directly (though it did make some) but
it did indirectly help me land a book deal and start a couple related
businesses that made a lot of money.

It also gave me a chance to figure out how to write and communicate well,
which I think is why we got into Y Combinator. I'd say that writing is
probably the second most valuable life skill (behind understanding the concept
of expected value) that I've picked up to date, and I was abysmal at it before
I started that first Movable Type blog.

So in a roundabout way, blogging has made me a fortune, though I never could
have anticipated it. When I started nobody had made much off of it.

~~~
M_Sanger
Agreed. 90% of the accomplishments on my resume are thanks to writing good
essays in applications and receiving fellowships, internships, and admission
to Stanford. I'd say I'm a competent engineer but nothing extraordinary.
Writing made all the difference.

------
rlpb
I hacked a Linux driver to make a slightly obscure hardware device work in
Ubuntu (to scratch an itch). I spoke to the hardware manufacturer on the way.
I ended up doing some contracting on Linux compatibility for some of their
other products.

------
corin_
I began playing video games... and in the last four years from that I've gone
through a full time job as a journalist in that field (award-winning :P),
gained a lot of experience running large (70,000 person) events, consulting
for companies that create games / hardware / events, and now work in
marketing/various other areas, all in that same industry.

Just because I played games online.

------
edv
I created a social networking software package, initially intended to be
downloaded and used behind their firewall by small and medium companies for
free (<http://www.jouzz.com>). I am currently in discussions with a large
corporation that wants to implement it, paying licenses for all its employees!

------
dkokelley
I accidentally made more money than I planned on when I created a website to
sell those Chronotebooks by Muji (<http://www.coolhunting.com/design/muji-
chronotebo.php>). When they were first offered, the company only sold them in
their store or over the phone. I guessed that there would be people who
preferred to buy over the internet (as it was pretty popular with blogs when
it was launched), so I did the dirty work of ordering in bulk over the phone,
and then selling individually through a website.

I didn't think it would be that popular, but it was around Christmas time when
I started it and I used the profits to buy myself a motorcycle. The funny
thing is sales dropped sharply after Christmas, so I shut down the site. It
was really a fluke that it worked out.

------
HeyLaughingBoy
I built some hardware a few years ago for hobby projects.

Someone came onto a forum asking about a way to read a certain sensor so he
could integrate it with his software. My circuit happened to do what he
needed, so I made a few minor mods and became his hardware supplier for a few
years.

------
jbm
Coming to this late but...

This happened about 10 years ago. I was out in Chinatown and came upon a knock
off of a Transformer I wanted for a long time (G2 Laser Rod Optimus Prime). I
bought him on the spot for 4$ and took him home. When I got back, I wandered
onto Ebay and noticed it was selling for quite a bit of money. I went ahead
and listed it (with specific mention of it being a knockoff) and left it
there.

7 days later, it was sold for USD 50$.

I later found the company that was importing them and bought 30 from them. I
went ahead and made quite a bit of profit (for a University student anyway)
before getting out of that game.

------
mattmight
Blogging.

I have lots of posts that rank well for obscure technical terms in programming
languages and computer science.

I have a comfortable job (I'm a prof in CS), so I don't really need the extra
money, but to my surprise, I get about $300/month now.

That's up from $10/month a year ago.

If it keeps growing like that, I won't be able to "ignore" it for much longer.

At the moment, I'm doing it all with Google AdSense and book referrals to
Amazon.

I'm sure if I spent more time on it, I could do a better job of monetizing it.

But, I'm not even sure what I'd do next.

~~~
kadavy
Yeah, dude - get direct advertisers and you can probably bump that up to
$3k/mo.

~~~
mattmight
Selling my own ads seems like a lot of work.

Any advice?

~~~
kadavy
See my advice to endlessvoid94: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1509160>

------
hwang89
I spent my free time on Digg during high school in 2006 and it led to a $1000
a month gig at Netscape.

~~~
tobtoh
Are you able to provide more detail? Digg -> X -> Netscape missed quite a bit
at step X :)

~~~
cfinke
Henry was one of top Digg users who was hired by Jason Calacanis to grow the
Netscape (now Propeller) social news site.

~~~
hwang89
Hey Chris!

------
Asa-Nisse
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