Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have? - somid3
======
venusflytrap90
New account because I don't want my employers knowing.

My sideproject on iOS and Android generates 1.1M a year. About 90-100k a
month.

I'm still employed because the app runs on its own, very low maintenance, so
might as well get a salary doing something else and learn new things

~~~
akhilcacharya
My question is how do you still have employers when you're making 1.1M a year.
Jeez.

~~~
Zenfinch
Certainly is amazing!

I want to know the secrets to being such a good company and/or manager that
you can keep someone earning 1.1m on your staff!

~~~
venusflytrap90
Lots and lots of work! Go home at 6pm, work till midnight. Eventually it paid
off for me but a lot of times I thought it was just digging a hole to nowhere.

~~~
jaredsohn
I think the GP was asking about how your company/manager is able to keep you
working there.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd guess it's not the company keeping GP there; it's GP choosing not to
leave.

~~~
venusflytrap90
You got it! Nothing that special about the company but it's in a good enough
space that I choose to hang around and learn as much as I can about the space.

------
ruler88
I run this website: [http://step2scheduling.com](http://step2scheduling.com)
It is solving the problem of scheduling step 2 CS exam for medical students.
It uses selenium to refresh and check for schedule openings and automatically
book tests for students. I coded it up for my G/F some time ago when she
needed to schedule a test and couldn't find an opening. Now I'm making
$500/month for doing next to nothing.

~~~
jtfairbank
Very interesting! I founded ReSchedule Med
([https://reschedulemed.com](https://reschedulemed.com)) to solve scheduling
problems that residency programs have. Our solution is quite different but
it's so cool that you've worked on a medical scheduling app- quite the niche
space.

I'd love to chat! Email is in my profile if you're interested.

------
bcruddy
A buddy and I started [https://goatattack.com](https://goatattack.com) last
year. It doesn't generate a ton of revenue but we enjoy it and people seem to
like it. It runs itself at this point.

~~~
equasar
Any plan to support international numbers? That would be nice.

~~~
bcruddy
As soon as Twilio supports it. Right now it looks like they've added Canada so
I need to add that to the website. [https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/sms/can-i-
send-or-receive-mm...](https://www.twilio.com/help/faq/sms/can-i-send-or-
receive-mms-messages)

------
swalsh
I built a drop-ship site, it started as a way to play with some ideas I had at
work. As a platform, I think it can scale pretty well... it has a super
flexible EDI system allowing me to automate suppliers, inventory system,
custom website, order management system, advertising feeds etc. It's built to
handle thousands of suppliers, products, and orders, and has all the bells and
whistles.

But I only really make enough to afford enough beer to wash away my regrets of
spending so much time building this thing.

~~~
hbhakhra
I attempted a drop shipping site as well, didn't go anywhere. Thankfully I
used wordpress to set it up so not too much of a time waste, but only after
building it did I realize its all about marketing your product. Not only that,
the drop shipping suppliers are supplying to anyone that wants to do it, so
there is plenty of competition.

~~~
swalsh
I think drop shipping can be a very profitable business model, but it doesn't
work for things with brand names. If you can google the product easily you're
going to end up competing on price, and then the big guys with better pricing
deals will win every time.

------
risingasia
Generating about 16k/mo after about 6 months building an Amazon FBA business
selling private label goods from Alibaba. Spend about 1 hour per week managing
inventory, the rest (shipping, returns, support) is automated through Amazon
and other various services.

~~~
pwrdbyryce
I'm interested in something like this. May I pm you?

~~~
risingasia
Yea sure, there is definitely a learning curve but simple once you know what
to look out for.

------
logfromblammo
I wrote an e-book novel. So far, I have made about $24. I probably spent more
than that on the electricity to run Notepad++ and 7-Zip, but OP asked for
"revenue-generating", not "profitable".

It's not bad writing; I'm just terrible at sales/promotion. I don't really do
it for the money, anyway.

------
nfriedly
I built [http://www.whatsmyua.com/](http://www.whatsmyua.com/) for myself back
in college, it reports and breaks down browser's User Agent strings. It now
brings in $20-30/month via adsense.

I also built [https://github.com/nfriedly/node-
unblocker](https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker) around the same time,
it's a web proxy for evading government/corporate/school/etc. filters. When I
had a copy of it online, it got a lot of traffic from around the world, and
used to earn anywhere from $10 to $100/month from adsense, depending on the
month. However, it wasn't worth the effort of keeping it online due to abuse +
clueless sysadmins.

Unblocker also earned me a consulting fee a couple of times from folks who
wanted help integrating it into their project, and I ended up converting it
from a standalone site to an Express middleware to make that easier.

~~~
palerdot
I couldn't see any ads on your "whatsmyua" site. Is there anything you control
on when and when not to show ads? Also, I would like to know whether that
20-30$ is consistent over months.

Nice site by the way

~~~
nfriedly
There's a single adsense banner between the big user agent string and the JSON
details, and just the standard adsense code, nothing to disable it. Google
might just not have had any inventory when you checked (or you have an
adblocker?)

And, looking at my history, "$20-30" is accurate for the past few months, but
it was lower further back. This is the past 12 months, starting at July 2015:
$12.41, 4.40, 21.29, 16.12, 13.38, 12.96, 15.56, 11.52, 23.93, 26.04, 23.84,
30.56.

It's been online since 2011 and more or less trending upwards, but last month
was the first time ever to break $30.

------
jcdavis
Standard trolling-but-not-entirely answer, I'll probably get $8-10k worth of
dividends this year from investing and holding in a bunch of low-cost index
funds.

~~~
hbhakhra
I actually appreciated your answer, because its easy to lose sight of truly
passive options to make money. If you don't mind, how much do you have to
invest to get that $8-$10k worth of dividends?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Unless my math is horribly wrong, $8,000/year of dividends in an ETF like SDY
would cost you about $400,000 right now.

~~~
talloaktrees
that sounds roughly correct

------
charlieegan3
I've been running [http://serializer.io](http://serializer.io) for over a
year. I get $3 a month as a recurring donation.

------
sii
Me and the wife started [https://arnestorp.se](https://arnestorp.se) (Swedish)
selling babynests about a year ago, along side two regular jobs.

It's been steadily increasing in sales volume to the point where my wife has
cut some hours from her regular job to be able to keep up.

As she does all the real work (sewing) I've been able to focus on fun stuff
like automating all the payment handling, bookkeeping, shipping etc.

~~~
blue11
Babynests seem to be a Nordic thing, I guess? Personally, I had never heard of
them until I read your comment. For what it's worth, the US market seems to be
quite unexplored, something you might want to consider. They look really cool,
although there might be some safety concerns. I think that US pediatricians
are currently unanimously recommending flat empty cribs / bassinets (no side
padding or loose blankets) for newborns.

------
acconrad
I DJ and coach powerlifting on the side, that earns me about $500/mo - not all
side hustles are tech-related :)

------
maplethorpej
I'm running a website called Narrow ([http://narrow.io](http://narrow.io)) on
the side. It's a Twitter marketing automation company that was started not for
the love of Twitter but the desire to get the benefits of Twitter without
having to do a lot of work. Lazy, I know, but I'm a programmer after all. Let
the computer do the work.

------
rockdiesel
[https://hackerlists.com/](https://hackerlists.com/) \- The goal is to create
awesome lists of hacking & programming related resources for people to
reference. I've had a couple of lists do really well on social media so far
[1][2], but I'm quickly learning that my knowledge limitations are preventing
me from creating the quality of lists that I want the site to be known for.
Therefore, I'm starting to put my energy into finding a freelance writer with
a technical background that can write at the quality level I want for the
site. But so far I've broken even in the first month.

[1] [https://hackerlists.com/hacking-sites/](https://hackerlists.com/hacking-
sites/)

[2] [https://hackerlists.com/free-machine-learning-
books/](https://hackerlists.com/free-machine-learning-books/)

------
talloaktrees
I created a mobile game in 2014 that gets about 300 new users a day and
generates about $1000 in pre-tax revenue a month

~~~
ashishb4u
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jrenner.su...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jrenner.superior&hl=en)
?

------
raben_
I run [https://ubersuggest.io](https://ubersuggest.io) a simple keyword
suggestion tool. On average I have 80k monthly unique users.

~~~
rockdiesel
I'm quite surprised that you only average 80k uniques/month. With how much I
see this tool being recommended throughout the SEO community, I thought it
would've been a lot more.

Have other similar tools cut into your traffic?

~~~
raben_
I think this is due to the fact that in web marketing many people love to talk
about tools they actually don't use (that much). By the way my traffic
slightly increased over the last few months.

------
dtougas
When I am not doing software development, I like spending time hiking and
backpacking in the outdoors. In 2014 my family and I successfully thru-hiked
the Appalachian Trail. To fund the project we produced a video series about
the hike, which we sold on a subscription basis. We launched a Kickstarter
project to pre-sell a bunch of subscriptions
([https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dtougas/beyond-our-
boun...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dtougas/beyond-our-boundaries-a-
family-backpacking-video-s?ref=user_menu)). We now have the video series for
sale on Vimeo
([https://vimeo.com/ondemand/boundaries](https://vimeo.com/ondemand/boundaries))
which sells a little bit of something every month (not a lot).

My next side project has been to create a social/micro-blogging platform for
outdoor enthusiasts ([https://outsideways.com/](https://outsideways.com/)). It
currently isn't generating any revenue (it just launched in May), but I have
big plans for it if/when it gets a core group of users contributing regularly.

------
Maven911
I don't have a project but I have always been wondering if there is some open-
source style software (with a license that allows this of course) that would
let me customize the software and sell it to other businesses and get small
recurring income as a SaaS product (like $70 a month). Think small restaurant
inventory management, pricing, CRM, software for real estate brokers to manage
clients, dentist online appointment tracker etc. etc.

Thoughts ?

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
You don't need to for most open-source software. You are free to take any
GPLv2 software, modify it and host it on your own servers and charge a usage
fee, all without publicly releasing your changes - it's an unforeseen catch in
certain open-source licenses that only requires source release if the customer
can get their hands on the binaries - if it's accessed through a browser or
over the network then they lose that privilege.

~~~
anilgulecha
This is what AGPL fixes, BTW. That's why many web based tools are under AGPL.

------
cbeley
I've been running Flextory ([http://flextory.com](http://flextory.com)) for
years now. However, the revenue it makes is pretty small now and customers
have dropped off as more niche solutions come into existence.

I've thought about selling it or even just open sourcing it though. Maybe one
day. It's been a really fun project though.

------
kingkool68
[http://dummyimage.com](http://dummyimage.com) does fairly well considering I
haven't touched it since it appeared on Hacker News in 2010
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1077013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1077013)

~~~
rockdiesel
How well does Carbon Ads perform?

Have you compared it against something like Google Adsense?

~~~
kingkool68
$10 - $40 a month depending on traffic. Seems to be higher earning than
Adsense.

~~~
rockdiesel
Thanks for the info. I might give it a look.

------
iguanayou
I'm running a test prep class for the new FAA Remote Pilot License, which will
be required this fall for all non-hobby drone operators:
[http://twincitiesdroneschool.com](http://twincitiesdroneschool.com)

------
someotheridiot
[https://rebrickable.com](https://rebrickable.com) \- A LEGO database that
shows you which sets you can build from your existing collection, also
includes thousands of fan-submitted designs.

------
scoj
I built my first SaaS app [http://sharpplm.com](http://sharpplm.com), Quote
Management for manufacturing companies. It has been pretty much autopilot and
is still making $2k per year.

I am currently working on [http://gemssports.com](http://gemssports.com). It
is activity, payments, member management for sports companies. Think sports
trainers, tournaments, softball teams, etc. We are just getting rolling but
having some good success.

------
DaiPlusPlus
About six years ago I pretty-much single handedly wrote the entire backend for
[http://www.ComedyCalls.com](http://www.ComedyCalls.com) and other sites like
[http://www.WakeUpDialer.com](http://www.WakeUpDialer.com),
[http://www.CallMyLostPhone.com](http://www.CallMyLostPhone.com),
[http://www.BirthdayDialer.com](http://www.BirthdayDialer.com), and others -
see the links in the footer. The PSTN system is all in-house (and we pay a LOT
less per-call than what Twilio, for example, charges).

I have a 25% stake in the company - but I don't get much money myself, less
than $1000/mo on average. This is because of our thin margins, and because my
other business partners own the other 75% (50% is owned by the founder who
created the sites back in 2008 using cheap outsourced labour that I was
brought in to rewrite) and the other 25% is owned by another person for
historical reasons. Furthermore because none of us spend much time on it
anymore - or get much money from it - we're all very hesitant to spend money
on marketing or advertising (we got marketing quotes starting at $5000/mo -
and my co-owners are unconvinced that advertising would help at all), hence
the impasse.

We do plan to create some new additional sites and services that have higher
margins, including launching a "Twilio-lite"-like API which would offer much
less functionality (as our backend is not as sophisticated as theirs) but
would also cost less per-call. But that, too, would require marketing to get
the word out.

If anyone here is a VC or is otherwise interested in investing for marketing,
or is a marketing expert yourself, or interested in using our system - we'd be
happy to talk a deal.

We did sell one of our older sites to a web publishing company a few years ago
that went for almost a six-figure value - but unfortunately for me, that was
after I wrote the entire stack, but before I was granted part-ownership (so I
was just paid for my time: 3 hours to set a clone of the system up on the
buyer's infrastructure).

One of my "rivals" \- the creator of WakeUp.io posted his site to last month's
"Show HN" thread, now it's my turn :)

------
MikeTV
[https://www.versionsql.com](https://www.versionsql.com) \- Version control
add-in for SQL Server Management Studio. Built it for myself after lamenting a
lack of affordable source control options for SQL Server -- turns out there's
other people in the same situation :-)

------
Tharkun
I run a small platform for a couple of web designing friends. They can deploy
webshops at the touch of a button while having full control over the design.
It saves them the effort of having to ask more techy folks for assistance, and
it lets me focus on more interesting things.

Started off at 3k EUR revenue a year, currently at about 2k. It doesn't cost
me any effort.

~~~
throwawayawaya
Would be interested in this. Are you looking for a new customer?

~~~
Tharkun
I would be interested, but the way it's set up is kind of tailored to the way
my friends work. It would take some time to make it more generally useful. I
think there other platforms out there that do the same thing in a more generic
fashion.

------
jackmott
A new website for sports timing data for Alphamantis
[http://alphamantis.com/](http://alphamantis.com/)

Written in F# using the Suave.IO functional web libraries. It will be a site
coaches/athletes can use to view/analyze data from their workouts, races etc.
Lots of tables, graphs. Runs on Linux cloud vms.

------
roschdal
[https://play.freeciv.org](https://play.freeciv.org) generates revenue with
ads.

------
cantbecool
[https://moviemagnet.net](https://moviemagnet.net) I don't make more than a
few quid extra over hosting costs each month.

------
johnflan
Apart from venusflytrap90, it seems that not many devs have profitable side
incomes -- or maybe are not willing to speak about them.

~~~
MrMember
I would guess some people who had a profitable side project turned it into
their primary source of income. Someone making $1000 a month from a side
project can't afford to quit their day job. Someone making $10k a month from a
side project can probably afford to quit their job and make the side project
their primary focus.

------
kevan
None anymore, my new contract explicitly disallows side ventures. But about a
year ago a friend and I built a screenshot-sharing service when CloudApp
raised their prices. It's basically a dock app that watches for new
screenshots and auto-uploads to the cloud, the same thing Dropbox and tons of
others do. We never made money off of it, but learning stuff like how to
incorporate and some new tech was worthwhile.

------
ajiang
Job hunting ;)

In all honesty, I find that when people working full-time jobs look for side
projects, either their not happy with the job they have or their job underpays
them. (That's not to say that working on fun side projects that happen to lead
to revenue is a bad thing, but seeking side project revenue is not a great
indicator).

Things that I've heard from friends: \- Shopify sites \- Consulting \-
Tutoring / teaching \- Affiliate sales

~~~
jonknee
> In all honesty, I find that when people working full-time jobs look for side
> projects, either their not happy with the job they have or their job
> underpays them.

Or they just don't get fulfilled spending all day making someone else rich?

~~~
patrickgordon
To add to this, I also don't get to program as part of my day job so it let's
me scratch my creative/building and making itch that I do not get as a
business analyst.

