How much money are you earning from your software products? - ericthegoodking
======
dangrossman
Improvely ([https://www.improvely.com](https://www.improvely.com)) passed
$10k/mo RR not too long ago and is about a year old. I run several other SaaS
sites with a couple thousand a month in revenue each. It's enough that I never
regret turning down the standing job offers I had at the end of college 3
years ago.

Nothing really compared to the short-lived but very successful WordPress
plugins I used to build and sell. A few days' work could turn into the
equivalent of a year's salary. One had over $250,000 in sales in 18 months
before I sold rights to it for another $90,000 to another company. I don't
work with WordPress much anymore, and don't have much motivation to force
myself back into that ecosystem to sell more plugins. It just wasn't as fun as
running live services that handle lots of users and _lots_ of data.

~~~
peacemaker
Hey Dan,

I'm selling Wordpress plugins right now with nothing near the same success as
you. Do you think it's a market that is too saturated to achieve the level of
sales you saw?

I'd also love to hear how you managed to attract the number of users to your
website that gave you over $250k in sales? It's something I'm having trouble
with right now and any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

~~~
dangrossman
> Do you think it's a market that is too saturated to achieve the level of
> sales you saw?

Not at all. There are thousands of plugins, but there are 72 million WordPress
sites.

~~~
peacemaker
True. My thoughts too which is why I got into doing this about 6 months ago
but since I've only had limited success I've had a few doubts recently.

I wish I could find a really good online marketing guide. One aimed at
developers would be perfect. It seems there is no shortage of "learn
programming" resources out there but marketing courses always seem so scammy.

------
patio11
Bingo Card Creator will probably come in at about $30k profit for the year,
which is a disappointment, but not enough of one to justify working on it.
(Sales are down due to Google sending less organic and AdWords traffic, though
costs are down impressively too, due to less AdWords.)

I don't talk numbers about Appointment Reminder, but suffice it to say that
it's both modestly successful and on the Long Slow SaaS Ramp of Death.

I get about $1.5k in monthly royalties from book sales and in residual sales
of the course on Lifecycle emails that I did last year. Hoping to launch
another project like that in the near future and plow some of the profits back
into AR - people are expensive.

~~~
jasonkester
_" Long Slow SaaS Ramp of Death"_

I've always liked that term (which I presume you used ironically). It's the
most pessimistic way one could possibly describe the state of "If I don't ever
touch anything from here on out, I'm still pretty much set for life."

I assume it was a Venture Capitalist who coined it, since VCs don't like
profitable companies that get slightly more profitable month after month.
_People_ , however, pretty much universally would think that was a rather nice
predicament to be in.

Congrats on the Ramping!

~~~
patio11
The first time I heard it was Gail Goodman's eponymous talk at BoS 2012. It
refers to the unlikelihood that you'll have a hockey stick revenue curve. Most
SaaS businesses add recurring revenue fairly slowly and steadily, over time,
and take a long while until they get to the "totally milk it!" part of the
model.

~~~
jasonkester
Indeed, but to a one man shop, being stuck in the flat part of the curve at,
say, $2k/month in profit and growing by $100/month/month is a completely
different thing to a 10 man shop at the same place.

One venture is about to fold. The other can safely quit its day job and start
entrepreneuring full time without having to worry about starving in the
immediate future.

------
euroclydon
I make $300-$500/mo. with
[http://www.makecupcakewrappers.com](http://www.makecupcakewrappers.com)

I started it three years ago with a single web page and an email-me-when-
it's-ready form. I barely got enough emails (50-60) in the first couple months
to justify moving forward. But I did, with three designs and a simple design-
by-form interface. Fast forward to today and I have dozens of templates and a
custom drag and drop interface done in canvas. I have a pretty good conversion
rate given that I only get ~90 uniques per day.

~~~
KevinUK
It's interesting that you have adwords on your homepage. Does it bring in any
revenue? To me it detracts from the overall look of the site. I just Googled
custom cupcake design and you are 4th, maybe there just aren't that many
people after the service?

~~~
euroclydon
I plastered them all over the site in an experiment to see if I could move to
100% ad based monitization since so many visitors are just looking for free
printables, but they only make like $50/mo. So I need to remove them. I just
haven't gotten around to it yet. The whole site is just a playground at this
point since the search volume indicates I'm close to maxing out the potential
revenue. My next move is to package the technology as _Custom Designed
Printable X_ for your business and sell it along with a setup and maintenance
fee.

------
dennisgorelik
[http://www.postjobfree.com](http://www.postjobfree.com) ~$19K/month revenue
-- mostly premium subscriptions from recruiters for job advertising and resume
contacts, but also job alerts, revenue from sending job applications to job
network and AdSense (in declining revenue order).

If it looks inspiring, keep in mind that:

1) It's revenue, not profit.

2) PostJobFree took about 4 years part-time + 2 years full-time.

3) I'm not doing it alone.

4) I still would be better off financially if I just worked as a programmer
for hire.

Startups are tough.

~~~
alandarev
That is fascinating. A year ago I had a talk with a friend about doing exactly
same, but in Russia. Though I had strong concerns on how will the job-sites
react on us automating the process and potentially spamming their boards.

I am curious, on how are you posting the jobs? Have you made an agreement with
these websites, are they willing to provide an API at some cost? Or, simply,
pretending being a human and submitting form POST requests?

Great job on the service, not only it looks promising, but is essentially
improving lives of many people.

------
bensmiley
I make around $600 per month on
[http://www.binpress.com](http://www.binpress.com). I sell 6 software
components for iOS. Most of them were component that I had already developed
for other projects. I just tidied them up and made them available for
purchase. The income's very passive - max 2 hours a week. Here's a link to my
profile: [http://www.binpress.com/profile/ben-
smiley/14290](http://www.binpress.com/profile/ben-smiley/14290)

~~~
mdolon
Great job with the site, it looks very clean!

------
waleedka
Symphony makes $2500/month
([http://www.symphonytools.com](http://www.symphonytools.com)). Launched 4
months ago. Back in December, my co-founder and I spent 3 weeks brainstorming
and wrote 25 business plans for 25 ideas. And then chose this one. Started
building it in January.

It's written in Python. Hosting costs about $700/month on Google App Engine.
It doesn't cover our costs yet, but it's growing. Hardest challenge so far has
been to find ways to let the world know about it.

~~~
heliodor
Why are you still on GAE if it costs that much? I learned Django and migrated
my projects off GAE a year ago. It was rather painless to learn the bits of
Django needed to replace GAE, and looking back it was a great move.

~~~
waleedka
I think of it as paying a little extra to outsource the boring parts of my job
to Google. I don't worry about sharding, load balancing, replication, ...etc.
I've done those in the past, and it wasn't that exciting. I like spending my
time on code, and it lets me build things faster.

App Engine has it's disadvantages as well. At one point I used typhoonae (open
source framework that let's you run you GAE apps on EC2) and was about to
switch, and then decided against it.

------
dannowatts
have a few side projects. here's a fun one:

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

it is making absolutely zero money (yet), but the engagement on the site is
INSANE. also, the site itself, and the people who come to it (and
email/tweet/blog/instagram/vine/smoke signals/carrier pigeon/etc about it) are
passionate and willing to support craft beer.

besides the benefit of interacting with super cool, kick-ass people who love
craft beer, i've also been in touch with some breweries who are wanting to
partner on a multitude of things, and i've been invited to come brew a batch
at a few of them, with the head brewers!

so to summarize:

• making no money on this side project.

• not losing any money on this side project.

• over 75 million hits since launch, over 1 million people and over 50 million
suggestions every month.

• fuckloads of fun interacting with the craft beer lovers and the craft beer
world.

• the amount of engagement the site has will help support _the next phase_
which __will __make money :)

• ...

• profit!!

~~~
bascule
It told me to go fuck myself when I put in Mephistopheles Stout by Avery. I
think it's broken

~~~
fphhotchips
It told me Victoria Bitter made me a God among men, but Coopers Pale Ale
bagged me "Nut Smuggler".

Definitely broken, VB is worse than sea water.

~~~
dannowatts
see my response below. or you're wrong. yeah... you're wrong ;)

------
huhtenberg
Carmack, Romero and two other guys were making $60K a month from Commander
Keen in its shareware format. That's _after_ Apogee's 60% cut.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander_Keen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander_Keen)

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Culture/dp/0812972155) \- highly recommended, really good read

------
pchaso
Well here is my journey. A few months ago, I built a vertical jobs board
platform, free for developers and paid by companies announcing their job
offers (yes another one).

The numbers:

I launched during summer and have made around $200.

Have 1125 developers subscribed to daily alerts

Have processed around 1500 applications for 81 jobs posted (most of them
through 100% discount tickets given away)

The idea was not very well thought, but something simple to start with. I used
it to start gaining experience and also to start building a reusable code base
(mailing, billing, etc) that would let me move faster with future products,
not expecting to make any money at all from it. As a single
founder/developer/designer/sysadmin/marketer/support guy etc, I found it very
hard to accomplish, but very rewarding once it was launched.

I built a few sites:

for django jobs: [http://djangojobbers.com](http://djangojobbers.com)

for ruby on rails jobs: [http://railsjobbers.com](http://railsjobbers.com)

I also have boards for javascript, php, java, android or ios, but with not a
lot of subscribers, so they are free for publishers for now. The links are
[http://php.jobbersnet.com](http://php.jobbersnet.com),
[http://ios.jobbersnet.com](http://ios.jobbersnet.com), etc

Now I am getting ready to launch a new thing (identee.com) to help low level
users increase their security by storing their usernames & passwords encrypted
in the cloud.

~~~
cpher
That's funny, for a few years, I had gisjobbers.com registered but never got
around to building the site. I think I got the idea from an open source
"jobbers" codebase. Was this your inspiration too?

~~~
pchaso
Not really, it was just the result of twisting a few related words until
finding a non registered domain not sounding too bad :-)

------
bemmu
Fan of the Week plugin for Facebook pages. It chooses one fan each week and
highlights them, kind of like an employee of the month.
[http://www.fanpageapps.com/](http://www.fanpageapps.com/)

Last month made $474.85 from premium upgrades, $152.53 from ads. The servers
cost $144.63.

The app has been added to 601,409 Facebook pages so far. For each of these
pages I do a weekly dance with FB to look at their feed, see if access tokens
are still valid for automatic posting etc., so it makes for a pretty
interesting server usage pattern.
[http://i.imgur.com/Q1WylAY.png](http://i.imgur.com/Q1WylAY.png)

------
lemonberry
I love these posts. They are super inspirational. I'm a relatively new
developer and have some saas ideas geared towards restaurants and bars. I'm
hoping 18 years of domain knowledge and great customer service skills will
trump any lack in developer skills that I have.

Congratulations to everyone that's found success doing this. And a huge go for
it to those of you on the fence of writing your own product.

~~~
w0rd-driven
If you have customer service skills that rival development work, there's a lot
of people who are precisely flipped, myself included. I would suggest finding
a Yin to your Yang, but only if you felt inclined. Its not to stick you with
the customer facing parts only. It could be a mentor/partnership where you
build that up in someone while they mentor/partner your developer chops. This
may be unmanageable and hard to find the right fit where you aren't the one
giving more than taking. I just think there's some pretty high value in domain
knowledge and customer service skills that if you have deficiencies that
eventually halt progress, finding someone to throw you over a wall is a
definite advantage. I just got a flash of coop games like splinter cell and
the analogy seems way too spot on. Co-founders should help you reach places
neither of you could alone in a "single player game". Now if I could just
remember this when the time comes to put myself on the market, so to speak :>.

~~~
lemonberry
Thanks for the comment. I think there's a lot of truth to what you have to
say. At this point it's about building up enough trust with someone that I'd
want to take them on as a partner. And vice versa as well.

------
AVTizzle
SimpleCrew ([http://www.SimpleCrew.com](http://www.SimpleCrew.com) \- a mobile
photo app for businesses, real estate investors, marketing street teams,
etc...) is earning $1,600/mo RR right now... ~35 customers averaging just
under $50/mo per customer.

The number isn't enough to support us in the US yet, but it excites us
regardless because of its implications. Between the revenue and usage (weekly
photo totals are consistently up and to the right) we believe we're on a
reliable path to financial sustainability with this one:

Assuming ARPU stays at $50, we're earning 6 figures per founder (ignoring
costs, just revenue) at just 333 customers, and we'll reach 7-figure earnings
at 1,666 customers.

Those numbers are completely doable! God bless the economics of monthly
recurring revenue, and DHH for spelling it out so clearly in his Startup
School '08 presi (on YouTube). I can say without irony that that video has
deeply influenced the course of my life.

~~~
jonathanwallace
Watch out for patents in the US. I worked on a similar MVP for a client a few
years ago and he did some patent research and did not move forward because of
what he found.

------
jonasvp
My side project [http://www.browser-details.com](http://www.browser-
details.com) is doing about $100/month right now. I haven't started to do any
marketing yet as I want to give it a small makeover before.

It started as a tool for my company so I know there's a need for it - not sure
yet how to best market it, though.

~~~
discreditable
Just a little note, your browser-dection page seems to be missing its Windows
8.1 icon (the icon image 404s).

~~~
jonasvp
Wow, thanks - I'll get that fixed up.

------
msurguy
Making around 500$/month from a carbon ad on my
[http://bootsnipp.com](http://bootsnipp.com) (free Bootstrap snippets), plus a
couple hundred from affiliate income that I link to from the site... Time
spent originally was 4 days.

Released a new improved version of the site two weeks ago (the rewrite took
about 60-80 hours total but has bigger potential for the site). Now thinking
of selling templates or skins on the site too - that would be a whole lot more
$ than the ad...

~~~
hcho
I think you site is the second best thing that happened to design challenged
after bootstrap. Thanks for all the work.

I have a feeling that if you set up an online course which teaches how to
design using bootstrap, it could sell pretty well.

~~~
msurguy
Thanks for the warm feedback =) I will be speaking about Bootstrap at Socal
Code Camp this Saturday, maybe will do a quick poll about what people would
pay for, course or videos or skins/templates, etc :)

------
robotmay
Currently [https://www.photographer.io](https://www.photographer.io) is
costing me about £100 a month to run, as its income is only via referrals to
Digital Ocean until I add a subscription model. I've been holding off for a
few months as I don't feel happy charging for something which I still feel is
incomplete; at what point do other people feel happy charging users for their
products?

I'm thinking of offering early adopters a significant discount for helping pay
for the costs whilst the site develops, as it's nowhere near the point where
I'd be happy charging a similar amount to Flickr/500px yet. However the
popularity of the project has helped me out personally; I've been offered a
number of jobs due to my increased visibility as a developer.

~~~
scoot
> I don't feel happy charging for something which I still feel is incomplete

It's not so much a question of what you feel happy charging for, as what your
customers are happy paying for. The only way to find out is to add paid tiers
and see what happens. You can always round out the feature set by adding
additional 'premium' features to the paid tiers - free upgrades for paying
customers!

~~~
robotmay
Aye I have a number of features planned which will need subscriptions. One of
them is the ability to host your own portfolio site on the platform, which I'm
planning to add fairly soon as I need it for my brother's and father's
websites :D

~~~
yourmailman
Always charge and set your price high unless your running a freemium model.
Its much easier to lower your price than raise it. And if your customers pay
and are upset you can always refund them.

------
simondlr
I created [http://www.twimemachine.com](http://www.twimemachine.com). Costs
only about $6 a month to run (S3 static costs). And I make between $70 - $100
a month from just the one ad box on it. Pocket money that usually goes into
buying some more Bitcoin.

~~~
ericthegoodking
nice! thanks for sharing

------
sumang
Making 500 Euro per month and after expenses I am making 450 euro . My first
customer and 110 customers in beta list which I am going to starting releasing
beta next week . here is the product .
[http://bit.ly/HDcvfA](http://bit.ly/HDcvfA)

~~~
ericthegoodking
This is inspirational! are you working on it alone or do you have a "team"?

~~~
sumang
got 2 freelancers , but as a founder , I am alone. I am a 2 time failed
entrepreneur and both times Investors rejected my startup just bcoz I am a
single founder, but still fighting alone to show what a one person can do :)

------
throwaway697596
Sorry about the throwaway account. Would rather not link the numbers to the
site at this point. Revenue about $60k/month; fairly even mix of affiliate
programs (mostly a couple big ones) and advertising (mostly adsense/ad
exchange). Earnings before taxes and my draw ~ $500k/year.

Have tried out many alternate ad networks and exchanges, and the only other
one I've found worth taking space from google so far is AOL's new
Advertising.com. Individual relationships and niche affiliates can be
worthwhile too, but come with more overhead. I'd generally rather optimize UX
and try to attract more users than worry about managing a bunch of advertiser
relationships. For a larger or smaller site that would probably change though.

~~~
ericthegoodking
Very inspirational! I have got few questions (1) From your own experience what
marketing strategy would you recommend that has worked for your software
products? (2) How did you come up with the idea? (3) Are you working alone?

Thanks.

------
crazygringo
Around $150-300/mo. with [http://testyourvocab.com](http://testyourvocab.com)
from Google AdSense. Tells you the size of your English vocabulary. And it was
HN which popularized it in the first place!

~~~
clearfont
just checked out your site, i think its decent it would be great if you made
it easier to tick the words, its difficult to pin point and click too many
check boxes

~~~
samweinberg
You can use tab + space instead of clicking.

------
amplification
After doing a lot of listening in forums, on my email list, etc... I launched
[http://jfdi.bz](http://jfdi.bz) as a response to a common pain I kept seeing:
there's so many people building products by themselves (alone in their
basements). They want a social connection with other folks who are doing the
same thing (more here: [http://jfdi.bz/guide.pdf](http://jfdi.bz/guide.pdf))

Did a small launch in August. It's now just over $1,000/month in revenue. I
use WPEngine to host the site. It's built mostly on the open source BuddyPress
platform.

~~~
alandarev
> Registration will be open until Friday, November 6th.

Uh? Is it Friday today? I am unsure whether I shall hurry, or the site wasn't
updated for years.

------
jay_kyburz
Neptune's Pride 2, an online strategy game is only doing $2500 a month.
[http://triton.ironhelmet.com](http://triton.ironhelmet.com)

I'm looking for remote work if you're hiring.

~~~
QuantumDoja
Hi, How are you making money form this? ~ curious

~~~
jay_kyburz
I sell premium accounts that let you create your own private games with custom
settings.

------
zupitor
Worked on
VineTube([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsinthe....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appsinthe.apps.vinetube)).
It was turning in $2000/mo in revenue before we sold it for $7000.

~~~
sumedh
If it was making 2k per month why did you sell it for just 7k, seems to low.
You should have asked for a higher price.

~~~
zupitor
Vine for android as well as Instagram video had been launched, usage went too
low. We couldn't find someone willing to pay more.

------
mmorey
$1000 to $2000 per month (winter vs summer) from Buoy Explorer iPhone app
[1][2]. I plan on releasing an update for iOS 7 in the near future.

The backstory on why and how I created it is available on my blog[3].

[1] [http://buoyexplorer.com/](http://buoyexplorer.com/)

[2] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/buoy-explorer-noaa-
marine/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/buoy-explorer-noaa-
marine/id593296099?mt=8&at=10l6oV)

[3] [http://matthewmorey.com/buoy-explorer/](http://matthewmorey.com/buoy-
explorer/)

------
dooyogi
I make about 100 Euro/mo with PhotoSlim
([http://photoslimhq.com](http://photoslimhq.com)), a simple windows software
to reduce the size of pictures. I built it although there are lot's of apps
for image resizing. But they all had either too many options or were too
complicated. So i tried to build the simplest possible solution for this
problem. I didn't really believe, that anyone would buy it, since there are a
lot of free alternatives. So I am quite happy with the outcome.

~~~
kawsper
Oh nice, looks kind of like [http://imageoptim.com/](http://imageoptim.com/)

We are mostly using OSX, but it is really a struggle to learn people to run
their images through an optimizer.

------
thenduks
Bugrocket ([https://bugrocket.com](https://bugrocket.com), since March 2011,
bug tracking for small dev teams) is subscription-based and grows slowly,
currently around $500/month in revenue.

CourseCraft ([https://coursecraft.net](https://coursecraft.net), since
December 2012, e-course creator tools + we handle transactions for 5%-9% of
sales) is a lot less consistent but growing faster, currently $300-$400/month
in revenue.

------
zrail
Mastering Modern Payments[1] has earned more than $14k in revenue since I
launched it in the middle of August. Real ongoing costs are $5/mo for the VM
that the sales application sits on, and that's basically it. I figured that I
broke even for time-spent when it hit $7k.

[1]: [https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-
payments](https://www.petekeen.net/mastering-modern-payments)

------
habosa
Zero now. Was a time when I was making $100/mo from ads on my free Android app
(took the ads off, now it's just free as in free) and I sold another Android
app for $2.5k. Those were my first two software projects ever so it was some
awesome feedback, convinced me to get a CS degree.

------
KevinUK
I make on average £330 a month from a WordPress plugin
[https://www.getmecooking.com/wordpress-recipe-
plugin](https://www.getmecooking.com/wordpress-recipe-plugin)

The idea was to get content for the main website so that it would make money.
I've got over 2000 recipes now but traffic is still under 1000 hits a day so
I've still not tried to monetise the main website.

I've now started to develop a job recruitment website as I can see that
earning money a lot easier. Other sites in the niche have 10 job postings a
day each and charge on average my prices which would mean £1000 a day. I just
need to solve the recruiter / applicant traffic problem...
[http://www.platejobs.com/](http://www.platejobs.com/)

------
girasquid
Beathound ([http://beathound.com](http://beathound.com)) is making between $50
and $100 a month in affiliate revenue from the various music stores. I'm
working on rolling out some new features that will increase that.

~~~
hobo_mark
Interesting! Plenty of room to grow considering it's iTunes-only and
(anectodally) most people I know don't use iTunes... What music stores do you
support? I've seen lastfm has 7digital, amazon, itunes and juno but I've never
used any of them.

~~~
girasquid
Right now it's iTunes only, but I'm doing a lot of research into what to
support next.

Some of that research has led to new projects ([http://magic-
playlist.com](http://magic-playlist.com) puts music recommendations into your
Rdio or Last.fm account), but all of them contribute to the overall ecosystem.
I'm hoping to eventually support everything.

------
peacemaker
Right now only about $300 a month but it is fairly passive. I also do
freelance work and sell other products.

I recently started using Google AdWords as so far I've done very little
marketing. Hopefully AdWords can improve that number into something far more
impressive.

I'm also building a couple of other websites which I think have potential to
make a lot of money but they will take a while longer yet.

It's my ultimate goal to build a sustainable living from software products
online. I think it's a realistic, yet very difficult goal but I'm enjoying the
challenge!

~~~
svs108
Can you share what kind of product this is?

~~~
peacemaker
It's a few products actually, mainly aimed at small businesses who need web
software. My main product is
[http://paymentsplugin.com](http://paymentsplugin.com) which gets most of the
sales. I enjoy putting products together though, some hit, others miss. It's
good practice on the sales and marketing side of things too as I'm mostly a
developer.

~~~
dbond
Interesting product, how well is selling through envato working for you? I've
looked at it before but the rates seemed a little too much for new members.

~~~
peacemaker
It's a tough trade-off really. Envato have millions of members so I get
regular sales but the commission rates are very unfavorable. I'm working on
moving some of my more popular products from Envato marketplaces and onto my
own websites. It's a slow process though as I want to keep the benefits of the
traffic from Envato throughout. Plus I'm still learning with regards to
internet marketing and can't hope to attract the types of traffic Envato can
bring me.

------
cleverfoo
Scanii.com ([https://scanii.com](https://scanii.com)) practical API for
malware/virus detection. Low thousands/month and growing quickly, profitable
from the beginning and we effectively spend $0 in marketing. Honestly, there
hasn't been an easier time to do a startup or side project - I know that's
cliché but it isn't. If you know how to consume cloud services you can keep
your operating costs amazingly low.

------
donniefitz2
I'm making zero dollars right now with
[http://togspots.com](http://togspots.com). It's a SaaS where photographers
can add and find photography locations. I'm working on setting up a
subscription that would allow users to save private spots and a few other
features. The biggest issue is getting more locations. Currently I require
users to add 1 location before they can search which is working well so far.

------
nerdben
Making about 500EUR/mo from selling motivational posters at
[http://squaredo.com](http://squaredo.com) \- primarily to startups

------
chrisa
$400/month from "Play Piano HD" iPad app:
[http://mobilesort.com/play_piano.html](http://mobilesort.com/play_piano.html)
I've tried a few other apps, but they haven't done very well - this one is
consistently in the top 100 iPad music category. I think having a very clear
message and value proposition is important, especially for small apps (impulse
buys).

------
abraham
$250-350/month from App.net for an extension I spend very little time on
anymore.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/succynct/hngjfhijh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/succynct/hngjfhijhmcechdkbgopbgghajokogdi)

I just launched a new App.net project that I'm hoping will bring in a lot
more.

[https://polls.abrah.am](https://polls.abrah.am)

------
icehawk219
So far $0/mo off Neutrino ([https://getneutrino.com](https://getneutrino.com))
as I'm still getting up and going. I built it for myself to help keep track of
my own side projects and then decided to embrace the idea of "sell your by-
products". I'm now getting a crash course on marketing and sales.

------
antisuji
About $350 in the first month of Double Dynamo
([http://doubledynamo.com/](http://doubledynamo.com/)), a memory and rhythm
game for iOS. I haven't put significant work into viral features, which could
probably substantially increase installs, but at this point I've put the
project on the back burner.

~~~
Zaheer
Wow that's great for just the first month! How did you initially market the
app?

------
palidanx
Menutail ([https://www.menutail.com](https://www.menutail.com)) which
generates about $300/month at the moment. The site is kind of niche as it used
to generate nutrition facts labels for food packages.

I mainly get new e-mail clients from cold e-mailing contacts from the farmer's
market database courtesy of data.gov.

------
CliffyA
$0 a month on [http://numberduck.com](http://numberduck.com)

Hopefully that's because I'm competing against some established and open
source projects, so anything with a lesser feature set isn't good enough for
people to pay.

Now I'm slogging away on features to be the best, then hopefully the sales
will follow.

~~~
ericthegoodking
This is a good idea.I would actually use it if i was working in a large firm
where excel is used for everything.

------
andersthue
I make around 2-3000$ from my TSR product suite : [http://www.tsr-
soft.com](http://www.tsr-soft.com)

Started 3 years ago, have one part time employee working on these besides me.
I only work part time one them too.

I have dialed up the revenue after I attended a conference resently by turning
more 'pro'

------
tcopeland
About $15 a month from a military reading list site
([http://militaryprofessionalreadinglists.com](http://militaryprofessionalreadinglists.com)).
That's $14 affiliate, $1 from ads. It's on a $40/month Rackspace VPS, so it's
halfway to covering its costs.

~~~
christiangenco
Wow - you must have hefty server requirements. I'm running
[http://dbinbox.com](http://dbinbox.com) (which handles ~10,000 file
uploads/month) on a $8/month VPS.

------
daflip
Launched my first SaaS app a little over 2 years ago. Monthly recurring
revenue is currently a little over $4000. 506 paying customers to date,
growing around 1.5 paying customers per day and working off ~2.7% conversion
rate (freemium business model). Single person "team".

~~~
pgsch
What does your app?

~~~
daflip
Sorry, I'd prefer not to disclose the app name - it's a simple website builder
targeting a niche.

------
christiangenco
I made $5K in a month with
[http://textbooksplease.com](http://textbooksplease.com) (textbook search
engine for college students) after spending ~$4K on advertising, but textbook
buying only happens twice a year.

Re-investing all profit into advertising.

------
boca
Earned $1 from
[http://gyaansharing.appspot.com](http://gyaansharing.appspot.com) because of
Disqus ads. It has been used by less than 10 people, mostly friends, till now
and it's been a while since anyone posted anything.

------
reiz
I am running [http://www.versioneye.com](http://www.versioneye.com). Currently
don't earn much with it. Most people are using it for open source projects.
Still thinking about how to monetise it right. Any ideas?

~~~
w0rd-driven
As it is, I find it hard. If you stick to bundler/npm/etc would there be
benefit it not only notifications but an automatic update feature? Tie it to
git where possible to have a "newest" branch that keeps this out of master
and/or tie it with the likes of Travis CI to make sure things didn't break.
There's almost too many moving parts but I see high value in keeping a project
on the latest dependencies without much involvement from myself. Its not
foolproof though and may be too error prone to pull anything off without
pulling your hair out.

~~~
reiz
Thanks for your feedback. I know what you mean. VersionEye has already a
pretty good GitHub integration. Currently we are working on automated change
logs. And I want to work together with TravisCI and CodeShip to run tests
against newest versions. I think together with automated testing it can be
very valuable. I maintain a couple open source projects by myself. And I don't
release new versions just for fun. Releasing a new version is a lot of work.
If I do it than there is always a very good reason for it. For example
BugFixes, SecurityFixes, New Features or Speed & Memory Optimisation. And I
think if somebody else is releasing a new version of an open source project he
has the same reasons. And that are all good reasons for me to update. That's
why I started VersionEye.

------
michaelcindric
We are currently making a few hundred a month on Doccy
([http://doccyapp.com](http://doccyapp.com)) its not something you go looking
for but once you do it makes sense to use it. Its also only a few months old

------
ctek
PageBlox ([https://www.pageblox.com/](https://www.pageblox.com/)) earns about
$300 a month and is growing steadily... The hardest part has been SEO and
marketing, something I am still quite new at.

------
nonsens3
I lose about $15 from [http://selfstream.io](http://selfstream.io) . I
havent't launched yet as I have been waiting for Paymill to activate my
payments processing account for over a month now.

------
amac
Human Software ([http://usehuman.com](http://usehuman.com)) - $250 monthly
revenue, not enough to be profitable but folks like my app (Prospect) and it's
enjoyable to run a small SAAS company.

------
mhoad
I literally just launched [http://fmhgifts.com](http://fmhgifts.com) last week
so it's a bit early to say but I have heard rumours of similar websites making
several thousand a month.

------
marveller
Freemium ([http://StockPhotos.io](http://StockPhotos.io)) photo sharing site.
Earns probably around $15/mo from Google Adsense and was made to use as a free
image bookmark manager.

~~~
ismaelc
Have you guys considered turning this into an API? I know of a successful
wallpaper API that's making decent profit

------
cashmonkey85
Vector graphics app
[http://vectorpaint.yaks.co.nz](http://vectorpaint.yaks.co.nz) Calculated
revenue would be $200 a week selling a small upgrade but leave it free at the
moment.

------
cyrilg
Fyrebox ([http://www.fyrebox.co](http://www.fyrebox.co)) makes $250/month,
5000 users, 1% conversion rate to paying customers that pay $5/month, launched
in June

~~~
ericthegoodking
nice clean design! I like your front page.

------
gesman
\- Just sold my wordpress plugin business for $4k.

\- Run hosting company that just became slightly profitable.

~$110/mo fully passive affiliate commissions for referrals to recurring
membership businesses.

\- Looking to enter into personal development niche.

~~~
imdsm
How long have you been running the hosting company? What level of input does
it require from you?

~~~
gesman
I basically started it to get away from Hostgator which along with other
providers started to oversell anything under the sun and presented gradually
degraded speed and quality of service.

So I got dedicated server to myself and fully configured it for hosting needs
including automated iptables-based firewall protection and malware protection.
Then i sent emails to my past web. dev clients out of which a few signed up.

Right off the bat I started to offer malware protection for which site5
charges $30+/mo (10 sites max) and thevault.com charges $40/mo (1 site).

I offer everything for $25/mo, unlimited sites, no BS, firewall, complete
malware detection/protection, daily account-wide, off-site (off-continent
actually) backups for which I renting specialized service in another country.

Originally I was hoping to just cover my costs but it started to become
profitable already - so I plan to boost this side of effort.

People do see value in this where they feel protected and having fast service
without doing anything.

~~~
oijaf888
Did you build your own control panel or are you using something like Cpanel?

~~~
gesman
I had WHM which comes with an ability to fully manage
(create/edit/suspend/delete) CPanels for clients.

------
redact207
I make exactly $0 pm on www.mixthread.com that I haven't launched. It took me
8 months part time to develop but have been waiting to graduate so I can
devote time to running it like a business.

------
scoj
SharpPLM (document and quote management for small/med manufacturing companies)
is still pretty early but I make $200/month. I feel like I am still figuring
out product/market fit.

~~~
amarghose
How early are you if you don't mind me asking? Are your secondary plans ready
to go? (I assume you only have your current customers on the lowest plan based
on your revenue)

~~~
scoj
I'm pretty early since I only work on it part-time and I'm learning
marketing/sales at the same time as this. I want to get a few more customers
to prove out the product fit before putting a bunch of resources into adwords,
etc.

------
raelmiu
I'm losing about $200 a month so far on
[https://blankpage.io](https://blankpage.io), the subscription model took
longer than calculated to implement.

~~~
Everlag
Visiting in chrome and firefox yields me an issue with your certificate and a
large warning about how your site is potentially unsafe. That may be an issue
with your certificate.

It also may be a reason for poor returns if this has been going on for a long
term.

~~~
tjdetwiler
Ditto, definitely makes the site feel less "legitimate".

~~~
raelmiu
Thanks guys, it's apparently a problem with how parse.com handles SSL certs.

------
hdragomir
Even though
[http://hdragomir.github.io/facetogif/](http://hdragomir.github.io/facetogif/)
it gave me around 120$ from donations.

------
rk0567
$100/mo from [http://assembleyourpc.net](http://assembleyourpc.net) \- a
simple tool for assembling pc online.

~~~
alandarev
I bet you could easily increase the revenue by simply localizing the currency.
As I have no clue of the current currency being used, it drows the pricing
feature useless to me :(

~~~
rk0567
Thanks! Actually, the prices are lot different in some countries, so it gets
little tricky, but I'm working on it.

------
visualR
$2000/mo on a Mac app

~~~
ericthegoodking
is your app, desktop only? do you mind sharing what it does and how you market
it?

~~~
visualR
desktop only marketed through the Mac App Store and mac update

------
rbritton
4-5k/mo from iOS apps and occasional contract work

------
ukashkartim
i earn about 2000 aobut the software about ukash sell it my site
[http://www.ukashkartim.com](http://www.ukashkartim.com)

