
Tricks to Monetize Your Side Projects - kornish
http://jeremyaboyd.com/tricks-to-monetize-your-side-projects/
======
mittermayr
Along with all the others here, I also immediately unsubscribe and get rid of
products that feel like they're a bit too close for comfort. My side project
is now making a lot of money, and people value tremendously not getting
newsletters, or messages from John, the customer superhero. There is value in
email, tremendous value, but I strongly believe that it's timing, wording and
situation that will get you the most mileage here. I send one single email
after about a week of no user pulse, all it says is: we still have your data,
looks like you may haven't had a chance to try this yet, here's a coupon that
expires today and it'll get you some extra credits (or whatever your product
offers). If not interested, simply remove your account by clicking here.

No point in storing dead accounts. I don't care about a falsely inflated user
base. People love that.

Also, I end the email by saying, "click reply to talk to our CEO directly and
ask any questions you may have."

The last one gets a lot of conversions, and helps tremendously in figuring out
what their concerns are.

This system is doing the magic for me.

~~~
falsestprophet
In the spirit of forthrightness, wouldn't it be consistent to call yourself
the owner or proprietor rather than "our Chief Executive Officer"?

~~~
jermaustin1
This all depends on the audience. Our tests have shown if you are a B2E
company or you have a higher priced good, CEO/President/Some Official Sounding
Title makes more sense. But if you are aiming toward the consumer market or
small businesses, Owner typically sells better.

We tested this out on the "Agency" vs "Basic" and "Pro" plans for Linklicious.

~~~
mittermayr
Very good point as I personally hate, hate, hate the term CEO in business
smaller than 20 employees. Founder is also a bit pretentious, owner sounds
like "I own this, you can use it, but I own it!" In the U.K. we use Managing
Director, which is very uptight. I don't know. It's almost never beneficial
(above a certain package price) to be overly open about something being a
side-project, or small operation (one man especially)—but I also believe it's
very wrong (and usually very telling) to act like there's six offices around
the world.

Tough line, I have a proper company, and under this entity, all side projects
are run, so that keeps it mostly okay to say CEO. I happily open up a bit if
people get curious though, usually in the many emails people send over the
months.

~~~
dboreham
Perhaps "High Heid Yin"?

[http://www.thedialectdictionary.com/view/letter/General+Scot...](http://www.thedialectdictionary.com/view/letter/General+Scotish/5348/)

------
tiborsaas
> First and foremost, always, always, always, split test EVERYTHING.

That's a lot of work and as a developer I couldn't care less, since it's just
a side project. Just ask people about your core message and if it doesn't
resonate, change things.

> On-boarding

This is the hardest thing to get right. Too much instruction will be counter
productive, too little will be unpredictable. Black magic.

> 1 Hour later

I'd instantly unsubsribe. Leave me the ____alone please with your followup
mails. I can instantly tell if your personal touch email is sent 60 min later
that it 's a bot. Product hunt follow up mails on my submissions are bots. I
find it lame.

It also probably converts more :)

> Price Anchoring

Do, test, ask. This is the most crucial part of any business. I'd personally
push a lot of focus here.

> QA the SHIT out of your product

Well said, any product start should have this as #1 priority.

> While I know this is probably only a side project, there is no reason you
> couldn't turn this into a viable small startup with an additional 1-2
> developers

What you listed above already takes a fulltime job of 1-2 people.

~~~
jermaustin1
Thanks for you comments.

I agree with you on unsubscribing from the emails, but it works. 86% of the
users open, 54% click, 23% replied to the email and only 2% unsubscribed.

At my job with HKSEO/Humankind, this is what I spent my days doing, but I
would do 4-5 prototypes at a time, pitch them to the owner, build the 1-2,
launch and repeat constantly. Once the product was making a decent amount of
money, we would spend more time doing the split testing and on-boarding (which
was also split tested).

So I know a single developer can do this on 20% time if they aren't expecting
a 1 week turnaround.

~~~
huhtenberg
> _86% of the users open_

How did you measure this if there's literally no email clients left out there
that load remote content by default?

~~~
iraldir
Probably wrong numbers because of gmail. Gmail will cache the image
automatically, regardless of wether or not you open the mail. This is done
specifically to prevent people to know that you open their mail. So you must
have a shitload of false positives in there.

~~~
jermaustin1
As far as I'm aware, google doesn't load the image unless you open the email.
That said, these numbers are from 3 years ago prior to that change.

It is the last information I have from my job with Humankind before I left for
a corporate gig.

------
MattBearman
Speaking as someone who turned their 5 year side project into a full time
startup, I whole heartedly disagree with point 1 - split testing is likely to
be a waste of your time.

Unless you have a tonne of traffic, and let's face it, side projects tend not
to, A/B testing simply doesn't work. I've tried it a few times with
BugMuncher, but the results take 3 - 4months, and are usually inconclusive.
I've spoken to other people in similar situations and they've found the same
thing. For reference, BugMuncher is lucky to see 3,000 uniques a month :)

I believe A/B testing is a good idea when you have the traffic for it, and I'd
love to be able to make use of it, but unless your side project is getting 10s
of thousands of unique views each month, there's much better things to spend
your limited time on.

~~~
gm-conspiracy
What is your startup?

~~~
MattBearman
BugMuncher - [https://www.bugmuncher.com](https://www.bugmuncher.com) I've
been transparently blogging about my experiences going full time and trying to
get profitable without outside funding - it's been a pretty crazy year but I'm
still on target :)

~~~
edgartaor
I read you blog post tilte "My Timeline of Failed Business Ideas" [0] It was a
interesting reading, I can relate to that. I think everyone here have a
similar timeline after a few years in the business.

[0][https://www.bugmuncher.com/blog/timeline-of-
failures/](https://www.bugmuncher.com/blog/timeline-of-failures/)

------
throwaway13337
In response to the email spam thing (5 emails after the first week of a
signup. Wow):

I have some projects that fit the use case very well, but I personally hate
receiving them. I know that I am not the target audience of my app and that
familiarity with a product and just having the name show up over and over
makes the product easier to recognize. Of course, the data shows it converts
better.

It just seems like one of those dark patterns.

Is it really about choosing ethics or money? Is there a third option?

~~~
cyberferret
I don't like them either, but when I implemented them with our latest SaaS
app, it really proved to be extremely useful to engage with users, and bring
them back to the fold if they were thinking of letting their trial lapse.

The beauty is that we run it all using Intercom.io, and if someone really
doesn't want to hear from us, they can unsubscribe and never hear from us
again. If they stay on, we can really tailor the drip onboarding emails and
tailor it to suit their situation (e.g. logged on less that 'x' times, only
entered < 5 transactions, never visited a particular page etc.)

Speaking of 'dark patterns', I absolutely abhor, and insist on never using pop
up email request dialogs on the main landing page of our site. My philosophy
is never badger a potential customer before they sign up, but rather entice
them to engage with me and my product after they have expressed an interest
and signed up for a trial. We don't want to 'punish' people for just looking
but we don't want them to feel alone if they are looking to become a user.

Even then, if they choose to walk away, we stop pestering them after one last
attempt to entice them back.

~~~
jermaustin1
So I quit doing all of this right as intercom.io big (3 years ago now), so I'm
jealous you are getting to work with them because I have only heard amazing
things from the few industry people I still speak with. Maybe one day I will
make my way back into the product world, and I will look to implement them
instead of having to roll my own!

------
jermaustin1
Author here. I'm happy to answer any questions or comments. A little about
this post:

I was recently commenting on an excellent Show HN for a product called Duet
and it was the most karma I have ever received on HN (17 votes in 4 hours),
and another respondent said I should write it up as a blog post. So here it
is.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Hey, thanks for writing this.

What do you think of MNMN.io? That's one of my side projects.

~~~
taprun
I'd like to see some examples of the summaries. If you've performed a few
already, it's literally no additional work to post them.

You might want the units you charge by the word summarized. A possible issue
might be highly technical texts that require specialized knowledge. You could
charge more for those.

Your business model is basically what I call 1:1 - One person pays for a
summary and you perform one summary.

It might be more profitable to do a N:1 - A bunch of people pay for the same
summary and you perform one summary.

This is how SparkNotes and CliffNotes work. Imagine selling "The top ten daily
Hacker News posts/comment threads summarized daily."

Even better would be to offer summaries of things many people want that are
relevant for longer periods of time (so you can sell to more people). A site
that summarizes famous speeches would be one such example.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Sure, you can see some summary examples here:
[https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN](https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN)

------
karlb
>always, always, always, split test EVERYTHING

Side projects tend to not have the traffic for this. If in doubt, use a
calculator to calculate how long it would take to statistically detect a given
uplift.

Instead, user-test everything. User-tests give feedback that's rich, nuanced,
instant, qualitative and granular. And each one needn't take more than five
minutes.

------
onion2k
_Annual Licensing - Don 't give updates away unless it is a bug fix._

I strongly disagree with this point. Patching in bug/security fixes to
different versions of a product is several orders of magnitude more work than
just having everyone on the latest, most secure and most patched version. For
a _side project_ to be successful you want to spend as as little energy on
admin as possible and much energy on the project as you can.

Have one version. Differentiate between tiers by using feature flags so
everyone is on the same codebase. Make development _easy_ and design things so
there's as little admin work as you possibly can.

------
ams6110
_Immediately: email

1 Hour: email

Day 2: email

Day 6: email

Day 10: email_

Maybe it works but that kind of crap is super annoying and for me is going to
turn me off your product. IF I ask you a question, quick and helpful followup
is often the key between my staying with your product or moving on. Annoying
unsolicited spam is not.

~~~
rmason
If I downloaded the software I have no problem with that frequency. But you
can take it too far. A week ago I downloaded a white paper. Now the guy is
sending me six emails a day to get me to subscribe to his for pay course.

I liked the white paper. I'd gladly let him check back with me 4-5 times a
year and I might even buy one of his courses. But the guy has lost me forever
with this rabid emailing. You'd think a marketing expert would know that
wouldn't you?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Being extremely annoying to lots of people most likely converts for them.

This sort of marketing is pretty sociopathic.

------
jasonkester
Beyond split testing, it's a good idea to collect usage metrics for everything
your users do on the site. At a bare minimum, you can send event data to
something like Google Analytics and sift through it by hand to look for
patterns.

Ideally though, you should be associating that data back to userids and
bucketing it by whether or not that particular user converted to paid or let
his trial expire. That way you can collect statistics on what things make your
users happy so that you can know what sort of features to add in the future,
and so that you can gently steer wayward users toward doing things that you
know will tend to bump their chances of converting.

I've been writing a bit about this lately. Here's a better thought out
explanation of the above:

[http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/maximizing-saas-
trial-...](http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/maximizing-saas-trial-
conversions.html)

~~~
jermaustin1
In Google Analtyics we use the user id attribute and custom variables to track
back their email address in reporting.

I always wanted to use kissmetrics, but the owner would never pay for it so we
made due with our GA and custom rolled everything (which honestly cost more to
maintain than the 200/mo kissmetrics).

------
Ericson2314
My side projects are arcane libraries and infrastructure for developers
so......not gonna happen.

~~~
jermaustin1
Developers don't usually pay, but you don't have to make money off of that
project directly.

In internet/affiliate marketing this is what we called a "lead in" to the
back-end offer (typically training or a consulting gig).

We would typically write an ebook and give it away for an email address, then
over the coming weeks send tips and tricks leading into a soft sale of a
product or training that would completely automate everything they just
learned in the ebook.

~~~
Ericson2314
That's true. And I'm sort of going into that line of work. Good trick!

------
jermaustin1
So the irony isn't lost on me that I should have probably had my blog
monetized! I am writing a book on how to properly hire for, build out and
project manage your development team. Would have been nice to have that on the
blog BEFORE I got 5000 visitors!

~~~
nickpsecurity
I was thinking about that as I read through these comments and you kept saying
how you should get back into the industry. Monetize your knowledge of it in
other words. Your idea about the how was better, though. No surprise. :)

~~~
jermaustin1
I definitely didn't expect this response. No way to collect email addresses or
anything! My personal blog got 100 visits per month on average, it is now
getting that every 5 minutes.

Oh well. I'm just glad I can help a lot of people with this post.

~~~
gk1
Add a note to the end of the post to say you're available for consulting.

~~~
jermaustin1
Done and done! Thanks for that suggestion. I'm not a big fan of self
promotion, so it takes a lot for me to "sell" myself.

------
jbb555
Wow, If I get spammed an hour after trying something, and then again after a
day or two that would be it. No chance I'd EVER use their product even if it
was free.

~~~
elliotpage
Agreed. Whenever a service does this to me I immediately turn off any further
messages and seriously re-evaluate using it. I strongly dislike this kind of
messaging, which is exacerbated as a lot of services follow the exact same
pattern!

------
IANAD
> "Day 2 (if they haven't used the product): Have you had a chance to use
> {ProductName}? - Body of the email went over a few benefits left out of the
> second email..."

When I get this email, I unsubscribe/ignore/tell them I'm not interested. If
it's too high-pressure, I'm out.

------
robryan
Regarding onboarding I think one thing you can do is be smarter about the
trial period. I will often signup for things and not get around to properly
trailing before the trial period runs out.

No doubt if I email you you will give extra trial period, this could be done
automatically though with an accompanying follow up email to reengage. As you
would be tracking usage metrics anyway there would be plenty of data to decide
if I have properly trialed the full capability of the software or not.

------
manuelflara
> First and foremost, always, always, always, split test EVERYTHING. Well most
> side projects I think have very little traffic / customers, due to most side
> projects being done by developers (not marketers) and these developers
> having little time to work on them. It's a bit of a waste of time to AB test
> a project when you don't have enough traffic / user activity to generate
> meaningful results.

------
test_pilot
Any suggestions for [http://www.pincalendar.com](http://www.pincalendar.com) ?
my side project written with django

~~~
fiatjaf
Write an [https://eager.io/](https://eager.io/) plugin that basically creates
an account and a calendar automatically, then embeds it in the target page.

------
matheweis
> Include your own payment processor by default (I would use Stripe,
> personally)

In my opinion this decision (not only which payment provider to use, but
whether to do it yourself at all!) depends highly on the kind of project.
Fraud detection, international tax compliance, etc. can quickly become very
expensive. Choose carefully.

~~~
jermaustin1
The good news with Stripe is it handles all of the fraud and tax compliance.
All you need to do is on the off chance your client does more than 200
transactions AND $20k in billing to send them a form 1099-k

~~~
matheweis
Is that new? See my other comment on this page for a story about some poor
fellow who used Stripe and was getting charged £22 for every reversed £6
charge...

------
patrickgordon
Would love some feedback on monetizing my side project..

[https://simplerm.co](https://simplerm.co)

Paywall isn't implemented yet so feel free to sign up and try it out.

A lot of feedback I've gotten so far has been on the pricing and finding it
hard to get the right mix.

~~~
UweSchmidt
If I'd ever feel the need to sit down and manage my contacts/relationships,
the 100 contacts from the cheapest plan would be nothing. Maybe unlimited
contacts but fewer features (which someone could discover and want as they go
along)?

~~~
patrickgordon
Thanks for the feedback. I'm thinking a freemium model might be useful for
exactly this sort of thing.

------
ranit
> from $0 to $80 CLTV on a $15 product.

What is CLTV?

~~~
teej
Customer Life Time Value. It's the average amount of revenue he can expect
from a particular type of customer (trial users) over some time window (X
months from signup, typically 12-36)

------
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------
michaelmior
> you could always know the date and time you pushed a new version of the page
> and track visits/conversions from then until you replaced it with the next
> test.

While this is true, it's worth acknowledging that this comes with some risk.
If the current version is doing reasonably well, you could potentially miss
out on a lot of conversions by replacing it with an untested version.

------
lowglow
I'd also say get community involved early in your project. Use something like
Baqqer to put it up, embed newsletters, open up a shop, get feedback/help and
give it some distribution.

------
cyberferret
Nice blog post. I can attest to the fact that I have tried most of the
suggestions on there with fairly good results.

~~~
jermaustin1
Thank you!

Yeah, these aren't a secret if you live and work in products. For most people
creating a side project, though, marketing and product management is some sort
of dark voodoo magic.

I like lifting the veil on that.

------
jwmoz
Harassment.

------
leksak
Sounds more like a job than a side project.

~~~
jermaustin1
Monetizing your 20% project can turn it into a job!

------
nadermx
How about Yout.com?

~~~
rndgermandude
The shitty German translations are a big turn off for me, to be honest. Looks
like a bot translated phishing mail...

It might be tolerable for a free as in beer service, but if anybody wanted me
to pay for it, do the translation properly (e.g. hire somebody for a few
bucks), or focus on languages you mastered first. I am more likely to pay for
a "proper" English-language service than a crappy "German"-language one, but
that does not necessarily translate well to other Germans.

~~~
dejv
Yeah, badly done translations are a big turnoff.

In Czech version they call their "Premium" plan button as "Insurance".

This is good point for monetising side projects: if you are going to create
international version, spent 20 USD on people who actually speak that language
or keep it in English.

------
fiatjaf
These "tricks" are so awful I can't comment. This guy just tells you to do
everything you already wanted to, but don't have time to it (it's an article
about side projects, so this is totally unexpected), and it doesn't tell you
what to prioritize or anything like that.

Also, many of the "tricks" are bullshit, or, if they're not, at least they're
not proved in any way.

------
erikb
So the core idea is: When doing a job for a customer, use that time to resell
other people's stuff with an increased price and don't tell the customer about
you taking a cut. Sounds shady!

Why not make money on the side by providing additional values? E.g. if you
write a plugin that enables the customer to deliver his service, don't charge
a fixed price but a yearly license fee, including updates to the software and
the ability to write you an email if a question occurs.

In the end being honest is always paying off more in the long run. If you do
shady stuff like that it will work in the short run, but will cost you
customers who just find other developers.

~~~
jermaustin1
> When doing a job for a customer, use that time to resell other people's
> stuff with an increased price and don't tell the customer about you taking a
> cut. Sounds shady!

What is this in regard to? I was always a product builder (I haven't done
client work in nearly a decade) and if I could utilize someone else's product
inside mine to not only save me development time but provide a better
experience and charge more, I will do that ever time. There is nothing
dishonest about that.

When you get a cab from point a to point b, you are paying more than just the
gas/depreciation, you are paying for the fact that someone is doing something
for you. Same with every product.

~~~
erikb
Yes, but if you write an app that helps me get a cab, you get a share from
that one business with the cab and me. You don't get a share of the next 100
cabs I use or the next 100 customers the cab gets without your app.

The service you provide should be paid well. But recurring income without
telling any side of the business may even be illegal.

~~~
jermaustin1
>But recurring income without telling any side of the business may even be
illegal.

I am still very confused by your meaning. If you could expand it further, that
would help me possibly better get my point across. I think there may be a
miscommunication.

~~~
erikb
Look, you have a payment processor A and implement it in website of business
B. You take a share of all the trades, have I understood that correctly? And
you didn't tell either company A or B about it? I think that is probably
stealing money. Don't wonder if one side figures that out that they sue you.

~~~
jermaustin1
Oh, I understand now.

If your small business goes to Stripe/Square/etc you will be quoted a 3% +
30cents transaction fee. By pushing volume through them, they lower your
transaction fee. As far down as 2% + 0cents. This would allow you to add value
while profiting from the spread.

And to your stealing money comment, all business is stealing money. You take a
service that is less than you sell it for. If you were doing it any other way,
you wouldn't be in business for long.

------
vacri
One month of phone support... for a _side-project_? Ouch.

You can make that high-tier throwaway suggestion when the app is an invoicing
app for freelancers who will never buy that tier, but it's bad general advice.
For the general product, you better hope you _don 't_ get a few enterprise
customers who don't see a difference between $100 and $500 when it comes to
pricing, and who can drain your phone with demand...

------
ycombinatorMan
this seems less like side-projects and more like major projects?

~~~
jermaustin1
Not really. I used all of this on my 20% projects. Granted my entire job was
20% projects, just 5 of them at a time.

------
vidyesh
For once a top voted HN article is up there to be 100% criticized and fix the
bad advice. Quite different from the usual norm of supportive discussion.

