

How Much Money I Made From Side Projects In 2010 - mattcurry
http://pseudocoder.com/archives/how-much-money-i-made-from-side-projects-in-2010

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lylejohnson
This is very inspiring! Matt, for your next post(s), in addition to the
monetary costs I'd like to hear about how much time you put into maintaining
and supporting these projects. I can imagine that with a couple of thousand
users you could easily spend a lot of time answering support emails.

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patio11
You'd be surprised how easy it is to support web applications, if you work on
killing the issues which continue to cause support requests. (BCC had
something like 75k trials in 2010. My support load is typically well under an
hour a week.)

Maintenance in terms of "Making sure stuff doesn't break" also doesn't have to
take a lot of time. January was a _bad_ month for me, and that only took about
one hour of firefighting and one hour of (hopefully) preventing the next
firefighting.

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rsobers
Wow, that's shockingly low! I'd have guessed at least a few hours a week in
answering customer emails.

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patio11
Hat's off, that was some fantastic growth last year. If you're ever in the
mood for chitchatting, I also sell to your market and know a few things about
a few things.

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mattcurry
That would be great.

I actually emailed you in the beginning of '09 after reading about your site
in Bob Walsh's MicroISV book. You took the time to send a lengthy and detailed
response which was very appreciated.

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patio11
Heh, I saw that when I searched right after posting the above comment. My
thought was "Oh goodness, there is totally egg on my face if he has already
emailed me and it slipped through the cracks."

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muhfuhkuh
Is that market averse to monthly subscriptions? Charging $5/mo. Could triple
your revenue and turn a side biz into the main stage. And 5 bucks is a latte a
month.

I recall patio11 speaking about marketing to the educational market but not
sur if he covered recurring subscription revenue vs. Flat annual rate or not.

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damoncali
Nitpick - I think you mean "revenue" not "earnings". Nice article though -
very inspiring.

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mattcurry
You're right. I fixed it.

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websockr
Thank You

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johnohara
Nice article Matt.

I taught high school CS for ten years and can tell you from personal
experience that you are scratching at the surface of a very promising market.
Most schools hand out the traditional lesson plan books at the beginning of
the year during faculty meetings and in-services. They are a pita to fill out
and maintain and frequently change year to year if you are worth your salt

However, I believe your sales would increase dramatically were you to target
administrators and department chairs instead of individual teachers. $20 per
instructor is well within their annual budget and they are very open to ideas
that make day-to-day operations smoother.

Making it possible for parents to view the lesson plans would enable you to
engage entire districts without much difficulty.

Well done.

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mattcurry
Any tips on the best way to approach admins or department chairs?

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johnohara
Start local. Work with a couple of elementary schools and a couple of high
schools. Ask them to beta the product in exchange for feedback. Help them load
it on their server and start with a small group.

And then make it work for them. You have a good product.

Most schools have a curriculum director (or someone in that capacity) in
charge of coordinating classes, adding and dropping courses, etc. They usually
interact with everyone from admins to teachers.

Principals are the decision makers but asst principals do a lot of the
implementation.

You'll be able to cold call with no problem. And now's a good time of the year
to lay the ground work for 2011-2012.

Here's the key: be functional and very useful. Schools are up to their
eyeballs with the latest wiz-bang gadgets.

Your product may qualify under some kind of Federal Grant. Many schools have
part/full time people whose job it is to manage grant applications. They'd be
able to help you as well.

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mattcurry
Thanks, great advice.

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mcantor
Hey Matt, out of curiosity, why do you want to avoid this blog post showing up
in Google searches?

Thanks for these posts, by the way--I find them patently inspiring. It's nice
to know I'm not the only developer with a million ridiculous project ideas.
Keep up the good work!

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mattcurry
I've been going after some big schools and entire districts lately, so I worry
that they'll be less enthused if they knew I was just one guy doing this on
the side.

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ligerhearted
Would love to hear about how you market to school districts/large school
units.

I built a product (back in 2008) that was aimed at the education sector for
students and teachers to use to study in groups, but alas it never got much
traction with large groups like I intended. But it was heavily popular with
international users from (mainly) Europe.

I had pretty much 0 luck marketing to school districts or schools, just a few
classrooms.

It seems the school district market is a hard nut to crack that I've been
wondering how one can angle on..

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mattcurry
Going forward I'm also listed in the Google Apps Marketplace in the EDU
section
([http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?pro...](http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewListing?productListingId=6528+15556554624571304041)),
which has gotten me a few inquiries.

~~~
ligerhearted
Awesome, so good SEO and a platform where people are _looking_ for this type
of thing.

Thanks a ton for the tips Matt!

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mdoerneman
Thanks for the inspiration. I needed it.

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getsat
FYI: Matt, your "redacted" links on the 2008 and 2009 versions of this article
still link to the site in question. The Twitter link on the 2009 article
actually links to the Twitter account in question, too.

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guynamedloren
Very, very inspiring. I love posts like this (as we all do) because it's a
good way to benchmark my own projects and gives me hope for future projects.
When I finally round the numbers up (hopefully later this week) I'm going to
make a post detailing the financials of my little 4-hour profitable project
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176771>)

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crocowhile
As I see it, both your renewal rate and the number of free users are high
enough to launch a promotion (e.g.: $10 instead of $20 for the first
12months).

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rmc
If you haven't already, I recommend you read what patio11 says here (and on
their blog), they are in a very similar market with similar customers.

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tomthorns
Great post. Do you have some sort of referral scheme whereby current users can
recommend the product to their coworkers and get a discount if someone signs
up? I think that could help you grow it if not, your existing users spend all
day alongside your target users - give them a reason to talk about it!

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mattcurry
I did a few years ago, but it went poorly. Might have just been my
implementation. Either way I removed it.

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fady
nice post. really. I bet if the UI of the sites were refreshed for something
more intuitive, easier on the eyes, and a better layout (rsstalker) - i bet
you would see an increase in signups.

<http://planbookedu.com/> \- seems to have a better design than the others.
The UI of a site really is important to me, and how I perceive the company or
outfit, not sure if that is a good thing, but its important. You will attract
the more web-savy peeps - IMO

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rmc
This service might not be targeted at web savy folks

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fady
you know, I thought of that, as I work for a company that targets the "IE"
crowd, but regardless, I think good UI goes a long way, regardless of your
target audience.

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prpon
Matt, What caused the signups and new orders to go up compared to an year ago?
Other than AdWords, are there any strategies that worked well for you?

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mattcurry
Most of the traffic still comes from Google search, so I'd say a combination
of user interest in this type of thing and being near the top for most of
searches.

As far as features I added sharing which allows teachers to generate links
that they can send to other teachers and embedding which allows teachers to
put their planbook right in their website.

Nothing revolutionary, but both helped w/ SEO and increased visibility with
target customers.

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toadi
So you have spent 100k in adwords and over the years you haven't earned that
amount back?

Or did I mis something?

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scottbessler
Pretty sure they are presenting a hypothetical situation where the revenues
mentioned are worthless, implying that revenues are not the whole picture.

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mattcurry
Yes, exactly.

