
Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate and from what? - djshah
The same thread was started 2 years ago with a follow up last year. I think it&#x27;s time for a refresh and updates from those who answered before.  
Previous threads:
Last Year - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4467603
Year Before - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=2567487
======
patio11
Bingo Card Creator is pretty firmly EOLed. Sales YTD this year are about $30k,
probably $35k all-in for the year. Profits are stable at about 60% unless I
miss my guess. This is down substantially from previous years, partly as a
result of Google changes which I haven't made the least bit of effort into
looking into. Also have ~$1k a month from books/courses, and hoping to get out
another course before the end of the year, if life cooperates.

My main gig these days is Appointment Reminder. I'd describe it as "modestly
successful." (A single signup for the largest publicly available plan is,
probabilistically, worth more than BCC made in its best months. Historically,
that has only received about as much sales effort as BCC clients got -- i.e.
nil -- but I'm experimenting with having active inside sales starting this
week.)

~~~
chrisan
> partly as a result of Google changes which I haven't made the least bit of
> effort into looking into

Do you know what google changed at least or simply that google changed
_something_ and organic traffic dropped significantly?

~~~
gk1
Moz keeps a record of known Google algorithm updates:

[http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change](http://moz.com/google-algorithm-
change)

In 2014 alone there have been more than a dozen of major updates. Keeping up
takes significant effort.

------
tjbiddle
Just wanted to add a note: Most people who aren't making anything won't be
posting, so results will be drastically skewed. So for anyone here getting
discourage because they think their a minority - think otherwise (And then get
back to work on trying to get your own setup ;))

~~~
goshx
People on H1B, like me, simply can't. It is ilegal to have any income coming
anywhere else other than the employer associated to the H1B...

It is ilegal to even make money on ads on a blog... this completely sucks and
is very frustrating.

~~~
putlake
That is not true. You can be on H1B and not work for a business as an employee
but can own a business. Making money on ads on a blog is perfectly legal.

~~~
gamblor956
It's a tricky hole to thread: if the blog is being run as a business it
_could_ violate the terms of the H1B. On the other hand, a blog that is run as
a hobby and that makes incidental/minimal income should not violate the H1B.
Generally, the difference between the two is that a business blog is intended
and managed to maximize revenue (even if it actually does not make money),
while a hobby blog is not intended to make money(even if it actually does).

------
plehoux
Conferencebadge.com(+Leanticket.com) started in January 2013, generates ~$36k
/ month and growing. Interesting to note we were reject after interviewing in
SF for YC S2013. We are a team of four working on this. Mostly part time,
customer support, fulfilment with partners.

The money from this enables us to focus most of our time on a newly not
announced projet, which we plan to launch in spring 2015. We plan to apply to
YC with this one and are confident it will be a good match. Big vision, big
plans.

I personally also have an old flash game portal (jeuxgratuits.net) started 13
years ago still generating ~1.5k / month. All legacy traffic from Google and
10 years of web links. 0 maintenance time.

~~~
ghobbins
Really neat idea and well designed. Excited for the upcoming project. Where
can we sign up for updates?

~~~
plehoux
Follow us on Twitter: @plehoux, @etienneLem, @rafBM and @_tristan

~~~
Asparagirl
Nice site! But friendly tip: you have a small CSS rendering bug in the prices
listed on the front page when using an iPhone 5 in portrait mode.

~~~
rafBM
Thanks very much for reporting this! It’s now fixed.

------
zrail
I wrote and self-publish a book named Mastering Modern Payments[1], with a
fairly recent second edition. It's making about $2k/mo.

I am also selling paid support and add ons for my open-source Rails engine for
Stripe named Payola[2][3], which very recently gained support for
subscriptions[4].

[1]:
[https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com](https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com)

[2]: [https://www.payola.io](https://www.payola.io)

[3]: [https://www.payola.io/pro](https://www.payola.io/pro)

[4]: [https://www.petekeen.net/payola-
subscriptions](https://www.petekeen.net/payola-subscriptions)

Edit: You can read a free preview here:
[https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/read](https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/read)

~~~
raphar
@zrail and just for anyone out there who wants a product idea. I really would
pay for a book on the same subject but for ppl outside US and the first world.

To setup and collect payments world wide outside those countries is a pain in
the ass. Any book on that (or good services) deserve money & success.

~~~
zrail
One option is Boku[1]. Several companies I know use it to great success for
non-credit-card, non-paypal payments.

[1]: [http://www.boku.com](http://www.boku.com)

~~~
vram22
How does one use it, though? Doesn't seem to have any signup page, unless I
missed something (checked just now). Or is it only by invitation or something?

~~~
zrail
I think you have to talk to a sales rep.

------
bdunn
I have an email course (autoresponder) -> course sales funnel setup for Double
Your Freelancing Rate which nets about $1-1.5k a day in sales, mostly on
autopilot. This is by far the most successful funnel I've created for any of
my products, and is performing really stinkin' well.

Product:
[http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/rate/](http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/rate/)

Email course: [http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/free-pricing-
course/](http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/free-pricing-course/)

~~~
imjk
You're making $365K-$500K+ on this annually?

~~~
bdunn
I just crossed $200k in sales since I (re)launched in May, so yeah - about
that.

~~~
imjk
That's awesome, congrats. How did you create your sales path? Did you use
another model. Also, do you still work a salaried job? I assume this is your
main source of income.

~~~
bdunn
Haven't had a salaried job in more than 6 years, so no. All of my income is
through the course I referenced, my SaaS
([https://planscope.io](https://planscope.io)), and a few other courses/books
I offer.

------
justinmares
I'm around $5500 a month total from 2 Udemy courses and a launching Traction
book. It breaks down like this (all links below):

My SQL for Marketers course on Udemy does about $1500 a month, and has been
pretty steady since launching the course on Udemy in late April. This takes
almost no maintenance, though I am starting to work on improving it in
response to student feedback.

My other course, Productivity for Mac Users, is a simpler keyboard shortcuts
one can use to be more productive on Mac. This one makes $400-800 per month,
though average over the lifetime (launched in May) has been around $500.

Lastly, we launched Traction book 3 months ago, and it continues to sell
really well. Even after splitting with my co-author, I make about $3500 a
month from that. You can see full numbers breakdown in the blog post we wrote
summing up our launch.

[https://www.udemy.com/sql-for-marketers/#/](https://www.udemy.com/sql-for-
marketers/#/)

[https://www.udemy.com/mac-keyboard-shortcuts/#/](https://www.udemy.com/mac-
keyboard-shortcuts/#/)

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

[http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2014/10/getting-
traction...](http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2014/10/getting-traction-for-
traction-book-12328-copies-by-the-numbers.html)

~~~
stephancoral
How much work went into advertising your Udemy courses? Was it something that
took significant advertising / reach to gain students?

~~~
justinmares
Honestly, no. One post to reddit, one to Growthhackers.com and the rest has
all been organic.

~~~
stephancoral
Pretty good ROI it seems like. Thanks for sharing!

------
heliodor
One day, I saw opportunity. I called in sick from work the next day (because I
just couldn't wait for the weekend!) and hacked out an Android app. Net result
after several years: $50,000 in revenue.

The way it happened is that I was already working on my Iridium Flares app,
when one day I saw a certain new app launched. I knew I could do it better and
I already had some useful code from another project, so I called in sick from
work for one day, and hacked out a better version of what this guy had just
launched. That app's user reviews told me exactly what to build. It took off
from there.

I have built several Android apps in the early days of Android. The just-
mentioned app, which was my most profitable one, was selling for $3.95 and
netted about $50,000 over the course of its life. Highest monthly income from
that was $1500/month for about two months.

I also had an Iridium Flares app for Android. It contributed maybe about 5% of
the numbers stated above. This app was priced at $1.95. Both apps had a free
version running ads. Most of the revenue came from the paid version of the
other app.

In the early days, simply putting an app on the Play Store was enough to have
people find you through the search box and the 'new apps' list. I remember I
was scanning the list of new apps every few days for neat new things to try on
my G1. Making a better mouse trap would ensure your app got installed.

Which brings me to the present: I just launched a cryptocurrency price charts
website a few weeks ago with a friend.
[https://pizzacharts.com](https://pizzacharts.com) Got about $20 in donations
at launch. We have a freemium model, $9/month only payable in Bitcoins at the
moment, and ads. We'll see what kind of revenue comes out once we scale,
fingers crossed.

~~~
SandB0x
Call me old fashioned, but I'm not sure it's a great idea to advertise the
fact that you wrote your app on company time.

~~~
ams6110
He didn't, he was on a sick day. Dishonest about being sick, but still not on
company time. And more and more companies just lump sick time and vacation
into one pool of "paid time off" so it doesn't really matter what you call it.

Edit: in fact, we don't even know that his company pays him at all if he's on
a sick day. Many jobs don't, e.g. if you are paid hourly.

~~~
heliodor
Exactly. Whether you work on your projects in the evening or during
vacation/sick days is the same thing. I never provided reasons for my sick
days and it wasn't requested/required, so I didn't lie either. I feel that
having people justify their time off worsens a company's culture.

------
kalid
I sell math books and courses at
[http://betterexplained.com](http://betterexplained.com) and on Amazon. It's
about 3k/m currently, hoping to improve that with better landing pages, a/b
testing, retargeting, drip campaigns, etc. [the patio11 playbook].

More details on how I got started here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=870015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=870015)

~~~
ivan_ah
Hi kalid. That's awesome to hear you're grown the business to 3k/mo. Clearly
the model of free content online + sales of curated book-length content works.
Imagine now if a bunch of people with tutoring experience in chemistry,
biology, economics, etc. write textbooks on their subject. Wouldn't the life
of the ugrad student get suddenly better? (Stop the exploitation of ugrads! )

BTW, since you cover a lot of high school topics, you should consider making a
textbook that is aligned with the common core math state standards---the big
textbook publishers are scrambling to update their books right now...

~~~
kalid
Hey Ivan! Been meaning to reach out about your mini reference guides, I really
like the approach. I agree on aligning with common core, I've been out of
school so long I forget what old textbooks are like (the courses I have are
more like "enrichment"). Well-written, reasonably-priced books that teach
lasting understanding would be awesome for undergrads.

------
vbsteven
I currently make about 1000EUR/month consistently from an Android app I sell
for 9.99EUR.

It's a tasks app that syncs with OmniFocus.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.quantus.app...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.quantus.apps.androidfocus)

~~~
phreeza
That is quite remarkable, do you think the OmniFocus integration is the killer
feature that gets most people to pay?

~~~
vbsteven
I think so, the app is purely focussed on OmniFocus integration and reuses
their backend.

Most of my customers pay for the app because they are heavy OmniFocus users on
the Mac and recently switched to Android.

------
jliptzin
Around $2k / month from real estate rentals after expenses. It'd be a little
less if I hired a property manager to make it fully passive, but I actually
enjoy doing the property management myself as it gets me away from the
computer and exposes me to things I would never otherwise be involved with.

~~~
asah
Done the same over the years. Although slum lords can do better, I prefer the
higher end, where appreciation is part of the equation. Property management
headaches typically go down at the high end because there's more $ per unit,
and the things that break tend to be per unit/person. You also have more $ to
fix things and can do it "right". Finally, you can enjoy the places yourself.

Typically, I shoot for ~5% rent to value ratio, e.g. $100k/yr income on $2mm
worth of property. With appreciation, I can see why old people do this.

I used the time to bootstrap a company to 40 employees, and profitability--
boy, that wad hard work.

bbf.io/snacks -- killer food for bay area offices and startups

~~~
charlesdm
Sort of similar questions I asked the OP:

How much capital did you invest, and how much debt did you use?

~~~
asah
Sorry, this is confidential. :-(

Also, the capital equation is something you can compute: if you want $x in
income, then how much capital cost is there etc

Keep in mind, we're in a low interest rate environment.

~~~
charlesdm
Absolutely. :P

Was just curious how you would run something like that, by raising equity,
instead of putting up all of your own money. I know it's possible in some
cases, but often, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

------
hwswfun
$0.00 from my free game "Barnyard Politics" on Android. Immeasurable wealth
realizing I could make the game in 4 days with a game sdk verses the whole
summer I spent chasing an idea that I never released but used OpenGL, Android
NDK, OpenCV. All the technologies I learned led to the next couple years of my
work innovating for my employer so it was a good thing. Time well spent.

Long live SDKs, APIs and other ways to get a product out the door without
coding every bit myself.

Fun teamwork results from these side projects also. Such as my wife recording
her custom mix of "Old McDonald" \+ "Hail to the Chief" to be used as my
background music for the game. She did this at 1AM of election day, 2010 so I
could release the app that day.

Can lessons in life be measured as recurring revenue? Maybe not monetarily but
certainly in wisdom and the ability to execute better the next time.

~~~
ssharp
What SDK did you use?

~~~
hwswfun
For Barnyard Politics, I used AndEngine. Since then, I have used and loved
Unity3D for hard core conceptual prototypes and am in love with Construct 2
now for my current side project though. I am walking my kids through
developing and I needed something less complicated than Unity3D. Construct 2's
dev environment is fairly easy to use and it exports to html,css, js. Better
than that is that I can make my own plugins in js and make them available to
people that will create content for my future website / app. I have extremely
limited non-corporate time so I plan to author the first content to get
started but then make tutorials and allow others to create.

Note: My opinions on game SDKs or anything else here are entirely my own and
have nothing to do with my role in the corporate world. The experiences I
mention here stem from the fact that I cannot stop programming or thinking
about apps when I come home. I love this stuff. And yes, I deeply desire to
get to MRR at some point.

------
chrisdew
I wrote virtsync, an alternative to rsync, which performs much better on
sparse, GB+ files that don't change much (like VM disk images).
[http://www.virtsync.com](http://www.virtsync.com)

It's a niche product that makes me $1-2K per year.

More importantly, virtsync customers have hired me for other jobs.

------
gravitronic
100-200 a month from having an android app.

The free version has had 483k downloads, makes ~5$/day advertising
(admob/adsense). ~250 downloads a day, been on the market since 2011.

The paid version ($2.99) has had <2000 downloads over the ~3 years it's been
on the market.

Unfortunately I've no time to keep it updated so last update was in 2012.

~~~
jonahx
thank for sharing. it's surprising that nearly half a million downloads
translates into such a small amount of revenue. is this the nature of in-app
advertising, or is this because the number of active users of the app is much
smaller than the number of downloads?

~~~
gravitronic
my app's a bit special - it's purely SDL / opengl / C with a tiny java wrapper
just to get going. TBH, there's some key technical problems with it with
respect to onboarding, and because of those problems and likely technical
problems there's <20k installed users.

It's DJPad, feel free to try it - the library functionality is embarrassingly
bad but the audio engine and UI's half decent.

Probably the biggest feature is that it's lower latency than the competitors
written in java. It doesn't hold a candle to any of the DJ apps on iOS
whatsoever though.

I started a new job/career 2 years ago, and now I'm a dad - suffice to say my
free time is gone. If I had stuck with this project I would have rebuilt the
library and built a dedicated onboarding walkthrough.

------
dangrossman
$30K per month from [https://www.improvely.com](https://www.improvely.com)

A few thousand per month from
[https://www.w3counter.com](https://www.w3counter.com)

~~~
notdarkyet
Wow, so is improvely is run just by you? 30k a month is impressive. I checked
out your blog, but have you ever had anyone else working on it or have you
always maintained the full stack?

~~~
dangrossman
It's always just been me. This is a lifestyle business for me, and I don't
really feel time-constrained at all. The variety of skills you have to develop
to run a software business alone is what makes it interesting to me; I never
get bored with the work since there are so many roles I can choose to take on
each day. There's always something new to learn on the horizon, and great
motivation to do the learning (like ack! you're about to have more traffic
than one server can handle, better learn how to handle that!).

The only downside to working alone is being on-call 24/7/365 for the servers.
I have a good alert system that will wake me up if anything goes wrong
overnight, though most components of the stack can fail without taking down a
site. Lots of load balancing and warm failovers at a second host just in case.

~~~
umenline
Great saas's! how much $$ from this saas you paying to servers?

------
johntdyer
I am a Google apps reseller and have a few customers. My customers get the
accounts for a small discount then what they would direct and I make a small
margin. Right now the total on that is about 1200 a year. I pretty much use
that as a "toy slush fund" and use it to buy geeky stuff without getting in
trouble from the boss ( wife ).

~~~
zo1
Would you mind telling us how you got into such an area?

------
waterside81
Personalized kids books on the iPad ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/little-
heroes/id477247738?ls...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/little-
heroes/id477247738?ls=1&mt=8)) ~ 2K / month

~~~
jeremyjarrell
This is awesome.

------
Osiris
I earn about $1500 a month from a program called BatteryBar, it's a laptop
battery meter for Windows laptops. Sales are driven mostly by referrals from
web forums and Q&A sites where users recommend it. It's a freemium model with
the vast majority using the free version.

~~~
lovelearning
I find that both eye opening and inspiring.

Couple of years ago, I developed a battery meter and alerter for windows. I
never thought anybody would buy it, much less use it. Never published it
anywhere :(

~~~
yitchelle
Should go the extra step now and publish it..You never know.

------
embwbam
About $450 a month from my share of a spanish language bookstore, reader, and
audiobook player app. It provides public domain books and Librevox recordings
in a nice UI and all cleaned up. Users can buy books for 0.99 or 1.99 or buy
the whole library for 4.99

I spent about 4-5 months working on it full time and kind of consider it a
failure, but revenue isn't dropping. I don't know how to grow it though
because it is search targeted.

~~~
markyc
link?

------
jeremyjarrell
I generate about $1750 USD per month producing training videos for
Pluralsight, most recently on how developers can make sense of agile.
[http://www.pluralsight.com/author/jeremy-
jarrell](http://www.pluralsight.com/author/jeremy-jarrell)

The $1750 month is the current rolling average. It can be much more when a new
course is launching.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Same question as to the other Pluralsight creator. What tools do you use to
create these courses?

~~~
jeremyjarrell
Hey Nico!

Regarding hardware I record with a Blue Snowball cardoid mic and a pop filter.
The entire setup including mic, stand, and pop filter cost me a little over
$100 on Amazon. Pluralsight also reimbursed the majority of that after my
first course was delivered. ([http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Microphones-Snowball-
Microphone-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Microphones-Snowball-Microphone-
Aluminum/dp/B002OO333Q/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1416409819&sr=8-2&keywords=blue+snowball))

Regarding software I record and edit with Camtasia for Mac ($99) on a MacBook
Pro. I've used Camtasia for my last three courses and while the Windows
version is quite nice the Mac version is...painful. I'll be starting a new
course in January and plan to record with Screenflow
([http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm](http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm))
and edit with Adobe Premiere. Screenflow and Premiere are more expensive
options and, as painful as Camtasia was to work with, it was more than
adequate to get me started.

I also use a bevy of other free tools to support the production process. For
example, I do all scripting, outlining, etc in Google Docs and track the
entire production process in Trello. Each course is a fairly large undertaking
(the course I'm wrapping up now will have about 135 hours into it by the time
its done) so being able to keep track of where you are and how you're pacing
for the deadline is critical.

I also have a full time job, am married, and have two young kids (a 3 year old
and a 3 month old) so I have to make time for production at odd hours of the
week. This makes trello all the even more important for helping me manage the
process ;)

Let me know if I can give you any more information.

~~~
robgough
I'm curious if there is a reason you don't use Quicktime's built in screen-
record functionality?

~~~
jeremyjarrell
Oddly enough I didn't realize that Quicktime could even do that until about a
week ago until I'd already made the choice to switch to screenflow.

I haven't tried it yet but it did occur to me as an option, perhaps I should
revisit it.

------
stevenmays
Stocks, depends on the month: 1000-2000 on average. Link:
[http://mays.co/i-made-6k-this-month-doing-
nothing/](http://mays.co/i-made-6k-this-month-doing-nothing/)

Webhosting: $20 (Mainly just pays for my VPS)

Launching soon: [http://gymbrew.com](http://gymbrew.com) (Subscription box
service for protein goodies)

~~~
tvanantwerp
This blog post is highly misleading. The only reason you made $6k in a month
with index funds is A) because you would have already had about $60k in the
account and B) because indexes were recovering from a large drop just before
that one-month time horizon. To give more perspective, the 3-month return for
your most heavily weighted fund is about half of the current 1-month average.
To make $6k/month assuming average annual growth (not something you can always
count on, but let's keep it simple), you'd need closer to $900k already in
your account.

Should people invest? Yes. Should they invest in index funds instead of day-
trading? Almost certainly. Should they expect $6k/month returns from whatever
change they scraped from underneath the sofa cushions? No.

~~~
stevenmays
I have more then 60k in the account. Yes, results are atypical. I said that in
the blog post. I also said assume 8% a year returns on average.

Edit: Btw, everything you said is true. And great advice for those trying to
follow a similar path. I rarely even check my on my stocks, it's mostly set it
and forget it. I simplified this for family members and friends who I think
would benefit greatly from investing.

~~~
sferoze
Hey Steven,

I saw what your investing allocation was from your blog post 60% VTSAX, 25%
VTIAX, 10% VGSIX, & 5% VBTLX

Have you heard of betterment?
[https://www.betterment.com/portfolio/](https://www.betterment.com/portfolio/)

What do you think of betterments portfolio strategy and allocation? For
younger people they recommend 90% stocks 10% bonds.

~~~
sbenario
Why Betterment over Future Advisor? I really like the latter, but haven't
really looked into Betterment all that much.

~~~
stevenmays
They cost more. They charge .5 percent on assets vs betterment charging .15 if
you have over 100k, and .35% if you dont.

They both do the same thing, tax loss harvesting and automatic rebalancing.
That fee difference over 30 years assuming an investment of 20k per year and
an 8% return could cost you like 400k - which is not chump change.

~~~
gabrielgrant
How do these compare to
[https://www.wisebanyan.com](https://www.wisebanyan.com)?

It seems to be roughly the same idea, but without any fees at all (I haven't
used any of them, so I'm likely missing something)

------
Threep78
I own and run a website, in the category of special-interest news stories,
that's making 10–15k a month consistently for almost 10 years. (Yeah, we got
started early, which is probably why I have good search engine rankings.)
Google AdSense is the only means of income. We get close to 1 million unique
visitors a month. Just me and one other part-time employee running it, so it's
been a pretty spectacular (and unexpected! It started as a hobby) success.

~~~
scottydelta
will Google allow me to display adsense ads on a website like this
[http://www.mega.pastemehere.com](http://www.mega.pastemehere.com) ?

~~~
scottydelta
[http://mega.pastemehere.com/](http://mega.pastemehere.com/)

------
MicroBerto
We run a network of product microsites that use PricePlow's API to hook users
up with good deals and free samples.

The new microsites are actively maintained (blogging, product updates, support
questions, security) and definitely not passive, but some of our older ones
from 2010-2011, like
[http://www.coconutwaterlife.com](http://www.coconutwaterlife.com) sit around
collecting Amazon money for doing next to nothing.

The non-maintained network of sites earns about $500/month.

That sounds great, but honestly, I wasted so much time building so many of
them -- scaling business in the wrong direction instead of building a _real_
brand -- that at this point, I believe that had I spent the time working on
the main PricePlow setup in those two crucial years, my returns would be _far_
higher than what I'm getting from screwing around with a ton of microsites.

Plus, pareto principle. 10% of the old sites make 90% of the passive revenues.
The rest of them were total WOMBATs.

------
mokkol
$800/month with an online proposal software app:
[http://nusii.com](http://nusii.com) We are open for 2 months now.

~~~
notdarkyet
Site looks nice, did you use a specific frontend/css framework for the design?

~~~
mokkol
Thanks! Mostly it is all from scratched. I used bootstrap for the grid. Here a
little article about the process: [https://medium.com/sketch-tricks/how-i-
used-sketch-to-design...](https://medium.com/sketch-tricks/how-i-used-sketch-
to-design-nusii-beautiful-proposals-simplified-b7162d7d7078)

------
phreeza
Crappy t-shirt designs. I have a bunch of random shirt designs (I am no
designer, just made some mediocre SVGs with funny ideas I had in Inkscape),
and sell them on the German spreadshirt marketplace, makes about 20
Euros/month.

Most of them trivially translate to the English-speaking market, I should
really do that. Does anyone have a hint where the best place to sell 'low-end'
t-shirt designs in the US is?

~~~
rawrnosaur
I think that you can start on threadless.com

~~~
phreeza
I believe threadless designs are much more refined that what I have produced.

------
abuiles
I wrote and publish a book through leanpub about Ember.js: ember-cli-101[1]. I
started to sell it without finishing it and it was bringing about $500/mo, but
now that is completed sells are going up. I hope it would be above $2000/mo
for the following months.

[1] [https://leanpub.com/ember-cli-101](https://leanpub.com/ember-cli-101)

------
twelvenmonkeys
$190 / month (net profit, after tax, fees, everything) from my cheap-as-hell
VPS company ([http://kihi.io](http://kihi.io)). Helps little-businesses get
off the ground for only a $2 VPS. Fortunately it hasn't had many orders as of
late since everything is quite full.

Largest customer base has been China & Indonesia which brings in a lot of
happy faces and awesome customers, so I got that going for me at least, which
is nice.

Been looking at alternative plans (disposable VPS' maybe?) and other ways of
profit.

I've done enough Android development to warrant a decent app, so maybe I
should create a few more in the horizon.

~~~
Someone1234
That is "cheap-as-hell."

People who have ran other hosting companies have claimed that "the lower the
price the more support you have to provide" (because in the low end many users
won't have dedicated technical personnel or are just penny pinching and will
shift problems to you when possible).

Has that been your experience? How do you cover the cost of support time in
general at $2/month. Also is there a language issue as your customers are
Chinese and Indonesian?

~~~
twelvenmonkeys
Yeah, that is one issue that I did encounter at first. Supporting users.

Luckily, since most of the marketing comes from word-of-mouth, a lot of users
have a decent knowledge of Linux / VPS'.

I also make Ruby scripts as well as using a crap-ton of custom shortcuts in
Mutt (terminal-based email) so answer support tickets quickly and without a
ton of effort.

The occasional ticket I usually get involves some form of client-side/user
issue such as a borked Linux package install. Usually I bite-the-bullet and
say "We don't usually provide support.. but I would suggest having a look at X
or Y on your VPS." 90% of the time the customer fixes it with my guidance and
they learn what do to next time it happens. The other 10% I unfortunately say
tough luck to and suggest to hire a Sysadmin or I link them to someone who can
provide support for cheap setting things up.

Funny enough, most Chinese / Indonesian customers rarely ask questions! Even
if they don't speak English well, we can still understand each-other in Linux
terms. I don't know if it's a cultural thing, but most Eastern clients
countries try and figure the issue out themselves first. Western clients
usually open a ticket first, then figure the issue out.

------
edent
Solar Panels. I've 4kWp systems on 2 properties in southern England. Making
about £3k/year with them. The money comes from the Government and is
guaranteed for 20 years. First 8 years will be enough to pay off the cost of
installation. Money is tax free, but does depend on the weather (and
components breaking). Lots of details at [https://shkspr.mobi/blog/solar-
graphing-faq/](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/solar-graphing-faq/)

I run a silly little Amazon (UK) referral tumblr -
[http://fiverfun.tumblr.com](http://fiverfun.tumblr.com) Makes about £100 /
month - which is enough to keep me in cheap electronics :-)

Tried adverts & paid apps, only ever made ~£10/month.

I rent out a couple of properties - that's ~£1,600/month (before tax, mortgage
payments, new carpets, fees, more fee, insurance, more tax, etc).

The key to all of them is to find things that take as little effort as
possible. The panels need checking every quarter, the tumblr is a few minutes
in the evening, the properties are handled by professional agents. All that
leaves me time to work for a living :-)

------
drsintoma
My German job board [https://englishjobs.de](https://englishjobs.de) started
generating around $50 per month on some link referrals, but the site is still
on dippers.

~~~
s3nnyy
Do you scrape the jobs from somewhere else or from where do you get the
content from?

~~~
drsintoma
Everything, I get proper referral feeds, RSS feeds, some scrapping and on-site
posting. Everything that is not posted on-site is a just link to the original
source.

[https://englishjobs.de/faq#sources](https://englishjobs.de/faq#sources)

------
bennesvig
$200-$600 a month from a book I wrote 2 years ago:
[http://www.amazon.com/First-World-Problems-Reasons-
Terrorist...](http://www.amazon.com/First-World-Problems-Reasons-Terrorists-
ebook/dp/B006OGG4D6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416407973&sr=8-1&keywords=first+world+problems)

------
raivo
About $15 a month from 3 iOS baby tracking apps. Built to scratch my own itch,
so to speak :)

Here's one, and the side bar lists the others.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/napendar-baby-sleep-
tracker/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/napendar-baby-sleep-
tracker/id898565907)

~~~
dotnetkow
Scratching your own itch is the best way to get started! Congrats, keep it up!

------
bengarvey
[http://kidsdungeonadventure.com](http://kidsdungeonadventure.com)

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

Usually around $50/month. A little more lately since I launched the new
gamified getting ready for school project.

------
psobot
On average, $400/month from
[https://the.wubmachine.com](https://the.wubmachine.com), an online music
remixing app. Split pretty much evenly between Google AdSense and Android/iOS
In-App Purchases for the Android/iOS native clients.

~~~
joeframbach
That's pretty neat. Although it took me a while to think of a good song to
use. If you have insights on "popular tracks" or "recently used tracks", how
about a quickstart link on the wubmachine? That would be handy.

~~~
psobot
I might be able to do that for popular tracks fetched from SoundCloud, but I
take special care not to keep any of the data people upload to the site due to
copyright worries.

------
chemcoder
Recurring Income

I run a small firm supplying air freshener services - dispenser along with
monthly refilling.

Manufacturing and selling water based air fresheners, car air fresheners,
scented wood balls for cupboard.

Recurring is growing fast. First is a service - I make around 3k USD in
recurring revenue. Profit margins are good. Another counter sales is also
periodic not monthly though unevenly amongst clients however it has been
launched two months ago and had 2k in first and 3.5K in second in revenue.
Here too i manage good margins because i havent yet made into big retail. Its
increasing rapidly and consuming resources and money.

Non recurring but periodic

Also sell air freshener products suitable for larger areas like custom
diffusers etc revenue ranges anywhere from 0.5-2.5K USD each month.

------
chaseadam17
We launched Watsi's Universal Fund [1] (our monthly donation product) a few
weeks ago. However, we had people beta testing our previous version of monthly
donations for around a year before that.

We've had 671 people join in total. 1 signup today. 8 signups this week.
$21,300 in recurring monthly donations. $1,900 in recurring monthly tips (to
our operations). The median monthly donation is $20.

Since we launched the Universal Fund we've seen a conversion rate of 2.42%
(signups/sessions). I'd be curious to know what conversion rates other
recurring revenue products see.

[1] [https://watsi.org/universal-fund](https://watsi.org/universal-fund)

------
AwesomeMan
I currently generate a couple hundred a year from
[http://www.randomamazonproduct.com/](http://www.randomamazonproduct.com/)

I made it in a couple of hours one weekend as a way to show a friend how to
build a website.

------
bussiere
Stocks 300 / month with a custom data analysis (very simple, it's based on
event. It analyse stok data and highlit regular period of high on the stocks
on the same date each year, and after by hand i try to find why it goes high,
and i can put past event also and it told me if theses event have an influence
on stocks in the past). [http://www.skruge.in/](http://www.skruge.in/)
[https://github.com/skruge/skruge.github.io](https://github.com/skruge/skruge.github.io)

I'am limited by the amount of cash. I'am in the process of launching a fund.

~~~
why-el
I am fairly clueless about stocks. Would you mind sharing how would one start?
How much upfront cost does it require?

~~~
bussiere
Play only money that you don't need, my program aims to 3% per month.

Choose a sector that you like (biotech , videogames etc ...).

Take care of trading costs.

And if you are a programmer try to find pattern in stocks.

[https://www.quantopian.com/home](https://www.quantopian.com/home)

If you play even with an algorithm or without, write your rules (i play this
amount, i go aout at this date or if i loose this percent).

Have a clean head when you play.

By analysing data you can earn a little.

For the upfront it depends of what you aim.

And in the end if someone talk you about technical analisys , run it's
bullshit like horoscope for trading -_-

~~~
jslabonte
As a neophyte trader, I can't tell the difference between technical analysis,
and what Skrudge does. Can you elaborate ?

~~~
bussiere
Technical analysis, take too much non rationnal things in account and try to
find pattern with it or rationnalise it after. It tries to find pattern and
rationnalise it with its method (that use too much random , too much non
relationnal things (i even heard one use golden number)).

Here i'am just trying to find pattern in stocks and find if an event can
explain it.

I correlate event and stocks fluctuation. The goal is to find event that are
regular (like black friday or a keynote for apple or announcement etc ...)

I will not say it will goes up because of my method, i say it will goes up
because there is the black friday / christmas / exdividend Date.

English is not my main langage. Don't donate to us if you want but run away
when someone talk about technical analysis.

Sometimes stock market is so random that you can "explain" it with bullshit
theory.

------
bigmessowires
Great topic. I have about $1000/month in revenue from selling floppy disk
emulators for classic Macintosh computers. This was originally something I
designed myself, just for fun. There's more labor required for order
fulfillment and shipping than I'd like, though.

I also earn a tiny $150/year from Amazon affiliate sales on a running/sports
web site I built 10 years ago, and has good Google rankings. I used to have
Google adSense ads too, but it always showed very generic ads that got very
few clicks. Now I hand-select Amazon products I think visitors might be
interested in, and include links to those.

------
pedromsantos
I generate about $500-750 USD per month on a few apps I have published on the
app store
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/letsbasket/id409205141](https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/letsbasket/id409205141)
and google play
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bytesteam....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bytesteam.letsbasket&hl=en)
Income comes form advertising (admob/adsense), in app purchases and paid
versions.

------
jjp
About 10K per annum from www.rssweather.com. Been a reasonably consistent
source of money for ten years.

~~~
WallyL
Just with the ads? What are your revenue channels?

~~~
jjp
Yes just with ads.

------
breitling
Real Estate - Thanks to the financial crisis, I've been able to pick up some
cheap real estate that generates cash flow. Currently, I'm making about
$50k/year.

~~~
cylinder
I've always wondered, when you try to vulture on cheap property during a
crisis, are you able to secure financing at all or do you have to buy all-
cash?

~~~
breitling
I'm not an American, so financing is a little more difficult but if you are
willing to put down 25%, it's doable. With 50% down, almost anyone will give
you financing. This is institutional financing...there's always private money
with higher interest rates...they are much more flexible with the terms.

Cash is king. You can get better deals if you have all-cash and can close
quickly.

------
dfar1
As cheesy and sketchy as it sounds I make about $600 a year by logging into my
"surveys" account once a month (need to login to keep it active). All the
money comes from referrals, I no longer take surveys. Every now and then I
login to check my balance and to cash in. I used to run a blog where I got all
the referrals from, about 2400 people. The blog has been down for a couple of
years, but the referral's money continues to come in.

------
andrewtbham
i make about $2k per year with my location aware time tracker app. iOs only. I
spent about 100 hours to write it, spend about 40 hours per year on updates
and support emails.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onsite-time-
tracker/id470803...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onsite-time-
tracker/id470803110?mt=8)

~~~
consta
how many total downloads do you have if I may ask?

~~~
andrewtbham
I offered it for free for a while and it got picked up on app advice... so
when that happened I got 10k downloads in one day.

but paid downloads... about 100 per month.

------
mox1
Roughly $200-400 / month from Admob on a single app that I put out 2 months
ago.

App is ranked Top 5-10 on Google Play for a fairly common English keyword.
Same app available on iTunes, but little to no traction.

I get 400-800 downloads a day on Google Play. 10-50 a day on iTunes.

Requires $5/ month VM instance for a database and 1 hour a week for updates.

------
bbcbasic
I have done too many things in the past (which are now dead) to even remember
them all.

My current project is making me a handsome $2-3 a week is an Andriod app for
children. Money from admob. I am trying to slowly growth hack it in various
ways.

One is to get translations done on fiverr.com to countries where it is
popular.

An other is to think about improving my 'asking for ratings' UX so that I can
compel people to give feedback and therefore improve the app, reduce the % of
uninstalls.

This is based on a simple idea that the number of installs stabilizes:

Let new installs / day = N

Let uninstalls = U

Let % of uninstalls per day = P

Let total current installs = C

Then U = P * C

This is stable when U = N So when N = P * C

Therefore C tends to N/P

So for example 100 new installs per day at 1% uninstall rate = 10000 installs
eventually and no more.

But get the % down to 0.1% is the same effect as getting 1000 new installs per
day.

So this is part of my plan.

------
moron4hire
I didn't answer last year, but last year would have been $0/mo. Today, it's
$800/mo from two subcontractors I have on a project I run for a client. They
each only put a few hours in a week, so I don't really have a lot of time
spent on management.

------
razvanh
I love reading and I'm a designer so I started
[http://greatdesignbooks.com/](http://greatdesignbooks.com/) where I share
books that inspired me. I'm using amazon affiliate links which brings in a few
dollars a month :)

------
cx42net
I'm surprised to see that no one talked about money they make by selling
themes or modules on sites like ThemeForest.

I personally make around 400/500€ per month by selling a few modules on the
Prestashop platform, and this month I'll pass the 1.000€ bar, which feel
awesome. I made around 3800€ in 8 month with just a few support, and this
feels great !

We also launched the new version of VoilaNorbert
([https://www.voilanorbert.com](https://www.voilanorbert.com)) that aims to
find email of people with a slick and easy to use interface. Since the new
release (two weeks ago), we made around 250$.

It's not much, but it's amazing :)

------
malditojavi
Mmmm I did my first $49 with an sponsor that I get for
[http://petithacks.com](http://petithacks.com) A website where I curate small
hacks & tricks companies do to get more of your time, of your attention, of
your money.

Nothing spectacular, I know. I started to get some traffic (28K visits so far)
1 month ago after being featured in ProductHunt, SmashingMagazine, SitePoint,
etc.

Still trying to figure it out what I could do with the 1,4k signups I have.

------
mastef
we're a team of 4 core ppl ( some part time ) working on
[http://www.pitchxo.com](http://www.pitchxo.com) and have managed to increase
revenue since launch ~4 months ago MoM by ~20% - to around 2000$ monthly. (
famous slow SaaS ramp of death )

In that whole time running manual services like
[http://www.sharkboard.co](http://www.sharkboard.co) ( monthly investor
updates ) and [http://www.stefanxo.com](http://www.stefanxo.com) ( cto
consulting, PA services & hosting ) kept us afloat while building it with
4-5k$ + shortterm gigs

backstory: i ran a small mvp 1-2 years ago on a blog of a famous european
angel investor. we uploaded his next project's pdf behind a social login - 800
people signed up.

few months later we made a similar page for a fintech firm that was raising a
round - this time with email notifications about sign ups and adding them to a
CRM. they got about 150 investors signed up and raised the money quite quickly

so we started automating the process and building it as SaaS app step by step.
at first with a few customers who we set up manually, then end of summer we
finally launched the SaaS version

------
neoterics
Ha not sure if this counts, but around a year or two ago I found out a cheap
source of page rank which I pointed to one of my loans lead gen website which
resulted in me ranking for some fairly decent money keywords. I was making few
hundred a day for a couple of months before the website was penalized by
Google.

I mostly dabble in whiter-hat stuff now but the progress is slow (but
hopefully it lasts longer) and make a few hundred per month.

------
Toadsoup
My friend and I launched our service last night.

We will record a video note to someone you like on your behalf (anonymous if
desired). It's a video service for secret admirers.

We built the entire thing last night (11/19/14) in about 5 and a half hours
from conception to implementation. If we sell any, we'll go about polishing
the page and making it better.

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

------
buro9
A forum I ran which pulled in GBP +30k per year (for 4+ years) in affiliate
fees is approaching EOL.

eBay changed their fee structure and cookie policy last November, and this has
coincided with a rise in voucher sites and cashback sites which take the prize
of the last cookie placed.

At the moment, across multiple side projects, I'm breaking even. I'll look to
shutter some of them next year and will try something else.

------
itengelhardt
I make about $1,400 MRR from my SaaS app LinksSpy
([https://www.linksspy.com](https://www.linksspy.com)).

LinksSpy is a tool for SEO agencies that helps them find better link
opportunities for their client's websites. I started it at the end of April
2014 (7 months ago) and it has grown ever since.

Considering that I am moonlighting the app, it has been quite successful so
far. AM(A)A

~~~
thepredestrian
What did you do to market your app?

~~~
itengelhardt
A bit of posting on reddit; spent a few bucks on FB/StumbleUpon/Reddit ads;
Retargeting through PerfectAudience; Drip email campaign using GetDrip.com;

Word of mouth plays a huge part as well.

In addition to that I use LinksSpy to build more links to LinksSpy.

------
shanecleveland
$150-$200/month from ads on a few simple web apps to generate international
shipping documents. Needed something better to use at my regular job, so I
made my own. Turned out to be a decent demand for them (few hundred visitors
each day). Narrow niche targeting businesses, so that helps with search engine
rank and per-click Adsense value. Might be the potential to productize it.

------
mkertajaya
I ran shopebike.com, a dropship of electric bikes and soon electric scooters.
I provide customer supports via email and sometimes over the phone.

It has generated around $8000 a year so far, mostly in the warmer months. I
tried google ads words in the past, but the cost was too much so I dropped it
in the beginning of the year. Maybe I wasn't doing it correctly, but it was
almost no conversions.

~~~
thisisdallas
This is really interesting. I have read a lot of articles about dropshipping
being extremely hard to get right. Just out of curiosity, how much time on
average did you put into marketing/seo in order to start generating income? Do
you also blog about electric bikes?

~~~
mkertajaya
The article is probably correct. I had access to the manufacturer on this one.

I haven't done much advertising this year. Most of my traffic comes directly
from the manufacturer's site.

I don't blog directly but I am actively looking and linking to other
blogs/article about our e-bikes.

~~~
icebraining
What's the upside for the manufacturer in linking to you?

------
mikelbring
My new service has 2 customers at 29$ a month each.
[https://textfollow.com](https://textfollow.com)

~~~
othello
How did you get these first two customers?

~~~
mikelbring
They are two local businesses that my partner knew the owner of. We tried cold
calling a few others and working with local marketing agencies with little
luck so far.

------
scottydelta
I am making around $1500/month by freelancing on odesk where I work on max 2
projects per month(I am an undergrad student) and each project takes approx 4
days.

Before that I was hired full time work from home(40 hrs/week) by a swedish
company and was making 2500$/month for 3 months.

PS: looking for full time remote work at startups, Pythonista web
developer(flask/django)

~~~
icpmacdo
What programming languages are the oDesk job in? I am also a student and need
to start making some money freelancing.

~~~
scottydelta
There are almost all kinds of jobs on odesk. From debugging a c/c++ code to
writing algos and doing web developent etc. PHP is in high demand on odesk.

------
onaclov2000
I make around $10-$20 a month from my amazon affiliate link generator.

[http://blog.onaclovtech.com/2012/12/how-to-quickly-build-
ama...](http://blog.onaclovtech.com/2012/12/how-to-quickly-build-amazon-
affiliate.html)

That actually got me work for another app, and I make around $10-$20 off that
as well per month.

------
mipapage
My wife and I have an old website that makes about 1200 euros/mo from Adsense.
No work on it in years.

So many ideas, so little time.

~~~
junto
Whilst I understand you won't want to share what the website is, can you give
us an idea of how you went about picking the particular niche you choose, how
you built traffic, how you wrote the content? I presume most of this is pure
organic search engine traffic that is highly SEO optimised? Those are some
nice figures. Have you not though about replicating this x100?

~~~
mipapage
Thanks for asking!

"Have you not though about replicating this x100?"

My wife's family asks us that at least once a year.

We started the site a looong time ago, back when google dances were all the
craze and SEO was just a baby. We worked hard building quality content around
our theme in order to get pages indexed and were one of the first to market in
this area. We ranked very well rather quickly, and started to get inbound
links from university sites and courses where teachers linked to our content.
As a result we get huge traffic relative to the work we put in. We were lucky.

Most of the traffic boost happened before AdSense existed. I remember when it
came out and we got accepted. Seriously? We can make money off of this
website? Advertising was never the intention, it was lead gen. Anyways, on
went AdSense and lo and behold we made 80 cents that first week. I forgot
about it for a long time until at some point we received a big cheque.

We have tried a lot of other things to monetize the traffic (lead gen no
longer being necessary), but AdSense has always won. We have tried to build
other sites to replicate this, but we were never able to luck out as we did
with this one.

These days I would really like to do something more meaningful as well, rather
than try to build an MFA site (not that this first one was, nor were many of
the later ones; we always tried to tie the website into lead gen for a local
company in some niche - friends, neighbours, family - using adsense in the
hopes the site may be successful one way or the other).

WRT some of your comments, we didn't highly optimise the content, wrote most
of it ourselves and the niche was our area of work. The main idea behind the
content was building out the theme of our site, adding content related to the
various aspects and explaining terminology, history and other details.

------
RTigger
I net about $1000/mo from one decently-watched pluralsight video I made over a
year ago - [http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/description/building-
dotn...](http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/description/building-dotnet-web-
services-10ways)

~~~
NicoJuicy
What tools did you use to create the video?

~~~
RTigger
I used (and they recommend) Camtasia Studio. Also picked up a Rode Podcaster
microphone for decent audio quality.

------
wwarren
I have a little Android app that makes about $60/mo. It's my burrito money for
the month :)

------
alokm
Monthly ~4-5k USD from Adsense through my Android Apps, and couple of hundred
from in app sales for removing ads. I made my apps just to learn about Android
initially. I did not know it would be a big hit. So, I just kept on adding
features as per popular demand.

~~~
softdev12
did you initially launch the app with ads? does the ad hurt the user
experience?

~~~
alokm
Yes i added ads initially. But I always made sure they did not compromise with
user experience. The ad revenue was not significant initially. It has grown
steadily over couple of years as the user base has increased.

------
carloscm
~150USD / month from [http://thespatials.com/](http://thespatials.com/) with a
jump to 1000 USD in October after we announced our successful Greenlight.
Launching in Steam in early 2015 and expect to shake things up.

------
mrlebowski
$100 per month from my Android apps. I have three apps out, and only one is
generating most of the money.

$0 from [http://favoriteof.com](http://favoriteof.com) \- Site about
recommendations by noteworthy people. Currently focusing on books!

------
par
I make about $15 a month from my blog
[http://devcodehack.com](http://devcodehack.com) and about $300/month from my
Twitter marketing site [http://followme.io](http://followme.io)

------
yesimahuman
A few years back my friend and I had bootstrapped a simple SaaS product to
over $30k/mo in recurring revenue with insane margins. We turned it into a
bigger business after that, but I sometimes can't believe how much we made
with just two people.

~~~
softdev12
that's amazing. was there much of a sales effort involved?

~~~
yesimahuman
No sales or marketing spend. We built developer tools (still do) and just
found really passionate communities that were willing to pay for things. We
did spend a good amount of time on "virality" (just making sure we were
utilizing organic growth on Twitter), and also tweaking and testing pricing
models. We probably tried 5+ pricing models for new customers in a given year.

------
taphangum
$1,100 per month from a Udemy course - [https://www.udemy.com/building-and-
selling-a-niche-website-f...](https://www.udemy.com/building-and-selling-a-
niche-website-from-scratch/?couponCode=redditpeeps123)

------
selamin
I sell a self hosted web app ([http://duetapp.com](http://duetapp.com)) that
generates 3-4k a month. It used to be higher, but I haven't given it the
attention it deserves in a couple of months.

~~~
foofoobar
Where do you advertise? Is your web page the only selling channel you are
using?

~~~
selamin
I don't do any paid advertising at the moment. I get a decent amount of leads
from two other apps that I distribute for free
([http://theanchorapp.com](http://theanchorapp.com),
[http://getsoloapp.com](http://getsoloapp.com)), google, and word of mouth.

Yep, the website is the only sales channel...

------
pankajdeoria
Using adsense and Affiliate,
[http://www.cricketwa.com](http://www.cricketwa.com) and
[http://couponcodewa.com](http://couponcodewa.com) , avg $1000/m overall

~~~
razyshah
Hi Pankaj, when did you get your Adsense account approved? Would you be able
to share the process? I understand that it is quite a challenge to get Google
Adsense approval in recent times.

------
fiatjaf
$3 a month at [http://alimentos.alhur.es/](http://alimentos.alhur.es/) and
[http://tabelas.alhur.es/](http://tabelas.alhur.es/).

------
bigmessowires
I see many comments about Android apps as money-makers, but only one for iOS.
Does that reflect where app sales are in each market, or are Hacker News
commenters just much more likely to be Android users?

~~~
not_with_retard
_Much_ more likely to be Android users.

------
OutsourceJunkee
This is a fun thread I make a Thousand a month by hooking companies up with
outstanding off shore employees that I have tried and tested myself. The goal
is to focus and become a the best.

~~~
scottydelta
try me: email me @ contact@pastemehere.com

~~~
OutsourceJunkee
Email sent

------
gavinballard
~$500/m from sales of my Bootstrap framework for Shopify themes
([http://www.bootstrapforshopify.com](http://www.bootstrapforshopify.com)).

------
scrumper
About $20-30 a month from an $1.99 iPad synthesizer app. Probably grossed
about $2k over its life. It's entirely passive income: I haven't done an
update since iOS 6.

------
laurenbee
$200-$300/month from ebook sales on Amazon. It was more ($600-$700/month) when
I was releasing ebooks more frequently, but I haven't written any since July.

------
eb0la
About $80 yearly from an affiliate link inside a blog post I made some years
ago. I still wonder why it is still geting traffic from google and how I could
scale it.

------
appplemac
$0 at the moment for Honey with a Story[1], but I made it pretty recently, and
it did not get any coverage yet outside of my circle. But I hope it will :)

[1] www.honeywithastory.com

------
rk0567
$100 per month from this little tool [1] I created few months ago (as a fun
side project).

[1] [http://portchecker.co](http://portchecker.co)

------
cerberusss
I bought a floundering app on AppTopia for $4000 and with some solid work and
design, I'm getting about $170 per month.

------
may
Does anyone have any good books or resources to help someone determine a match
between possible niches and their skillset?

------
guiomie
around 1$ a month from my android game ChubbyFish. It was really just me
experimenting with android game developement.

------
sdernley
I have a small iPhone app that generates around 200 a month. Nothing
spectacular but not bad for a bit extra.

~~~
afoot
I always thought that building something like this might generate an initial
income (and potentially a profit) but that consistent, longer-term revenue was
much harder to come by. Any chance you'd expand on what your app does and what
the revenue generation/ongoing promotion model is?

~~~
sdernley
It's a utility app. I think that if you build something people will get some
use out of, and make it look (and be) easy to use then you should get a fairly
recurring revenue. A lot of the smaller apps look bad, so i just tried to make
mine look a little more like something i'd want to use.

I think it depends on store positioning too, once i got into the top charts
for my section then I got more downloads (or maybe i got there because i got
more downloads, i guess it's a rolling ball effect).

I plan to do some more utility ones soon, and i'm working on a bit of a bigger
one (health based) now that will hopefully provide more value to people.

I'd be happy to tell you more about it and what i did if you want. My email is
in my profile.

------
edpichler
I get just $45,00 month with my web app. I have 1800 users.

www.easypnr.com

It's just a few bucks but, at least, pay the server bills.

------
nick2
iOS app average less than a hundred dollars a month
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tasq-
logger/id877346886?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tasq-
logger/id877346886?mt=8)

------
dharma1
about $800/year, radio play royalties from music I made about 10 years ago.
Pays for a new guitar each year

------
tthrowaaa__dddd
$3,400 this year, from dividends and bond interest.

------
xerophyte12932
You mean apart from the day job?

~~~
tthrowaaa__dddd
You mean your day job isn't sitting around reading HN? ;-)

------
jdawg77
I've never participated in one of these before...deep breath.

* Ebooks - I publish under four different names; the big alias I've been making $100-$400 dollars per month for several years. A few months I made over a thousand, but I haven't published anything new in months, thus the drop. Sales via Amazon (90%), Smashwords, BN, etc - I'm not on Google Play yet but on Apple, which is about 5x bigger than BN now.

* Adsense - back in the day I co-founded a niche social network, peaked at nearly $60K per month in adsense, despite being 11 years old, the site still gets a few hundred thousand visitors per month - I sold my stake in 2012.

* I'd like to add a 3rd here, but there isn't at present. Hopefully soon, keep posting these, they are hugely inspiring for all of us who mostly lurk.

~~~
wicker
I've been kicking around the idea of writing something but I'd like to do it
under my real name and so I'm paralyzed by the fear that I'll write something
terrible and get bad reviews and it'll show up on my search results forever.
Maybe I'm more afraid it'll just languish once it's written. I don't know.

Can you talk a little more about the ebooks? How did you choose a topic and
could you point at a useful reference or two for how to market?

------
bizocean
I earn most of money from trading stock and binary options you read my review
about binaryoption here [http://www.bizocean.org/2014/05/Binary-signals-aka-
option-tr...](http://www.bizocean.org/2014/05/Binary-signals-aka-option-
trading-what-you-need-to-put-your-income-on-autopilot.html)

------
a89839812983
About $9000/month. I would say I am very good at what I do, but I am sick and
cant be bothered to do business stuff. My nearest competitor just raised $10M.
I do comparable stuff, but I am single person.

So I found business guy (marketing cofounder) who takes care of everything and
pays me flat fee. I live on tropical island and work in average 2 hours a day.

Next year I will be probably better, so I am going to scale up the business
(and income) little bit.

~~~
jayd77
What kind of business are you in?

------
websitescenes
I make a nice chunk of money every two weeks working full time at a steady
Rails job. I'm sure that's not what you meant but to be fair your question is
very ambiguous.

~~~
moron4hire
It's not really ambiguous at all. Between the general entrepreneurial nature
of this site, the phrasing of the question, and certainly the backlinks, OP
clearly means passive income streams.

~~~
raphinou
I think he is absolutely right in that the question is ambiguous. The linked
questions are phrased exactly the same and don't mention passive income. It is
not because everybody, myself included, interpreted that passive income is
meant without it being mentioned that the question is not ambiguous. It is
just our interpretation due to what we expect to see on this site.

