
Ask HN: How do you make money on the side? - yogurt
A variation of this question comes up once in a while, but it&#x27;s been a while. I am curious to know what type of projects HNers are working on that is acutally generating some side income.
======
dangrossman
This is still on the front page of Ask:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9941005](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9941005)

Not many replies this time around, which is too bad since I love reading these
threads. There are links to the previous posts in there.

I usually talk about the same projects of mine, so this time I'll talk about a
few smaller projects instead that also make money on the side.

[http://www.daterangepicker.com](http://www.daterangepicker.com) \-- a
JavaScript widget for choosing date ranges, like hotel reservations or dates
for a report. Initially it was just a post on my blog and a zip file. It got
so much traffic I put it up on Github and gave the thing its own site. That
site gets over 1000 daily uniques. I put one small banner ad in the sidebar,
and that generates $200-400 per month.

[http://www.websitegoodies.com](http://www.websitegoodies.com) \-- A site I
started in the mid-1990s to share what I learned as I taught myself web
design. All the articles and tutorials became outdated, but the tools still
had some popularity, so I rebuilt the site around them one weekend. A banner
ad or two on each page generates $50-100 per month.

I have a few very old sites that resell another company's advertising
services. Almost all the customers are new site owners, small businesses, that
sort of thing. After checkout, there's a "resources" page in the customer area
of the site with links to SEO services, payment processing services, and other
things a new site owner might need. Those are all referral links, and I earn
$200-300 per month in commissions for the business those links generate.

~~~
panorama
First of all, I never get tired of seeing you post in these threads. Keep it
up and thanks for being so transparent every single time.

Second, I'm surprised that ads work to such a significant degree for DRP. My
assumptions off the bat would've been a. 1000 uniques is too few to generate
significant income, b. a tech savvy crowd (developers) wouldn't click on
ads/are more likely to have adblock. Am I missing something?

~~~
dangrossman
The products targeted to developers are SaaS (huge lifetime value) or business
priced ($$$+ per purchase), which means there's a ton of money for customer
acquisition. The ads I'm getting on my sites are paying over $1 per click, so
1000 daily uniques generates a couple dollars a day even with a CTR under 1%.

------
andersthue
I still get a couple of thousand every month from my TSR projects, mainly
[http://www.watermark-image.com](http://www.watermark-image.com) but some of
the other TSR products are getting some traction.

The TSR LAN messenger has been getting some traction because people are scared
of the privacy concerns with public chat clients. [http://tsr-
soft.com/products/lan-messenger/](http://tsr-soft.com/products/lan-messenger/)

The TSR photo manager gets a purchase every know and then, but to be honest I
don't promote it much. [http://tsr-soft.com/products/photo-
manager/](http://tsr-soft.com/products/photo-manager/)

All income frome those TSR projects is funneled into a new SaaS project
[http://timeblock.com](http://timeblock.com)

(My main income is from my consulting business.)

------
caspercrf
I started to make simple Android apps about a year ago. I have 8 apps, 1 makes
50% of the income, and 4 make the other half. The other 3 do nothing. They
make ~$250 a month, so nothing crazy, but it's 100% passive. Once I release
the apps, I rarely touch them again.

~~~
zerr
With ads or just paid apps? Any idea how to sell apps from unsupported
countries? Thanks.

~~~
caspercrf
Just ads, I've never done a paid app.

------
ljw1001
depends on why you want to do this. if you're an engineer in a good job
market, you could probably get more money out of your primary job than a side
project (obviously there are exceptions). You could, for example, switch jobs,
work harder, ask for a raise (even without working harder). A side project
might make more sense if you did it for fun.

------
newdaynewuser
I have helped setup WordPress sites for friends and family which led to
helping friends of friends. I usually tell them what it cost to build a site
professionally and let them pay me whatever. Usually they pay very little for
my time spent. I just enjoy building sites.

But I have only two rules, no deadlines, no nitpicking. Most people seems to
be ok with it.

