
Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects - what did you make? - tagabek
It can be a SaaS app, a mobile app, or any side project that is netting you recurring revenue.
======
chaddeshon
[http://www.brombone.com](http://www.brombone.com)

It's a service that solves SEO for javascript driven websites.

For the most part, Google can't crawl sites that manipulate the DOM using
javascript (AngularJS, Backbone.js, Ember.js, etc). The solution is to use a
headless browser to make html snapshots for all your pages and serve those to
Google instead of the page that requires javascript.

This turns out to be a bit of a pain in practice. So, BromBone does it for
you. It generates, hosts, and updates the html snapshots. When Googlebot
visits your site, you proxy the snapshot from BromBone and serve it to Google.
Now Google can see the same thing your users see.

~~~
27182818284
Huh. I totally thought Google would penalize your ranking for trying something
like that. Have you heard of that happening at all?

~~~
chaddeshon
This method follows Google's own guidelines on Making AJAX website crawable.

[https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-
crawling/](https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/)

------
ericabiz
My blog at [http://erica.biz](http://erica.biz) makes more than $1,000/mo in
advertising and affiliate commissions.

I built the blog after I bootstrapped and sold my first tech company. I talk a
lot about growing your business/startup, and especially about all the failures
I had while building my businesses. It became popular (1.2 million unique
visitors last year alone.)

I've now been blogging there for just over 6 years. Today I'm more focused on
my startup, so my blog isn't bringing in as much income as it used to (though
it's still over $1,000/mo.) My best month was over $24,000 in income.

~~~
elwell
Have you noticed a decline related to the rise of AdBlock (and related)?

~~~
spurgu
Interesting question. I read her post, checked out the blog, disabled Adblock
but still didn't see any ads. So I disabled Ghostery as well and finally saw
the source of her income. My initial thought was "who the hell clicks these
ads?". I suppose the target group isn't people like me who use extensions
Adblock and Ghostery. And people like me are (and probably most of you) - at
least for now - a pretty small group among web users.

~~~
pxue
you don't have to click the ads to mean something. every time you see an ad
you're most likely getting cookie retargeted as well, meaning the advertizers
now can uniquely identify you across the internet. The next time you purchase
something related to an ad you saw half way across the internet, she gets paid
for showing you the ad.

------
someotheridiot
[http://rebrickable.com](http://rebrickable.com) \- a LEGO database that does
some number crunching and tells you what you can build by combining parts from
all your sets. Lots of user submitted content that is also searched and can be
built, everything with instructions.

~~~
halcyondaze
easily coolest idea in the thread for me (and I posted as well). Nice!

~~~
someotheridiot
Thanks, it's a lot of fun too :)

------
drc37
I started a bag company,
[https://www.missionarybag.com/](https://www.missionarybag.com/), for a niche
market (young adults who leave home for 18 months to 2 years). A contract
sewer here in the US makes the bags and my stay-at home wife does the
shipping/handling. This is our first month to hit $1,000 profit in a month in
under 6 months. After spending 12 years in software development, I wanted to
create something tangible. And all the ecommerce/SEO/marketing I have helped
others with over the years has come in handy - learning a lot in the process.
We are looking to fill some larger orders with an overseas manufacturer.

~~~
phamilton
Important to note: Missionaries are now discouraged from using backpacks, so a
sidebag like this is great timing.

~~~
famousactress
Tangential curiosity: Why discouraged from using backpacks?

~~~
jthurman
I can't speak for the church or any particular mission, but from my experience
as a Mormon missionary over a decade ago, backpacks 1) Make missionaries look
like students, when they are not. 2) Are awkward on public transportation (and
using them on transport is considered quite rude in some cultures). 3) Are
more prone to being pickpocketed or losing things than a bag at your
side/front that you can see more readily.

~~~
tekalon
The first option is the one I've heard the most.

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xur17
[http://pizzacodes.com](http://pizzacodes.com)

My goal was to break $1k / mo by the end of this year. Last month I not only
broke that goal, but more than doubled my next highest month.

~~~
jonknee
That's great. I usually wade through Retail Me Not on my own, but it's time
consuming to go back and forth to see what's available from different stores
(and they try and hide the actual code). I'll give it a try next time.

~~~
xur17
They hide the actual code until you click on their link so they can get the
affiliate traffic (otherwise people would just copy the code, and leave,
resulting in no revenue for them).

Retailmenot was part of the inspiration for the site - I always found pizza
coupons on their site to not be very accurate.

------
investor1234
I made a nest egg of $150,000 through advanced use of the "spend less than you
make" framework. I invest passively with index funds. I average about 6%
annually, but this year was significantly more than that. Easily $1k/month.

~~~
jcdavis
Is that from dividends or growth of capital? 2013 is definitely a historical
anomaly when it comes to returns, not hard to do well when the S&P 500 is up
27% YTD

------
wyck
A good old fashioned web site which ranks high for a resort town which has a
lot of tourists who don't know where to eat so they search in the Google. My
next venture is a run on sentence shortening service.

~~~
msr101
do you make money from the restaurants advertising directly or adsense etc?

~~~
wyck
Direct only. Our competition is tripadvisor, it a david and goliath situation,
even though we specialize in just one area for one thing. My friend owns a
similar site in a much larger demographic and makes a lot more, but be
advised.. this works mainly because of salesmanship and ranking well, the per
month hours are now very minimal (5-10).

~~~
eerburu
So, do you call the hotels/restaurants and try to sell banners/ads?

------
postertext
I run [http://postertext.com](http://postertext.com). We design art prints for
bibliophiles. All illustrations are made entirely out of text.

I've been running it while traveling the world for 3 years non-stop now. Check
out my AMA on reddit if you're interested:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1rneli/ive_been_travel...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1rneli/ive_been_traveling_around_the_world_for_3_years/)

~~~
tchadwick
I bought a couple poster texts about 3 years ago. They're awesome :)

~~~
postertext
Thank you for your business!

------
kerrsclyde
I run a forum (historic vehicles) members donate to see additional content,
mainly old posts and bigger images, this is the primary income. Our recurring
income is in that range.

Certainly not hi-tech but valuable to our membership and increases by at least
10% each year.

We don't run any keyword advertising but in the past year I we started selling
advertising space in 12 month plans which has supplemented income.

Facebook has taken a bite out of our daily posting figures but it has made no
difference to traffic/income. Facebook can't compete when it comes to
delivering old content.

There are several associated niches to ours which don't have a centralised web
site, much potential, you do however need a good knowledge of the subject
matter and time to build the community.

------
benhirashima
I made an Android app, Unlock With WiFi, three years ago. It has brought in
about 64K over that time. The app unlocks your phone when you're connected to
your home wifi. I'm currently working on a complete rewrite that will support
patterns and face lock for root users.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.benhirashi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.benhirashima.unlockwithwifi)

~~~
motyar
Great idea.

------
manyxcxi
[http://www.shipadick.com](http://www.shipadick.com) \- no joke. They sell
themselves.

~~~
pcharles
Ha. Gotta love sh*t like this. Hilarious Probably most sales from college kids

------
jthurman
I built and sell a collection of plugins for the Delphi IDE at
[http://www.twodesk.com](http://www.twodesk.com). (Yes, people still use
Delphi), for a consistent single-digit multiple of $1K each month.

~~~
nobleach
That is AWESOME... back in 2000, I was writing a vertical app for an oil
company using Object Pascal/Borland Delphi (it was still Borland... and
Kylix... at that point) It got me using Interbase/Firebird/FirebirdSQL for a
couple of years. Glad to hear it's still around.

~~~
jthurman
Thanks! I've been doing this since 2002. It's a fun project and a very
interesting business to be in.

------
akanet
[https://coderpad.io](https://coderpad.io) is a SaaS product I built that
provides the highest fidelity experience out there currently for interviewing
other programmers over the phone.

I got to my current rev with a mix of self service plans and enterprise deals.

~~~
tectonic
I use coderpad.io for remote pair programming interviews. Great work!

------
anon292929
I built and run the internet sales for my fathers and friend company and both
produce over $1k a month for me: [http://bluebidet.com](http://bluebidet.com)
and [http://naturalsinsonline.com](http://naturalsinsonline.com)

------
heldervasc
In my spare time i make more than $1,000/mo designing and building Android
Native Applications for companies and businesses. Is hard to balance your time
between your day-day job and your personal projects but i think is possible
with a good management of time.

~~~
santa_boy
Cool. How do you find clients? Its one of the biggest challenges I have to
deal with.

------
stevenp
My mobile app, Routesy ([http://routesy.com](http://routesy.com)), falls into
this category through a combination of sales of the paid version and
advertising in the free version. It was one of the first 500 apps in the App
Store when it launched in 2008 and has been pretty consistent in its earnings
ever since then.

~~~
tectonic
Thanks for Routesy, I use it most days. :)

~~~
stevenp
Aww, thank you. That always makes me feel good to hear.

------
chuckouellet
[https://snipcart.com](https://snipcart.com)

It is a shopping cart service developed for developers and web design
agencies.

This is the a side project we have with the team @ spektrummedia.com.

We are up and running since last August, we won the site of the day on
Awwwards.com back in August and then we have a lot of traffic and we are
getting new customers everyday.

------
lifeformed
A music album I made fits that description, although it is winding down, as to
be expected:
[http://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/](http://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/)

Via album sales, Spotify streams, iTunes, etc, all done through TuneCore
([https://www.tunecore.com](https://www.tunecore.com)).

~~~
tprice7
Cool album. How did you get a big enough audience to make real money from
this? Was it just word of mouth from making good tracks? Or was it also from
doing shows or reaching out to music blogs or something?

~~~
tprice7
Nevermind, I got it:
[http://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=lifeformed%2C%20dustfo...](http://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=lifeformed%2C%20dustforce&cmpt=q)

~~~
lifeformed
Yup, it was mostly piggybacking off of the game itself. Also, it was in a Game
Music Bundle, which got another $10k in a week.

------
23andwalnut
I make quite a bit more than $1k a month from Duet -
[http://duetapp.com](http://duetapp.com)

It's a project management app for freelancers and small businesses. Hopefully
one day soon it will be more than a side project.

~~~
nreece
Good on you! Curious to know how do you market & promote the app, considering
that project management is a very competitive/saturated market segment?

~~~
23andwalnut
It's very difficult and I'm still figuring it out, but I get a decent amount
of traffic from the free version
[http://getsoloapp.com](http://getsoloapp.com).

~~~
pcharles
Freemium model almost always works best! Best of luck

------
veesahni
[http://www.supportfu.com](http://www.supportfu.com) \- SaaS. bootstrapped.

------
taphangum
I was making ~$3k/month with
[http://myapptemplates.com](http://myapptemplates.com). Recently sold it. Now
working on an ad tech startup.

------
appbot
I make ~$2.5k a month from my simple iOS apps
[http://www.bytesizeapps.net/](http://www.bytesizeapps.net/)

~~~
anthonycerra
Very clever 4 in a row game! Makes me want a 5c.

~~~
appbot
Thanks!

------
fheisler
Kickstarted a Python course (now 2, soon to be 3 courses) - RealPython.com

~~~
Nicholas_C
My work VPN blocks this as porn. Ha!

~~~
fheisler
Oof, good to know... Any other false positives you've had so I can maybe
figure out why?

Edit: Never mind, I think your censorware might just have a more inventive
sexual imagination than I do when it comes to domain names...

~~~
veidr
Not sure it would be related, but python.com used to be a _startling_ high-res
extremely NSFW spread that you really didn't want to accidentally visit in a
public setting when you really wanted python.org...

(They are now 'no longer accepting new affiliates' though, and the pictures
are gone.)

------
kalamari
Adult comics - [http://www.8muses.com](http://www.8muses.com)

~~~
throwaway125
How did you obtain the right to distribute jab comix for free?

------
wsieroci
This is my brand new project: [http://metrics11.com/](http://metrics11.com/)
It helps you find profitable keywords niches you can use on your site to get
free traffic from Google. It shows you how many people search for given term
per month in chosen country, what is competition for that term, and other
metrics like trends or domains availability. We focus mostly on competitors
metrics. I think it is the most comprehensive keyword research tool on the
market right now. Try the demo on the front page.

------
zeeg
getsentry.com - saas

~~~
palidanx
How long has the sentry app been live? It looks pretty useful.

~~~
acrooks
The company I work at uses it across all products - Javascript and PHP. It's
super handy and has helped us find bugs before our users! Definitely recommend
giving it a shot since you can have Sentry logging your Javascript errors in 2
lines of code.

------
jsherer
My first software product I launched on the side 5 years ago still makes quite
a bit more than $1k/m (and that's in non-recurring revenue). Its best month
was more than $15k while I was working full time. I was able to quit my
corporate job back in February to focus on some new products.

~~~
fantastical
Can you share what the product is?

------
adidash
A service that helps businesses recover from Google Penguin penalty. The
number of websites using poor link building and seo practices is unbelievably
high. I help them undo the poor practices and recover/prevent from Penguin
penalty.

~~~
yetisinger
How do you identify your leads?

~~~
adidash
Mostly through referrals from existing clients. Also, got a few clients from
various blogs and forums.

------
the_watcher
Have you thought about some kind of drop shipping business? Find a vendor,
make a store on Shopify/Volusion/BigCommerce, whatever. A lot of items can
have 50%+ margins while still staying within range of competitors.

~~~
pcharles
promoting it is the hard part. You also have to beware of the bargain basement
shoppers that will vampire you

------
rk0567
My side project :
[http://html5portfoliotemplate.com](http://html5portfoliotemplate.com) is
generating some revenue. (not closer to above mark but in next few months it
may reach there)

------
visadoor
[http://www.visadoor.com](http://www.visadoor.com) Visadoor lets you search
through employment based green cards petitions and H1Bs. I make a couple of
hundred dollars from adsense.

------
halcyondaze
1\. Niche music site monetized with apparel sales

2\. Network of content sites monetized with ads

------
propelledjeans
[http://best.ly](http://best.ly)

It's a SaaS providing A/B testing for mobile apps that started out as a side
project.

------
gregormck
I started [http://buildtracks.com](http://buildtracks.com) as a side project.
Now working on it full time.

------
satyap
I made a course and documentation management, and grading system for speech
pathology students. Netted me >12k last year (before tax).

------
robwilliams88
I made a service where I find leads for other freelancers. Something I
desperately wanted for my own freelance biz.

~~~
collyw
Any chance of posting it here? I am sure people on this site would find it
useful.

------
jsnk
I wrote a short book on Ruby
([http://dmtri.com/posts/65/just_enough_ruby_to_get_by](http://dmtri.com/posts/65/just_enough_ruby_to_get_by))
for beginners. I wanted to publish it via LearnPub originally and earn some
money, but I decided to release it for free instead.

~~~
mintplant
And how is it generating revenue?

------
ashishb
Personal blog: [http://ashishb.net/](http://ashishb.net/) Makes money from
adsense. No where close to 1K/month but growing towards that.

~~~
welly
I bet you're making no where close to 1k. There's no ads.

~~~
felipesabino
found the ad, it's waaaay down the footer

------
felixrieseberg
A tiny Zombie Shooter (www.snipezombies.com)

------
simonhamp
builtwithbootstrap.com

------
davidsmith8900
\- I will like to thank everyone for their contributions. I have learnt so
much from Hacker News.

