
Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make? - xrxrxrx
Let&#x27;s do this again. It can be a SaaS app, a mobile app, or any side project that is netting you recurring revenue.
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jlgaddis
Discussion from the last time this question was asked:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11214497](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11214497)

And the time before that:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9508528](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9508528)

And the time before that:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884552)

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_jdams
Upvoting for visibility. Not because the question has been asked to death, but
because reading those threads are so damn fun.

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selmat
Dedicated category might be worthwile :-) something like WhoIsHiring with
fresh information every month.

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vram22
Seconded.

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hemezh
Is there a common place on the internet for such discussions? A site where
people can share ideas and find people to work together.

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sha256md5
r/entrepreneur and r/webdev on reddit, but you have to weed through the crap.

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whamlastxmas
I find the entrepreneur subreddit to be pretty terrible, honestly. My biggest
problem is that to the less experienced, reading it can give you a false sense
of being productive. Many years ago, I was reading it constantly because I was
convinced one day I would find the secret to having a successful business.

However, it's overwhelmingly filled with people who have pretty low ambitions.
It's mostly projects that are better suited for an etsy store than they are as
a stand-alone startup. The ones with more ambition are usually something like
"Uber for dogs" or "Facebook for dogs" and lack any real possibility of ever
becoming a meaningful product.

~~~
sha256md5
I totally agree, but occasionally there are posts that are worthwhile. Some
people have done great write ups about how they've scaled their small
businesses to a point where they make a living, but like I said... have to
weed through a lot of junk to see something good.

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nerdy
My wife is making high 4 figures a month (record was 13k+) selling educational
PDFs on a 3rd party website.

Anything is possible if there's a demand and you market to that audience.
Differentiating "cool" from real demand is the hard part. That said, she makes
me feel completely inadequate with her side project ;)

Money isn't everything. How sustainable your business is, your required level
of commitment on an ongoing basis, and how happy you are doing what you do are
also very important.

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jerrickhoang
what kind of website is that if you don't mind sharing

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nerdy
She sells (exclusively) on TeachersPayTeachers.com. Educators create resources
and list them online for others to download/buy. Each seller is required to
have at least one free resource so somewhere around 5%~10% are free.

The payment structure is basically 70% to the seller, or the seller can pay a
flat fee of $60/yr to become a "premium" seller and then keep 85% of sales.
What's nice about their platform is that the customers are highly qualified
and support is mostly offloaded to their support staff. When a customer makes
a direct inquiry (to a seller like my wife) about a product there's a very
high chance they will actually convert, so time answering questions is well-
spent. If a customer wants a refund they contact TPT directly, so it can be a
very hands-off kind of thing. We've discussed selling off-site to recover a
piece of the 15% but it hardly seems worthwhile because of their
infrastructure and how it allows her to focus on creating new products.

TPT has posted engineering job openings on HN in the past and seems like it'd
be a great place to work in NYC if anyone is looking. I don't represent or
know them personally but get a strong positive impression from their virtual
meetings with sellers and people who I know who work closely with them.

As I understand it they have a bit of cross-pollination with the team at Etsy,
which is another interesting marketplace similar to TPT but for arts & crafts
products. You might know Etsy from their blog at codeascraft.com,
presentations they openly host, or because Rasmus Lerdorf (creator of PHP)
works there. If not, their blog is worth checking out.

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LyndsySimon
We homeschool, and buy things off TPT all the time.

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Osiris
My project: [https://batterybarpro.com](https://batterybarpro.com)

Freemium model, $4 for a Pro license, ~$1500/mn consistently for the last 6
years.

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nettulfsen
I do 2-4 k a month on adult oriented webcam sites. Running on autopilot
updating every 60 sec. Have a normal job and nobody really knows about this
side project..... no work required just paying for hosting and domains. My big
secret, my family would kill me if they saw the sites.

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ratchetratchet
I'll bite. How exactly do you make the money? Signups, affiliate fees linking
through to other sites?

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andegre
I run a college wrestling website,
[http://www.wrestlestats.com](http://www.wrestlestats.com). I'm right at about
the break-even point with the site through the ads I have on the site, but
hopefully it will get better. Trying to find some people willing to
donate/invest so I can get my new version of the site completed.

~~~
rwmurrayVT
This is pretty cool. One of my favourite websites when I was in high school
was MileStat/MileSplit. It was specifically geared towards high school runners
in each of the states. I assume it started out specifically at the national
level, but they've bought up state specific sites to merge under 1 banner.

I don't know much about wrestling, but perhaps consider taking on the high
school level.

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andegre
I've thought about doing that (actually, my one helper WANTS me to open it up
to New Jersey High School, which is where he's from). It would require some
decent architecture changes, but the majority of those I'm working on this
summer....so maybe in the future.

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Jake232
I run AdsXposed ([https://adsxposed.com](https://adsxposed.com)) on the side.
It's a project that scrapes online ads (specifically popups and redirects) and
provides intelligence on them. Which publishers they popped on, which
countries, to which devices, etc. It brings in pretty reasonable $$$.

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lifeisstillgood
Would you mind explaining what this does? I am vaguely aware of "advertising
networks" but really don't get it enough to grok what you are doing.

How do you know what device an ad appeared on unless the ad is somehow pulling
a monitoring .gif from your servers etc? (That's a bit 90s I know)

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Jake232
We scrape hundreds of thousands of publishers who we know run the
popup/redirect ads, with IP's from 100 + countries, spoofing hundreds of
different mobile devices / orientations / etc. There's a little more magic to
it than just those things, but that's the principle.

We see what popups appear, and then record this info and show it in the tool.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I would never have thought of that. Thanks

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andersthue
Downloadable watermarking tool (now with a mac beta :)

Been at it for 5+ years, makes a few $K a month

[http://www.watermark-image.com](http://www.watermark-image.com)

~~~
vatotemking
How do you market your product? Google ads? Word of mouth?

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devsno
a dumb greeting card site ( hey.sick.af ) and a dumb mug site ( meanmugs.af )

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Splendor
Congrats. Your "squad" is a little unusual.
[http://www.sick.af/squad](http://www.sick.af/squad)

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gp10
How about RF hardware?

I make user-friendly RF analog electronics:

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/iseeabluewhale/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/iseeabluewhale/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=)

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

~~~
kelu124
Interesting to see this ! Any way to contact you?

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TheHideout
I write retro indie videogames and averaged 1k/mo for the first year and a
half after my last release [1]. That dies off pretty quickly if you don't
constantly promote though. I have a couple new games launching later this
year, one of which is by contract - a 7th guest style puzzle game, and another
Action RPG. I've been supplementing my gamedev income with WooCommerce
clients, such as [2]. These are purely side projects outside my normal day job
as an aerospace engineer.

[1] [http://www.TheHideoutGames.com](http://www.TheHideoutGames.com) [2]
[http://shop.bikestripper.com](http://shop.bikestripper.com)

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mountaineer22
7th Guest is excellent.

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pentesterlab
[https://pentesterLab.com/](https://pentesterLab.com/). I started a paid
version with additional content and videos in December. It's bring more and
more revenue every month.

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brighta
Hello to anyone! I am making it and use it for travelling. It has occurred to
me that no one could doubt that vacation plays one of the leading roles in our
life. It is really true. So, you have to make it bright. This platform offers
you a full range of unique hotels worldwide you can stay at with pleasure. So
you are adding new colors to your trip and make it vivid. It is way much
better than choose what you got used to!
[http://www.hotelyouwant.com/](http://www.hotelyouwant.com/)

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garrypettet
My revision website for radiologists in training brings in about £1-2K per
month: [https://reviseradiology.com](https://reviseradiology.com)

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kkt262
We make more than that with VYPER -- [http://vyper.io](http://vyper.io)

~~~
mountaineer22
Over $8k/mo?

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Jake232
Just curious, but why choose to ask $8k/mo? Seems a random figure.

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seryl
Guessing he's asking 8k a month because...

8k/mo is roughly 100k/yr

So he's asking if the project's pulling six figures.

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mahadazad
I sell my script qrunched.com, I sell this script between $650 - $800.

