
Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make? - kashifzaidi1
let&#x27;s re-open this topic to see how things are going on this front :)
It can be a SaaS app, a mobile app, or any side project that is netting you recurring revenue
======
danschuller
I am but I don't know how long it will continue!

My side project is: "How to Make an RPG"
([http://howtomakeanrpg.com/](http://howtomakeanrpg.com/)) which I released in
June.

It's a collection of code samples, art and digital book that shows the reader
how to make an old-school, Japanese-style RPG. So, it's super niche! I wrote a
little about my process here:

[https://medium.com/@DanSchuller/my-first-side-project-
part-1...](https://medium.com/@DanSchuller/my-first-side-project-part-1-what-
went-right-e40f4eac8f92)

There was supposed to be a second part to this article but I haven't written
it yet.

It's been over $1000/month very comfortably so far but it is trending down.
This isn't uncommon for this type of project - there's often a spike followed
by a slow decline.

Still, for the last three months I haven't actively worked on it and it's
still sold well. I've moved country and been finding a job (all sorted now),
so I haven't had much free time.

I'm not really sure where is good to go after this project. For now I'm
building on the base the book introduces, just for fun.

~~~
pavel_lishin
That's really cool. I wonder if you could make some money by doing actual in-
person classes. It obviously wouldn't scale as well as a book you write once
and release, but you might be able to charge a lot more for in-person
education.

~~~
danschuller
This is a good idea, and then potentially classes can be recorded and that
would be another product (or special tier). I think this applies equally to
other similar products.

~~~
AlexeyBrin
You can try to record a course and sell it through Udemy or Pluralsight.

------
trcollinson
I've been working on a side project for the last 3 months and it has finally
gotten to the point where I am making more than $1000/month with more than 25
active customers 100% through word of mouth. I am working on a Show HN with
some of my learning from the process so I won't get too deep into it here but
here are a couple of highlights:

    
    
      * You do have time. I work a time consuming job, have a wife and kids, and still found 1 hour per day to work on it, and that was enough.
      * Automate everything that you can. Early on I automated the deployment, the creation of new accounts, the management of the sales, and soon the marketing.
      * Have a plan and stick to it. I planned to use 1 hour per day and I did. I have a backlog and I work against that always.
      * Pick a market you understand. I help a lot with my kids schools and this is software to help with that.
      * Drop bad ideas when needed. I have started more side projects than I can think of. Sometimes in the past I have felt bad because I didn't want to give up on an idea. So I worked on a bad idea for way too long. Don't do that.
    

It turns out that when you have the right idea and are scratching an itch that
real people have, it's not that hard to get people to pay you to solve their
problem.

~~~
csallen
I think all of this advice is spot on. It's what I've experienced myself
working on Taskforce and Indie Hackers, and it's backed up by what I've
learned from interviewing ~40 founders of profitable businesses in the past
few months.

Picking a good market might be the biggest thing. If you pick a market you
don't understand, it's _way_ harder to build a good product that solves an
important problem well. You end up guessing a lot. It's also _way_ harder to
get the word out, because you don't know your customers well enough to know
where they hang out. If you go to
[https://IndieHackers.com](https://IndieHackers.com), sort by revenue, and
pick the companies making the least, the most common phrase is some variation
of, "I haven't really done much marketing yet," and it's often because they're
in a market they don't understand well.

I'm also a big believer in automation. I haven't done nearly enough of it, but
I just got into using Buffer for Twitter, and it's a tremendous time saver (I
can do all my tweeting for a week in a single 2 hour block of time). I have a
ton of other marketing tasks that I could automate as well. Also, Mike Carson
of park.io is making like $1.5M/yr as a solo founder/employee, and he claims
it's mostly due to automation, so that's kind of hard to ignore :)

~~~
conorgil145
Thanks for sharing park.io, I'd never heard of it. Do you have any links to
related reading? I'd love to hear about how it was built, how profitable it
is, etc, etc.

~~~
csallen
No problem, you can read about it here:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/park-
io](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/park-io)

------
matthewmueller
[https://standupjack.com](https://standupjack.com) is a side project I started
earlier this year on my own. It's making more than $1k/mo now :-)

~~~
startupss999
Good job.

How does it make money?

~~~
maccard
If you clicked the link, you'd see he charges $1/user/month for teams with > 3
people.

~~~
conorgil145
I clicked the link and it was definitely not obvious how much it cost. I even
clicked to add it to Slack and it didn't mention cost or anything. Pretty
reasonable question.

------
julianshapiro
Wrote a guide that summarizes the science of building muscle:
[https://julian.com/learn/muscle/intro](https://julian.com/learn/muscle/intro).

It made a few thousand in Amazon referral fees after being at the top of HN,
Product Hunt, and Designer News for 4 days. As these traffic spikes wear off,
I expect it to continue at at least $1k/mo.

To maximize referral fees, I use this clever service called A-fwd, which geo-
redirects visitors to their appropriate Amazon.tld so that they can make a
seamless purchase without switching regions. This also allows for my affiliate
codes to stay intact, and for me to collect worldwide Amazon affiliate
revenue.

I also had to learn the ins and outs of Amazon Associates policies, which are
incredibly finicky (no Amazon links in emails, no showing product pricing on
your homepage, etc.) and frequently results in unannounced account closure
that requires you to pester their support team to get things back online.

~~~
novaleaf
I saw that HN post, it is a very impressive piece of work btw.

It also seems like a good fit for the HN / entrepreneur space. Was this
intentional? IE did you plan it this way before starting the guide, or was it
a marketing plan you figured out after it was already done?

~~~
julianshapiro
Thank you!

I chose the subject independent of the audience — despite knowing how to
distribute to the tech audience.

I can't write something I'm not passionate about or don't want to learn
myself.

But I was fortunate that this topic appeals to many in the tech space — or at
least a scientific approach to this topic does. I am an engineer myself, so
I'm naturally writing for a likeminded audience.

Ultimately, almost anything can hit the front page of HN. This is a smart,
considerate, and curious crowd. Good content tends to make its way to the top
regardless of the niche/market.

------
csallen
[https://IndieHackers.com](https://IndieHackers.com) is a side project of mine
that recently hit $1k/mo. I launched it here on HN a couple months ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12269425)).

It's pretty meta to be posting this here, because Indie Hackers is basically a
huge collection of interviews with developers who are making money from their
apps and side projects. I only include interviews with people who are willing
to share revenue numbers, employee count, etc. There's also a forum/comments
section where you can ask your own questions to the interviewees if you find
my questions lacking :)

~~~
stockkid
What is the main source of revenue for Indie Hackers? Congrats on hitting
1k/month.

~~~
csallen
Sponsorships account for 97% of my revenue right now. I send out a weekly
newsletter, and in the first couple weeks I asked if anyone was interested in
sponsoring the site. At least 4 or 5 companies have reached out to me since
then.

I've also dabbled in Amazon affiliate links, but those don't seem to be quite
worth it yet.

~~~
stockkid
I am going down a similar route with my project RemoteBase.

But I am realizing that my scalability is limited because I can have only so
many sponsors on the site. If there are too many sponsors at the same time,
they start to lose value.

I think it might be worthwhile to diversify the revenue source from
sponsorships in my case, and perhaps yours too.

~~~
csallen
Right, I've been concerned about the same thing. I can make roughly $1k/mo
from every extra 100k pageviews/mo, and I have a lot of room for traffic
growth, so I'm focusing on that right now. But eventually I'll hit a ceiling
beyond which it's hard to grow traffic, and I'll have to find out what to do
from there. Hopefully that won't be before I can pay my rent etc from the
revenue!

I'm going to be writing about all my decision-making in a lot more detail on
the blog pretty soon
([https://IndieHackers.com/blog](https://IndieHackers.com/blog)). Indie
Hackers is all about transparency, after all.

RemoteBase is cool, btw! I'd love to feature you on Indie Hackers this week if
you're interested.

------
Shank
If you haven't already seen IndieHackers, it's worth taking a look -- lots of
stories about side projects and their associated incomes:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses)

------
qwertyuiop924
You guys are making cash off your side projects? Jeez. I usually just release
them for free. I should get in on this.

...Assuming that I ever finish a side project.

...And that I ever come up with a side project somebody would pay for.

Neither is very likely.

~~~
patio11
Being able to successfully ship things is a useful muscle to develop. People
who can program _radically_ overestimate where the bar is for being able to
charge money for things. (And underestimate how much money businesses pay for
just about everything.)

~~~
triplesec
Can you give an example or two of such overestimation, and how low the bar
might be sometimes, so as to encourage people more?

~~~
benzor
If you haven't heard, patio11 is the original creator of Bingo Card Creator
[1], which is both an excellent example for your purposes, and as a bonus he's
helpfully shared many useful lessons from it on his blog [2].

[1] [https://www.bingocardcreator.com/](https://www.bingocardcreator.com/) [2]
[http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-
hits/)

~~~
iurisilvio
Bingo Card Creator is a great example to patio11 answer. I'll never expect
someone to pay for it, but we know it worked great for him.

------
caser
I started Hacker Paradise as a side project in 2014, and now we're a full-time
team of 3.

We organize trips around the world for developers, designers, and
entrepreneurs who want to work remotely while traveling. People pay us to
organize housing, accommodations, and community events wherever we go (past
speakers have been CIO of Estonia in Tallin, Matz in Tokyo, etc.).

Happy; to answer questions about running more of an ops business that still is
related to tech.

~~~
ljf
Any blog posts or other info about this? Sounds great and a HN front page
worthy business!

~~~
caser
Thanks! We wrote some blog posts last year, but I've been meaning to do an
update on the whole project.

Here's our main site: www.hackerparadise.org

Here's a blog post with some of our marketing experiments:
[http://www.hackerparadise.org/blog/2015/05/06/marketing-
less...](http://www.hackerparadise.org/blog/2015/05/06/marketing-lessons-
learned/)

What would you like to know more about?

~~~
heroprotagonist
How feasible would it be to do this year round? eg, do the trip schedules
always overlap?

At $500-600 per week, one could put their stuff in storage, skip their lease
renewal, and put a couple grand a month of rental expense towards this to
reduce the overall cost.

My concern with that approach is that I would need to manage any intermediary
periods where there was no trip. Shopping for short term housing is kind of
annoying, and can be expensive without proper planning. eg, I wouldn't want to
go live in a hotel from December 18th to January 7th, the time between the
Bali and Argentina trips. I mean, I guess I could arrange to stay with family
elsewhere, or grab an airbnb somewhere, but it'd be cool if that was handled
too.

I also wouldn't mind seeing a program that stays within the continental US,
with easy access to airports. I'm considering a couple of positions, and the
more attractive one will require some occasional travel, which is easier to
manage if it's not international.

------
erikrothoff
I made [http://feeder.co](http://feeder.co), a Chrome extension to simulate
Firefox's RSS live bookmarks back in 2010. Now it has 500,000 active installs
on Chrome and our cloud hosted service is netting around 1500 USD each month
after costs (1700 subscriptions).

Me and my twin brother have had it as a passive income thingie for years.
After a failed attempt at selling it (SaaS metrics are NOT easy) we met a guy
who saw some potential and we're finalizing paperwork with our lawyer to
create a Swedish limited company right now with him as co-founder. We will try
to take the plunge and get it running as a full time company within a couple
of years!

Achieving a lifestyle passive income project is surprisingly hard...

~~~
justanton
Pardon my ignorance: but how one actually earns money with chrome extensions?

~~~
RaitoBezarius
You can ask the user to pay a subscription fee to use the extension. (a
freemium model for example).

Then, the user, in fact, pays only for using the back-end API. The front-end,
of course, is like a website, """open-source""".

~~~
justanton
does Chrome Web Store have this feature built-in (to offer and process
payments for extensions)?

~~~
erikrothoff
And yes, Chrome web store allows payments. We have
[http://braintreepayments.com](http://braintreepayments.com) and
[http://paypal.com](http://paypal.com). Having them play together is hard
enough...

------
eLobato
I no longer make that kind of money through any side project but I did during
~ a year of college. It was one of the worst projects (coding wise) I made,
and I made it all through ads.

It was just an Android soundboard app for a very popular TV show in Spain. You
could tap a button and it'd play some funny sentence from a character from
this show. Long press, you could share that sound.

Revenue model: a little ad bar on the bottom of the screen.

It grew from 60$/month to > 1000$ in around 6 months, only through word of
mouth. That lasted another 6 months or so until the show became less trendy.

Probably not very sustainable as I was piggybacking on the popularity of the
show, but it taught me that making money was 100% not about writing 'the
bestest codes'.

~~~
GavinMcG
IANAL, nor am I in Spain, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. My
sense, though, is that in the US the TV show owners could sue me for copyright
infringement, and I'd be on the hook for up to $150,000 in damages for each
"infringing work" – I'd think that means audio clip, in this case.

There's a "fair use" defense to that (where I'd say that the clips didn't
impact the market for buying the original work) and they might not go after me
anyway, since it would presumably reinforce the popularity of the show.

Was any of that stuff you ran into? Or is there no similar copyright concern
in Spain?

~~~
eLobato
There was an eventual copyright complaint and cease&desist which I had no
intent to fight. I talked with a lawyer (friend of my family) who said I could
probably win or find a settlement in court.

They only went after the app a few years after the show was in its prime (it
was making ~40$ a month more or less) so I just removed the application from
the Android Play Store as that was all they were asking for.

------
ekwogefee
Feem ([http://www.feem.io](http://www.feem.io)) is making over $1K/month
online; and I'm from Cameroon, Africa.

Feem is a great cross-platform way to share files within your LAN.

~~~
Carl_Platt
How do you make revenue?

~~~
Ravengenocide
It seems to be answered in the FAQ:

> How is Feem different from other similar apps.

> 3\. Business Model. Our business model is simple: If you like the app,
> you'll pay for it. Similar apps focus on growth only, then later switch to
> serving you adware and malware.

------
mutatio
Created [http://encycolorpedia.com](http://encycolorpedia.com) a few years
ago, kind of neglected it until recently (it's looking very dated), a version
implemented in Rust is 90% complete - cheaper to run (more beer money, thanks
Rust team!) & more features than the node.js implementation it will hopefully
replace in the coming weeks.

~~~
unlimit
> a version implemented in Rust is 90% complete - cheaper to run

Is it cheaper to run because of Rust? Why is it so? Could you please explain,
don't know anything about Rust though.

~~~
mutatio
A lot of the colour space calculations are orders of magnitude faster using
Rust (LLVM). This would be the same story had I chose C/C++ of course, but
Rust was chosen in part for educational purposes.

I had originally started the re-write in Google Go, but I experimented with
Rust and had a much better performance profile for the more CPU intensive
stuff like using the more modern Delta E methods
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_difference](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_difference)).

I had to use the more primitive colour distance calculation methods for the
node.js/JS implementation (CIE76). Not only that, I also had to cache the
output after the first run. Using Rust I can use better colour difference
methods, do it in real time AND get more requests/sec.

I should add I still use Go on the API side of things.

------
rsoto
Here in Mexico, you get an XML for your invoices, which you must keep in order
to be tax deductable. However, it gets messy very quickly, as it must have
your Tax ID, it has to exist in the tax office's database and then you must
keep it for 5 year. It is a chore.

I run [http://www.boxfactura.com](http://www.boxfactura.com), an email service
for your digital invoices. It has been quite a journey because everyone I
speak to has some kind of trouble with their invoices, but they don't know
there's a product for that, so first you have to market the idea of it, and
then the product.

~~~
brianbreslin
How much do you charge? What's the most popular accounting tool there?
Quickbooks?

------
suhastech
I started basically when I stumbled upon a problem myself.
[https://thehorcrux.com/why-i-built-horcrux-app/](https://thehorcrux.com/why-
i-built-horcrux-app/) TL;DR: Google disabled my account. So, built an email
backup app to not get into this situation again.

I started building the app 4 years ago. I put it on Hacker News and it blew up
a tiny bit. That was enough to keep it going until now.

There is still a lot of work I can put into it marketing or coding wise. So
far, it's been going well ($800ish). I recently rolled out a UI/UX
improvement.

Its 4 year anniversary is in 2 days. :)

~~~
jtrip
Do you have any plans for a linux release? Or a windows?

~~~
suhastech
Well, I don't think Linux would be my target market.

I feel like Linux users are tech savvy enough to use open source scripts like
Gmvault etc.

I must think about Windows however.

~~~
soared
This answer is awesome because so often on HN confuse their friends/coworkers
with their target audience. Good job, cool app.

------
Schweigi
[https://www.ganttplanner.com](https://www.ganttplanner.com) is one of my side
projects. It turns your Google Calendar into a gantt chart. The project is
making a bit more than 1k/month and is currently on auto pilot.

I created this project for learning purposes and because it was a lot of fun.
I open sourced the actual gantt component: [https://www.angular-
gantt.com](https://www.angular-gantt.com)

------
thearn4
Not a "side project" in the usual sense, but I teach as an adjunct professor
(mathematics) every so often, and at a rate of about $1000 - 1200 per credit
hour (depending on the institution) I can make a little under a grand a month
after taxes. Teaching can be fun for many people, and I think it keeps me
grounded in the fundamentals, where my day job is entirely application
oriented.

The trick is that after a few times around, the courses require a bit less
preparation.

Adjuncting is an absolute nightmare if you are trying to do it as a full-time
job. But as a side thing for beer money when there is a staffing need? It's
pretty light on stress. Since I am not gunning for tenure track (or even a
full time position), there are little to no stakes involved.

Weirdly, I think the folks in my position (teaching as an adjunct as a side
gig) along with the tenured full-professors on the opposite end of the
academic spectrum are actually very similar in that regard.

~~~
tom_b
Adjunct side-gigs can be fun. Teaching students who started at zero and wound
up quite capable of sophisticated hacking was very rewarding for me. If you
have been curious about teaching and find an opportunity, I highly recommend
trying it just for this aspect of teaching.

But I taught a course as an adjunct and the preparation time totally killed
me. I wound up re-working the entire course from scratch. Worse, the course
started almost as soon as I was asked to teach. By the end of the course, I
was often prepping for the class the night before lectures.

Despite promising myself to not repeat the experience, I have just accepted
another adjunct lecturer side-gig for the spring. The main difference is that
excellent and up-to-date materials already exist. I'm hopeful these materials
make the course prep less intense.

------
kyloren
I saw the previous post as well. I know how it feels having a good idea is not
easy. Even people say talk to people and find pain points in their work is
easier said than done.

I guess it's partly because we are used to these pain points for a long period
of time we don't feel it as a pain point anymore or even though we have a good
idea it's not easy to build it as we need lot of capital to do so.

Also even if we have a good idea monetizing is a whole new ball game
altogether. Like the chrome extension I'm hacking together on weekends which
allows people to search for restaurants around them. I have no idea how I can
monetize it and just build it for the challenge of making it.

I think one option is to keep on making cool things. Do something challenging
and keep pushing out new things whenever you can. And finally one will stick.
I don't think it's easy but if one keep persistent in shipping new things
definitely one will become a success.

Like in a similar post I have made like this in the past I remember one
commenting, we as HN users believe that everything that we make should be like
Airbnb or Uber due to the illusion of success in many startups. But that is
not the case and it all comes down to being persistent and enjoying the
journey along the way.

~~~
verbify
> Like the chrome extension I'm hacking together on weekends which allows
> people to search for restaurants around them. I have no idea how I can
> monetize it

Have you considered paid promotion by restaurants to be at the top of the
list?

~~~
criddell
As a user, I don't think I would want the contents of the list influenced by
the restaurants.

I would look into something like the OpenTable affiliate program.

~~~
homarp
what if you get coupons ?

------
RyanOD
Years ago, I created an affiliate site advertising the Snuggie. A couple
months after I created the site, the Snuggie craze took off and I was making
several hundreds of dollars per day. Then, consumers realized how absurd this
fad was and the money dried up nearly as quickly.

Loads of fun while it lasted! Gave me a nice income bump for 3 holiday
seasons.

------
swiftisthebest
Digital magazine company. I have thousands of subscribers that pay me $2 /
month. I pay royalties to content providers. I work about 10 hours a month on
the project.

~~~
JayNeely
Did you negotiate royalties with individual content providers at the
beginning, or find the content through a marketplace of some kind?

I'm wondering how you can find good content cheap enough to be profitable at
$2/month.

------
wturner
I just wanted to say that I really like these kinds of posts an enjoy seeing
people ask them every few weeks. Its exciting to read business ideas that
people like myself can pull from. Curious if anyone would be interested in
doing video cast where some of these respondents are interviewed for ten to 15
minutes about their business. I know sites like Mixergy exists but I think
something more raw and down to earth would be cool. :)

 _edited for clarity_

------
nycdotnet
I made two TypeScript videos for Pluralsight ("ES6 with TypeScript" and
"Practical TypeScript Migration"). I put them together in the evenings and
weekends using the knowledge I got at my day job and from working on
TypeScript open source projects like grunt-ts (and a lot of research).

It was a lot of work, but it's a great passive income now that they're done,
and I'm quite proud of how they turned out. The Pluralsight authors are a
great professional network to be plugged-in with, and being an author is a
pretty unique differentiator on your resume.

I'm going to put together a third course soon.

They're always looking for new authors.
[https://www.pluralsight.com/teach](https://www.pluralsight.com/teach)

~~~
nojvek
That seems interesting. How much do you make a month?

~~~
nycdotnet
I prefer not to say exactly, but it's enough to post on this thread and also
enough that I'm considering making another one. Their top authors make serious
money.

------
streptomycin
[https://basketball-gm.com/](https://basketball-gm.com/) is a basketball
management sim video game (sorta like football manager), and it makes more
than that from ads.

~~~
deepaksurti
This is brilliant. May I ask you a question? I assume you are not using real
team names or real players. If you are using real names, how do you handle the
licenses? Sorry, not a baseball enthusiast hence could not figure if your team
/ player names are real.

~~~
streptomycin
Yeah, that's the reason I don't use real players :)

A lot of similar games simply ignore the law and pray they don't get sued (or
that the publicity from a lawsuit would actually be good).

But I do have support for uploading custom leagues, and people have made them
with various real leagues like the NBA
[https://github.com/alexnoob/BasketBall-GM-
Rosters/releases/t...](https://github.com/alexnoob/BasketBall-GM-
Rosters/releases/tag/2017.0.6) and the Philippine Basketball Association
[http://www.mediafire.com/file/1e8cq2l3rrndln5/PBA-
GM-2016.tx...](http://www.mediafire.com/file/1e8cq2l3rrndln5/PBA-GM-2016.txt)

~~~
CoryG89
This seems like a good idea. Surely you can't be sued for user generated
content which uses licensed team/player names.

I had previously mulled over trying to make a fantasy sports site using
bitcoin, but since I am based in the US, the gambling laws are too
prohibitive, even just using bitcoin.

~~~
noir_lord
> Surely you can't be sued for user generated content which uses licensed
> team/player names.

Probably not but I think they might be able to send a DMCA notice.

------
maxsavin
I created Meteor Toys, available at [http://meteor.toys](http://meteor.toys)

It's been very good to me, but also trending down as people seem to be
diversifying from Meteor. Certainly not what I expected when I got into it.

The story for it is a simple one: I solved some of the annoyances during
development for myself with by making a devtool, and then open sourced it.

The reaction was very positive and encouraging. Between the opportunity to
make more tools, and the downside of having to maintain them, I decided to
create paid tier for the tools.

~~~
LeonM
Website background becomes black as soon as I scroll down, making all the text
unreadable and the entire site unusable. Chrome 53.0.2785.143 on OS-X 10.11.6

~~~
_asummers
53.0.2785.143 on OSX 10.11.3 is fine. Perhaps an extension is throwing it off?

~~~
tmnvix
Same blackout issue for me. OSX 10.9.5 Chrome 53.0.2785.116

~~~
_asummers
I just updated to 10.11.6 like the original reporter (thanks for that, Apple
stopped nagging me I guess?) and still can't reproduce it on my end. Does it
do it for either of you in incognito?

~~~
tmnvix
Same issue with incognito.

------
NateG
I created an online game called Pit of War
([http://www.pitofwar.com](http://www.pitofwar.com)). It's a
strategy/management game that puts you in charge of a stable of gladiators.
You train your gladiators, outfit them in armour and weapons and give them a
set of strategies to use during the fights against other players. Strategies
start off simple and grow in detail and complexity as gladiators gain levels,
skills and better equipment.

~~~
LyndsySimon
I've always been at least mildly interested in game development, but what has
stopped me cold to this point is my inability to create the necessary artwork.
Did you create the art yourself, or did you have someone else do it?

~~~
riskable
Even if you _can_ create the art it's a _lot_ of work! More work than coding
the game, even.

Seriously, I started learning Blender so I could make assets for my own games
and even though I have some training in art it is one hell of a learning
curve. Not Blender itself, no. The first three weeks were a bit slow but then
I started to get a workflow going and now I'm confident I can make decent-
looking characters.

No, the _real_ hard part. The serious drain on time is _the art_ part. If you
haven't had years of experience _making art_ on a _very_ regular basis you're
going to have a slow go of it. Not only that but experienced artists will look
at your work and give you a handful of tips that will make you feel both
stupid and inadequate.

Art is a skill that can be learned... Just like programming. However, just
like programming you're going to spend the first few _years_ making absolute
garbage. It takes _time_ to be a decent artist.

You can learn to make _one_ kind of art pretty quickly. For example, I
successfully mastered the art of creating 3D anime girls (which are for the
game idea) in about a month. Can I animate them with any semblance of, "that
looks kinda natural"? No. I'm still working on _getting the hair right_. I've
yet to even _begin_ animating walks or arm movements!

...and for those who've done this: Yes, I'm using Rigify to save time. I'm in
the process of writing a Python script that works like the Ragdoll script for
hair or rope-like structures (because I'll be _damned_ if I have to spend any
more hours positioning a pony tail by hand @60 FPS!).

Edit: I had to take a break for a while to work on non-art stuff but here's
where I stood three weeks ago:

[https://imgur.com/a/I5YwR](https://imgur.com/a/I5YwR)

Note that she has eyes but they weren't showing up in the Cycles render output
for a reason I haven't figured out yet :)

The entire head was made from scratch by me. The hair was my focus when I was
last working on it (the animation thereof).

------
_asciiker_
I've launched Sentopia ([https://www.sentopia.net](https://www.sentopia.net))
as a side project and it is still easily making over 1K with just 2 medium
sized clients but it is not passive income, requires some maintenance &
customer support but still very much worth it.

This year we're launching new features and a simple API:
([https://sentopia.net/apidoc/](https://sentopia.net/apidoc/))

~~~
marktangotango
Very nice, what did you use to generate your api docs?

~~~
_asciiker_
Thank you! I used apiDoc ([http://apidocjs.com/](http://apidocjs.com/))

------
equalarrow
Indie Hackers ([http://indiehackers.com](http://indiehackers.com)) also has
some great projects earning over $1k/mo on it. It's been on the front page of
HN multiple times.

------
khuknows
I run [https://uimovement.com/](https://uimovement.com/) and it makes just
over $1,000 a month from sponsorships and ads most months.

The majority of that is from sponsorships for the weekly newsletter, which has
almost 13,000 subscribers now. Currently doing cust dev and what not to see if
there are income opportunities that don't involve ads.

~~~
truth_sentinell
How did you get those sponsors?

~~~
khuknows
I emailed people from companies that I saw had previously sponsored other,
similar newsletters (like hacker newseltter) - I'm also making progress by
emailing subscribers who work for companies that could be good fits as
sponsors. I do need to spend more time finding sponsors though.

------
sunnynagra
I tried releasing an iOS sticker pack app that had an actual use case
(allowing you to markup and annotate iMessage conversations). I was hoping
would give some passive income. Had a good first day and then dropped off a
cliff.

Link:
[https://appsto.re/us/zMHnfb.i?app=messages](https://appsto.re/us/zMHnfb.i?app=messages)

~~~
nojvek
Care to share what games?

------
docsapp_io
I built my side project "Documentation Hub for Developers" DocsApp.io
([https://www.docsapp.io/](https://www.docsapp.io/)). I spent 1 year+ to build
it. Current revenue around $800 per month. Now I still spending night time and
weekends to enhance it. HTTPS for custom domain powered by LetsEncrypt is on
roadmap.

The project started because there is always need for documentation for
software projects (in my career), and a lot companies are not used to have
one. At the same time, I want to learn Scala so I pick up Play! framework to
play and build real world app.

Happy to answer any questions!

~~~
coleifer
I'm one of the cocreators of readthedocs.org, in the interests of improving
this free platform, what features does docsapp provide that aren't available
on rtd?

~~~
docsapp_io
One of the features I think RTD missing is DocsApp support upload swagger.yml
file and auto generate API browser ([https://demo.docsapp.io/docs/swagger-
api](https://demo.docsapp.io/docs/swagger-api)) as well as API Tester (soon).

Another one is DocsApp is using markdown editor instead of pulling docs from
SCM (git). Which good for users that do not know to use git.

DocsApp also support generate Github release page
([https://demo.docsapp.io/docs/github-
release](https://demo.docsapp.io/docs/github-release)) so users able to
download artifacts without leaving DocsApp.

PS: I never use RTD so I might wrong.

------
marmot777
What do side projects that make income tend to have in common? When I hear
about people's side projects or read them here, I'm not certain what the
lessons are. I personally do side projects just for fun but heck if
interest/passion could somehow be directed toward money making side projects
that were good for the world then i'd direct my energy toward those. Possibly.
It's a good thought exercise everyone should at least consider, can a hobby be
monetized without fucking up the reason you loved it in the first place? Can
it be done in a way that makes it less like your day job, so to speak?

~~~
kowdermeister
They solve a small problem most startuppers / entrepreneurs would not jump on
because the market is so small (or at least they think it's too small).

They don't want to change the world, just make it a tiny bit better.

> Can it be done in a way that makes it less like your day job, so to speak?
> Of course, just do things when you feel like it to do, no stress, no
> pressure.

------
johndandison
[http://getlivead.com](http://getlivead.com) and
[http://chattorney.com](http://chattorney.com). They're different front ends
to the same backend. Makes everything from aubscriptions. Not enough to live
on as primary income but not shabby either. It has been a long four year road,
with a couple of pivots and rewrites, 3 years of attorney's fees for patents
but hugely personally rewarding and self-sufficient now.

~~~
sgc
I liked the idea of getlivead.com and went to the pricing page.

149 for what time period? Hard to sign up like that.

For most people, that is way too much for a tool that only does one niche
thing. The thing is, everyone could use that one niche thing every once in a
while. You should have a casuals tier with limited use/time for people who
have some stuff to sell because they are moving or whatever. Bigger clients
could give it a test run and upgrade if they want.

~~~
johndandison
Thanks for the feedback. If you're interested in some of the thought pattern I
can give you an abbreviated history. Also, if you're interested I can give you
a code to sign up for free.

We started to service attorneys only, but as a clearing house of sorts.
Attorney signs up, registers practices and regions, and when a user sends a
message in that region/practice, all subscribed attorneys are notified and
chat begins. That is challenging from a marketing perspective. So we pivoted
to a more simple embeddable chat box, with the core still being web to SMS.

We then tried to expand to include the casual user, hence texttheweb.com and
getlivead.com. At the same time, the prices dropped to $5/week or $10/month -
thinking craigslist seller.

Fast forward to now and we have resellers - some targeting attorneys, others
targeting local professionals (plumbers, electricians, etc). They get funny
about pricing and undercutting, so we've basically jacked up the 'published'
pricing so the resellers can make some money. It has effectively ended passive
web sales, with all sales coming through resellers.

Probably more than you asked for, but figured I'd offer some insight.

~~~
sgc
Got it, but you still need to say 149 for how long. I have no idea if that is
per month, quarter, or year, etc.

------
soheil
Radio show archive website, it's been running for about 10 years now.

------
ArturT
I created pro version of my ruby gem for test suite parallelisation
[https://knapsackpro.com](https://knapsackpro.com) I released it last year but
started validating it by charging users since July this year. $1K/month is my
goal by the end of this year, so far I'm halfway there.

------
kilroy123
You never said net or profit. My side project is now making over $1,000 in
revenue. Soon it will actually be profitable.

It's an apparel company for women who like to: hunt, fish, and be outdoors.

VERY random for a vegetarian software develop, from Portland.

[https://henoutdoors.com](https://henoutdoors.com)

~~~
carlmungz
How did you get that up and running?

A friend of mine started this label therhinestonecompany.bigcartel.com as a
side project and I joined a year ago. We had (and still do) a lot of interest
but we both became busy. But I'm tempted to pick it up again only because I
feel it would do well with proper execution. I've been a silent Hacker News
reader the past year or so (I'm a journalist turned coder) but your post
grabbed my attention!

~~~
kilroy123
I've been meaning to write a blog post about it...

We use Shopify with a printing and fulfillment service:
[http://theprintful.com](http://theprintful.com)

It's been a decent amount of work, to be honest.

~~~
carlmungz
Interesting - will check it out. Thanks.

------
zachlatta
Without sharing too much info, I'm making ~$1.2k/monthly right now off of a
Bitcoin arbitrage bot I made.

I'd share more, but the arbitrage only exists because of a market inefficiency
and I'm sure that if anyone here started competing with me, the market would
become too efficient to easily profit :-).

~~~
usgroup
How long have you profited on this op? Is it actual arb or stat arb?

~~~
zachlatta
3 months. It's not really a "real" arb because actually dumping the coins is
hard, but it takes advantage of a spread across exchanges. Closer to a
financial services company.

------
jhylau
I made [https://www.switchup.org](https://www.switchup.org) \- all the revenue
is from advertising. I spend around 10 hours a week on it and have another
full-time job/startup. The website is run by two freelancers and a full-time
hire.

------
fodoj
I made a platform where people can hire a mentor to learn programming
(ruby/rails, frontend, devops, big data). I've focused on mentorship with a
per-week payment, so not a 1hour tutor or 15min "solve concrete task" service,
but a real, long-term mentor dedicated to sharing all the knowledge with
students.

Initial customers base grew from the free ebook I wrote and various blog posts
available on the website. Lots of success are due to email newsletter, which
I'm trying to keep useful and rarely send any ads there.

I'm taking 20% from each payment and that's be growing quiet well so far,
especially after entering english-language market. Website is
[https://mkdev.me/en](https://mkdev.me/en)

~~~
touchingwood
Love this idea. How do you vet the teachers and how do you make sure they keep
going through your site (and not just go direct)?

~~~
fodoj
I am very careful with picking mentors and I generally just trust them to do
their job. :-) It might not scale well long term, but that's the problem I
don't need to solve right now. Right now if some lead tries to go directly to
mentor, mentor always 1. Reports it to me; 2. Tells this lead to pay through
mkdev.me.

It's simply much more convenient to mentor through mkdev.me than to do it on
ones own.

------
double_h
My app makes roughly around $1K/month. A simple utility to backup(free) and
restore(paid, in-app purchase) mobile phone contacts. Check it out:
[http://c2x.eastros.com/](http://c2x.eastros.com/)

~~~
endisukaj
I only know for Android since that's the only mobile OS I have ever used so
excuse my question if it sounds stupid:

Why should I pay for your app if Android has a built-in backup/restore system
for contacts? Or does this work by creating backups periodically in case you
accidentally delete a contact you might not have wanted to?

~~~
double_h
Good question, and there are couple of reasons why people buy the import
feature. (1) If you are switching from Android to iOS or vice verse, app can
make the contact transfer process very simple and convenient. (2) People like
you and me can find very easy ways to transfer contacts, but there are a lot
of non technical people who don't know about auto backup and restore features.

------
googlereject
I make well over $10,000 / month operating several mobile games.

~~~
snyp
Hi would love to know more details.. specifically what genre of games do u
make?

------
malcolmocean
I run a productivity app called Complice
([https://complice.co/](https://complice.co/)), which is currently making me
about $3k/mo. If you want to learn tons more about the process of getting to
profitable, you can read my profile on IndieHackers from back in August:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/complice](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/complice)

------
plantain
I run [https://skysight.io/](https://skysight.io/) , which does weather
forecasting for aviation.

------
vsax
I created MEAN studio, www.meanstudio.com, where I charge $25 per hour to
create highly functional prototypes in couple of weeks. I use existing code
from other projects so my coding velocity is fast and never charge the clients
more time than I spent on it. Clients see the quality and speed and just
spread the word. I am making $1500 per month in the 3rd month of it running.

~~~
conorgil145
How much time do you spend to generate the $1500? Is this your full time job,
or do you do it on the side? Do you have any plans to scale up somehow, or are
you content with what you have going right now?

------
soheil
iPhone apps combined revenue ~$1k/mo, most popular unlocks a Mac using iPhone
bluetooth mac address when it's in range.

------
throwaway17265
Over 3-4 years I seem to average around 800 per month, but the last 2 months
have been over 1k, and around 1-2 times per year this happens (in the
meantime, it's very low).

It is software, 3-4 small utilities of high quality in the niche platform it
is. A launcher, a screenshot tool and such items.

------
disows
I've actually just started [http://valleyhunt.com](http://valleyhunt.com) with
the hopes of reaching $1K/month. It's basically a curated list of domain names
for startups, so if anyone has any - feel free to submit yours.

------
DaveChild
I made [https://readability-score.com/](https://readability-score.com/) \- a
site for measuring the readability of text. It's been a bit of an accidental
success, but it's proving to be a great project.

------
pcunite
I have a website that largely runs itself right now. C++ based desktop
products for the Windows environment.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12636044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12636044)

------
tchadwick
My side project is [http://codeposters.io](http://codeposters.io). Revenue is
hit or miss. I'll occasionally get big bumps in traffic. Conversion rate sits
at almost exactly 1%.

~~~
htkibar
That is quite low, if you were to optimize it a bit you could net a decent
amount of money I presume.

------
pauljarvis
I spend very little time on my short/solo podcast but it makes a decent amount
(much more than $1k) each month with long-term sponsors.

------
jusob
Browshot ([https://browshot.com/](https://browshot.com/)), a screenshot
service.

------
icehac
High frequency trading algorithms.

~~~
mkrum
How did you get started with that?

~~~
icehac
It's been a project of mine for about 6 years now. The algorithms trade off of
"orderflow" principles. Same algorithm is applied to equities, currencies,
futures, etc. with decent success. I use compiled linux distributions for a
little bit of an "edge" with trade execution.

------
soufron
I created a political news aggregator in France, with a nice community...

~~~
joelthelion
Could you link to it?

------
williamle8300
I started a (strictly e-book) publishing company. We publish public domain
titles on Amazon, and Apple's iBookstore. GooglePlay has gone by the wayside
just like all of their "cool projects."

We don't just copy-pasta public domain titles. We actually go through it, and
create a really nice table of contents, include flourishing images to chapter
headings, link any footnotes, and re-typeset so there's pleasant vertical
rhythm to the paragraphs. We really pride ourselves on creating a great user
experience rivaling titles from major book publishing companies that have
delved into the foray of e-book publishing. CSS for e-books is a repeat of
browser compatibility problems reminiscent of the 90s unfortunately.

Our average price is usually $0.99. Our genre is theology, so we publish books
from Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvin to name a few.

We make over $1K/month, but sales are on a downward trend. The hype of
e-readers has faded in the past 2 years. It's not that e-reading isn't cool.
It totally is. Just like the mp3 player was a great successor to the Walkman.
The problem is that there isn't One Great Device for e-reading (like the iPod
was).

A review of e-reading devices:

iPad: No person with eyeballs can read on an LCD screen for more than 2hrs,
but I can read a physical paper book as long as I want. Dead-on-arrival in my
opinion. Sales from this market never overtook sales from the Kindle store for
my company.

Kindle: Better than the iPad. That's not saying all that much because they're
only better because they use e-ink. That's it. Navigating and whatnot is still
really janky. The worst thing about the Kindle is that all text is justified.
There aren't any settings to change it to left alignment. It's nuts. You have
to see a screenshot of some text to see how absurd this design decision is.

Kobo: These guys make the best e-readers. They are e-ink like Kindle, but they
have this revolutionary technology called "left alignment of text" instead of
justified-only text on the Kindle. You don't have the sophisticated backend
infrastructure like Apple/Amazon for synchronizing your
books/bookmarks/highlights/blabla. But it's not that important really. Just
sideload your e-books, and dupe your e-book library on your computer. That's
an end-to-end backup plan. You may not have heard about Kobo because they
don't have the marketing budget like their competitors.

My company is called Fig, because I started the company on Fig St in
Escondido, CA while I was in seminary. Here's some of our titles on Amazon:
[https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
alias%3Dd...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-
alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=fig+theology)

Footnote: I probably went too far with this off-handed hardware review, but
I'm drinking wine and felt loquacious.

~~~
jackgolding
How do you get sales? Do you have any customer analytics on cross-selling
through amazon's recommendation engine or anything?

~~~
williamle8300
Amazon doesn't give you access any kind of information about your customers. I
just see raw sales figures for each e-book. Apple is the same way. The reason
for this is they benefit the most by keeping you and your customers separated,
so you can't wiggle your way in between them and "cut out the middle man."

So for us, we don't really have any kind of marketing plan other than trying
just trying to make a great reading experience.

------
imaginenore
I have a project making $200/month, 100% passively (I just renew the domain
every couple of years). But I think it would be so dumb to just tell what it
is here. Why would you invite more competition to your niche?

~~~
quirkafleeg
Anyone who visits your site (who are more likely to be interested in and
knowledgeable about your niche than random people here) could copy it if they
wanted to.

By posting here you may increase your traffic/ad revenue, now and/or in the
future (not everyone cares about or has the time to rip off every site they
see), and you may get some constructive, helpful comments or advice.

Totally your choice, just giving possible benefits.

~~~
imaginenore
But if you visit my site, you wouldn't know if it makes money and how much. So
you don't know if it's worth days of work copying it.

~~~
quirkafleeg
True, though you don't know if it's worth it anyway until you spend the time
to do it. Just because you make $200 with your (established and known) site
doesn't guarantee someone else would just by copying it.

I do get your point of view though, and it's fair enough, I just think the
risk of someone copying a site they see here (and hurting that site's bottom
line) is minimal.

I doubt you're going to copy every site on this page and I know I'm not, and
yet they collectively bring in several thousand dollars a month.

Anyway, good luck with your site, whatever it is. :) And to everyone else who
posted.

I think these kind of threads are really interesting, mainly just to see the
different kinds of sites or apps people are making, but I think they serve as
an inspiration for people to create something themselves (not just copy), and
I'm glad people are not shy about posting what they're doing.

------
jcslzr
Website to learn to type faster:
[http://learn-2-type.com](http://learn-2-type.com) (I am getting close to
$1K/month, just $998 usd more to go....)

