
Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell - folli
It seems this question hasn&#x27;t been asked for some time, so I&#x27;d be interested hear what new (and old) ideas have come up.
======
geerlingguy
[https://hostedapachesolr.com](https://hostedapachesolr.com) \- since 2013,
started with intention of just hosting my own search indexes (since cheap
shared hosting didn't allow java apps to be installed), then ballooned from
there. Minimal maintenance, almost every process is automated with Ansible +
Jenkins + tiny bits of PHP glue code.

[https://servercheck.in](https://servercheck.in) \- since 2012, same as Solr,
I started it to do SMS messages for my own site outages... then realized I
could scale it easily using cheap ~$10/year VPSes and Node.js, currently have
a few hundred clients monitoring ~1000 servers and websites.

[https://www.ansiblefordevops.com](https://www.ansiblefordevops.com) \- book I
started writing during the process of automating both of the above SaaS
products—and now the book generates more monthly revenue than both of the
above :)

I've written extensively about all three projects, but continue to devote more
time to the Ansible for DevOps book / project. Here are some posts with
history/reflection on self-publishing:
[https://www.jeffgeerling.com/search/self-
publishing](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/search/self-publishing)

~~~
jwitko
Very inspiring. Coming across a "geerlingguy" ansible repo in my searches for
pre-existing ansible roles is always a treat as I know it will be solid
quality.

------
donutdan4114
I launched an app for Shopify about a year ago called Custom Fields:
[https://customfields.bonify.io](https://customfields.bonify.io)

Currently it's making about $5,000 / month.

It's been a very interesting process dealing with building the app, marketing
it, and dealing with support. The app is $19/mo for regular Shopify stores,
and we have about 700+ total customers (only some are paying). We get A LOT of
support requests for misc things and have been trying to build up a knowledge
base of articles and help guides in our ZenDesk.

We have recently been running into an issue with file hosting storage fees (we
allow people to upload files, no additional charge). We have a couple of
Shopify stores that are costing us about $70/mo each in file hosting fees (we
don't charge them extra).

I absolutely LOVE building apps for 3rd party providers. We don't really
market the app, it's found organically in Shopify's app store. The first 8
months were filled with lots of little bugs needing fixing, but that has since
slowed down as I've fixed things. At this point, it's a pretty stable
application that doesn't require much maintenance, mostly just user support.

~~~
jv22222
I really like what you've done.

> We don't really market the app

Well, what you did _is_ marketing (via integration), it's a great strategy
when done well and looks like you did an awesome job.

I've heard it said that marketing is basically doing anything that exposes
your product to more people.

~~~
donutdan4114
Yea, that's why I love 3rd party integrations.. Just need 10 more of them and
be raking in $50k/month would be nice :)

------
wanqu
[https://wanqu.co](https://wanqu.co) \- A San Francisco engineer (me) curates
5 English articles on tech & startup for Chinese makers everyday.

Started on August 6, 2014. It's a side project of mine. I built a website
(Django), a native iOS app (Swift), a native Android app (React Native), and
some automation tools. It brings around $1200/month via iOS in-app-purchase,
sponsorship, affiliate links etc. I keep a full time job while doing this
content curation thing at night (2~3 hours per day). So far, I've curated
5000+ articles and I've written over 1 million Chinese characters for comments
-- The Chinese translation of all Harry Potter books consist of 2 million
Chinese characters :)

Over 3 years, it accumulates over 140,000 followers across 10 content
distribution channels as of today (Sep 1, 2017), including iOS push
notifications, android push notifications, Weibo, Twitter, chrome push
notifications ...

It's in Chinese, so it's pretty much unknown to the English-speaking world.
Hacker News and Product Hunt are English only. Non-English projects are not
allowed :( I hope my side project can fill the gap between Chinese-speaking
makers and the English-dominant tech world. I believe doing good is the best
business model.

Checkout my Indie Hackers interview (in English, of course):
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/wanqu](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/wanqu)

~~~
ethbro
Good and useful idea! Sounds useful!

I feel there's a huge pattern of "proficient in X _and_ Y" opportunities that
people underappreciate.

There may be a million people better than you at X, another million better at
you than Y, but only 10 better than you at X _and_ Y.

So if an idea requires expertise in both, the chances of success increase
substantially. Or at best, there's simply no one who's ever done it!

~~~
wanqu
Thanks!

This reminds me of an article that I'm going to curate today: "Being Different
Beats Being Better" [http://dariusforoux.com/being-different-beats-being-
better/](http://dariusforoux.com/being-different-beats-being-better/)

------
jonandersense
I've been working on my app Leap Second, it generates somewhere around 1-3k
per month. [https://www.leapsecond.co](https://www.leapsecond.co)

I created the app after using 1 Second Everyday crashed on me and deleted a
few years videos. The app stores everything in the Photos app which made it
very fast and easy to develop (a weekend). Now I spend a few hours a month
mostly improving the UI and doing bug fixes as I find them. Initial traction
was very slow as I didn't do any marketing. I started using App Store ads and
it gave me a good help of getting small user base that could grow on it's own.

~~~
notjackson
Very nice app, awesome concept UI/UX. Very well done, congratz on your current
success.

~~~
jonandersense
Thanks for the kind words!

------
pilom
I've cut my expenses and invested the extra in index funds. Currently at a
nest egg of around $300k which spews off dividends of around $500/month and is
currently appreciating a bit faster than that.

~~~
redsn0w422
Which index funds, if you don't mind me asking?

~~~
pilom
Vanguard mutual funds. About an 80/20 split between VTSAX (Stocks) and VBTLX
(Bonds). Nice and simple. I re-balance with monthly contributions.

------
timmaah
I screen scrape camping reservations and send out notifications when a
campsite becomes available.

[http://reserve.wanderinglabs.com/](http://reserve.wanderinglabs.com/)

Currently working on integrating the new CA reserve website. It is a shit
show.

~~~
karjaluoto
Interesting—we’re doing something similar with
[https://www.campnab.com](https://www.campnab.com)

Currently available in B.C., Ontario, and Washington State. Now adding
national parks in Canada.

~~~
weej
Excellent user experience. Thanks for including Washington State. I'm already
sharing this with friends.

------
lxmorj
DonaldTrumpDogPoopBags.com pulls in about $500 in revenue per day after some
FB ad tuning. I acquired the site from a client when he decided to shut it
down. It's moreorless break even until his earn-out is complete after a few
hundred more orders.

Fortunately running the site break-even supports main business, and e-commerce
fulfillment company (MonthlyBoxer.com)

~~~
giarc
You should branch out into other personalities. I imagine getting the artwork
done is quick and can be swapped easily. That way you can attach yourself to
the next fad and roll with relevant FB ads.

~~~
lxmorj
Yessir! We're planning to launch quite a few of these mini-sites, and will be
exploring things like "Vladmir Poo-tin" and such once the Trump fountain runs
dry...

------
mikejarema
My domain name and social media handle search tool has been humming along
nicely for 5+ years now and produces a modest amount of profit each month.

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

It makes money from domain name registrations it refers via affiliate links.

I've been playing with the idea of adding "pro" features for a couple of years
now but I worry anything that detracts from its simplicity may hurt sales.

~~~
Toadsoup
Just a note on twitter - it looks like there is a false positive for the
availability of 'wood'

There isn't an (obvious) account with that name, but twitter doesn't let me
register it. I don't know if it is a blocked keyword or private or what.

~~~
mikejarema
Yeah the false positives are such a pain.

I've been maintaining a manual list (thanks for the @wood addition) but
otherwise haven't really figured out a way to definitively sort through these.

------
mitchellbryson
[https://workroll.com](https://workroll.com) \- started in June, turns over
$2k a month. Built whilst automating my own freelance sales work flow and
figured others could make use of it too. It saves me about a week a month from
doing my own lead generation. Been trying to get funding but had no luck. Too
early.

Also started a blog to help freelancers grow:
[https://medium.com/workroll](https://medium.com/workroll)

~~~
kilroy123
How did you find people who were looking to hire? I want to create something
similar for a niche industry.

~~~
mitchellbryson
I monitor hundreds of job boards, social searches e.t.c.

More info here: [https://medium.com/workroll/find-5-freelance-design-
developm...](https://medium.com/workroll/find-5-freelance-design-development-
leads-every-day-985f59aa0cac)

------
arekkas
I make over 700$ per month through patreon for my open source work, primarily
[https://github.com/ory/hydra](https://github.com/ory/hydra) . Hydra started
as a side project for a work-for-hire project. After getting bashed by people
for it being trash (it was, mostly due to bad dependencies but also due to bad
architecture), I rewrote it (and the libraries enabling it) and now it's one
of the go-to services for getting an OAuth2 server up and running. I am very
stubborn and spent a ton of time on auth* questions while building other
projects, and it seems like people like my approaches to it! :)

It's come so far now that I'm starting to consider this my full-time thing
(I'm in the final stages of completing my MSc computer science) and I'm
currently running evaluation on an API security platform based on that
technology. Basically, I spend most of my time on it and I even got a small
team helping me - but it's not what earns my living at the moment.

Before that I gathered a lot of experience from running and building
[https://en.serlo.org/](https://en.serlo.org/) which is basically a Wikipedia
for learning (I built the whole CMS from scratch) that serves over 1m MAUs in
Germany (the english page is very sparse, most of it is on
[https://de.serlo.org](https://de.serlo.org) ) and is thus on the most popular
learning platforms in Germany. The company behind it is an NGO (= no profits)
I cofounded and the platform is ad-free and doesn't cost anything. We get
money through donations and other funds.

It's an exciting journey, I'm now at a point where I need to figure out how to
actually make money on the web that doesn't come through donations and
goodwill, but I think I can do it - why not, right?

By the way, you may also like the WYSIWYG editor I wrote - I also plan a
static site generator based on it with a themeforest-y market place. Feel free
to check those out:

* [https://www.ory.am/sites/](https://www.ory.am/sites/) * [https://github.com/ory/editor](https://github.com/ory/editor)

ps: It took me almost 2 years to get to 700$ at patreon and most of it comes
from one sponsorship I'm very glad of. Their CTO texted me one day because he
saw hydra on HN frontpage and he works in the identity space.

~~~
edem
So why don't you have a public profile on Patreon? I mean I can't see how much
you make on your Patreon page.

------
peacetreefrog
Planning a 'Show HN' on this as we get closer to the season, but I built a
model for Fantasy Football that works pretty well and has done over $500 this
month. Takes into account correlations across same-opposing team players to
give a slight edge.

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

Modeler by trade, had to learn all the back and frontend stuff myself, been
really fun so far.

~~~
giarc
Might want to remove the Edelman example given his recent injury... no one is
going to be starting him ;)

~~~
peacetreefrog
Ha, yes that's on my to do list!

------
02thoeva
Went full time on our side project,
[https://emailoctopus.com](https://emailoctopus.com), last year when we hit
the $5k a month mark. We'd been working on it for 3 years and had some steady
growth - contracted a few days a week alongside until I could afford to go
full time.

In hindsight should have done it sooner, a year on we've grown so much more by
taking it seriously as a business. We value our time more and as such charge
more, yet growth has only accelerated.

------
buf
Looking for a voice actor, look no further than
[https://www.castingcall.club](https://www.castingcall.club)

Strong network effect so far, about 65k users

~~~
RikNieu
This is pretty interesting! Why/how did you get it started?

~~~
buf
I'm an amateur voice actor and felt like I knew my audience pretty well.

~~~
RikNieu
And how did you market it initially? Did you market it to voice artists or
clients? How?

~~~
buf
I had about 10 years worth of voice acting contacts that I reached out to.

------
BacktestMarket
[https://www.backtestmarket.com/](https://www.backtestmarket.com/) \- since
2015, we started a service collecting historical financial data to help retail
traders getting high quality information.

In 2016 we started offering Expert Advisors we started for personal necessity,
and now we are earning around 1.5k per month.

BacktestMarket will come out with a new version of the website on October 2017
with new products and new services

------
justboxing
[http://www.visaok.in/](http://www.visaok.in/) \- Since late 2016. Soft-
launched in April 2017.

Made 700$ in June, been fluctuating since then, but I'm not doing it for the
money though.

When I first came to America on a H1-B visa, I remember job searches were
super-annoying because I'd find a position that I was a good fit for, only to
find "Sorry we can't sponsor your Work Visa" in Bold H2 font. I am now an
American Citizen, but even now, I find these exclusions on several popular
websites like dice.com, indeed.com and even here on @whoishiring

So I decided to create this curated job board listing jobs with employers who
are willing to sponsor or transfer your work visa in over 30 countries around
the world. Lot of countries in Europe (ex: Germany, UK, Netherlands etc) have
recently launched "Startup Visa" programs that lets entrepreneurs come to
their country and live and work on exciting new technologies and eventually
get permanent residency.

A new modern UI, email alerts for jobs matching your search, and a Visa
application / help community site is in the works.

Meanwhile if you have feedback please shoot me an email. theblogdoctor [@]
gmail

------
aarondf
I have an accounting tutoring website for students at specific colleges. You
can see one of them here: [https://acct229.com](https://acct229.com). It makes
> 500 a month, but the bulk of it (obviously) comes in two waves: middle of
fall semesters and middle of spring semesters. There is no activity at all
during summers and christmas breaks, which really is quite nice.

~~~
pdm55
So your tutoring is all done through your videos, or separate online
individualised instruction (1-to-1, or 1-to-many?), or through visits to your
tutees for in-person sessions, or tutees come to you, ...?

I am a tutor here in Australia. I visit people's homes, or they come to me. I
am interested in online tutoring, but I am unsure what exactly to try; or even
what software and hardware to use to create the videos. I market myself
through Gumtree (not sure if you have that in the US). Any advice more than
welcome.

~~~
aarondf
Hey good questions. All the tutoring I do is in the form of recorded video. I
don't do any live tutoring except for very rarely when someone needs extra
help. Because the content never changes, I recorded the videos a couple years
ago and haven't had to record any more since. I still do a lot of work in
terms of marketing it, but the hard work was definitely recording the
material.

Happy to help in any way I can

------
malchow
I offer web publishers a stack that enables client-side removal of
programmatic ads when users pay a small subscription fee. Lots of law blogs,
economics blogs, etc., are using this now. [1]

[1] [https://subscriptions.publir.com/](https://subscriptions.publir.com/)

~~~
sgslo
This is an awesome project, nice job! If you don't mind sharing, how did you
land your first few law/economics blog customers? Seems like they might be a
tough market to get into. Do you run into onboarding issues with them around
the script setup?

One small nitpick - your three section links in the header ("How it Works",
"Analytics", "Why Publir") need a "cursor: pointer;" rule on them.

~~~
malchow
To be honest, my partner and I just made a Sheets doc of all the blogs we
read, and emailed the writers (usually professors) letting them know that they
can give their readers a fair way "out" of the ad ecosystem. They loved it.

Figuring out how to remove ads client-side while not getting the site
"charged" for policy violations by the ad networks was tough, though.

~~~
pdimitar
So how did you do the last exactly? Very interesting.

------
eljamon
I made ~$4000 last month by arbitraging crypto currencies on 3 markets.

I use a bot to do the work for me, but I monitor it very closely and I spend a
lot of optimizing the old code. I don't have much money on the exchanges
because I don't trust them but I could make much more if I wanted to risk
more.

~~~
nylonstrung
How much capital did you need to put in to generate that 4K?

~~~
thisisit
This. Arbitrage is something which has real potential in cryptocurrency
markets but the problem remains on the capital front.

------
joeax
I wrote a science fiction novel, _The Final Six Days_. I had been kicking
around the idea for 5 years, working on technical side projects until I
decided to shift course toward writing. I'm in the process of writing out the
rest of the series (books 2-4).

As far as money, I've made close to a thousand on months that I am promoting
it heavily. Right now I have pulled all advertising and promotion until book 2
is in pre-order.

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

~~~
RikNieu
How do you go about promoting it? I've been kicking the idea of writing
fiction on the side too for quite some time.

~~~
joeax
I bought Mark Dawson's SPF course, which focuses on running targeted Facebook
and Amazon ads. I also ran ads on Goodreads that were mildly effective. The
most effective approach though for me so far is Freebooksy/Bargain Booksy.
Give away your book for a few days, then for a month or so after your sales
and KDP page reads will skyrocket (you should invest in a really good cover).

Email me if you have any further questions.

------
vital101
I've been working on [https://kernl.us](https://kernl.us) for a little over 2
years now.

It's currently making $650 / month and growing.

Something I "knew" but never really understood about growing a business is how
long it can take. Granted this is completely on the side, but it still takes a
long time to find your market, grow, get customers, etc. Learning that this is
actually a marathon was valuable.

The other thing I have to actively manage is building things that are valuable
-vs- things that I find interesting. As a developer I LOVE tinkering with new
technology, but when I'm wearing my business hat upgrading to the new hot
frontend framework doesn't make that much sense.

------
craigcherlet
[http://www.craigcherlet.com](http://www.craigcherlet.com) \- started writing
how to articles and promoting SaaS applications as an affiliate on my blog.
Already doing over $1,000 a month in recurring revenue and growing. Focusing
on value and it seems to be working.

------
funtober
Fall event directory and costume store launched in 2012:
[https://www.funtober.com](https://www.funtober.com)

Basically a one-stop shop for fall festivals, Oktoberfest, haunted houses,
pumpkin patches, etc. Still have a long way to go to make it what I would like
but traffic last year was roughly 1 million in the month of October.
Anticipate it will double to 2 million/October this year. Still working on the
right revenue model.

~~~
shanecleveland
There's something to be said for seasonal niches. It seems to me there's a bit
of a reset in terms of search rankings that can mitigate the authority bigger
players may have. Do you find that be true?

~~~
funtober
I could talk about the SEO behind it for days but:

We did use the reset to our advantage to pick up rankings, but I don't think
it mitigates the authority of bigger players much. The reset tends to wash out
small-time players in the space and bigger players who can't niche effectively
more so than it does committed players. Now that I have traffic, I don't worry
too much that we are going to get bounced in the reset. I am much more worried
that someone will beat us with better content for the next year. Everfest is
another startup that I have seen that appears to have pretty much conquered
the reset at this point.

Funtober had a very hard time displacing a couple mid-sized players in some of
our seasonal niches that were established. Even with the reset, it can take
years for their information to become truly out of date and people to look for
alternatives. There are also a few things that they can do to keep their
information current with little effort. We're just about even now with two in
particular that I have in mind, but it took 5 years to get there.

Black Friday would be an obvious example of an area where the reset should be
biggest if your theory is true. I think the players there have been pretty
consistent and my internal estimate is that even with the reset it will take
5+ years to crack it.

------
rathboma
Making ~$500/month from a combination of things:

[https://blog.matthewrathbone.com](https://blog.matthewrathbone.com) \-
Articles about Hadoop, Hive, and Spark with Amazon book and Coursera course
affiliate links

[https://www.99inbound.com](https://www.99inbound.com) \- Forms and form-
endpoints for close.io, add a form to your website and have entries sync to
Close.io as new leads. Made this as a side-project when I needed this
functionality and didn't want to pay out the nose for Zapier.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.matthewrat...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.matthewrathbone.simplecheckin)
\- Android app to check-in to foursquare/swarm in one click. Used to be more
popular when checking in was more of a thing. Revenue comes from an in-app
upgrade that adds minimal features, so is more of a 'thank you' upgrade. Built
in a weekend.

And of course, investments in index funds like VTI and BND.

When I launched Simple Check-in upgrade payments it did about $400/day for a
week which was very exciting.

------
znq
We've developed an internal tool to remotely access iOS and Android log files
(NSLog and logcat). We work remotely, so we always had issues debugging
problems that we couldn't reproduce.

Initially it was just an internal experiment at Mobile Jazz and at some point
we even thought killing it, but now after 3 years we're at €7300 MRR
(~$8600/month) and growing consistently.

That said, we still haven't reached our break even point (also because we
decided to invest more in marketing and supporting additional platforms) and
it'll take us some more years to recuperate the time (=money) invested.

We've written about our story here: [https://bugfender.com/blog/three-years-
bugfender-9-5m-users/](https://bugfender.com/blog/three-years-
bugfender-9-5m-users/) and have provided an updated to revenue numbers and
other statistics here: [https://bugfender.com/blog/updates-from-
bugfender-q2-2017/](https://bugfender.com/blog/updates-from-
bugfender-q2-2017/)

------
markfer
[https://www.recapped.io](https://www.recapped.io) is what I actually launched
2 months ago since I was frustrated by the lack of existing solutions for my
sales team.

Around $600/mo now, but believe I should hit $2,000+ MRR by next month.

TL;DR: Sales-enablement that helps sales reps communicate, collaborate, and
engage with potential customers.

~~~
TamDenholm
Looks cool, one suggestion, in your homepage, change the screenshots to have
actual text in them, it provides a lot more context to understand the app.

------
andygor
[http://datastarta.com](http://datastarta.com) — launched 3 months ago. The
last month was $1350. I spent a month and $29 (domain + bubble) to build an
MVP.

~~~
RepressedEmu
Just curious: Did you scrape the initial dataset or did it come from personal
research when looking for an investment?

~~~
andygor
For 5 years i worked as an investment analyst for a global accelerator. A few
months ago i left the job to ship my own products. Datastarta is the first
one.

During the accelerator journey, I met thousands of startups and hundreds of
investors from many countries. Some of them were looking to work with
accelerators. From my experience, 50% of startups who apply to an accelerator
actually need a program. Another part is strong enough, has a great team and
just want to setup meetings with seed investors on a demo day. Why spend 3-6
months to do that?

I set down for a month and made a solid research on markets I know. I collect
a lot of data, structured it, analyzed and decided to launch the first product
as a database of angel investors from around the world.

------
jgimenez
I built [https://localname.io](https://localname.io) as an excuse to learn
some Swift and node.js.

It helps server side development by giving a publicly accessible URL to your
computer.

I needed it for development and testing of mobile applications together with
the backend. Also works well for webhooks.

Didn't reach the $500 yet, but it's getting there!

~~~
maheshj
You probably get asked this a lot, but why would anyone use this when ngrok is
available for free? Cool homepage btw...

~~~
jgimenez
Yes, that's a common question. Our offering is a nice, easy to use user
interface. Ngrok is a strong competitor though.

------
Xixi
Two side projects: Tomotcha and Requires.io. Tomotcha
([https://tomotcha.com](https://tomotcha.com)) is a Japanese green tea
subscription service (inspired by Bemmu's Candy Japan). Requires.io
([https://requires.io](https://requires.io)) is a spin-off from a now defunct
Continuous Integration service to track python dependencies.

As a software engineer Tomotcha is more challenging to work on, as it doesn't
involve much tech at all: it's all about logistic, customer service and
marketing. I will admit that I'm not very good at it yet, but improving
slowly. I think a side project is the perfect opportunity get outside of one's
comfort zone. For instance we are currently completely reviewing the packaging
of our tea shipments... It should be ready for either November or December.

~~~
ehben83
Are you on touteslesbox.fr yet ? If not, it's a great place to acquire
qualified leads.

~~~
Xixi
Thanks for the link! We are not yet registered on it...

------
jaypaulynice
I'm working on RESTfender: [https://restfender.com](https://restfender.com) to
connect and secure IoT devices. Show HN link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15106959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15106959)

------
marketvulture
[https://marketvulture.com](https://marketvulture.com) \- Monitors dramatic
events around the world and spots the opportunities that lie beneath. Using
machine learning, we track global happenings, business downturns, logistic
delays, breaking news, disasters, market conditions, macroeconomics and more
to find interesting and profitable ways to leverage current events.

We've been open to the public for about 5 months;
php7/python/redis/mariadb/workers/queues, NLP, tons of machine learning, etc.
Cleaning and normalizing hundreds of feeds from different sources and formats
is definitely a pain for us, as well as all the machine learning fun
(training, feature selection and normalization, etc.)

~~~
rayj
Reminds me of
[https://twitter.com/botus?lang=en](https://twitter.com/botus?lang=en) hah,
good idea. Wonder if anyone has tried this for cryptocurrency markets?

------
joelrunyon
[http://movewellapp.com](http://movewellapp.com)

Built this as a home physical therapy coach after I busted my ankle running an
ultra marathon. It's grown quite a bit in hte last few months.

~~~
2triggers1
This is great. Is there an android version on the radar?

------
ohashi
[http://reviewsignal.com](http://reviewsignal.com) \- ~$3,000/month

I run the largest web hosting review site. It uses twitter comments as the
data source. I wrote nearly the entire thing from scratch in PHP/MySql with a
couple libraries for twitter streaming api, templating, WordPress blog.

I did a long interview at IndieHackers if people are really curious with full
monthly revenue disclosed
([https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/reviewsignal](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/reviewsignal))

~~~
senatorobama
how does it make money?

~~~
ohashi
affiliate links with companies that have programs. But that doesn't influence
the rankings. You'll notice companies without programs like Amazon, Azure
listed. Also companies like Digital Ocean who don't offer cash, but only
credit rated quite well. I let the data sort it out, it's nice when they do
have affiliates because it's a business after all, but the existing shitshows
of affiliate garbage just pumping the highest paying companies has done
tremendous harm to thousands if not millions of people over the last decade+.

------
tony584
Nearing $1500/mo on ads and affiliate links, been running since 2009, did not
monetize until 2015: [https://worldoftea.org/](https://worldoftea.org/)

~~~
rkuykendall-com
Nice! I have a similar but much younger / smaller site for comic books. I
would love to hear what you did to pay your early contributors, as right now
it's just me, and I think that's the next step. I have no issue finding
writers, but I'm not sure what I should pay them, how I should structure that
relationship, or if there's any legal stuff I should look out for.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

------
adamqureshi
[https://onlyusedtesla.com/](https://onlyusedtesla.com/) $150/day around that!
A used tesla marketplace.

~~~
wonderous
Home page of your site appears to currently say it's free [1] - how're you
making $150 a day?

[1] "FREE DURING BETA: Our site is always free for buyers, but right now it’s
free for sellers too."

~~~
adamqureshi
Yup. $150 sold vehicle. Its a hassle right now its all manual i run everything
off FB messenger. I do plan to flip it soon. Trying to grab a slice from cars,
auto trader for used tesla listings.

~~~
ew
How are you convincing anyone to pay $150/car when your site says it's free
for everyone?

~~~
adamqureshi
I don't know. I just tell'em there a fee: $150 if we find you a lead / buyer
from our site. They say stuff like, ok cars sucks and they get spammed to hell
with craiglist and some say autotrader charges them a fee upfront. Then i
gotta track them down, its not easy but i am making money. Next move is to
figure out a upfront price. I just want to grab a slice from cars, auto
trader, craiglist ONLY for used tesla cars.

------
lukebyear
I built Strum Machine ([https://strummachine.com](https://strummachine.com))
which is a music practice tool aimed at players of bluegrass, old-time, folk,
etc (the music sub-culture I grew up in). I started working on it only after
having failed to find an existing product like it and wanting one to be
available for my music students. Development began in Jan 2016, launch was May
2016. Built with the Meteor Javascript platform as a mobile-friendly website;
native apps still in (very slow) development. About 300 paying users, mostly
through word of mouth; it's been hard to figure out how to do marketing
otherwise. Just cracked 1k MRR. Minimal ongoing costs and maintenance,
although I still have a looong list of improvement-related TODOs. It's been an
extremely rewarding project to be working on, and the extra income has been a
very nice bonus as well. :-)

------
jv22222
I've been working on a side project that sends startup ideas to developers and
entrepreneur for the past year. Revenue high point has been $4k/month.

[https://nugget.one](https://nugget.one)

Within the next few months I'll be pivoting to The Nugget Startup Academy and
will focus on training entrepreneurs instead of sending out ideas.

~~~
itbeho
That sort of has a "those who can, do. Those who can't, teach" ring to it :)

I enjoy your podcast Justin. I'd keep swinging for the fences unless you just
have a passion to teach.

~~~
jv22222
Well it's because I've found it quite unfulfilling watching hundreds of
entrepreneurs struggling to get to revenue.

Since I've done it three times I wanted to see if I could help switch up
things for them.

Basically, I do have a passion to teach right now, because it's annoying the
hell out of me! ;)

------
askmike
I made ~500 euro a month by running ads on my a visualization website[1] I
made a few years back (in a weekend). I've earned that until a month ago, when
I changed the Google AdSense ads to a static ad (which I don't get commission
for).

[1] [https://blocks.wizb.it/](https://blocks.wizb.it/)

~~~
Jeremy1026
The IP always 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1, looks like you may have a bug.

~~~
askmike
Ah darn, will have a look soon. I think an API I am consuming updated some
stuff.

------
uakiki
[http://www.soulidstudio.com](http://www.soulidstudio.com) \- since 2009,
Mosaico started as a side project to help me handling dozens of windows on my
desktop. Now it's a commercial product appreciated by thousands. It's C++ and
Qt, I also wrote the licensing system in .NET and C++.

------
Swizec
[https://swizec.com/reactd3js](https://swizec.com/reactd3js)

Classic content with attached sales funnel play. The aim is to help people
become better engineers. Been hammering away at the React visualizations niche
for a bit over two years now and it’s time to make something new.

Product sales make around $20k/year and are slowly trending up, and I’m
experimenting with coaching which makes around $1k/month but is hard to scale
due to time/focus.

Also doing some influencer marketing type deal with
[https://school.shoutem.com](https://school.shoutem.com) makes about
$1.5k/month and I build React Native apps for them and write about it.

All in all, going to come up to around $50k in sidehustle this year. Been
2x-ing YoY steadily for the past 3 years since I got serious about it.

I write posts about all this stuff on my blog if you’re interested —>
swizec.com/blog

~~~
zapperdapper
Very nice website and blog. You obviously love what you do. I enjoyed the
piece on reverse engineering HN too!

------
donohoe
[https://article.rocks](https://article.rocks)

Started it in 2014 or 2015 and just keep rebuilding it every 3-6 months. Its a
curation of news and articles that I personally like. Its a mix of scraping,
automated curation, rough sentiment analysis, randomness.

I built it for my commute, eventually giving it its own domain.

Its no longer hitting that per month since I intentionally scaled back the
custom ads that earned referral fees. Its just Amazon now. Money is not a
goal.

This side project is more focused on keeping my coding skills going and
playing around with ideas in media/publishing and ads.

For example, I redid things so it would get a 99 or 100 PageSpeed score:

[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Farticle.rocks&tab=mobile)

~~~
sillysaurus3
For me it's just a single photo.
[http://imgur.com/a/lHASw](http://imgur.com/a/lHASw)

Is there more to it?

~~~
donohoe
Sorry, should have said; I only tested on mobile. Swipe/drag to go between
stories.

~~~
vidarh
The lack of a non-mobile UI aside, I love the idea of just stripping it down
to one image / one headline at a time.

------
rundavidrun
Me and my husband had been developing our own Android apps published to Google
Play for a while and never made much money. But when Android Wear first came
out, we started developing watch faces (mostly ones we wanted for ourselves)
and persistence finally paid off. Income varies, but we've been steadily
making between $500 and $1500/month. These are the top two:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sparkistic...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sparkistic.justaminute)
and
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sparkistic...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sparkistic.photowear)

------
karcass
I wrote an in-browser CAD tool for theater lighting and sound design:
[https://drafty-app.com/](https://drafty-app.com/). I have a partner who does
that for a living. We've just hired (part time, 5-10h/wk) a tester and a
salesperson.

~~~
hamfisted
I will show my wife. She is a theatrical lighting designer. Seems like the go
to for that is vector works, so an alternative would be welcome.

------
nickjj
Anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 per month selling video courses for software
developers.

Details are in this Indie Hacker interview:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/nick-
janetakis](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/nick-janetakis)

------
feralmoan
I don't do side projects or open source any more and run some bots for
cryptocurrency trading instead. The bots continue to grow their positions and
has been several times more lucrative than anything else I've tried to
monetize at a fraction of the effort

¯\\_(シ)_/¯ I guess it still counts

~~~
senatorobama
where do you get started with trading algos?

------
plantain
[https://skysight.io/](https://skysight.io/)

Soaring (gliding) weather forecasts for EU/NA/SA/AU. My side project has now
become my main gig. Took approximately 3 years to build, 2 before I started
making any money from it.

~~~
gbacon
What are potential benefits to power pilots? Have you considered approaching,
say, ForeFlight about licensing and integration?

------
GoLocalApps
We launched AppToolkit.io earlier in the year and it's now breaking $500
monthly. Since we use it in-house, we don't judge it quite the same as if it
needed to support itself. It isn't profitable yet, but as more app developers
sign up for our Super User and Cloud Config service, we're seeing faster
revenue growth.

Our original goal was to cover the AWS bill and pay for all the in-house dev
work and I think we'll have that by the end of the year.

If you're interested in the background to AppToolkit and where it came from,
we did an interview on Indie Hackers here -
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/apptoolkit](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/apptoolkit)

------
Schweigi
[https://www.ganttplanner.com](https://www.ganttplanner.com) \- April 2015. A
tool to turn your Google Calendar into a Gantt chart.

Its currently running on autopilot and making ~$1200/month.

Its all running on Heroku and barely requires any maintainance.

~~~
ErikBjare
Seems hugged to death?

~~~
Schweigi
I don't see any issues on the server side. What exactly isn't working for you?

------
archiolidius
[http://livereacting.com/](http://livereacting.com/) \- SaaS app launched
about 8 months ago. Currently $3k/mo. I automated everything. Last 3-4 months
it works almost on autopilot I just do customer support

~~~
kposehn
This is quite cool. How do you get this to work with FB? Are these streams you
run via their Live API?

~~~
archiolidius
I have a quite complicated tech for streaming under the hood. And yes, I use
Live API to be able to stream it to Facebook.

------
billwear
~$500+ per month making custom-designed handbags; not just sewing bags, mind
you, but one-offs for individuals : word-of-mouth, facebook, friends, etc.
Can't afford to advertise, couldn't handle the demand without hiring, don't
want it to get too big.

~~~
IAmGarrett
I'm curious what they look like. Is there a place online I could see your
work?

------
kring462
I built [https://www.parrotqa.com/](https://www.parrotqa.com/) because
overseeing non-deterministic selenium tests at my day job was such a hassle.
It turned into a small (around $1k/mo) side project.

~~~
pilom
How did the rights for that work out? If I were an employee when I built a
tool to solve a problem like that I would expect the employer to own it. Can
you talk to how that conversation went?

------
FloayYerBoat
[https://www.planeol.com](https://www.planeol.com)

I wrote a subscription service that notifies IT administrators when software
they have purchased is coming up on End of Life. Helps plan and manage budget
and for security reasons.

~~~
gremlinsinc
Cool idea.. name could use some work.. .I read it as PlaneOl not Plan-EOL.

------
giarc
I co-founded a childcare management software business here in Canada. We now
have customers in both US and Canada. We were on IndieHackers a few months
ago.[0]

Our main product is KidGenius[1] that helps childcare centres run their day to
day operations as well as connect with parents. Becoming a bit of a crowded
space but we are doing what we can to rise to the top.

0 -
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/kidgenius](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/kidgenius)

1 - [https://kidgenius.daycareiq.com/](https://kidgenius.daycareiq.com/)

------
gnicholas
My main startup [1] launched a side project called Read Across The Aisle [2]
earlier this year. Even though the iOS app and Chrome extension app are free,
we've actually seen several thousand come in through donations and whatnot.

Lots of traffic comes from Google, since we are apparently the first result
for "read WSJ free" (we have a partnership with the WSJ that gives free access
through our tools).

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

2: [http://www.ReadAcrossTheAisle.com](http://www.ReadAcrossTheAisle.com)

------
ryandrake
This is a great Ask HN, and it would be even better to specify whether
$500+/month is in revenue or profit. I can't imagine most of these things
listed so far could actually make $500 in profit a month!

------
docsapp_io
DocsApp [https://www.docsapp.io/](https://www.docsapp.io/) \- Started ~ 2
years ago but only profitable since few months ago.

I built DocsApp to provide platform to publish documentation easily. Instead
of spending time to build your documentation site, DocsApp allow you to start
publish documentation in minutes.

The challenges to build a profitable SaaS is marketing, especially for people
with only technical background.

No extensive marketing done yet so users growth slowly. A lot improvement to
be done especially on UX side.

------
khuknows
UI design newsletter ([https://uimovement.com/](https://uimovement.com/)) -
still making over $500 a month on average from sponsorships and Carbon ads on
the site.

Going steady for a couple of years now - but requires very little time from
me.

Shameless plug: Currently working on a service
([https://letterfuel.com/](https://letterfuel.com/)) that makes building
daily/weekly newsletters like UI Movement super-easy.

------
ygerasimov
[https://backtrac.io](https://backtrac.io), visual regression tool for
websites. Started two years ago and it is doing 500$+ a month after all
expenses. Has great potential for growth.

[https://turbohiring.co](https://turbohiring.co), built a year ago. Database
for recruiting IT specialists in Ukraine. After only one year it already
generates $3k+ in revenue and growing. Finding a right sales person was a key.

------
christilut
Check out [https://www.indiehackers.com](https://www.indiehackers.com). Lots
of side projects (and bigger) there with full interviews.

------
encoderer
Three years in, Cronitor.io is finally paying both of our (SFBA) mortgages. My
co-founder August did a great write up for IndieHackers if you're interested
in learning more.

~~~
coffee
Well done! Here's the IndieHackers link for those interested:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/cronitor](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/cronitor)

------
pypetey
We've started [https://gdprapp.com](https://gdprapp.com) \- a piece of
software for data protection officers / it auditors - to help with compliance
and auditing process - it's focused at the moment on General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) but we will be integrating it with other security standards.

It was an internal project in the beginning and after some time and reworks
we've decided to open it up to public.

------
fernandohur
Working on [https://apibot.co](https://apibot.co), a testing and monitoring
tool for REST APIs.

Many of our customers come from word of mouth plus talking to people. Its been
very interesting to see the kind of tests that people built with our tool.

We're still technically in BETA although sales are going slow but smoothly.
Send me a message if you are interested (fernandohur at apibot.co).

~~~
yeezul
FIY: I get an HTTPS certificate error on Chrome reply

~~~
stevekemp
Confirmed:

    
    
       The certificate is only valid for the following names: 
          *.github.com, github.com, *.github.io, github.io

------
eulid55
Started [https://dotlayer.com](https://dotlayer.com) like 2 years ago, it was
initially called wpzoan, I started it when my friends would message me about
issues they were facing with WordPress, at that time I totally hated
WordPress, I guess that was the developer in me. But I later saw all the
issues people were facing and it's worked out well.

~~~
Jeremy1026
So how does this work. Do I give your anonymous "expert" access to my server
for them to do the fix? Or do I provide database and codebase dumps? Where is
the security in your service to not have my code stolen along the way?

------
cddotdotslash
I wrote an eBook[1] on AWS Lambda when it first came out. Still brings in a
decent monthly revenue. I'm working on an updated version as well, since a lot
of new features have been added.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/AWS-Lambda-Guide-Serverless-
Microserv...](https://www.amazon.com/AWS-Lambda-Guide-Serverless-
Microservices-ebook/dp/B016JOMAEE)

------
jwho82
Launched [https://logmyhours.com](https://logmyhours.com) 2 years ago. Hour
tracking and invoicing. I actually log all my hours working on it :). Launched
an iOS and Android app last year that syncs up with the website.

Currently making over $700/month and growing. Hoping to go full time on it
early next year.

------
par
Meta Meme: [https://itunes.apple.com/zw/app/meta-
meme/id1173783944?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/zw/app/meta-
meme/id1173783944?mt=8)

Doing around $500-700/month in revenue right now, all through in app
purchases. Still growing and a lot of work to do.

------
colinbartlett
[https://statusgator.com](https://statusgator.com)

StatusGator aggregates the public service status pages for all the cloud
services you use. You can get automatic notifications when services go down
and up, and you can query the service status from things like Slack.

It makes about $1,000 month right now.

~~~
jackweirdy
Out of interest, what made you choose the fixed-price tiers? $80/mo is a big
jump to go from 30 to 31 services. What made you rule out pricing per service?

------
RabbitmqGuy
[https://www.amqphosting.com](https://www.amqphosting.com) \- started just
over a year ago. It is a RabbitMQ as a service company. I started it because I
wasn't satisfied with the few RabbitMQ SaaS companies that were already there.

Currently doing about $1k/month

------
nickswan
I started charging for
[https://www.sanitycheck.io](https://www.sanitycheck.io) in July and am at
$970 per month. $800 of this is from 2 customers going for the 'done for you'
option though - which is kinda productised consulting.

------
manavo11
I've been working on [https://doorbell.io](https://doorbell.io) since 2013,
and although it had a slow start in terms of revenue it is making just shy of
$2,800/month at the moment, still as a side project.

~~~
RabbitmqGuy
Hi, cool site.

You might want to consider redirecting requests for your IP address to go to
your domain name.

Something like:

server {

    
    
        listen 443 default_server ssl http2 reuseport;
    
        listen [::]:443 ssl http2 reuseport;                
             
        server_name doorbell.io;
    
        # redirect IP address requests to https domain                        
        if ($host = '192.241.177.143') {                        
          return 301 https://doorbell.io$request_uri;                             
          # you might want to use code 307 in place of 301 if you care about POST requests etc                     
        }                   
    

## more stuff here

}

~~~
manavo11
Good point, thanks for letting me know! (and leaving a message on Doorbell
itself) :)

------
billwear
Making ~$500+ per month designing handbags, word of mouth / text / facebook
posts. Not just sewing bags mind you, unique bags designed to fit each person.
Problem is throughput -- I'll have to hire soon or keep it smallish.

~~~
zild3d
Or raise prices...

------
vladdanilov
Getting close with Optimage for Mac [1], a visually lossless image
optimization tool.

[1] [http://getoptimage.com](http://getoptimage.com)

------
petecodes
Well I've made $480 since 25th august with www.techpresslist.com

Attention from top 10 on Product Hunt definitely helping.

------
jadeydi
ICO, we raised more than $15M in 9 minutes, we only built a website with
homepage, lol

~~~
onesneakymofo
Really? Looking at your Twitter, you work at toptalkedbooks.com which
according to your associate that posted in this exact thread a few posts below
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15149593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15149593))
isn't even making any money. Hmmmm?

~~~
toptalkedbooks
toptalkedbooks.com is a side project of my friend and me. I'm not talking
about toptalkedbooks.com here. ICO is true and $15M (50,000.0 ETH) in 9
minutes is true.

------
guohuang
I have been working on a side project to show all the most mentioned books
from hacker news, stackoverflow, reddit.
[http://toptalkedbooks.com](http://toptalkedbooks.com)

we are still struggling on marketing, no revenue yet.

~~~
rcarrigan87
I'd recommend you create a blog where you write interesting posts on different
trends, analysis, etc. from all the data you're collecting. I'd be interested
to know if current events drive the frequency of certain book recommendations
in different forums. This will help bring people to the site, build links to
improve SEO, etc. Also, make the email capture more prominent.

~~~
guohuang
Thank you so much for your advise, this is a great idea! we are currently busy
on cleaning up the data.(comics books) we want to keep our focus on tech
related books. After that we will be creating more analysis to the community.
stay tuned.

