
Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make? - xrxrxrx
It can be a SaaS app, a mobile app, or any side project that is netting you recurring revenue.
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MattBearman
Holy crap, I remember seeing these kinds of threads before and being amazed by
people making good money from a side-project, I can't believe I'm now one of
them!

My project is BugMuncher -
[https://www.bugmuncher.com](https://www.bugmuncher.com) \- a website feedback
tool I created back in 2011, and it's currently making $1,489 Monthly
Recurring Revenue.

Strictly speaking it's not a side project anymore, as in Sept 2015 I fired all
my freelance clients to focus on BugMuncher full time, but I've never taken
funding, and I'm the only person working on it, so it still feels like a side
project :)

If anyone is interested I've been writing a blog series about my mission to go
from side project to profit, which starts here -
[https://blog.bugmuncher.com/2015/10/22/from-side-project-
to-...](https://blog.bugmuncher.com/2015/10/22/from-side-project-to-
profitable-start-up-part-1.html)

~~~
xrxrxrx
have you considered adding a free tier? Our project has one and we have had
success upselling existing free customers a lot, since our free tier is very
limited.

Its different from a free trial since if they like your product will use it
until they grow enough to upgrade and might eventually start giving you money.

I can think of countless products that I ended up upgrading from free to paid
after using their product > a few months on their free tier.

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adzeds
[http://betalyst.com/](http://betalyst.com/) \- A football betting
analysis/predictions website.

Offer the whole service for free. Revenue generated through
advertising/sponsorship.

Looking to move into a premium model over the coming months to gain some MRR
to allow me to develop it furthur..

Currently earns over £75,000 per year in advertising/sponsorship/affiliate
revenue.

Work on it for about 2-3 hours a week.

~~~
adzeds
I am currently looking into how I can generate more buzz/PR for this site....

If anyone has any tips I am all ears... I like to work on small budgets, as I
don't believe you need to spend a lot of money to gain traction online.. I
have only spent around £1,000 to get to where I am now...

Share any ideas you have.

~~~
randomtask
How do people currently find the site? Searches or do you run ads?

~~~
adzeds
There is an app in the Android story that generates leads that I then upsell
the site to on a drip email campaign.

Get about 10% of traffic from Organic searches and the majority is direct from
email.

I am trying to work out how to get more referral traffic and backlinks.

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someotheridiot
[https://rebrickable.com](https://rebrickable.com) \- A LEGO database that
shows you which sets you can build from your existing collection, also
includes thousands of fan-submitted designs. The revenue fluctuates quite a
lot though since I suck at that side of things.

~~~
_jdams
Revenue is from LEGO and toy-related ads? What is the pricing model for an
information-based website such as yours? I'm at work and unfortunately can't
browse at the moment.

~~~
someotheridiot
Yeah, ads and affiliate sales. It gets a decent amount of traffic (~130K
users/month, 2M pageviews) but I have trouble monetising it.

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iqonik
[https://retailwizard.co.uk](https://retailwizard.co.uk) &
[https://propertywizard.io](https://propertywizard.io) (Same product,
different marketing)

Automated social media assistant for small businesses in the UK - currently
making £750 MRR. If you have any questions I'm happy to answer.

~~~
twlng
[http://www.TwLng.com](http://www.TwLng.com) has the same goal, however its
great that this is hyper-targeted.

~~~
iqonik
I took a look at your site and don't see how they have the same goals?

Sorry if I have missed something, it's a cool project anyway and it's 100%
solving a pain point many people feel when using Twitter.

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dangrossman
Here's a recent discussion on the topic, along with some links to other
previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10879529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10879529)

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andersthue
As in the previous thread I made [http://www.watermark-
image.com](http://www.watermark-image.com) that makes 3000+ each month.

I am using the money to build [http://timeblock.com](http://timeblock.com)
that currently makes around $350 a month.

~~~
zerr
Interesting. There are tons of image watermarkers, how do you differentiate in
terms of marketing/promotion (and maybe pricing)?

~~~
andersthue
Pricing is more or less the same across all the watermarkers out there - any
lower and it is just not worth the time!

Marketing wise I primarily offer great and fast support also in building
additional features, this drives a lot of user reviews and reccomendations on
forums.

Email me if you want more insights, I will be happy to help you building
something different!

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gasparch
Engineering has a lot of similarities with crafting :) Sooo I just started
[http://www.smiles-bags.com/](http://www.smiles-bags.com/) with my wife. I'm
doing design of the products and she runs a business :)

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haddadda
bentbasket.com

~~~
nonuby
Neat idea... Why does it prompt to join mailing list when clicking 'Order one
now' and if I close that annoying pop-up nothing happens (still on main
page)... Clicking the button again does work though. Latest Chromium if it
helps

