Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#11

Post by iqonik » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 11:29 AM UTC

throweway wrote: post #8

iqonik wrote: post #7

https://retailwizard.co.uk & 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.

How do you sell? Face to face? Phone? Word of mouth?

Right now I spend my Saturdays going to a High Street and going shop-to-shop. If the manager/owner isn't in I'll follow up with a call to try and get a meeting.

Word of mouth is starting to bring in new business, my accountant has recommended a few people to me! :)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#12

Post by adzeds » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 2:08 PM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#13

Post by flashm » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 2:14 PM UTC

adzeds wrote: post #12

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.

That is brilliant, top work.

Do you put your money where your mouth is? Place bets that your system pops out?

Edit: Roughly how many visitors do you get, monthly?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#14

Post by adzeds » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 2:21 PM UTC

flashm wrote: post #13

adzeds wrote: post #12

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.

That is brilliant, top work. Do you put your money where your mouth is? Place bets that your system pops out? Edit: Roughly how many visitors do you get, monthly?

Yeah, I follow the system... It makes it easier for me to build on and improve the algorithms if I am using the service myself..

I am looking to add an extension to the site so it places bets automatically through the Betfair API then I can track the growth of the better balance that way.

I am planning to turn all the learnings from this into a free betting guide/ebook as well in the coming months to educate people on how to pick better bets and manage their bankroll.

The site gets around 25k visitors a month, and has a very good pages per visit rate and visitor duration. - The bulk of the engagement comes from the Android app which has around 75k users.. I am hoping to actually release the new improved version in the coming months and then launch on iOS as well. - There is also an email database with just over 20k subscribers, which gets a 30% open-rate and 5-6% click-rate on average per email.

Is all pretty fun... Currently spending more time on the site as I neglected it a bit when focusing on the app and the algorithm. Working hard on SEO to get the traffic levels up. Want to have 100k monthly visits to the site by the end of the year.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#15

Post by MattBearman » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 3:35 PM UTC

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 - 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-...

Re: Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#16

Post by MattBearman » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 3:39 PM UTC

adzeds wrote: post #12

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.

That's awesome! At 3 hours a week you are truly living the dream. What are your plans for a premium pricing model?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#17

Post by andersthue » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 3:41 PM UTC

zerr wrote: post #6

andersthue wrote: post #5

As in the previous thread I made http://www.watermark-image.com that makes 3000+ each month. I am using the money to build http://timeblock.com that currently makes around $350 a month.

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

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!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#18

Post by sdernley » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

adzeds wrote: post #12

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.

Is this something you could fairly easily transfer to other sports? Seems like adding something like basketball or American football could help increase revenue and attract a new market.

Might be easier said that done but wanted to mention in case it was something you hadn't thought of.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#19

Post by adzeds » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

sdernley wrote: post #18

adzeds wrote: post #12

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.

Is this something you could fairly easily transfer to other sports? Seems like adding something like basketball or American football could help increase revenue and attract a new market. Might be easier said that done but wanted to mention in case it was something you hadn't thought of.

Do you mean by embedding it in the same site?

That is something that I have considered but am not sure how easy it is to scale and diversify the content at the same time... Needs some planning but dont think it is impossible..

Have it noted in my product roadmap.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#20

Post by adzeds » Thu, Mar 03, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

MattBearman wrote: post #16

adzeds wrote: post #12

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.

That's awesome! At 3 hours a week you are truly living the dream. What are your plans for a premium pricing model?

I am still trying to work it out.

One option could be to have a section of the site that contains the highest accuracy of predictions that can only be accessed by premium members..

Or I could maybe gate some of the more details analysis to only premium members..

I am not sure how scalable these options are or what I could charge as a fee for this.

I am open to suggests if anyone knows a good way I could introduce a premium model?