11–20 of 32 posts
I have been building a job board for more than a year now. It makes decent money, more than I expected it to. It's somewhere around 1.000€+ on good months. On the other hand, it's not quite so passive. I constantly work on it, because I really enjoy working on it. Be it sales, marketing, SEO, building it - love it. This is also my way of putting the work in to progress my career. I'm learning a lot; experimenting wit…
I have been building a job board for more than a year now. It makes decent money, more than I expected it to. It's somewhere around 1.000€+ on good months. On the other hand, it's not quite so passive. I constantly work on it, because I really enjoy working on it. Be it sales, marketing, SEO, building it - love it. This is also my way of putting the work in to progress my career. I'm learning a lot; experimenting wit…
Before (FCP 2.1s): https://www.webpagetest.org/video/view.php?tests=220208_AiDc...
After (FCP 1.3s): https://www.webpagetest.org/video/view.php?tests=220208_AiDc...
(Also, you're loading a Google Fonts CSS file and then not using Open Sans. Also also, your fonts.gstatic.com preconnect wouldn't work even if you did use the font – you'll need `crossorigin`. See: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-fonts-3/#font-fetching-requirement...)
That said. I’ve learned that building out a product, even seemingly small things, takes a huge amount of effort as a solo dev. I built https://fretpro.app and it makes about $100/month (has been very slowly growing for the last year). I thought it would be quick and easy, but it took months of early mornings and weekend mornings (can’t code all night like I used to anymore), and can’t lie, my health and mental health suffered during that time. I’m much more selective with side projects these days.
I built and run a Minecraft server hosting service for parents to enable young kids to play online safely and with less hassle ( https://minecraft-playdates.com ). Been slowly growing it while adding features, and it's bringing in about $150/mo now. Potential for much more if I were focused on it.
I run both apps and info products. For earning a few hundred, info products are infinitely easier, usually take a one-time upfront effort and have little to no maintenance, bugs etc. to fix.
In your case, an info product could be a short course on a very specific skill that you have, maybe related to coding.
For example, I created this course called Learn Programmatic SEO[1]. Created it in Feb 2021 and after the initial launch high, earnings stabilized to around ~$500/mo. I haven't put any more effort or time into it since launch except reply to 3-4 doubt emails a month.
This year, I'm putting in a little more effort (equivalent of 4-6 hrs/month) in order to double earnings to $1000/mo by end of 2022.
I did not run ads in 2018 until I ran So I have done nothing since early May 2019. From June 1st 2019 to Jan 31 2022 I made over $3500 on ads for it. It made $70 in October 2021, $87 in November 2021, $104 in December 2021 and $82 last month. In March 2020 it made $264, then $242 in April 2020, then $264 in May 2020. This is from ads.
My expenses are a $10 a month Ramnode VPS, a $20 (probably overkill) a month Linode VPS, a yearly Namechap domain name expense of maybe $30 or so. It kind of pays for itself, plus a little more.
I could make more money on it with some work, or release another app, but my current direction is "those efforts would be better off trying to progress my career". Studying Kotlin helps me at my day job, but also could potentially help in the future if I decide to revisit the app.
I had another app which in late 2013 and early 2014 was making $2000 or more a month. My expenses were about the same, I ran no ads at that time.
> the effort is much greater than it sounds
The initial effort for both apps was a lot but then less work was needed to be done. I also learned how to put a whole "modern best practices" app together (plus the backend REST API, plus the relational database and its normalized schema etc.)
> was worth it after your initial effort and ongoing maintenance
For 2 1/2 years my ongoing maintenance has been next to nothing. I had nagios watching it while working on it, but a change on the nagios server broke nagios and I have not fixed that yet. Every once in a while I try the app out and see if it is working.
My Android (and Python REST API) skills are much better than they were when I wrote the app and if I released an app (or apps) now, I'm sure I could hit the $2000 a month mark again and then start pushing that up, even with existing competition. But I make multiples of that in my day job and with study can level up my title and get the pay that goes with it.
There are different motivations to do it or not do it which fluctuate with time. I could see going back to writing my own apps at some point.
I have been building a job board for more than a year now. It makes decent money, more than I expected it to. It's somewhere around 1.000€+ on good months. On the other hand, it's not quite so passive. I constantly work on it, because I really enjoy working on it. Be it sales, marketing, SEO, building it - love it. This is also my way of putting the work in to progress my career. I'm learning a lot; experimenting wit…
Hey OP, I'd highly recommend adding info product to your list of ways in which you could earn a few hundred dollars online. I run both apps and info products. For earning a few hundred, info products are infinitely easier, usually take a one-time upfront effort and have little to no maintenance, bugs etc. to fix. In your case, an info product could be a short course on a very specific skill that you have, maybe relat…
I built and run a Minecraft server hosting service for parents to enable young kids to play online safely and with less hassle ( https://minecraft-playdates.com ). Been slowly growing it while adding features, and it's bringing in about $150/mo now. Potential for much more if I were focused on it.
Very cool idea. I'd love to hear more about how the back end works and what types of software you wrote to interact with the Minecraft server.