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Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#141

Post by wanqu »

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

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#142

Post by joeax »

RikNieu wrote: post #123
joeax wrote: post #83

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…

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

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.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#145

Post by Xixi »

ehben83 wrote: post #139
Xixi wrote: post #84

Two side projects: Tomotcha and Requires.io. Tomotcha ( https://tomotcha.com ) is a Japanese green tea subscription service (inspired by Bemmu's Candy Japan). 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, cu…

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

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

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#146

Post by thisisit »

nylonstrung wrote: post #124
eljamon wrote: post #76

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.

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

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

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#147

Post by pilom »

alangibson wrote: post #57
pilom wrote: post #12

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.

Are you reinvesting the dividends? If not, why?

Yes I am, just used those as the metric for meeting the $500/month landmark from the title.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#148

Post by krashidov »

donutdan4114 wrote: post #17

I launched an app for Shopify about a year ago called Custom Fields: 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 b…

Wow good work! How much time do you spend on this a week?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#149

Post by kilroy123 »

mitchellbryson wrote: post #115

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

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

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#150

Post by pilom »

redsn0w422 wrote: post #50
pilom wrote: post #12

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.

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

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