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Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

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Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#151

Post by ja27 »

trafficlight wrote: post #126
ja27 wrote: post #92

After a football-related post on my personal blog got a surprising amount of search traffic, I threw up a quick Blogger blog with similar posts for a few football teams. The traffic rolled in. I threw on some more and eventually added baseball which was a much bigger source of traffic. Right now baseball season is earning me about $10 a week. I think I've spent less than 30 hours on it total. Not a great return on my…

Is it information about pro teams/leagues? Or is it information on the sport itself?

Just short specific information about each team. Pro baseball is my biggest money-maker, I guess because there are more games during the week and day games, when people are at their computers to search and possibly spend money. College football is second place. Pro football is surprisingly weak in comparison. Hockey made a little during the playoffs, but NBA and even college basketball playoffs aren't even a blip on my traffic.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#152

Post by mvkel »

riskish wrote: post #6
mvkel wrote: post #5

I made a very simple iOS gym log app for my own needs and decided to sell it in the App Store. I think I've generated almost $5k in revenue. So, not a 'business', but it certainly paid for my developer account! :)

Cool, do you have a home page?

http://pumpapp.tumblr.com/

Iroically, the app isn't truly native, but was built in jQTouch. When I get around to it, I'm planning to finish a native version, which I think it desperately needs to be.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#153

Post by MattBearman »

MattBearman wrote: post #148
fakelvis wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neat. Remind me of the feedback integration on Google+ -- is this where you got your inspiration? Love it...

Thanks for the kind words. If I'm honest I think 'inspiration' may be playing it down a little, I pretty much just ripped off the Google + feedback tool :) As soon as I saw the G+ tool I knew it was something people would want on their website. I also knew I wouldn't be the only person doing this, which is why I went for a really lean approach, and managed to go from idea to first customers in 2 and half weeks.

I think I should probably add that I didn't rip off any of Google's code, just the idea :)

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#155

Post by skuvnar »

einaregilsson wrote: post #149

My current hobby is writing simple cardgames in javascript. Currently I have Hearts - http://www.hearts-cardgame.com , Idiot/Shithead http://www.shithead-cardgame.com and Crazy Eights http://crazyeights-cardgame.com . Am getting my first payout from Google Adsense this month, about 120 $. Which isn't much, but they're pure client side games, require no maintenance or anything so I'll just keep getting a small check e…

How did you advertise your sites?

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#156

Post by iSloth »

conesus wrote: post #23

NewsBlur - http://www.newsblur.com - a visual RSS feed reader with intelligence. I have a few hundred paying users and a few thousands free users. I develop it almost entirely on the train, which I'm on for almost an hour and a half everyday. It's a ton of work and is profitable in the sense that the hundreds of dollars a month in server costs are just a bit more than covered by the premium users. But otherwise, it d…

http://whatportis.com - fairly simple little project, need to remove some of the Ajax and add content to get it more search engine friendly, however makes $xxx/pm as it is.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#157

Post by einaregilsson »

skuvnar wrote: post #155
einaregilsson wrote: post #149

My current hobby is writing simple cardgames in javascript. Currently I have Hearts - http://www.hearts-cardgame.com , Idiot/Shithead http://www.shithead-cardgame.com and Crazy Eights http://crazyeights-cardgame.com . Am getting my first payout from Google Adsense this month, about 120 $. Which isn't much, but they're pure client side games, require no maintenance or anything so I'll just keep getting a small check e…

How did you advertise your sites?

Basically just posted about them on Facebook. Two of them also have links on the Wikipedia article for that game. And they all link to each other.

The biggest referer is Facebook, with Google coming in second. Ive also created all of them as Chrome Apps in the Chrome Web Store so people can "install" them there. (basically just a big bookmark on your New Tab page in Chrome)

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#158

Post by case »

Domainr -- http://domai.nr/ -- a search engine we built for finding available domain names.

~80% of its revenue is registrar commissions from successful referrals (domain name purchases, hosting, ssl certs, etc.), and the other 20% is from ads (from adpacks.com).

We launched it in 2008, and both traffic and revenue have been growing slowly but steadily ever since. These days it's covering our respective apt rents (in the Bay Area) each month.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#159

Post by MPiccinato »

case wrote: post #158

Domainr -- http://domai.nr/ -- a search engine we built for finding available domain names. ~80% of its revenue is registrar commissions from successful referrals (domain name purchases, hosting, ssl certs, etc.), and the other 20% is from ads (from adpacks.com). We launched it in 2008, and both traffic and revenue have been growing slowly but steadily ever since. These days it's covering our respective apt rents (in…

I use this all the time, thanks for making it so easy :) Helped me find HopOnTheB.us which is still in the works.
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