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Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?

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Re: Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?

#201

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

patio11 wrote: post #68
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #60

You guys are making cash off your side projects? Jeez. I usually just release them for free. I should get in on this. ...Assuming that I ever finish a side project. ...And that I ever come up with a side project somebody would pay for. Neither is very likely.

Being able to successfully ship things is a useful muscle to develop. People who can program radically overestimate where the bar is for being able to charge money for things. (And underestimate how much money businesses pay for just about everything.)

People who can program radically overestimate where the bar is for being able to charge

Very late response here just to second what Patrick said, but...

My latest anecdote to reinforce this is the person who wanted to pay me for the Arduino software I wrote for him in about 5 minutes, but I declined (that's on the order of the amount of help I give out on the internets for free). Not kidding: being generous, it took a grand total of 5 minutes including firing up the editor, while grumbling about how much overkill an Arduino was for the task...

It really is about providing value. He has a $250,000 machine sitting idle a lot of the time and that 10 minutes of code reduced the idle time so he could get more utilization out of it.

Phase 2 is figuring out how many other people have a similar problem and finding them...

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?

#202

Post by wturner »

I just wanted to say that I really like these kinds of posts an enjoy seeing people ask them every few weeks. Its exciting to read business ideas that people like myself can pull from. Curious if anyone would be interested in doing video cast where some of these respondents are interviewed for ten to 15 minutes about their business. I know sites like Mixergy exists but I think something more raw and down to earth would be cool. :)

edited for clarity

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?

#203

Post by AlexeyBrin »

danschuller wrote: post #32
pavel_lishin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really cool. I wonder if you could make some money by doing actual in-person classes. It obviously wouldn't scale as well as a book you write once and release, but you might be able to charge a lot more for in-person education.

This is a good idea, and then potentially classes can be recorded and that would be another product (or special tier). I think this applies equally to other similar products.

You can try to record a course and sell it through Udemy or Pluralsight.

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?

#204

Post by zachlatta »

Without sharing too much info, I'm making ~$1.2k/monthly right now off of a Bitcoin arbitrage bot I made.

I'd share more, but the arbitrage only exists because of a market inefficiency and I'm sure that if anyone here started competing with me, the market would become too efficient to easily profit :-).

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?

#205

Post by Im_a_throw_away »

trcollinson wrote: post #167

I've been working on a side project for the last 3 months and it has finally gotten to the point where I am making more than $1000/month with more than 25 active customers 100% through word of mouth. I am working on a Show HN with some of my learning from the process so I won't get too deep into it here but here are a couple of highlights: * You do have time. I work a time consuming job, have a wife and kids, and sti…

Really cool! What's your app doing?

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?

#206

Post by usgroup »

zachlatta wrote: post #204

Without sharing too much info, I'm making ~$1.2k/monthly right now off of a Bitcoin arbitrage bot I made. I'd share more, but the arbitrage only exists because of a market inefficiency and I'm sure that if anyone here started competing with me, the market would become too efficient to easily profit :-).

How long have you profited on this op? Is it actual arb or stat arb?

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?

#207

Post by tom_b »

thearn4 wrote: post #87

Not a "side project" in the usual sense, but I teach as an adjunct professor (mathematics) every so often, and at a rate of about $1000 - 1200 per credit hour (depending on the institution) I can make a little under a grand a month after taxes. Teaching can be fun for many people, and I think it keeps me grounded in the fundamentals, where my day job is entirely application oriented. The trick is that after a few tim…

Adjunct side-gigs can be fun. Teaching students who started at zero and wound up quite capable of sophisticated hacking was very rewarding for me. If you have been curious about teaching and find an opportunity, I highly recommend trying it just for this aspect of teaching.

But I taught a course as an adjunct and the preparation time totally killed me. I wound up re-working the entire course from scratch. Worse, the course started almost as soon as I was asked to teach. By the end of the course, I was often prepping for the class the night before lectures.

Despite promising myself to not repeat the experience, I have just accepted another adjunct lecturer side-gig for the spring. The main difference is that excellent and up-to-date materials already exist. I'm hopeful these materials make the course prep less intense.

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?

#209

Post by ekwogefee »

brianbreslin wrote: post #184
ekwogefee wrote: post #106

Feem ( http://www.feem.io ) is making over $1K/month online; and I'm from Cameroon, Africa. Feem is a great cross-platform way to share files within your LAN.

Congrats! is there pricing anywhere on the site?

Thanks.

The pricing is "revealed" when you use the app.

Re: Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?

#210

Post by zachlatta »

usgroup wrote: post #206
zachlatta wrote: post #204

Without sharing too much info, I'm making ~$1.2k/monthly right now off of a Bitcoin arbitrage bot I made. I'd share more, but the arbitrage only exists because of a market inefficiency and I'm sure that if anyone here started competing with me, the market would become too efficient to easily profit :-).

How long have you profited on this op? Is it actual arb or stat arb?

3 months. It's not really a "real" arb because actually dumping the coins is hard, but it takes advantage of a spread across exchanges. Closer to a financial services company.
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