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

Post by justanton » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 10:33 AM UTC

RaitoBezarius wrote: post #221

justanton wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my ignorance: but how one actually earns money with chrome extensions?

You can ask the user to pay a subscription fee to use the extension. (a freemium model for example). Then, the user, in fact, pays only for using the back-end API. The front-end, of course, is like a website, """open-source""".

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 1:16 PM UTC

erikrothoff wrote: post #34

I made http://feeder.co , a Chrome extension to simulate Firefox's RSS live bookmarks back in 2010. Now it has 500,000 active installs on Chrome and our cloud hosted service is netting around 1500 USD each month after costs (1700 subscriptions). Me and my twin brother have had it as a passive income thingie for years. After a failed attempt at selling it (SaaS metrics are NOT easy) we met a guy who saw some potential…

Post by marktangotango » Thu, Oct 13, 2016, 7:32 PM UTC

_asciiker_ wrote: post #36

I've launched Sentopia ( https://www.sentopia.net ) as a side project and it is still easily making over 1K with just 2 medium sized clients but it is not passive income, requires some maintenance & customer support but still very much worth it. This year we're launching new features and a simple API: ( https://sentopia.net/apidoc/ )

Post by conorgil145 » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 2:19 AM UTC

csallen wrote: post #171

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…

I think all of this advice is spot on. It's what I've experienced myself working on Taskforce and Indie Hackers, and it's backed up by what I've learned from interviewing ~40 founders of profitable businesses in the past few months. Picking a good market might be the biggest thing. If you pick a market you don't understand, it's way harder to build a good product that solves an important problem well. You end up gues…

Post by conorgil145 » Fri, Oct 14, 2016, 3:10 AM UTC

vsax wrote: post #219

I created MEAN studio, www.meanstudio.com, where I charge $25 per hour to create highly functional prototypes in couple of weeks. I use existing code from other projects so my coding velocity is fast and never charge the clients more time than I spent on it. Clients see the quality and speed and just spread the word. I am making $1500 per month in the 3rd month of it running.