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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#251

Post by HEHENE »

mrbad101 wrote: post #235
HEHENE wrote: post #197

My side project currently grosses close to $1,400 per month through Patreon. I run a modded Grand Theft Auto: V roleplaying server with around 1,500 members (around 300 really dedicated MAU.) If you're not familiar with GTA RP, it tries to emulate real life as closely as possible while still recognizing that GTA is an arcade game. Players live lives as if they were real people, buying cars and houses, holding jobs, o…

My son plays FiveM almost exclusively when he is on the computer gaming. He has been enamored with it for years now. As a parent who is also a gamer, I can't help but chuckle when I hear the conversations going on between everyone. Although it is not my cup of tea now, when I was that age, I would have killed to have such a world available for me to engage with. Thank you for such a killer "side" project!

The conversations can be interesting to put it mildly. When I get the chance to play, I mainly play a police officer and it has caused more than one moment of confusion when I didn't realize my partner had taken a work call and their co-workers could hear me barking out "lawful orders" from the other room.

Roleplaying games are really great for exercising your social skills and creative expression though, that's for sure.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#252

Post by thrwy_ywrht »

abetusk wrote: post #211
thrwy_ywrht wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic model is people pay for access to more sounds. For the last few years this bas been separate transactions on the ios app, android app and for the web version. Ideally I'd move to a single subscription-based account that worked across all devices for extra sounds. Revenue breakdown is roughly equal between android, ios and web, somewhat surprisingly. Android converts worse but has higher user numbers. Web co…

Thanks, that's pretty interesting to hear! Can you talk about how you advertise and got traction enough to get to $500/month?

> Can you talk about how you advertise and got traction enough to get to $500/month?

Pure dumb luck. I made the site to scratch my own itch many years ago, and then it took off because there were few similar sites at the time (that let you mix together different sounds). Only promotion I did was mention the site on reddit a few times. Users were prepared to tolerate a lot of rough edges at first.

There has been zero advertising. The site gets a regular influx of new users because it's been featured on a number of discover-interesting-website portals (the modern versions of StumbleUpon). This happened with no input from me. I assume it's a good match for these kinds of portals because it's immediately usable without any kind of instruction, signup etc.

I only made the decision to monetize after a long period of the site getting lots and lots of organic traffic with no input from me.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#253

Post by kouteiheika »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #222
kouteiheika wrote: post #35

I'm running a website for people learning Japanese and currently making ~$590/month from Patreon donations: https://jpdb.io/ This is an entirely spare-time project on which I've been working publicly for the past year. Here's some info about the tech stack I'm using: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26693959

Hi, if you're still around: jpdb looks really cool, but will it work for somebody who is a complete beginner? I want to learn Japanese, and intend to commit time to doing so sometime in the upcoming 2-3 months. However, right now, I'm literally at zero. Is there somewhere else I should go to learn things like basic grammar and sentence structure first, or will jpdb help with that sort of thing too?

A complete beginner? Nope. Well, at least not yet!

Eventually I do want to make it a one-stop-shop which will teach you everything and take you from a complete beginner to someone who can immerse in native media as soon as possible. We're not there yet, and the site works best if you're at least an advanced beginner. The bare minimum requirement is that you know hiragana and katakana already.

Your best bet would be to start with a textbook of some kind and/or some actual lessons with real teachers to learn the basics. The more of a beginner you are the more the human touch helps; the more advanced you are the more you can depend on apps.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#254

Post by Graffur »

konschubert wrote: post #10

I make this e-paper calendar: https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale... It syncs with Google Calendar. To be fair, I currently does > 500$/month in revenue not earnings . If it doesn't count let me know and I will delete my comment. EDIT: I am currently out of stock sadly. If you want to be notified when I am back in stock, you can leave your email here: https://forms.gle/tNcCcYrNBu5nWKgJ9

This is awesome. I would 100% buy a battery operated version

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#256

Post by andi999 »

konschubert wrote: post #10

I make this e-paper calendar: https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale... It syncs with Google Calendar. To be fair, I currently does > 500$/month in revenue not earnings . If it doesn't count let me know and I will delete my comment. EDIT: I am currently out of stock sadly. If you want to be notified when I am back in stock, you can leave your email here: https://forms.gle/tNcCcYrNBu5nWKgJ9

I agree, very cool. Here what I do not like so much:

a) the wood frame seems to be too large (probably there is a technical reason for this), but still. Not much too large though, just maybe 25%?

b) the wood (at least from the pictures) looks cheap (plywood?)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#257

Post by asdf3243245q »

kouteiheika wrote: post #35

I'm running a website for people learning Japanese and currently making ~$590/month from Patreon donations: https://jpdb.io/ This is an entirely spare-time project on which I've been working publicly for the past year. Here's some info about the tech stack I'm using: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26693959

Wow, that looks great!

My main complaint is that I haven't known about this until now. I frequently search for Japanese resources and specifically did searches to find pre-made decks of Japanese content from Japanese language media, but never encountered your site.

Thank you for the effort to revamp the Heisig kanji keywords - makes me wish I didn't already learn it the RTK way. The way to teach new kanji by introducing the enclosed primitives first is smart - it's a good compromise between "primitive first" and "usage first" approaches.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#258

Post by notamy »

thrwy_ywrht wrote: post #18

I made a background noise website and app https://asoftmurmur.com There are a lot of improvements I want to make, but due to life commitments it has been stuck in maintenance mode for far longer than I'm comfortable with

I use this constantly, oh my gods. Thank you so much for making it!! <3

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#259

Post by xd1936 »

matthall28 wrote: post #81

A tiny API for embedding weather forecasts as an image: https://weatherembed.com/ Makes around $500/month from various subscriptions through RapidAPI. Built on a whim during the pandemic. Uses Google Cloud Run + NodeJS.

Excellent idea!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

#260

Post by RussianCow »

konschubert wrote: post #10

I make this e-paper calendar: https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale... It syncs with Google Calendar. To be fair, I currently does > 500$/month in revenue not earnings . If it doesn't count let me know and I will delete my comment. EDIT: I am currently out of stock sadly. If you want to be notified when I am back in stock, you can leave your email here: https://forms.gle/tNcCcYrNBu5nWKgJ9

Wow, this is great! I was actually just thinking about hacking something like this together on my own, but $200 seems really reasonable for a pre-built product, and it looks much nicer than it would if I built it! :) Any plans to support non-Google calendar accounts?
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