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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#311

Post by mettamage »

bengold14 wrote: post #177
mettamage wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why did you start this? I've always used photofeeler.

Thanks for asking! I also used photofeeler and found the way it rated me 1-10 fairly harmful to my mental health. RankPic has users rank your photos best to worst, so it's just against yourself. Additionally it allows users to get more mileage out of each test, when you can do 2-6 photos instead of just one at a time. Anecdotally I've also heard it is a more fun experience for the rankers.

That answer is very inspiring, thanks :)

Are you up for a digital coffee? If so, my email is in my profile.

While I haven't been an entrepreneur, I did some side projects. Would be fun to chat about it.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#312

Post by noAnswer »

mtw wrote: post #250

I make between $3k to $6k from putting a log cabin on Airbnb. This started during period of boredom during the pandemic. I operate remotely with smart home devices and with a local cleaning team/handyman. I had a project to completely automate this with an AI agent but Airbnb doesn't offer a publicly available API. $3k seems high but the costs add up and the time as well (details here https://studiozenkai.com/post/ai…

We should be able to claim our landlords as dependents on taxes.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#313

Post by throwaway24124 »

melvinmelih wrote: post #300

Thanksgiving last year, after GPT-4 was released, I realized large language models were finally good enough to bring my idea to life: an AI book generator. Over the holiday weekend, I built the prototype for https://instabooks.ai , to allow anyone to instantly generate 200+ page books on any topic. I sell them in pdf, epub and print form and they take about 30 minutes to complete. Since launch, over 10,000 books have…

What LLM are you currently using? And how do you prevent against hallucinations/drift when generating content of this length? Do you start by asking the model to generate an outline of a book, and then have it expand on each chapter with more detail? Awesome project

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#314

Post by JamesSwift »

joshstrange wrote: post #36
JamesSwift wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Are you comfortable sharing any architecture details? Im half wanting to do the same for a local fair that had a high friction ticket system. I wasnt happy with any designs I came up with though

Sure! It's QR-based, so customers create an account, load money onto their account, then show their QR code to vendors who scan it to charge their account. We also provide plastic cards (think: gift card) for people who don't want to use their phone but we see 80%+ of people interact completely on their phone/online. We have an app and website (same codebase, Quasar framework) and for in-person payment (entry, bar) w…

Awesome, thanks for sharing

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#315

Post by butshouldyou »

ipaddr wrote: post #295
nspeller wrote: post #116

I built an interactive Music Theory course 8 years ago over a winter break and it continues to bring in enough to pay my rent each month. I just thought there had to be a more intuitive way to learn music theory than the very boring and jargon-heavy alternatives. It uses Tone.js to include little interactive pianos, guitars, and other demos. I've done no marketing, it hit the HN front page for a day, and after that i…

After seeing your landing page I finally understand what a landing page should be.

I clicked through to the website after your comment. Landing pages are too often a wall of text, this one is a great example of how they can be done correctly.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#316

Post by melvinmelih »

throwaway24124 wrote: post #313
melvinmelih wrote: post #300

Thanksgiving last year, after GPT-4 was released, I realized large language models were finally good enough to bring my idea to life: an AI book generator. Over the holiday weekend, I built the prototype for https://instabooks.ai , to allow anyone to instantly generate 200+ page books on any topic. I sell them in pdf, epub and print form and they take about 30 minutes to complete. Since launch, over 10,000 books have…

What LLM are you currently using? And how do you prevent against hallucinations/drift when generating content of this length? Do you start by asking the model to generate an outline of a book, and then have it expand on each chapter with more detail? Awesome project

Currently using GTP-4o combined with Perplexity API context infusion for real-time knowledge (this also reduces hallucination for the most part). And yes, starting with outline and then writing chapter by chapter while doing real time research. After initial completion there’s another editing round to make everything more coherent.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#317

Post by noAnswer »

melvinmelih wrote: post #300

Thanksgiving last year, after GPT-4 was released, I realized large language models were finally good enough to bring my idea to life: an AI book generator. Over the holiday weekend, I built the prototype for https://instabooks.ai , to allow anyone to instantly generate 200+ page books on any topic. I sell them in pdf, epub and print form and they take about 30 minutes to complete. Since launch, over 10,000 books have…

So you are the guy that poisons people with this generated cookbooks.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#318

Post by TheJoeMan »

goenning wrote: post #10

I did not like any Kubernetes UI so I built my own https://aptakube.com It went from side project to my primary job in less than 6 months. Everyone was saying that $99 was too much for “an API wrapper”, but here we are, 2 years later and with hundreds of small to enterprise companies using it :)

Any architecture advice on making receiving payments from small-to-medium businesses streamlined? Struggling on how to go from an employee trying the free demo to their company paying that employee’s subscription… like no PO request nonsense, is there a “master” account you bill and they dole out the seats?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#319

Post by rolandpeelen »

upcoming-sesame wrote: post #286
rolandpeelen wrote: post #223

I made https://konfig.xyz/ after making about 6500 images for a product configurator. Instead of using images, we use 3d models. Initially quite simple and for use with relatively flat scenes (ie - no tree like structure for options / scenes) but grown over time to sort of support those too. The main use case are fixed-in-size products that can be customize-able. So colours and materials, but also swapping one object…

Very cool, since there's no pricing, what's the ballpark cost of some of the demos on the website?

We so have pricing https://konfig.xyz/pricing (perhaps I need to make it more visible). There is some upfront cost in the modeling, but we don’t really make / want to make money there. So everything essentially goes to the 3d party. We’ve partnered with a great company in the Ukraine but you can always also do it yourself

We have some basic docs at docs.konfig.xyz - which need some love, but happy to help anyone get up and running :)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#320

Post by protocolture »

The gist I get from this thread is that if you have something on the cards you should just commit to it?

How much is just survivorship bias?

I have like 4-5 side hustles being worked on at any one time, but I rarely ship for various reasons.

Lots of people in this thread seem to have just gone and done it without thinking. How often does that pay off?

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