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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#371

Post by oakhaven »

jspizziri wrote: post #285
rafram wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m seeing a lot of AI tells in the cover art (like for War of the Worlds) and book descriptions. Didn’t see any discussion of where the narration comes from on the site. Are all your audiobooks restorations of classic readings? Do you hire narrators to record new ones? Or is there AI involved there too?

All the audio is by real humans but I definitely use AI help on the descriptions and images, as graphic design and copywriting are not areas I’m competent in, and as a side gig currently I only have so much time. A good chunk of the initial audio has been curated and re-engineered/enhanced from librivox, however I’m also working with voice actors to produce originals. For instance I just release A Christmas Carol whi…

When I read your first comment, I immediately thought that the audiobooks are voiced by AI. I'm really surprised to learn the opposite.

So you take existing recordings created before 1929 and remaster them? Are recordings (of books published pre-1929) which were created after 1929 in public domain too?

I don't even want to ask about producing and voice actors.. Really nice idea and realization!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#372

Post by quarry_quirk »

dubme1 wrote: post #338

I run https://aliveai.app a large uncensored (i.e. adult) AI image and video generator. It started as a small side project but slowly grew every month and recently exploded to well over 50k USD revenue per month. It's fun to have a large community of paying users but honestly I never thought out of all my side projects this one will make it. I am still a one man show managing everything from development, marketing, c…

Why would you ever admit to such a thing? Don’t you have any shame? It’s odd you admit looking at NSFW content all day messes with your mental health but I guess it’s ok since you make 50k and the women in your life aren’t having AI porn generated of them.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#373

Post by mvkel »

spuzvabob wrote: post #171
mvkel wrote: post #10

https://www.repth.com , an AI cycling coach that I vibe-coded back when gpt-3.5 was hot and vibe coding wasn't yet a thing. We've come a long way! Free for athletes, but I license the underlying "coach" logic to actual, human coaches.

Neat! We made a similar thing years ago in the pre-AI era, with strong focus on detection of how the planned workouts were executed rather than making plan adjustments just on a single scalar metric (e.g. TSS). Didn't really go anywhere unfortunately. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1725424103/summit-train...

Nice! Curious, what metrics did you land on? IF, VI, duration, etc., or an interval detector? That is the unfortunate thing about the serious cyclist industry; it's tiny! Not worth pursuing as a business unless the TAM is expanded broadly

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#374

Post by strongpigeon »

andysinclair wrote: post #345
strongpigeon wrote: post #11

https://fivethreeone.app/ a weightlifting app for 5/3/1 has been earning me ~$1000 a month for over two years now. I'm actively working on a successor that allows you to create your own custom workout programs using formulas: https://vis.fitness

Looks really good, will try it. What is your revenue split, tip vs non tips? I've always wondered if putting a tip button on a free app could generate significant income.

Tips are insignificant compared to the paid features. On iOS for the last 6 months I made $5090. $31 was tip.

That being said, it feels really nice that people like it so much they’re willing to pay extra.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#375

Post by jspizziri »

oakhaven wrote: post #371
jspizziri wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the audio is by real humans but I definitely use AI help on the descriptions and images, as graphic design and copywriting are not areas I’m competent in, and as a side gig currently I only have so much time. A good chunk of the initial audio has been curated and re-engineered/enhanced from librivox, however I’m also working with voice actors to produce originals. For instance I just release A Christmas Carol whi…

When I read your first comment, I immediately thought that the audiobooks are voiced by AI. I'm really surprised to learn the opposite. So you take existing recordings created before 1929 and remaster them? Are recordings (of books published pre-1929) which were created after 1929 in public domain too? I don't even want to ask about producing and voice actors.. Really nice idea and realization!

There's a really awesome site called Librivox [1], where volunteers narrate books that are in the public domain. Those recordings are also in the public domain as well (this is just part of the Librivox thing). The quality of those recordings (both the narration, and the actual recording quality) varies quite a bit and most of them aren't at a quality I'd expect people to pay for and thus aren't useable for me. I've spent hours and hours sorting through those recordings finding the best ones (from a narration perspective) and then improving the recording/audio quality on them. Those recordings have all mostly been made in the last 20yrs, so they're not old recordings of the books. So, the value I add to the Librivox recordings are: curation/selection, audio enhancement, and a much better delivery mechanism (IMHO).

I'm also simultaneously building out our own library of original audio content by working with voice actors to get them recorded and proof read (this is a very expensive and time consuming process, but also very fun). One of the hardest parts is honestly the proofing process. Once I get finished narration files I have to compare them result with the actual script (as there are always mistakes) and request edits. I use whisper.cpp to transcribe them and then git and a few other scripts to compare the transcript with the actual book text.

I'll also add that I _do not_ use AI Audio narration because it just doesn't sound good IMHO, and I personally hate listening to it. I regularly run experiments to see what the current state of the tech is and it's still pretty far from where it needs to be IMO. I also don't love the idea of AI swallowing absolutely everything.

I appreciate the feedback and compliment!

[1] https://librivox.org/

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#376

Post by agotterer »

1_over_epsilon wrote: post #340
agotterer wrote: post #78

A friend and I host a monthly dinner club for people interested in ethnic cuisine. We work with a single restaurant each month to create an 8-12 course all inclusive price fixe menu. The food is served family style and is authentic to the region we are hosting. We typically host the dinners on a Tues or Wed when the restaurants in our region aren’t too busy and could use the extra business. Since 2023 we’ve been to 4…

This is awesome, how did you get the word out and market/advertise?

We’ve never paid for marketing or advertising.

- We are lucky to have a passionate community who tell others about us.

- Sometimes we do shared reels with the restaurant, which helps drive some of their traffic to our social pages and website.

- There’s a few large local Facebook food groups which have driven membership.

- The largest driver of new membership came from coverage in the region newspaper. We credit that with the transition from 1 or 2 degrees of separation to people we had no connection to.

- There’s been a few influencers who have shown up and documented their experience. We didn’t pay for it. It drove a few members, but the quality of the newspaper and Facebook group members was higher.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#377

Post by tikotus »

rkomorn wrote: post #355
tikotus wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, and perhaps worth mentioning that today's puzzle is not very representative of a regular puzzle, as usually the grid is filled with different professions and not reindeers!

Is it representative of the regular difficulty because if so it... doesn't bode well for me. The concept is really cool though. I like it!

Thank you!

It's a pretty normal mid week puzzle. They start easy on Monday and get harder towards Sunday. But don't be afraid to use hints to get started with the game! It gets easier with time!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#378

Post by dubme1 »

quarry_quirk wrote: post #372
dubme1 wrote: post #338

I run https://aliveai.app a large uncensored (i.e. adult) AI image and video generator. It started as a small side project but slowly grew every month and recently exploded to well over 50k USD revenue per month. It's fun to have a large community of paying users but honestly I never thought out of all my side projects this one will make it. I am still a one man show managing everything from development, marketing, c…

Why would you ever admit to such a thing? Don’t you have any shame? It’s odd you admit looking at NSFW content all day messes with your mental health but I guess it’s ok since you make 50k and the women in your life aren’t having AI porn generated of them.

I am looking at the content for moderation purposes and customer support. Not sure why saying that this affects me mentally should be a bad thing.

Also maybe you missunderstood what AliveAi.app is. It is strictly a on-platform AI generation. We do not allow editing of user uploaded content (i.e. deepfake) for obvious reasons.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#379

Post by willprice89 »

realsdx wrote: post #282
willprice89 wrote: post #227

I'm developing Wallpunch, a censorship resistant VPN for people in China, Iran, and Russia. Userbase is pretty small as I'm still polishing things up, but I hope to expand my marketing efforts a lot in 2026! https://wallpunch.net/

Site is dead

Really? What country are you connecting from? It should be accessible in China, US, Europe etc.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#380

Post by infecto »

laurentiurad wrote: post #367
infecto wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again no disrespect, it’s blunt honesty. I am not promoting anything. I live in the US and work at the intersection of finance and software. Your site has quite literally zero details on it. It’s a bunch of fluff on the landing page. Why would anyone signup without any information about what they are signing up for. Your response to a question about sourcing it’s odd. You only mention 10qs which you built a scraper f…

No disrespect but still accuse someone of a scam, right? I specified clearly in the description of this service that I deliver financials, historical or congress/senate trades. I think it's obvious for someone working in finance that the last two cannot be fetched from quarter or annual forms. Things like revenue, eps, ebitda, pre/post earning moves (those use last, open prices too), are strongly-related to 10Q thoug…

Again only honest feedback. As someone who would be a potential client your site looks like a scam. Good luck!
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