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

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

#411

Post by Tsarp » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:36 AM UTC

VoiceType: Mac Dictation tool. Running locally with WhisperLarge Turbo. So its fast accurate and can get a lot of Rust Library names correctly when I use with Cursor.

Why I Built It?

I ended up getting RSI over the last year and half. Despite lifting 3x a week and physio-therapy, circumstances had me working >12-15hours 6-7days a week for a few months straight. I’d read about folks using diction but never worked well for me or was pricey software.

At the same time I started using ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor etc quite a bit. When the Whisper Large turbo model was released by OpenAI, I tried transcribing some technical terms and it got transcribed quite well. ( still makes errors, but its within tolerance of what ChatGPT et.all can understand). I mostly talk type to my Mac now.

https://carelesswhisper.app/

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

#412

Post by zahlman » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:39 AM UTC

noAnswer wrote: post #317

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.

I assume you're referring to this issue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwp_WEdJaEk , yes?

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

#413

Post by Tsarp » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:42 AM UTC

BrainDump: Apple Notes + VoiceMemos + ChatGpt in 1.

What is it? - Apple Eco-system based voice note taking/journal. - Tried various note taking apps. Nothing stuck like Apple Notes. - Writing by hand was the best way to get clarity but seemed high friction. Talking about ideas with friends/colleagues was the second best to thought clarity. - Basically combined it. Voice -> Transcribe (whisper accuracy locally) -> Rewrite with COT LLMs. - Helped me maintain journal now ( life events, ideas, anxiety days etc ). Added some prompts to help me. ( researched what experts in the field recommend; as an example - How do I start? And what do i say if i want to gratitude journal ).

Since launch, more than 50% end up using it for meeting notes.

https://voicebraindump.com/

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

#414

Post by carlosjobim » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:43 AM UTC

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…

That's not really a side project. It's an income, but not a project.

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

#415

Post by kmoser » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:43 AM UTC

Soupy wrote: post #117

I run https://pastmaps.com as a lil' solo bootstrapped labor of love. Think Google Maps, but for OLD maps. It has 185K+ fully georeferenced high-res maps covering all of America, as well as satellite, LiDAR, and 3D layers to enable exploration through space and time. History is cool yo. And apparently lucrative - it currently makes ~$5000/mo and is slowly but surely growing through word of mouth

Possible minor bug: I searched for "New York, NY, USA" and it showed 41 maps of only Staten Island. I had to search for "Manhattan, New York, NY, USA" to get the maps I was looking for.

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

#416

Post by darthcloud » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:48 AM UTC

atlgator wrote: post #389

darthcloud wrote: post #144

I've build BlueRetro [1] an universal Bluetooth controller adapter for nearly all pre-USB gaming console. I guess I could update from my previous post in a similar thread. [2] Long story short, my open source firmware is used by product makers and they make a voluntary contribution often base on how many unit they sell. It is also widely used by Chinese company on AliExpress. I got one of those Chinese company to spo…

Very cool. Did you source the individual components along with a printed PCB and assemble yourself?

No I got panels with multiple pcb fully assembled from china. But I still had to program them, solder the connector and assemble them into the case. A very long process.

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

#417

Post by jd24 » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:50 AM UTC

bengold14 wrote: post #131

RankPic ( https://www.rankpic.info ) is an app to help users crowdsource their best photo. I've been building over the past 3 years & just recently monetized and crossed the $500/m mark through a Pro subscription. It's grown into a lovely community of people who help each other pick their best pictures for dating apps, professional photos etc. I've seen some pretty fun novel use cases, such as (multiple!) people usin…

How does an app like this work in the beginning when you have no/few users? Were you ranking images yourself or hire people to it?

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

#418

Post by kebob » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 3:57 AM UTC

I built a Figma to Bubble.io converter, basically Figma to code but for a nocode platform. Niche, but something that I personally needed so figured others may find value as well. I charge a flat $25/mo, and based on the Figma design it significantly speeds up my development in bubble.

Been hovering around $1.4K MRR, only real spend is ~$15/day google ads which has yet to pay for itself, but I keep telling myself its a good excuse to learn google ads.

https://www.deezign.io.

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

#419

Post by bitcoinmoney » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 4:00 AM UTC

Tsarp wrote: post #413

BrainDump: Apple Notes + VoiceMemos + ChatGpt in 1. What is it? - Apple Eco-system based voice note taking/journal. - Tried various note taking apps. Nothing stuck like Apple Notes. - Writing by hand was the best way to get clarity but seemed high friction. Talking about ideas with friends/colleagues was the second best to thought clarity. - Basically combined it. Voice -> Transcribe (whisper accuracy locally) -> Rew…

Can I make this listen to a zoom call and have it transcribed and summarized

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

#420

Post by nicksergeant » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 4:00 AM UTC

abetusk wrote: post #406

nicksergeant wrote: post #310

I started designing and building websites for locally-owned small businesses in my town, and have grown it to 45+ clients with a current MRR around $11k. I still work full-time and have built an awesome team over the years! https://flxwebsites.com

Do you mind going into what web stack you use? What about businesses that want online payments?

Sure! When I started 5 years ago, I had a single Django + Wagtail app that hosted all websites on a single monorepo/deployable. For the few sites that needed interactivity I just used vanilla JS. We actually do have a few sites that we've done some custom Stripe integrations for so they can accept payments online, but it's very minimal/simple.

About a year and a half ago I began moving everything to Next.js, and have migrated 30 sites from the Django platform and have built 20+ on the Next.js platform since building that out.

Next has allowed us to create reusable but heavily-themeable functional components that we couldn't do with Django's templating language (without a lot of boilerplate and pain), and I'm extremely happy with the move (even though I might not reach for Next on my next side project).

I do however wish I had given more attention to Astro when I was evaluating frameworks, because in hindsight it looks like a perfect fit for what we're doing. Not worth migrating now, though. Haha.