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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

#421

Post by rahimnathwani »

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…

I sent you an email in Feb 2023 about a video that wouldn't load. I'm not sure whether you saw it, as I didn't see a reply:

  One of the embedded videos on the progressions page is no longer available on YouTube. I'm not sure whether you're still maintaining lightnote, but thought I'd let you know anyway :)

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

#422

Post by conductr »

johnjungles wrote: post #340

I built https://check.supply with a friend - it’s an iOS app that is like a cash app experience for mailing a check. Old school landlords, paying gardeners, or other people still only accepting checks. We use plaid to connect your account, then press send, then track the printing, mailing and delivery of the check. Only iOS App here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/check-supply/id6475490646

This is awesome, I built this exact same thing back around 2008. However, I didn’t use plaid or any verification. I’d print whatever you wanted on the account and routing number lines. I just bought a stack of mailer checks and printed it from my laser printer and mail them out. MICR line ink is supposed to be magnetic but I think all the scanners are optical as I never had any complaints or issues as I personally was probably the biggest volume user.

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

#423

Post by kmoser »

windowshopping wrote: post #402
Jabbs wrote: post #30

https://www.unlistedjobs.com/ Scraper of job listings directly from company websites. I found my last day job by using a scraper that visits company websites in search of job listings. Now I've turned it into an app for others to use and access jobs that are posted on company websites (rather than paid employer ads on Indeed or wherever). This gives the job searcher an advantage to find jobs not listed on job search…

How did you design and build your homepage? I find that building the landing page and making it look like a professional, beautiful design is one of my biggest hurdles. I'm an experienced web developer but without a design to work off of - and especially accounting for mobile and dynamic sizing - I really struggle with this part of the work so I'm wondering what other people's workflows are for it.

Not OP but I have two solutions for this: 1) find an existing site and mimic their design, or 2) hire a designer

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

#424

Post by conductr »

windowshopping wrote: post #401
johnjungles wrote: post #340

I built https://check.supply with a friend - it’s an iOS app that is like a cash app experience for mailing a check. Old school landlords, paying gardeners, or other people still only accepting checks. We use plaid to connect your account, then press send, then track the printing, mailing and delivery of the check. Only iOS App here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/check-supply/id6475490646

How did you design and build your homepage? I find that building the landing page and making it look like a professional, beautiful design is one of my biggest hurdles. I'm an experienced web developer but without a design to work off of - and especially accounting for mobile and dynamic sizing - I really struggle with this part of the work so I'm wondering what other people's workflows are for it.

Try bolt.new or similar

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

#425

Post by aussieguy1234 »

Tunnelmole - https://tunnelmole.com/. This is an open source tunneling tool in the same category as ngrok. I have turned this into an actual company, it's just a one person one for now.

While it is open source, I am trying to build a sustainable business around it. It is bootstrapped and there is no VC funding as of yet.

Currently there are several thousand monthly users and just enough paid subscriptions to be making ~$500 (AUD) per month. Promoting it so far has not been too difficult with different strategies, but the conversion rate is quite low, so i'm planning to start doing some data science type analytics to find ways to optimise that.

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

#426

Post by alaithea »

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…

This is great. I started creating something like this almost twenty years ago, but didn't finish. You're living my dream. :) Kudos to you!

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

#427

Post by vthommeret »

nspeller wrote: post #341
abtinf wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I built…over a winter break This site is extremely well done. You built it, and all of its content, in a couple weeks ? That’s amazing.

Ah, yeah that is misleading. Let me clarify. The landing page is what I built over the winter break, including those first 7 lessons. Since then that page has remained largely unchanged. However, when it started getting a lot of traffic I added a pre-order form for a full course. THAT took me 6 months to code up all the additional lessons. Building all the interactive pieces (drum synths for rhythm lessons, an ear tr…

I'm curious where you get your traffic from / if it's fairly consistent and if you have any marketing costs. Thanks!

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

#428

Post by xisthesqrtof9 »

true_pk wrote: post #395

https://blymp.ca is about $600/mo with two clients. Building an MVP took two weeks, and getting the first paying customers another two. I wrote about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42344002 It’s a B2B SaaS in out-of-home advertising. We found that buying ads outside the digital realm is hard and the only alternative are marketplaces that take away control over media owner’s inventory. So we did for tho…

.ca! very cool

having a hard time figuring out what you do from your website, do you allow businesses to rent billboards?

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

#429

Post by bengold14 »

jd24 wrote: post #417
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?

I got all my friends to go on it and spent lots of time ranking people myself.

I also started things off with "fake" tests so that people had other people to rank at the beginning, otherwise folks would just see a dead app and drop off.

It was a really big moment 9 months in when someone's test completed entirely without me ranking. It was a lot of work & I'm really glad to be at a point now where I get to watch people rank each other without me.

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

#430

Post by zulban »

More like $400 a month the past couple months. Maybe that counts.

www.chesscraft.ca

I started this chess variant AI sandbox 5 years ago for myself to help with a brutal commute. Still working on it now and then. I've learned so much building and releasing a commercial product with a community, on Google Play and Steam. It's great to see the flexibility of the "good enough" AI I made has still held up after 5 years.

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