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Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#51

Post by jv22222 »

donutdan4114 wrote: post #17

I launched an app for Shopify about a year ago called Custom Fields: https://customfields.bonify.io Currently it's making about $5,000 / month. It's been a very interesting process dealing with building the app, marketing it, and dealing with support. The app is $19/mo for regular Shopify stores, and we have about 700+ total customers (only some are paying). We get A LOT of support requests for misc things and have b…

I really like what you've done.

> We don't really market the app

Well, what you did _is_ marketing (via integration), it's a great strategy when done well and looks like you did an awesome job.

I've heard it said that marketing is basically doing anything that exposes your product to more people.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#54

Post by malchow »

sgslo wrote: post #48
malchow wrote: post #10

I offer web publishers a stack that enables client-side removal of programmatic ads when users pay a small subscription fee. Lots of law blogs, economics blogs, etc., are using this now. [1] [1] https://subscriptions.publir.com/

This is an awesome project, nice job! If you don't mind sharing, how did you land your first few law/economics blog customers? Seems like they might be a tough market to get into. Do you run into onboarding issues with them around the script setup? One small nitpick - your three section links in the header ("How it Works", "Analytics", "Why Publir") need a "cursor: pointer;" rule on them.

To be honest, my partner and I just made a Sheets doc of all the blogs we read, and emailed the writers (usually professors) letting them know that they can give their readers a fair way "out" of the ad ecosystem. They loved it.

Figuring out how to remove ads client-side while not getting the site "charged" for policy violations by the ad networks was tough, though.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#57

Post by alangibson »

pilom wrote: post #12

I've cut my expenses and invested the extra in index funds. Currently at a nest egg of around $300k which spews off dividends of around $500/month and is currently appreciating a bit faster than that.

Are you reinvesting the dividends? If not, why?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#58

Post by rcarrigan87 »

guohuang wrote: post #29

I have been working on a side project to show all the most mentioned books from hacker news, stackoverflow, reddit. http://toptalkedbooks.com we are still struggling on marketing, no revenue yet.

I'd recommend you create a blog where you write interesting posts on different trends, analysis, etc. from all the data you're collecting. I'd be interested to know if current events drive the frequency of certain book recommendations in different forums. This will help bring people to the site, build links to improve SEO, etc. Also, make the email capture more prominent.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#59

Post by peacetreefrog »

nether wrote: post #38
peacetreefrog wrote: post #14

Planning a 'Show HN' on this as we get closer to the season, but I built a model for Fantasy Football that works pretty well and has done over $500 this month. Takes into account correlations across same-opposing team players to give a slight edge. https://fantasymath.com Modeler by trade, had to learn all the back and frontend stuff myself, been really fun so far.

Selling pickaxes. Nice.

Ha, I think it's a really good pick axe though. That is a good analogy for Daily Fantasy Sports though, where you do weekly games and tournaments ect to win real money. My model has some very useful features that might make it valuable there, but the sites take anywhere from 6-8% off the top, so yeah, on average when it comes to Daily Fantasy, selling pick axes certainly has a higher EV than actually playing yourself.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#60

Post by shanecleveland »

funtober wrote: post #42

Fall event directory and costume store launched in 2012: https://www.funtober.com Basically a one-stop shop for fall festivals, Oktoberfest, haunted houses, pumpkin patches, etc. Still have a long way to go to make it what I would like but traffic last year was roughly 1 million in the month of October. Anticipate it will double to 2 million/October this year. Still working on the right revenue model.

There's something to be said for seasonal niches. It seems to me there's a bit of a reset in terms of search rankings that can mitigate the authority bigger players may have. Do you find that be true?
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