Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#51

Post by ryannevius » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

jdthedisciple wrote: post #28

ryannevius wrote: post #12

Over a weekend during the height of the pandemic, I made a digital school material website that has a "donate" button on it. Totally unexpectedly, it was making $1k/mo via donations. The original hope was to just pay for the hosting costs.

How did you make people aware of your site?

My wife is a teacher and I built the materials so that she could use them in her remote lessons. She shared with her colleagues, and growth was purely through word of mouth.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#52

Post by pavel_lishin » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

t0mislav wrote: post #11

I had site similar to this that generated 600-700$ USD per month as passive income. https://randomcountrygenerator.com/ I didn't touched it, sometimes for many months in a row.

Aw, I thought this would create a wikipedia-style entry for a fictional non-existent country!

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#53

Post by pgm8705 » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 1:41 PM UTC

newbie578 wrote: post #17

I got a question for everyone reading. How to even decide what side project to work on? Should I keep all ideas in a spreadsheet and then choose one, or make a grading system for ideas?

I've started a handful of side projects over the years, usually trying to fill a niche for small businesses, but none really took off because I grew uninterested. Once I started a project that was a) related to a hobby I already had and b) something I actually needed to use in real life, building it became a hobby in itself, I looked forward to working on it every night before bed, and eventually shipped a real product.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#54

Post by jonathan-adly » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

I built https://joyful.gifts a couple of years ago. Nice lunch money and was a good technical challenge.

I did it to be able to call myself a full-stack software dev. Basically, get over my imposter syndrome.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#55

Post by keviv » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

Circa 2006-07, I made around $4k by selling Adsense coupons. I saw people selling these on SEO forums and thought that there must be a way to get them. A little googling and I found a way to get these $50, $75, $100 adsense vouchers. These would sell sell for anywhere between $5-$20. It literally was free money till it lasted.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#56

Post by LittlePeter » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

nojito wrote: post #47

I make a very sizeable side income on prediction markets. Basically, through scraping, collecting, and cleaning an obscene amount of data.

I am aware of maybe 3 or 4 prediction markets. Can you provide some names?

Are you betting or cleaning data and reselling it or displaying it and earning income via ads?

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#57

Post by bronco21016 » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

4pkjai wrote: post #23

I created a web app that extracts transaction data from PDF bank statements. I talk about it with friends, but often a lot of people think I'm running some sort of data hoarding scam.

As someone annoyed with bank transaction import, I’d be interested in hearing more.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#58

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

ryannevius wrote: post #12

Over a weekend during the height of the pandemic, I made a digital school material website that has a "donate" button on it. Totally unexpectedly, it was making $1k/mo via donations. The original hope was to just pay for the hosting costs.

Do you have insights to share about working in this domain or documentation (blog or otherwise) for this project?

I'm working on an e-learning platform that aims to solve a few pain points my sister encounters in her job as a teacher. I'd be curious to hear about your experience.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#59

Post by from » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

jbman223 wrote: post #27

In high school I made a site to help students view their AP scores early. It ballooned in popularity over the past 8 years. At it’s peak in 2020 and 2021 it was getting over 1.5 million students in 2 hours on the day of release. It was quite profitable for a side project I started in high school. Sadly I was never able to turn it into anything more than an early scores site on the day of score release, but now all AP…

You must run earlyscores.com! That site was a life saver for me. Sadly anything aimed towards tech savvy high schoolers is probably going to be pretty difficult to monetize.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#60

Post by bshimmin » Thu, Jun 16, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

tjbiddle wrote: post #36

elil17 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this make money? I don't see any ads.

They said a site similar - Not that this is theirs.

Not the OP, but if you search for "random country generator" you will indeed find a few similar sites which do definitely have a lot of ads.