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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

#51

Post by sim04ful »

https://explorer.withfudge.com

It's well on the way to make $600+/month now, almost doubling since last month. I've realised given the ease at which software can be ideated and maintained, i would rather focus on having a more dataset-intensive moat.

It's a database of website section screenshots I've been hand collecting with others for almost 2 years now (it's crowdsourced via a seperate chrome extension), each section has styling metadata linked - typography usage (leading, weights, tracking, sizes,etc), font details (foundry, designer), colors and alot more.

What really helped was my positioning, instead of trying to compete with established players (mobbin, landbook, refero), decided to focus on the MCP integration; the giving LLMs design taste angle.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

#52

Post by neuroticnews25 »

nikshepsvn wrote: post #35

nokeep.ai - private, uncensored AI -- launched it cause most folks who want privacy or less censorship attempt to run models locally but that obviously doesn't work unless you invest in hardware / want speed etc.

Wow you're not lying about the uncensored part. What models does it really run? Did you do the abliteration yourself?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

#53

Post by qikouki »

chasd00 wrote: post #11

My work came up with a bonus structure around a certain set of industry certifications. I looked at all the certifications available and worked out a strategy to max the bonus each year. It comes out to about $2.5k/month. So my side hustle is studying and taking tests. Over the last 5 years or so of taking tests + investing I’ve built a nice chunk of change set aside to help pay for college for my two boys (age 14 an…

That is very nice of your company to pay for the workers' certifications. Do you think it is useful to your work?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

#54

Post by cuu508 »

jas0n wrote: post #32

I've grossed 17,531.33 so far this calendar year. You know those cold emails you get sometimes where they want you to get contract jobs and them do the work? I've been doing that for 18 months now and I average roughly 2 hours/week throughout the year. There are some weeks where I'm doing almost no work at all, but then there are some weeks where I'm interviewing daily and maybe have a video call with a client. I've…

I recently got one of those emails, interestingly leading with "I came across your profile on Hacker News".

Once I understood the proposal, I thought this would be horror job cognitive dissonance-wise. So unethical.

I also had a conspiracy theory – perhaps the "we can't pass interviews, so you do the interviews, and we do the job, win-win" is just a cover for the real play – shady anonymous orgs getting access to infrastructure and data of various western businesses, using you as a facade.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

#55

Post by bwb »

I'm building Book DNA to help people get book recommendations from humans (mostly authors and experts so far in our early days).

-> https://bookdna.com/

We started with the website, and now we are building a full app: a private, personal way to track your reading and get personalized recommendations based on your tastes.

-> https://building.bookdna.com/

We are aiming for a soft launch in a few months :)

If you want to be an early user and give us feedback, sign up here, and I'll get you going with the early version. We are adding imports from Goodreads now, and user folders to organize books how your brain works.

-> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeOdeqpZCS95FMRy_tE...

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

#57

Post by neuroticnews25 »

codingdave wrote: post #46
jas0n wrote: post #32

I've grossed 17,531.33 so far this calendar year. You know those cold emails you get sometimes where they want you to get contract jobs and them do the work? I've been doing that for 18 months now and I average roughly 2 hours/week throughout the year. There are some weeks where I'm doing almost no work at all, but then there are some weeks where I'm interviewing daily and maybe have a video call with a client. I've…

Do your contracts allow sub-contracting the work? Most of mine do, so there is nothing unethical about that kind of setup. Unless you are lying about it. But openly sub-contracting work, as long as you maintain accountability for it, is completely fair game. Fraudulently doing so probably opens you up to a decent amount of legal risk.

From what I understand he's interviewing under the client's identity.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

#58

Post by welanes »

I've been running https://simplescraper.io for a number of years, so not exactly a side project but it started out that way.

If time allowed, I'd focus on the AI photo and video generation. Have seen friends hit $500 relatively quickly by targeting niches.

Sounds like a played out category, but if you look closer it's a bit of a potemkin village - many incumbents are not that good or haven't kept up with the latest models.

Each year it gets more crowded out there, but almost always room for better.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

#59

Post by epaga »

teddyh wrote: post #41
epaga wrote: post #29

Two weeks ago, I released the tactical map-based WW2 submarine sim Silent Shark (which I got feedback on from HN for beta test a few months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180924 ) and it's gone extremely well for a side project - I've had over 100 Steam reviews, 99% of them are positive, and I have sold a few thousand copies so far. I began working on this game just 6 months ago and have only worked on it…

Do sharks normally make sounds?

Think not but “Normal Shark” just didn’t have the same ring to it

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell

#60

Post by codingdave »

neuroticnews25 wrote: post #57
codingdave wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do your contracts allow sub-contracting the work? Most of mine do, so there is nothing unethical about that kind of setup. Unless you are lying about it. But openly sub-contracting work, as long as you maintain accountability for it, is completely fair game. Fraudulently doing so probably opens you up to a decent amount of legal risk.

From what I understand he's interviewing under the client's identity.

Yeah, if that is the situation, this is straight up fraud.
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