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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything comes and goes. HN is no exception. With that in mind does it matter for you? Are you here because HN is at its peak? If commenting here makes you life better a bit keep doing that. If not then just don't and go somewhere else. Or stop using the internet altogether and just became goat farmer. Do what makes you happy and not what crowd thinks will make you happy!

Crafting CSVs is what makes me happy.

it is a very interesting observation and I did some calculation and it seems that every 8 seconds, one hackernews comment is made

I feel like the reason why it has peaked is that when hackernews was created, it probably had both youngsters and experienced alike since it was the hot new thing once but over time it matured and I think that very few young people are here and I doubt that there are surveys for hackernews median age

I am one of the youngsters and honestly I joined because of youtube (fireship -> primagen -> theo t3 -> hackernews)

And I feel like the reason hackernews doesnt feel attractive to youth is probably because of attention span, like only recently I saw someone create a thread about what clicks on hackernews or not as if its a game and I do feel like hackernews isnt conventional social media and our whole new generation has never really understood something beyond conventional social media

To me, it was unstimulating at first (which in retrospect is a good thing), like just large amounts of texts and texts in comments and I didn't understand the situation

And I don't think hackernews should change. Once I got the hang of it, it became one of the most interesting websites to me personally.

But don't worry I think that the spirit of hackernews/tinkering is still there in youngsters whom I see in their own ways, people (my age) are definitely being fed up and are taking steps like clippy and other interesting stuff that one can argue go similar to tinkering/curiosity of computers

I will have to admit that even my attention span was "cooked" and I don't think it was something extremely because I have talked about it but like, as a youngster the culture is changing so fast sometimes like, after I was on hackernews for a long time, I do not feel talking internet slang but that does alienate me sometimes because people my age have low attention span and when I used to send long messages to my friends they were kinda responding like, "aint nobody reading ts" or even on platforms like discord, I genuinely felt like a left out person because all people my age had slang or something and I didn't

Nowadays I do not feel this way because this is the person I am and I kinda see opportunities for myself which are unique to myself because of hackernews and the tinkering curiosity it has given me but still I just wanted to share a perspective about something that had troubled me once.

Apologies for the yap and have a nice day!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

great to hear! I'm getting a bit worried about possible legal issues - although that is because I might not be involved in every meeting so I'm worried about possible risks. I sent you an email, my email handler is alanmeira. If you are too busy and can't waste time on this there is no problem tho, your post was quite motivating already.

I’m a little behind on email, I’ll reply later today. I’ll answer some of the legal right now. First, we are at every event. Not sure how much it matters legally, but we are there as hosts and to drive the feeling of community. Without us, I don’t think the community has the same feel. We also have an unbelievably respectful and mature community. After over 70 seatings we’ve never had an incident. We also have a code…

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#503

https://dbpro.app I’m building DB Pro, a modern desktop database client for developers who want a fast, local-first workflow. I started in October 2025, launched v1 at the end of November, and just crossed $1k MRR. I also post devlogs of life building and marketing DB Pro and am about to post devlog #4. The latest one is here if anyone’s curious: https://youtu.be/-T4GcJuV1rM Still very early, but it’s been fun seeing…

semrush shows that your organic visits significantly increased this week. Well done. Great product. Succes!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#504
post #459
post #419

https://www.unlistedjobs.com/ 26.3% of jobs found on company websites are not advertised on any job boards but found using this tool. The app scrapes company's directly (24/7) and give the user: - a head start over other job seekers - access to thousands of jobs not listed anywhere else - daily job filter emails with ability to be highly curated to reduce noise

1. What is the churn like? Don't people cancel after finding a job? 2. Has any company objected to scraping?

1. Churn isn't as bad as I would have thought. There is also the use case for someone who has a job and wants to find the next one. But yea if someone wants to only use for 1 month, that is expected

2. I think companies (or the ATS's they use) might object to reposting a job listing on my site but I'm not doing that. You can search/sort/filter jobs but in order to view the job posting you will open a link back to the original job.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#505

Super Fine Cuts, super low run custom "vinyl" records. I have been working on automating some processing but currently it is all manual. Had an overwhelming response as people are finding it mostly though ChatGPT which has been very interesting as I did a soft launch to friends only and no marketing. https://superfinecuts.com/

Now that is cool! What is pricing?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#506

https://cluesbysam.com I started making a daily logic puzzle called Clues by Sam in May and it's been stadily growing since. The number one thing people were asking for was more puzzles, so I started selling puzzle packs instead of monetizing with ads. The reception has been great, and the revenue has been enough for me to decline some consulting gigs and instead focus on improving the game.

Really loved it. Well done. 1000+ organic visits in 6+ months - awesome traction.

Do you want to put your CTA (puzzle packs) somewhere "higher" - closer to gameplay?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#507
bewCloud [0] is a simpler alternative to Nextcloud if you don't use a lot of its customization options.

This year I got a grant from NLNet [1] for it, which averaged to over $500 / month. I also have some customers for it, but not close to that at all, which I'd rather have, as more sustainable way to keep improving it.

Still, I'm quite grateful to NLNet!

[0]: https://bewcloud.com

[1]: https://nlnet.nl/project/bewCloud/

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#508

I was hesitant to add my own but I think you might find it interesting as we make money not from clients but from grants. We have IronCalc[1]. We don't make money from customers as we don't have a finalized product yet. But we have an ongoing grant from the NLnet[2]. You can have a look at the kind of projects they are granting money. It's always a source of inspiration. That being said IronCalc takes a lot of time f…

This is very cool indeed. Is there anything similar for ppt presentations that you know of?

No, not really.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#509

https://cluesbysam.com I started making a daily logic puzzle called Clues by Sam in May and it's been stadily growing since. The number one thing people were asking for was more puzzles, so I started selling puzzle packs instead of monetizing with ads. The reception has been great, and the revenue has been enough for me to decline some consulting gigs and instead focus on improving the game.

Thank you for the link, I loved today's puzzle and will now be a regular user

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#510
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you promote it? I find myself in the same market but for planning based on route weather and fitness conditions w/ https://brezza.cc - It is very hard.

Haven't promoted it at all, beyond having a marketing site live on the web with competent SEO. I should say, it's not hugely popular or anything. But considering that I only built it for my own needs, I look at it more as art than craft. In that way, it can only be a success.

love that response, congrats!
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