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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#541

Post by londons_explore »

axiosgunnar wrote: post #123
londons_explore wrote: post #6

I do pretty well out of serverthiefbait.com, despite having built it in a weekend and not touched it for 1+ year...

Did you really build all of it in a weekend? And customer support is fully automated?

There is pretty much no customer support required - I only received 12 emails about it last year. There have only been a handful of thefts. The vast majority of wallets never get stolen.

Yeah - the whole thing is appengine, fitting fully in the free tier, and getting the html template for that home page working on every browser was the hardest bit. There's no login or anything, and the database is just one record per sale. Wallets are all pregenerated. Checking for theft just involves polling a block-explorer API and sending a mail if anything changed.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#542

Post by Rastonbury »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #525
Rastonbury wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that silly monetarily? If extra work get's you even a 5% raise, that's $50k year pre-tax that will compound (with future pay bumps/stock grants). What is the equivalent amount of time to build a side project to that level? That said, if you spend extra time that does not translate into extra pay, it's essentially opportunity cost of a side income.

Silly because the two types of income are not fungible in my mind. With a job, I am a mercenary of my time and the income will dry up immediately if I decide to stop (let’s set aside the long tail effect of investing the savings). With a successful side project, it becomes a very passive income, like many people mentioned below. Ultimately I guess I am genuinely jealous of people clawing back their own time, while I…

I'm not sure if its realistic calculus to think you'll be easily able to make $1m passive income side project. Would you trade $1m a year for $100k passive?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#543

Post by biztos »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #56
sillysaurusx wrote: post #24

My Patreon makes >$100/mo. Currently sitting at $100. https://patreon.com/shawwn I figure since people are posting things making many times the $500/mo threshold, I should post something making many times less. :) It's actually pretty cool to just wait a few months and come back to a stash of money. Bought a Quest 2 the other day and didn't give it much thought, partly because of little eggs like this. The effort to…

In that spirit, search.marginalia.nu makes me about $70/month. Hardware investment is about $4-5k, plus a few hundred hours of development time. It was never intended as a means of getting rich though, so I am very grateful for the support.

I just tried a search and indeed I found a bunch of serendipitously interesting stuff!

Well done, hope it makes you more some day.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#544

Post by cinntaile »

mcluck wrote: post #317
plasticbugs wrote: post #2

My 'side project' is pretty conventional, but it surprises people to learn how much I've earned from it with very little effort. At least once or twice a week, I use my lunch break to walk to the local thrift store. I look up items on eBay as I browse and buy anything that would net me $20+ (basically to cover my lunch). I stick to the 'hard goods' section (things like electronics, games, DVDs, home appliances, books…

As someone who used to have to buy everything secondhand, this makes me sad. I can't tell you how exciting it was to find something that you wanted but knew you couldn't afford going for a reasonable price at the thrift store. I feel like by buying up all of those quality items, you're depriving people in less fortunate situations from experiencing the same sort of happiness.

A lot of the quality stuff in thrift stores is bought by professional buyers and resold. I'd guess 90%+, it could be country dependent. It's part of the thrill to find underpriced items and make a good profit. If there are still a lot of bargains to be made at your local thrift stores, expect these bargains to disappear when pro's discover them or when stores discover that they underprice. Whatever is still left as a bargain is simply your niche knowledge advantage.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#545

Post by wila »

Several projects.

https://vimalin.com - Backup software for VMware Workstation/Player/Fusion so that you can backup your virtual machines while they run.

https://vimarun.com - Automatically run a VM on startup of your host and suspend the VM on shut down (Windows only)

https://antview.dev - A WebView2 ActiveX control so that you can use the Edge browser control in software that normally would not be able to use a modern html5 browser control.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#546

Post by londons_explore »

kbuck wrote: post #248
londons_explore wrote: post #6

I do pretty well out of serverthiefbait.com, despite having built it in a weekend and not touched it for 1+ year...

Just a heads-up, a small typo on your FAQ page: > ServerBaitThief.com retains ownership of the wallet contents at all times. (wrong domain name)

Fixing that would require me to figure out how to deploy appengine stuff, now that Google requires you to use a whole new deployment flow, with a credit card required.

Not gonna do that unless something more major breaks...

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#547

Post by happybuy »

Nexxxeh wrote: post #383
happybuy wrote: post #16

I make a Safari ad blocker app for iOS and macOS - Magic Lasso Adblock - https://www.magiclasso.co/ It's free to use and download with an optional Pro subscription that includes additional features and makes > $500/month. Key things that have helped the revenue in 2021: - Released a major new version 3.0 which blocks all YouTube ads and has kicked along sales and improved the conversion rate considerably - Apple's sm…

How much is the Pro subscription please? I can't see it listed on the homepage, and if I go to the App Store page, the "yearly subscription" is listed multiple times at $30 or $15.

The optional Pro subscription is $US30 p/a (with differing prices in other regions).

There's also the free version of the app which includes ad blocking along with a 1 month free trial of the Pro version available in-app to see if it's useful for you before committing to a full year.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#548

Post by amaurym10 »

I run an open-source [1] email verification API, called Reacher. I managed to hit 10k ARR this year (1st year).

It's written in Rust, self-hostable, and does not use a DB of emails (like some competitors do).

Landing page: https://reacher.email.

[1]: https://github.com/reacherhq/check-if-email-exists

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#549

Post by GeoAtreides »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #526
sydthrowaway wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teach me your ways. Any major tips besides getting lucky?

No tips, it’s truly all about luck. My job is not particularly difficult or anything, I mostly herd cats all day without producing much, as I am at the whims of massively over engineered systems that are almost impossible to comprehend. The only thing I would say that can affect your luck is to always say yes to any opportunity that has a chance of taking you forward, even if it is incredibly uncomfortable. A couple…

You sacrificed much for your money. What's your exit strategy?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#550

Post by deanmoriarty »

Rastonbury wrote: post #542
deanmoriarty wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly because the two types of income are not fungible in my mind. With a job, I am a mercenary of my time and the income will dry up immediately if I decide to stop (let’s set aside the long tail effect of investing the savings). With a successful side project, it becomes a very passive income, like many people mentioned below. Ultimately I guess I am genuinely jealous of people clawing back their own time, while I…

I'm not sure if its realistic calculus to think you'll be easily able to make $1m passive income side project. Would you trade $1m a year for $100k passive?

It’s clearly tough to say without having a real opportunity in front of me, but if the passive income was diversified enough and with minimal time investment, I would most definitely trade my 60h/week job for a side project bringing a fraction of my current income (the exact fraction would be on a case by case).

I think I personally am at the point where time is a scarcer resource than money. Getting a lower paid job or consultancy is not an alternative either, both would still be too big of time commitments.

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