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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#611

Post by _benj »

protocolture wrote: post #320

The gist I get from this thread is that if you have something on the cards you should just commit to it? How much is just survivorship bias? I have like 4-5 side hustles being worked on at any one time, but I rarely ship for various reasons. Lots of people in this thread seem to have just gone and done it without thinking. How often does that pay off?

I guess it is survivorship bias, but I’d never be one of the survivors if I don’t even try.

I have an Etsy product, Christmas tree ornament, has made about $600 gross last year and another $400 or so this year…

It’s not much but now I have an Etsy shop with 5 start reviews all across. Planning to make a few more non-seasonal products and see where I can take it.

But, I also have a graveyard on my GitHub!

I guess the stats are like 9/10 entrepreneurial projects fail… so if I try 20 things…

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#612

Post by palsecam »

MrDresden wrote: post #533
palsecam wrote: post #124

https://FreeSolitaire.win brings around $500/mo in advertising revenue. It’s a Klondike Solitaire PWA (progressive web application). I started making it in 2016 and I’ve been slowly iterating on it over time. It has stayed minimal & lightweight, on purpose. No framework, no cruft, no obtrusive ads. Fun fact: because it’s so lightweight, it was included in 2020 in Moya ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=n…

Just spent the last 10 minutes playing, while having my morning coffee. I can honestly not remember when I last played Solitaire. Decades I think. Thank you for making this, it brought some joy to my day.

If it brought you joy, then you made my day It’s also a good way to spend the time, like when you are commuting. Keep in mind that https://FreeSolitaire.win works offline (after the 1st visit, using a service worker: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Wor...) ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#613

Post by palsecam »

swiftcoder wrote: post #508
palsecam wrote: post #124

https://FreeSolitaire.win brings around $500/mo in advertising revenue. It’s a Klondike Solitaire PWA (progressive web application). I started making it in 2016 and I’ve been slowly iterating on it over time. It has stayed minimal & lightweight, on purpose. No framework, no cruft, no obtrusive ads. Fun fact: because it’s so lightweight, it was included in 2020 in Moya ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=n…

That is pretty slick, and beautifully lightweight. Would love to see artwork for the royalty

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, as mentioned in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42382673), I should do something about the cards design, which is currently too rough.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#614

Post by Taters91 »

badcppdev wrote: post #559
TheJoeMan wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any architecture advice on making receiving payments from small-to-medium businesses streamlined? Struggling on how to go from an employee trying the free demo to their company paying that employee’s subscription… like no PO request nonsense, is there a “master” account you bill and they dole out the seats?

Are you saying that you don't want to deal with Purchase Orders? Is that because you don't want to provide a product in advance of payment or just the overhead of creation/tracking?

I want to do business, but without all that nasty business stuff

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#615

Post by dannydandan »

leetcodewizard wrote: post #18

https://leetcodewizard.io I released this fairly simple ChatGPT/Claude wrapper a few months ago. Currently it’s doing about 15K/month. It’s an invisible Electron app that can be used to cheat in coding interviews / OA’s.

How did you market this?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#616

Post by dannydandan »

kebob wrote: post #418

I built a Figma to Bubble.io converter, basically Figma to code but for a nocode platform. Niche, but something that I personally needed so figured others may find value as well. I charge a flat $25/mo, and based on the Figma design it significantly speeds up my development in bubble. Been hovering around $1.4K MRR, only real spend is ~$15/day google ads which has yet to pay for itself, but I keep telling myself its…

How did you market this?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#617

Post by wtf242 »

vidyesh wrote: post #567
wtf242 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built it in 2008, and have rewritten it twice now since them. I have spent quite a bit of time adding new lists. It's definitely a labor of love and I do spend quite a bit of time on it. I do use Gen AI now to generate genres, descriptions, and to grab other data. Previously years ago i would just scrape it or manually set it. Amazon has a nice product API with up to date prices. I am working on bookshop.org integr…

Thank you for replying. I am (on and off) building a regional price comparison website for various regional online bookstores. I do want to build a more fairer and honest monthly/yearly list something like yours and the price comparison as the main USP but more so I really like reading and enjoy exploring books even if I don't read all of the ones I wan to. Your website is quite inspiring to me and have given me more…

yeah the amazon product API has some severe limitations. I have 25,000~ books on my site, and I just don't have enough API calls in a day to keep the prices 100% updated. It's on my todo list to revisit this, but it's low on my priority list. I don't make that much from amazon refs(couple hundred a month)

I will say that I don't think they really defend their TOS too much from my experience. I used to have a cookbooks site for years that used the same affiliate tag i use for my greatest books site, and never had any issues.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#618

Post by henrygabby »

apapli wrote: post #485

My wife built https://www.jummbo.ai but she doesn't have an HN account so I'll share for her. Jummbo takes the "umm" out of prospecting in B2B sales. It makes it really quick to find and prospect new customers, as it googles them, researches them, and writes custom emails and call scripts that are highly targeted to each of them. The app is in the $hundreds per month, getting a lot of interest in a niche vertical whi…

I am interested in learning more. Is it available in the US?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#619

Post by jermaustin1 »

mrexroad wrote: post #477
jermaustin1 wrote: post #133

In 2023, I started selling solid wood rolling trays designed by my little sister and I on Etsy (The Stoned Craftsmen). Almost immediately I was making $1200-2000 per month. Some months can be big months (especially around Thanksgiving/Christmas) where I'm getting $75-200 a day in sales, but some months can be dogs (July and August this year were literally $0 months - the only 2 on record - I think an algorithm change…

How much of your woodworking is CNC? I’ve been thinking about selling a slightly different take on fountain pen trays, but I’m just routing by hand and/or with jigs.

When I started selling them, 50% was CNC, 40% was me and a bandsaw, 10% was me and a sander.

After a 20 months of optimizations, its now 80% CNC, 20% sander. There is a specific product that my CNC barfs on 100% of the time, so I have to do a batch of like 30 at once so the failures don't have any real impact. My next big purchase will be a small drum sander ($1500) so that I can leave an onion skin (1/16" - 1/8" thick) on the bottom of my stock and let the sander remove it. But I need a good Christmas season to make that happen.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#620

Post by pfista »

vincefutr23 wrote: post #343
johnjungles wrote: post #340

I built https://check.supply with a friend - it’s an iOS app that is like a cash app experience for mailing a check. Old school landlords, paying gardeners, or other people still only accepting checks. We use plaid to connect your account, then press send, then track the printing, mailing and delivery of the check. Only iOS App here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/check-supply/id6475490646

Do you have risk loss / fraud issues?

Not really. We don’t touch customer money- we just print and mail checks on their behalf.

We do require bank verification via Plaid, which proves the user has a valid username and login to their bank.

We perform further KYC checks for suspicious payments.

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