Earlier this year, NYT launched a new puzzle game called Strands, which gained a lot of popularity. I created a website, https://strands.today, monetized with AdSense. It allows users to check daily puzzle answers and play previous games in the https://www.strands.today/strands-archive/ . It generates about $600 per month.
Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
701–710 of 818 posts
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
#702I built https://vpzen.io - dedicated VPN servers that are pay as you go. 79c per day and 10c per Gb. Great if you only need a VPN occasionally. Plus there's no VPN client to download... it works with the native VPN client on Windows, iOS, macOS and Android.
What about legal stuff? Are you not worries of someone doing illegal stuff?
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
#703Earlier quoted context omitted.
Check out the docs section or any of the YouTube videos. And yes, I'm pretty proud of our backtesting tool (it's called strategy playground) that lets you set some bot parameters and filters for what alerts you want to trade based on (it has access to all the alerts we've generated historically, as well as symbol and option prices for all tracked options) and then does a full tick by tick simulation run and generates…
The docs seem to be locked behind sign-up. The only option I see is "Get Started" which leads to sign up. :/
It seems you can access this directly through the link: https://docs.rigged.ai/
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
#704I built an interactive Music Theory course 8 years ago over a winter break and it continues to bring in enough to pay my rent each month. I just thought there had to be a more intuitive way to learn music theory than the very boring and jargon-heavy alternatives. It uses Tone.js to include little interactive pianos, guitars, and other demos. I've done no marketing, it hit the HN front page for a day, and after that i…
I'm impressed! Every couple of years I come across a different music theory website and I try to follow along, but inevitably after a few sentences I'm completely lost and the rest becomes incomprehensible. I got really far along in yours, which was great, until I got to 6 (Keys): "When a song says that it is in the key of C Major or D Minor this is simply telling you which of the 12 notes are used in this song." You…
I am aware you didn't specifically ask for answer, but I was not satisfied with the answers you got :-), so I'll add my two cents.. I have 3 points to make.
(1) The first is about 'when does it make sense for a song to use more than 7 notes?'
WHEN we do this, we will often say "this song uses a key change".
Some keys have partial overlap - note-sequences they share, and ranges where they differ.
One elegant way to exploit this, is to let the song meander into the common range of the two keys, and then meander OUT of that range into a different key that we used to get IN to that range.
This can produce a cool surprise effect, a bit like looking at those optical illusion pictures that you can look at two ways. A similar trick can be used with rhythms that overlap, instead of frequencies that overlap.
(2) Where does the "rule" of 7 come from, ie what shapes it: As you know, notes have harmonic friends that they resonate well with. So when you are picking a 'colour palette' of notes that go well together, you will of course often pick such 'friends'. However, the more notes you already have in your picked pool, the harder it gets to add another note, that will still mesh nicely with all those previous choices. Your remaining choices will be more and more likely to clash; in particular it will be more and more likely to be "close" to one of your existing choices. And close notes clash. So, on a 12-note scale, 7 is about the optimal number of tones you can pick without them clashing too much. It is just a convention however, so some stubborn individual might come up with an 8-note scale. Once you start with 8 notes, you would be tempted to employ extra "OK I have 8 notes, but I try to avoid playing THOSE TWO back to back"-rules.
Then again, I often hear my 10-year old loudly playing .. sounds(music?) from tiktok and its ilk, and as an old geezer, I am starting to think that some of our youngsters have given up on scales altogether..
I have no idea what my third point was, at this point.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
#705More like $400 a month the past couple months. Maybe that counts. www.chesscraft.ca I started this chess variant AI sandbox 5 years ago for myself to help with a brutal commute. Still working on it now and then. I've learned so much building and releasing a commercial product with a community, on Google Play and Steam. It's great to see the flexibility of the "good enough" AI I made has still held up after 5 years.
I saw you present this many years ago at MariHacks! Stuck with me as a really cool idea and project. Awesome to see it still going strong!
Neat! Hope you're doing well. As I recall, that was a nicely run hackathon.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
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" thi…
What CNC do you use if you don't mind me asking? I do some hobby and small sales woodworking but run into requests where a CNC would make it easier. Would love recommendations.
6 months ago, I would have recommended my Carbide 3D Pro line, but starting 6 months ago, parts started failing one by one, it is now a CNC of Theseus. I had to buy a new controller board because sensors kept failing and Support would send me new sensors gratis, but I'd be down for a week while I waited and then attached the new one. After a handful of those, they guessed (still don't know how correct that guess is) that it was the controller board, but they didn't send that gratis, I had to buy that. When waiting for that to arrive, I received my most recent replacement sensor that was DOA. So I had to do some wire splicing and create a few Frankenstein's Sensors to get me through the holiday. So far my splices are holding up, but I don't have faith they will for long. After the Christmas Season, I need to decide if I'm going to keep repairing or go for a much better machine. In the $5k price range, they are all SO MUCH BETTER than what I have, and I paid nearly $4k in 2022.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
#707I built custom electric cars, and now I am sharing my knowledge for free in a knowledge base and in a YouTube series: https://foxev.io/batteries https://youtube.com/@foxev-content I hope this helps someone :) My knowledge is EV and renewable energy knowledge from first principles and for an open source tool. https://openinverter.org lets you re-purpose the drivetrain from any EV, like Toyota Prius or Tesla Model S an…
I think you need more how-to video content vs theoretical explanation. How to source motors, how to source batteries, what batteries are best, what is a converter, etc. I think if you ramp up the video production, maybe find a local shop or other local youtube content creators working on cars to collaborate on a project car. Essentially you need to prove to the audience that you can help them on an EV conversion project.
To make it scale, do what other content creators do and create a private, paid content area with more detailed videos or create a paid course people can go through that steps them through a conversion process.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
#708https://www.unlistedjobs.com/ Scraper of job listings directly from company websites. I found my last day job by using a scraper that visits company websites in search of job listings. Now I've turned it into an app for others to use and access jobs that are posted on company websites (rather than paid employer ads on Indeed or wherever). This gives the job searcher an advantage to find jobs not listed on job search…
Cool site - very clean lightweight interface which is great. Have a few friends that are looking that would for sure have checked it out had there been a free trial.
Thank you. Currently working on promo code functionality to give away to all the postings in Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42297422
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
#709Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not OP but I have two solutions for this: 1) find an existing site and mimic their design, or 2) hire a designer
Yes, I know, that's very easy to say, but in my experience: 1.) Imitating a good design can take a lot of developer hours. Many landing pages have fancy css effects and support many screen sizes and it can take quite some time to build. 2.) Finding a good designer is not easy. I have tried hiring on most freelancer sites with very poor results. The applicant pool is typically of low quality. So I am wondering if othe…
I've been on both sides - working with developers for the past 5 years and leading design teams, so I get the frustration.
The key is finding someone who understands both design AND development constraints. Feel free to check out some of my work here: https://monadile.framer.website/ .Feel free to reach out via email: monadile.design(at)gmail.com or book a call via my website.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell
#710RankPic ( https://www.rankpic.info ) is an app to help users crowdsource their best photo. I've been building over the past 3 years & just recently monetized and crossed the $500/m mark through a Pro subscription. It's grown into a lovely community of people who help each other pick their best pictures for dating apps, professional photos etc. I've seen some pretty fun novel use cases, such as (multiple!) people usin…
How did you design and build your homepage? I find that building the landing page and making it look like a professional, beautiful design is one of my biggest hurdles. I'm an experienced web developer but without a design to work off of - and especially accounting for mobile and dynamic sizing - I really struggle with this part of the work so I'm wondering what other people's workflows are for it.
In case you're looking for a designer, I can help you with the design especially mobile as I have worked on mobile apps that are live on app store and play store. feel free to check out my work : https://monadile.framer.website/
You can also reach out via email : monadile.design(at)gmail.com