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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

#81

Post by dbgrman »

Launched Standly, a standing desk companion app on iOS and Max in Feb 2025. Steadily grew it by talking to people on reddit and in person. Mostly word of mouth sales and ASO. Initially it was only for mac but launching iOS has been good. Most downloads coming from organic search. Most people like it to build stamina for standing and stretching while working, especially those with lower back pain. Most customers are from EU.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/standly-standing-desk-timer/id...

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

#82

Post by wahnfrieden »

Manabi Reader - learn Japanese by reading

More than $500/month. It currently sustains my full-time focus

https://reader.manabi.io

I quit my job a couple years back to work on this app full-time, as well as its companion flashcard app, Manabi Flashcards. The goal is to help you learn through immersion and eventually replace some of your flashcard reviews time with reading (once I finish auto-reviews for flashcards)

What's special about it? Manabi Reader became popular as an Japanese-focused alternative to services like LingQ in that it locally tracks and analyzes all the words and kanji you read and study. It shows you which words are new and which you're currently learning via flashcards, so you can easily find content that suits your level and see what flashcards to prioritize adding.

It also passively accumulates an on-device (and in your personal iCloud) corpus of example sentences from your reading. It’s also one of few ways to mine sentences including pitch accent directly into Anki on iPhone.

I had built this part-time while working over many years (starting with flashcards and then the reader app) but going full-time gave me the time to do a full rewrite: SwiftUI, native iOS + macOS, and an offline-first architecture that syncs with iCloud and my server in the background.

Although it has a companion SRS algorithm (FSRS) flashcard app, it's also excellent for mining Anki cards. This works with AnkiMobile on iOS and AnkiConnect on desktop.

You can use it like a web browser for the web, or subscribe to RSS feeds. It comes with a bunch of curated content by level. Recently I added EPUB support, pitch accents, and note-taking with todos.

I'm now almost done adding a manga mode via Mokuro, and Netflix/streaming video support via realtime captioning of audio streams.

To scale this with UGC/influencer market I need to make it more beginner friendly. Currently it assumes you can read kana at least.

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

#83

Post by bluemoola »

kaesve wrote: post #6

My wife's Etsy shop ( https://www.etsy.com/shop/LittleLanternShop ) is starting to pick up. She is leaning into creating digital sewing patterns for decorative felt crafts. We have had Etsy success before with 3d printed products, but managing printers and fulfilling orders can be stressful and time consuming, and she was hoping to build up a more passive income stream. She made over $1000 in the past month, which be…

How have you promoted it so far?

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

#84

Post by fandorin »

postatic wrote: post #65

I run SideProjectors - https://www.sideprojectors.com - a marketplace where people can buy/sell their side projects and businesses. I've been running it for over 14 years now.

interesting! how is it going? what’s the average price tag for such projects?

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

#85

Post by darknavi »

DubMFG wrote: post #76
trubalca wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a CO2 laser yeah

If you use LightBurn, hi from the team!

Wow! I was using LightBurn this evening for some holiday presents. Hello from a very thankful MacOS user.

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

#86

Post by bunnybomb2 »

crobertsbmw wrote: post #19

I’m still selling Computer Engineering for Babies. And I just launched a new book called Simple Machines Made Simple on Kickstarter a month or two ago. Both books are basically just simple interactive demos for kids and adults. https://hackylabs.com

Oh man this sounds so cool!! Ive always wanted to make a childrens book.

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

#88

Post by breakingstuff »

Started Find Boxes in 2024, it's a project and inventory management tool for audio visual companies. Took longer than expected to get the first customers, but I'm a bit above $300 a month now. I hope to cross the $500 a month mark sometime next year.

https://www.findboxes.co

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

#89

Post by mkummer »

pillefitz wrote: post #63
mkummer wrote: post #4

https://dreamandcolor.com/ has been a fun solo bootstrapped side project for me for the past 2.5ish years - (specialize in converting photos to coloring pages for parents, educators, etc) I started it primarily wanting to take a shot at productizing an image diffusion model (Stable Diffusion 1.5 when I started) in a novel (at the time) way and it ended up growing legs of it's own. She's steadily chugging along, growi…

Well done! How does it compare to using built-in image models like nano banana?

You can get great results with nano banana nowadays (ex: "convert this image to a coloring page") - I'd say we focus on 1. consistency with our base style from image to image, 2. likeness (still really tough to get 100% right but we've come a long way since our MVP) and 3. offering fun alternatives (South Park inspired coloring pages, Minecraft style, etc)

We also handle all the post-processing (upscaling, image cleaning, etc) that you need in order to get great printed results - with Gemini (Nano Banana) or ChatGPT you've got to pull each image out, possibly remove the watermark, set the curves/levels in photoshop/gimp, upscale it, etc then print the page - you can just hit Export and download a pdf ready to print from our site

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

#90

Post by mvkel »

Brystephor wrote: post #15
mvkel wrote: post #10

https://www.repth.com , an AI cycling coach that I vibe-coded back when gpt-3.5 was hot and vibe coding wasn't yet a thing. We've come a long way! Free for athletes, but I license the underlying "coach" logic to actual, human coaches.

How does this compare to Trainer Road?

TR's "AI" claims are a bit of a stretch. It basically just monitors fatigue and will ramp down a prescribed workout to ensure you don't overtrain.

The workouts themselves are templates chosen from a list and do not adapt to the rider as an individual. It plugs in a standard periodization schedule with flexible dates.

Repth uses AI for everything with a few guardrails. You pick a peak date, describe your peak event, weekly availability, and ftp.

Repth then generates a macro plan, and the next week of workouts. As you perform, it will monitor for compliance and adjust the prescription depending on your compliance and feedback. All of it is unique per user, optimized for the demands of the specific event.

Overall, TR's approach is fine. Any plan can work as long as you stick to it. I built Repth simply to replace my (human) coach in 2022 and in that regard it has been a huge success

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