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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

#811

Post by drakonka »

edanm wrote: post #801
drakonka wrote: post #747

I have one: I self-publish science fiction on the side. Although it isn't consistently $500 per month yet. Sometimes it is a bit more, other times less. The income goes up as I build up my backlist, but usually it is a spurt in the month of release that then trickles down to a lower baseline. With each new release, that baseline gets a little higher.

Can you share some of your work?

I don't feel like a good enough writer to share my pseudonym yet. It isn't a huge secret, but not something I actively link to. Maybe when I reach some kind of minimum personal threshold of success I'll be more open with my writing.

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

#812

Post by lmiller1990 »

tmaly wrote: post #774
lmiller1990 wrote: post #710

I made around $500 / month from selling courses on Udemy [0]. I have two courses, both about Vue.js. I do a ton of marketing by various blog posts I write, my YT channel (2k subs) and Twitter. [0] https://www.udemy.com/user/lachlan-miller-4/

What would your best advice/tips to someone considering creating their first udemy course?

I'd recommend getting comfortable explaining things while coding. I also listened back to my videos a lot and tried to pick up on my bad habits - an example would be I often omit the trailing "t" on words like "jest" when I speak, which makes it difficult for some people to understand.

I'd also recommend making sure you are a real expert in whatever you are making content around. There's a ton of competition for online courses, you either need excellent presentation/marketing, or extremely credible.

Building an audience is also challenging - I did so using my YT channel [1], which also gave me a chance to get better at coding + explaining at the same time.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/lachlanmiller

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

#813

Post by czue »

averagely wrote: post #799
czue wrote: post #289

I have two! An app for making wedding place cards that does about $1000/mo https://www.placecard.me/ A boilerplate for making SaaS apps with Python/Django that does $5k/month (highly variable) https://www.saaspegasus.com/ I also have a third that does around $150/mo. It's an app that adds analytics to GroupMe which is a WhatsApp alternative. https://chatstats.co/ I keep complete revenue and effort data here if you're…

Your Open Project Dashboard is really cool. Do you have a system for keeping track of everything? Is it somehow automated? I'd like to create something similar for my own work.

Thanks! The tech behind it is pretty embarrassing.

Source data is Stripe (profit), Toggl (hours) and a tiny amount of manual accounting for expenses. I manually dump the raw data once a month into a CSV file, and then have some Python scripts that do intermediate calculations and transform the output to JSON. Then a tiny bit of JS to wire up the charts. So, in short, not automated at all, but takes ~10 minutes a month to keep up to date!

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

#814

Post by canadaduane »

e-_pusher wrote: post #392
canadaduane wrote: post #92

I built an in-browser 3D world for life coaches so they can create better experiences for their communities. Audio & video chat in a game-like world, where exploration and socializing is for health, happiness, and personal growth. We're averaging about $400/mo right now through customizing worlds and building features as requested. https://www.relm.us

You guys are using y.js to implement the world right? Are CRDTs commonly used in the video games space? And if you don’t mind explaining, why did you go with y.js over Automerge?

Yes, we are. Yjs has been very performant in both size and space. Automerge may be competitive now/soon, but we needed something that worked out of the box.

I don't think CRDTs are commonly used in video games, at least not yet. We're using data sync in this way for collaborative world editing. I think it will be much more common in the future as it reduces boilerplate API code and puts the focus on the UX (which we are definitely still working towards!).

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

#815

Post by dsinc »

mendigou wrote: post #693
dsinc wrote: post #491

I run a micro ISP providing gigabit internet access to around 100 businesses that does around $4.5k a month. It started by accident when I got a connection for myself and then shared it with others. My landlord then expanded and invited me to offer it to more units so I made the platform self serve which means apart from initial install it's pretty hands off. Not enough to live on but good side income while I launch…

This is awesome. I'm not from the US but will move there soon and seeing how the internet connections around the area where my partner lives are absolute c*p, maybe this would be an option? Can I reach out to you somewhere? You can also write to at Gmail.com if you don't want to publish it here.

I'm actually based in London and only provides this service in a small corner of East London, so sadly can't help!

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

#816

Post by johnnyfittizio »

davidkuennen wrote: post #399

https://stockevents.app ~5000$/mo An investment tracking app with a unique view of things (events). Started just before corona, since I needed something like this myself. Turns out a lot of people were searching for something like that. The fact that many other investment tracking apps are either ad ridden, slow or have a bad ux helped as well. Technical: - App flutter - Backend go - Database postgres - Hosted Kubern…

I would like to get it on my MacBook pro (2019). But it seems it is required the Apple M1 chip. Why?

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

#817

Post by ac2022 »

vladstudio wrote: post #439

I've been drawing pictures and publishing them as desktop wallpapers for ~20 years now, selling Vlad.studio accounts with unlimited access to downloads [0]. In 2021, I earned $4761, which means ~$400/month. It's not horribly little amount, especially for Russia (where I live), given it's a side project. However, I feel I need to do something more active, rather than just drawing new pictures. Promoting and marketing…

This is so inspiring, I want to start drawing too. I never had formal training but wondering how did you learn to draw?

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

#818

Post by cercatrova »

Kaze404 wrote: post #591
_3u10 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not pay someone to develop your side project? More importantly if you want to put survivorship bias on your side, never develop anything until you have a working sales funnel. Put $1000 aside a month on a design and site for your idea, followed by a marketing person w/ a budget. The screen following getting their card should be a page letting them know you aren’t onbaording new customers, their card hasn’t been c…

> The screen following getting their card should be a page letting them know you aren’t onbaording new customers, their card hasn’t been charged and you’ll let them know when you’re taking on more customers (eg. The product is built) If a website did this to me they'd also be getting a very angry e-mail and zero recommendations from me.

Then you're not the target customer. I hear this often that people, especially on HN, don't like this tactic, but most people don't really care, they'll just shrug and move on.

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

#819

Post by ZephyrBlu »

amaurym10 wrote: post #548

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

I love the design of the landing page. Did you design and build it yourself?

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

#820

Post by vladstudio »

ac2022 wrote: post #817
vladstudio wrote: post #439

I've been drawing pictures and publishing them as desktop wallpapers for ~20 years now, selling Vlad.studio accounts with unlimited access to downloads [0]. In 2021, I earned $4761, which means ~$400/month. It's not horribly little amount, especially for Russia (where I live), given it's a side project. However, I feel I need to do something more active, rather than just drawing new pictures. Promoting and marketing…

This is so inspiring, I want to start drawing too. I never had formal training but wondering how did you learn to draw?

thank you! I never actually learned to draw, and I still believe I am not good at drawing :-) but I'm a pretty good designer, so I practiced skills of turning my pencil sketches into polished designs. And a "favorite" visual drawing style naturally occured along the way.
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