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Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#152
After six years of doing it on the side, I'm now doing it full-time (for a year and a half) and have one employee/apprentice (for the last half year). I provide IT training and consulting.

Started out with CFEngine, now offering Git training as well. Companies fly me in for 1-5 days to train their staff. I love getting to see different parts of the US.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of the money comes from the newsletter sponsorships. Newsletter sponsorships generally can earn wayyyy more than website ads. Incase you're interested in more details, the newsletter has ~10,000 subscribers (~50% daily, ~50% weekly) and the site gets about 30k uniques a month.

Also if anyone is wondering why the costs are so high, the main expenses are CloudFront (huge HUGE gifs) and Mailchimp. I'm sure I could reduce the costs to $50-100ish a month, but laziness.

Great work! I was wondering if you earn more by charing a buck for the daily post. I wonder how it would work?

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#154
post #150

1 year. Built up a hobby site slowly over the past two years, at the end of the first year it was making £7,700 a month.. It is still active and earning around £2-3k per month with only about 1 hours work a week. Currently looking to sell it on as I have just started on a new project.

What do you mean by "hobby site"? A site covering a specific hobby or something else? Can you tell more about how you earn money (memberships, advertisements, something else)?

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#157

I have several apps on the iOS app store. I make between $4000AUD - $9000AUD per month. I quit my job 3 years ago to do it, so I guess it isn't really a side project any more. That said, it is a lonely way to make money and I am over it. My career was computers, and I'm pleased I've done the apps, I can achieve anything technical so it isn't a challenge any more and am looking at something more physical, hands on. Wh…

Well if you ever decide to write about what you've learned I'd certainly pay for that kind of knowledge!

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#158
YouTube video tutorials on niche tech topics. Upfront investments: $50 for a decent microphone.

Spent about 40 hours creating and editing the videos. They have been online now for nearly 11 months and i have a total of ~300k views. That made me nearly $400 from video ads.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#159
post #148

Here's a brief list! * Wakeup.io - Simple Phone Wake-up Calls @ https://wakeup.io and it is fully automated and runs itself with actually really good profits. It was built in 2-3 days. * GetProve, Simple Phone Verification @ https://getprove.com and it is fully automated and runs itself with again, really good profits. It was built in a week or so. * Teelaunch, Kickstarter/Indiegogo Fulfillment Service (exited/sold)…

niftylettuce-- so does one have to leaarn node.js/react/etc. or ruby on rails to get involved with this stuff? Asking for a friend. Thank you,

if you want to start with something simple, have them install Node.js https://nodejs.org/ and learn to use Express (it's a simpler version than Glazed) at https://github.com/expressjs/express (see examples folder)

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#160

I created searchtempest.com as a hobby project in 2006, starting with zero web knowledge, although a bit of programming experience from electrical engineering. Within about a year and a half it was earning enough to pay my (very modest) rent. By 2009 I quit my day job to focus on it full time. Added autotempest.com around the same time and now have several employees working on the two. (The first hired around 2010 ii…

Did all of the "No affiliation with craigslist." warnings come after some legal action?

No, craigslist hasn't taken any legal action against us, perhaps because we go to significant effort through legal reviews and measures like those disclaimers to ensure that we don't infringe on their rights. (We also don't scrape their results, or indeed visit their site at all; we get everything from public search API's like Google Custom Search and the Bing search API.)
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