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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?

#181

Post by adzeds »

martin_a wrote: post #154
adzeds wrote: 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)?

Basically I started built a website and my hobby is to work on it and improve it.. The main goal was not to make revenue.

The revenue it makes now is through memberships and affiliate revenue.

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

#182

Post by adzeds »

devopsproject wrote: post #167
martin_a wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

Things that people do outside of work like mountain biking, yoga, paintball, cooking, whatever. There is lots of opportunity for ad revenue and affiliate links

Yeah. You can get affiliate links for pretty much everything these days.

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

#183

Post by tixocloud »

mhowland wrote: post #81

3 Months. I made https://www.myothernumber.com (online temporary sms/mms/voice numbers) about a 1.5 years ago, was making ramen money within 3 months. Now tracking in the 5-figure/year range. It's a very, very crowded market so primary cost is user acquisition, but then again that's exactly why I built it, to better learn (consumer facing UA) and have a platform to experiment with. About to officially launch http://a…

For these ideas, did you do any customer interviews or did you just decide to launch and iterate?

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

#184

Post by tixocloud »

mhowland wrote: post #81

3 Months. I made https://www.myothernumber.com (online temporary sms/mms/voice numbers) about a 1.5 years ago, was making ramen money within 3 months. Now tracking in the 5-figure/year range. It's a very, very crowded market so primary cost is user acquisition, but then again that's exactly why I built it, to better learn (consumer facing UA) and have a platform to experiment with. About to officially launch http://a…

For these ideas, did you do any customer interviews or did you just decide to launch and iterate?

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

#185

Post by tixocloud »

niftylettuce wrote: post #2

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)…

Congrats and wow, it's amazing how many of these micro-services you've launched.

Did you do any customer interviews or did you just build these projects out of love and just released them?

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

#186

Post by crobertsbmw »

hugs wrote: post #22

5 years. (2011-2016) While working on my first startup (Sauce Labs), I made a robot that plays Angry Birds as a side/art project in the autumn of 2011. The serious part of the project is that you can use the robot for testing mobile apps and devices. I started to sell the robots (still as a side project) on Tindie when that first launched in the summer of 2012. I made a couple of thousand dollars the first few years,…

I had this same idea about a year ago and started working on it with my cousin. I don't think he was as excited about the idea as I was, and we never got past the LEGO prototype. I'm glad you have done this. It convinces me that it's at least a decent idea.

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

#187

Post by adzeds »

adzeds wrote: post #182
devopsproject wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things that people do outside of work like mountain biking, yoga, paintball, cooking, whatever. There is lots of opportunity for ad revenue and affiliate links

Yeah. You can get affiliate links for pretty much everything these days.

I have also just started work on this project: http://cupomterra.com.br/

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

#188

Post by gldev »

ZenSwordArts wrote: post #123

About 9 months ago i created https://namesmith.io , a business and domain name generator. I practically did nothing to boost the search engine ranking but the volume of visitors is growing (very slowly). So far the site can barely cover my vserver cost but that's ok since I can use the server for more than just namesmith. Most of the time some few dollar amounts tickle in but I had some sales of premium domains which…

this is pretty good! haha i am gonna use it (:

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

#189

Post by logicb »

logicb wrote: post #174

I had done couple of projects before and one of them was somewhat successful. I made around $1.5k from that. Giftcardzilla an aggregator for discounted gift cards. I had to shut it down after Google Penguin update. Currently building AppsUlagam.com (apps world) as a mobile app discovery site for apps with Tamil language content.

Clickable link http://www.appsulagam.com

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

#190

Post by cdnsteve »

matthewmueller wrote: post #55

4 months. I built a Slack bot called Standup Jack ( https://standupjack.com ). It's a ton of work upfront but if you launch early, keep an open dialog with your users, iterate on their feedback and keep your costs low, it's a nice way to earn some side income each month. Udemy is a pretty easy way to start since they do the marketing for you (for a pretty big cut).

Looks great, going to show the team tomorrow! Can I ask what it is coded in? Node or something else?
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