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Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

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31–40 of 121 posts

Re: Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

#31
post #23

I run https://ubersuggest.io a simple keyword suggestion tool. On average I have 80k monthly unique users.

I'm quite surprised that you only average 80k uniques/month. With how much I see this tool being recommended throughout the SEO community, I thought it would've been a lot more.

Have other similar tools cut into your traffic?

Re: Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

#32

I don't have a project but I have always been wondering if there is some open-source style software (with a license that allows this of course) that would let me customize the software and sell it to other businesses and get small recurring income as a SaaS product (like $70 a month). Think small restaurant inventory management, pricing, CRM, software for real estate brokers to manage clients, dentist online appointm…

The key is selling it.

Re: Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

#33

New account because I don't want my employers knowing. My sideproject on iOS and Android generates 1.1M a year. About 90-100k a month. I'm still employed because the app runs on its own, very low maintenance, so might as well get a salary doing something else and learn new things

My question is how do you still have employers when you're making 1.1M a year. Jeez.

Certainly is amazing!

I want to know the secrets to being such a good company and/or manager that you can keep someone earning 1.1m on your staff!

Re: Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

#34
I'm running a website called Narrow (http://narrow.io) on the side. It's a Twitter marketing automation company that was started not for the love of Twitter but the desire to get the benefits of Twitter without having to do a lot of work. Lazy, I know, but I'm a programmer after all. Let the computer do the work.

Re: Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

#35
I built http://www.whatsmyua.com/ for myself back in college, it reports and breaks down browser's User Agent strings. It now brings in $20-30/month via adsense.

I also built https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker around the same time, it's a web proxy for evading government/corporate/school/etc. filters. When I had a copy of it online, it got a lot of traffic from around the world, and used to earn anywhere from $10 to $100/month from adsense, depending on the month. However, it wasn't worth the effort of keeping it online due to abuse + clueless sysadmins.

Unblocker also earned me a consulting fee a couple of times from folks who wanted help integrating it into their project, and I ended up converting it from a standalone site to an Express middleware to make that easier.

Re: Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

#36
I built my first SaaS app http://sharpplm.com, Quote Management for manufacturing companies. It has been pretty much autopilot and is still making $2k per year.

I am currently working on http://gemssports.com. It is activity, payments, member management for sports companies. Think sports trainers, tournaments, softball teams, etc. We are just getting rolling but having some good success.

Re: Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

#37

I don't have a project but I have always been wondering if there is some open-source style software (with a license that allows this of course) that would let me customize the software and sell it to other businesses and get small recurring income as a SaaS product (like $70 a month). Think small restaurant inventory management, pricing, CRM, software for real estate brokers to manage clients, dentist online appointm…

There are a few businesses built around that model: https://plan.io/redmine-hosting/, https://www.phacility.com/, etc. I attempted it once but quickly lost motivation because 90% of the initial work is marketing which I don't really feel passionate about (nor am I good at it).

Re: Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

#38

New account because I don't want my employers knowing. My sideproject on iOS and Android generates 1.1M a year. About 90-100k a month. I'm still employed because the app runs on its own, very low maintenance, so might as well get a salary doing something else and learn new things

I think the commenters are jumping to conclusion that OPs profit = 1.1M - 100k. Most of these apps have a big running cost and the profit is not so much as one imagines. Otherwise, OP won't be gainfully employed.

Re: Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

#39

New account because I don't want my employers knowing. My sideproject on iOS and Android generates 1.1M a year. About 90-100k a month. I'm still employed because the app runs on its own, very low maintenance, so might as well get a salary doing something else and learn new things

So like $350,000/yr after the 30% cut from the app stores, and additional 40% cut from state and federal taxes?

yeah I'd keep my job too and look forward to those sweet tax deductions and getting all that extra social security withholding back

Re: Ask HN: What revenue generating side projects do full-time employees here have?

#40
post #9

I run a small platform for a couple of web designing friends. They can deploy webshops at the touch of a button while having full control over the design. It saves them the effort of having to ask more techy folks for assistance, and it lets me focus on more interesting things. Started off at 3k EUR revenue a year, currently at about 2k. It doesn't cost me any effort.

Would be interested in this. Are you looking for a new customer?
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