https://iotsky.io - an educational site for experimenting with IoTs Free right now, but hopefully will make a decent amount after our beta.
Is it pronounced "yotskee"?
Ask HN: What are your profitable side projects?
81–90 of 133 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your profitable side projects?
#82People with side projects, how are you managing liability?
Browsing the projects on indiehacker, most of them are off-to-the-side (they consume data and work with it and mostly that data is low valye) or development related (things that are embedded or make pages but don't run in production).
But a handful of them actually must have credentials for other service to work or run in a trusted contest - in other words, they are used in ways that expose the customer to security issues on the part of the operator of the side project. What happens if you get pwned and cost your much larger customers serious money?
Re: Ask HN: What are your profitable side projects?
#83[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What are your profitable side projects?
#84Depends what you mean by profitable. http://sites.creou.com It took about 4-6 weeks to build (fairly significant hours during that time). It currently only has 1 paying customer, but they pay about 10% more than it costs to host, so it technicaly makes profit month to month, but is unlikely to ever make back the costs I sunk into it. (Main problem is that although it was intended to be able to be used to build lots o…
I sell something similar but charge at least a hundred times more per project / site. You should really promote this as the "local" (country based) solution and raise prices. For £75 you will only get annoying cheapskates.
That's interesting because in the end I gave up because I felt like the space was too over crowded with lower cost alternatives already. I had managed to get a few potential clients but ultimately they all decided to go with other companies that would offer them a fully custom site for a fixed price of anything between £1000 and £4000. We had limits on how much we would customize the sites because of how the engine was built, all the sites it produces essentially follow the same template. And £75 per month passes £1000 after only a year.
It seemed that we couldn't compete on price, because cheaper design shops could throw together a template and charge £100-£200 total + only bare minimum £5 budget hosting per month.
And we also couldn't compete on customisation or service because for only a few thousand you can get a reasonable quality fully custom site.
I'd be interested to chat more if you were willing. (email in my profile).
Re: Ask HN: What are your profitable side projects?
#85https://ipanoramaprints.com/ - prints panorama photos.
It started with just targeting iPhone users but we accept any kind of panorama photos.
Profit is good enough to cover my monthly meal expenses.
Re: Ask HN: What are your profitable side projects?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you market this to get that many visitors?
I actually launched my side project on indiehackers - http://www.oppsdaily.com - a newsletter filled with software opportunities. I posted some of the traffic stats here http://www.oppsdaily.com/blog
This looks really cool. I signed up.
Re: Ask HN: What are your profitable side projects?
#87I built a device that turns your Android phone into an FM Radio www.enrad.io
Re: Ask HN: What are your profitable side projects?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, turns out the average dev doesnt really know much about marketing. Some are even against learning it. I simply work with them to establish an online presence, a core brand (based on their skills and goals), a content strategy (what to write about in order to get the markets attention), visual branding (logo and website design), and time based plans to help them take action. Its like a sort of marketing makeover…
That last part got my attention! I'm currently studying internet marketing and there's so much stuff out there that makes me uneasy... have you found any resources for ethical marketing?
Marketing yourself as a developer can just be blogging, creating videos/sreencaptures of you explaining some thing etc. You don't have to sell anything, just convince people that you're worth employing.
Just the other day my boss discussed some hiring decisions with me, and he said "the guy is too expensive. If he had a blog or an active github profile, I could justify 10% more" (above what we'd usually pay for the position).
So, having a public blog with some contents and visitors can increase your pay as a developer by 10% easily. If you're not comfortable with traditional marketing, that's all you need to do.
And if you're lucky, you can also sell some courses on pluralsight/udemy/whatever at some point, and make some extra cash on the side.
Re: Ask HN: What are your profitable side projects?
#89I started two projects last year and now make ~$100/month in profit. Costs are almost nothing. https://autoplaylists.simon.codes : iTunes-style smart playlists for Google Music. https://gchat.simon.codes : autoreplies for Google Chat/Hangouts. Particularly useful for people with multiple accounts that forward email. https://simon.codes/2017/01/09/side-project-income-2016-0-to... has more details on why I chose these…
How do you combat code stealing and submitting an extension as their own if that has happened before?
Re: Ask HN: What are your profitable side projects?
#90I built and run https://todoport.com to allow people to move their tasks between task managers. Doesn't make a lot but running costs are tiny.
I spend way too much time on it though, so I wouldn't exactly call it profitable if you count my time - the term I use is 'hobby business'.