Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#241

Post by RepressedEmu » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 2:43 PM UTC

andygor wrote: post #143

http://datastarta.com — launched 3 months ago. The last month was $1350. I spent a month and $29 (domain + bubble) to build an MVP.

Just curious: Did you scrape the initial dataset or did it come from personal research when looking for an investment?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#242

Post by adamqureshi » Tue, Sep 05, 2017, 4:12 PM UTC

ew wrote: post #229

adamqureshi wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. $150 sold vehicle. Its a hassle right now its all manual i run everything off FB messenger. I do plan to flip it soon. Trying to grab a slice from cars, auto trader for used tesla listings.

How are you convincing anyone to pay $150/car when your site says it's free for everyone?

I don't know. I just tell'em there a fee: $150 if we find you a lead / buyer from our site. They say stuff like, ok cars sucks and they get spammed to hell with craiglist and some say autotrader charges them a fee upfront. Then i gotta track them down, its not easy but i am making money. Next move is to figure out a upfront price. I just want to grab a slice from cars, auto trader, craiglist ONLY for used tesla cars.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#243

Post by mikejarema » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 1:52 AM UTC

rmohan wrote: post #227

mikejarema wrote: post #13

My domain name and social media handle search tool has been humming along nicely for 5+ years now and produces a modest amount of profit each month. https://namevine.com/ It makes money from domain name registrations it refers via affiliate links. I've been playing with the idea of adding "pro" features for a couple of years now but I worry anything that detracts from its simplicity may hurt sales.

This site is very helpful -- can't believe I didn't hear about it before! Question: Have you thought about on-boarding LinkedIn vanities? Ex. linkedin.com/in/[vanity_name]?

No I hadn't thought about LinkedIn, I honestly have no idea why I hadn't, though it strikes me that it'd be a great addition to the site.

I'll take a stab at in when I've got some spare cycles, thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#244

Post by pdm55 » Sat, Sep 09, 2017, 12:36 AM UTC

aarondf wrote: post #94

I have an accounting tutoring website for students at specific colleges. You can see one of them here: https://acct229.com . It makes > 500 a month, but the bulk of it (obviously) comes in two waves: middle of fall semesters and middle of spring semesters. There is no activity at all during summers and christmas breaks, which really is quite nice.

So your tutoring is all done through your videos, or separate online individualised instruction (1-to-1, or 1-to-many?), or through visits to your tutees for in-person sessions, or tutees come to you, ...?

I am a tutor here in Australia. I visit people's homes, or they come to me. I am interested in online tutoring, but I am unsure what exactly to try; or even what software and hardware to use to create the videos. I market myself through Gumtree (not sure if you have that in the US). Any advice more than welcome.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#245

Post by insighter » Sat, Sep 09, 2017, 6:55 AM UTC

wanqu wrote: post #141

https://wanqu.co - A San Francisco engineer (me) curates 5 English articles on tech & startup for Chinese makers everyday. Started on August 6, 2014. It's a side project of mine. I built a website (Django), a native iOS app (Swift), a native Android app (React Native), and some automation tools. It brings around $1200/month via iOS in-app-purchase, sponsorship, affiliate links etc. I keep a full time job while doing…

I spent years in China and lamented that I couldn't keep up with my Chinese and tech at the same time, so this is awesome to see.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#246

Post by aarondf » Sat, Sep 09, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

pdm55 wrote: post #244

aarondf wrote: post #94

I have an accounting tutoring website for students at specific colleges. You can see one of them here: https://acct229.com . It makes > 500 a month, but the bulk of it (obviously) comes in two waves: middle of fall semesters and middle of spring semesters. There is no activity at all during summers and christmas breaks, which really is quite nice.

So your tutoring is all done through your videos, or separate online individualised instruction (1-to-1, or 1-to-many?), or through visits to your tutees for in-person sessions, or tutees come to you, ...? I am a tutor here in Australia. I visit people's homes, or they come to me. I am interested in online tutoring, but I am unsure what exactly to try; or even what software and hardware to use to create the videos. I…

Hey good questions. All the tutoring I do is in the form of recorded video. I don't do any live tutoring except for very rarely when someone needs extra help. Because the content never changes, I recorded the videos a couple years ago and haven't had to record any more since. I still do a lot of work in terms of marketing it, but the hard work was definitely recording the material.

Happy to help in any way I can

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#247

Post by rundavidrun » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 6:20 AM UTC

jonandersense wrote: post #93

I've been working on my app Leap Second, it generates somewhere around 1-3k per month. https://www.leapsecond.co I created the app after using 1 Second Everyday crashed on me and deleted a few years videos. The app stores everything in the Photos app which made it very fast and easy to develop (a weekend). Now I spend a few hours a month mostly improving the UI and doing bug fixes as I find them. Initial traction was…

Have you considered making -- or outsourcing :) -- an Android version?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#248

Post by rundavidrun » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 6:27 AM UTC

Me and my husband had been developing our own Android apps published to Google Play for a while and never made much money. But when Android Wear first came out, we started developing watch faces (mostly ones we wanted for ourselves) and persistence finally paid off. Income varies, but we've been steadily making between $500 and $1500/month. These are the top two: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sparkistic... and https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sparkistic...

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#249

Post by lukebyear » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

I built Strum Machine (https://strummachine.com) which is a music practice tool aimed at players of bluegrass, old-time, folk, etc (the music sub-culture I grew up in). I started working on it only after having failed to find an existing product like it and wanting one to be available for my music students. Development began in Jan 2016, launch was May 2016. Built with the Meteor Javascript platform as a mobile-friendly website; native apps still in (very slow) development. About 300 paying users, mostly through word of mouth; it's been hard to figure out how to do marketing otherwise. Just cracked 1k MRR. Minimal ongoing costs and maintenance, although I still have a looong list of improvement-related TODOs. It's been an extremely rewarding project to be working on, and the extra income has been a very nice bonus as well. :-)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell

#250

Post by wanqu » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 7:28 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #236

wanqu wrote: post #141

https://wanqu.co - A San Francisco engineer (me) curates 5 English articles on tech & startup for Chinese makers everyday. Started on August 6, 2014. It's a side project of mine. I built a website (Django), a native iOS app (Swift), a native Android app (React Native), and some automation tools. It brings around $1200/month via iOS in-app-purchase, sponsorship, affiliate links etc. I keep a full time job while doing…

Good and useful idea! Sounds useful! I feel there's a huge pattern of "proficient in X and Y" opportunities that people underappreciate. There may be a million people better than you at X, another million better at you than Y, but only 10 better than you at X and Y. So if an idea requires expertise in both, the chances of success increase substantially. Or at best, there's simply no one who's ever done it!

Thanks!

This reminds me of an article that I'm going to curate today: "Being Different Beats Being Better" http://dariusforoux.com/being-different-beats-being-better/