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Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

#41

Post by osrec »

westoncb wrote: post #28
osrec wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very true. I happily discuss my ideas publicly for feedback. Helps with failing faster. Execution and luck are more important than the idea itself. In fact, I would say most ideas aren't really worth much (some are, but those are one in a million).

I think that's the difficulty a lot of people have with this: it seems to them like their idea might be one of those "one in a million". Part of the difficultly for me has been realizing that the it's not just a rare, good idea that matters—but that it's a rare and good business idea specifically. For instance, I've had a couple projects that gained interest by researchers, which I took as evidence that they might be…

The thing is, most people are actually good at generating ideas. It's really not the hard part. The fact that your great idea has probably already been done by someone before you is a testament to this fact. Sit me down for an hour and I could probably come up with 10 good business ideas, and I bet if I Google each idea, someone's already doing it. That's not a reason to be disheartened though. What you're looking for is an arbitrage opportunity in execution. Do you back yourself to execute better than the other guy that got there first? If yes, then press on. Nothing is more saturated than the market I chose (accounting/business management app). But the incumbents are cocky and out of date, and I felt my execution could win me a good share of customers. A definite gamble, but it's working out alright :)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

#42

Post by joewee »

h1d wrote: post #36
joewee wrote: post #24

http://www.meetkaori.com multilingual virtual assistants. Right now the focus is Japanese / English but plans to add other tough to hire languages like Chinese.

I thought this was a little more than $500/mo class?

Well technically it’s a side project that generates more than $500 a month. Though I really should focus on this business or sell it.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

#43

Post by ricardobeat »

300bps wrote: post #38

Probably not what you're asking, but my side project is working on software projects for a couple local businesses. I work about 12 hours per week on the side at $150 per hour so I make about $7,200 per month. Having W2 and 1099 income like this is advantageous as well. First, I max out my social security tax at my main employer which means my side income is social security tax free. Second, I max out my 401k employe…

Would you mind sharing what kind of work that is? Getting $150/h on small projects is no small achievement.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

#44

Post by rootusrootus »

fipple wrote: post #29
rootusrootus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can hack it together in a week then there are probably already a bunch of competitors. As has routinely been pointed out, many of the most popular apps can be readily copied in a fairly short time. The app is the easiest part.

Great niche markets are valuable secrets. I bought a house in Silicon Valley with money that I make with a side project. It has no competitors because people don’t know how easy it is to make money in this space. Someone with a tech background looking for project ideas would never find it. I’d never say what it is because then my shitty app would immediately be fighting for market share against competitors. Someone m…

Okay I'm going to go figure it out...

Just kidding. I'm glad you're successful, and I hope to find my niche. I think I already have but it isn't successful yet.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

#45

Post by justin_oaks »

dpcan wrote: post #14
harel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideas are not worth much. Only execution matters.

Well, sometimes. But a lot of industries suffer from too many people poorly executing ideas. Makes it even harder for the "good guys" to catch a break, acquire, and keep customers. Some examples are SEO, entertainment, and mobile games.

Sounds like Sturgeon's law: Ninety percent of everything is crap.

"Everything" can mean every industry and their products.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

#46

Post by marianattestad »

westoncb wrote: post #32
marianattestad wrote: post #12

http://omgenomics.com/circa Circa is an easy-to-use tool for building circos plots with genomics data. I built the visualization piece (and most of the UI) with D3.js and made it into a desktop app with Electron. Initially sold it for $25 per user (one-time cost), which made about $750 a month. Then some professors told me it was way too cheap, so I increased the price to $100. Since then, it has made about $1,500 ev…

That's pretty cool—congrats. Especially interesting for me to see, because it's the kind of tool and business model that interests me. One thing I wonder though is how it can be sustainable using the one time cost model. I suppose if the market were large enough, then you could just charge for new major versions every couple years and that might be sufficient. But maybe some kind of more expensive licensing for speci…

I chose the one-time cost model for several reasons: 1) the way scientists get reimbursed from grants is difficult for recurring purchases, 2) one-time pricing is easy to do and fits well with desktop software, 3) Circa is a product scientists only use occasionally, maybe a few times a year, so with a monthly model they would probably just cancel and resubscribe when they need it, which is more of a hassle for both them and me. Circa does lend itself well to desktop software because it allows saving the visualizations they are building straight to their computer instead of me trying to manage user accounts and storage in the cloud -- again, less hassle on both sides!

On the topic of more expensive licensing for some customers, I forgot to mention that for commercial entities it costs $200, but that accounts only for something like 5% of sales, since it's mostly academics who want to make pretty plots for their publications.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

#47

Post by marianattestad »

zygotic12 wrote: post #37
marianattestad wrote: post #12

http://omgenomics.com/circa Circa is an easy-to-use tool for building circos plots with genomics data. I built the visualization piece (and most of the UI) with D3.js and made it into a desktop app with Electron. Initially sold it for $25 per user (one-time cost), which made about $750 a month. Then some professors told me it was way too cheap, so I increased the price to $100. Since then, it has made about $1,500 ev…

Just out of interest. Has anyone offered you a job because of this post? And to the wider world why not?

I do happen to currently hold a data visualization job at a genomics software company, which traces back partly to when I gave a talk there that included Circa and other visualization tools I built, the rest of which are open source and free since I built them during my PhD :)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

#48

Post by justaj »

fipple wrote: post #29
rootusrootus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can hack it together in a week then there are probably already a bunch of competitors. As has routinely been pointed out, many of the most popular apps can be readily copied in a fairly short time. The app is the easiest part.

Great niche markets are valuable secrets. I bought a house in Silicon Valley with money that I make with a side project. It has no competitors because people don’t know how easy it is to make money in this space. Someone with a tech background looking for project ideas would never find it. I’d never say what it is because then my shitty app would immediately be fighting for market share against competitors. Someone m…

It's interesting to see a counter-example to the otherwise ever-present HN credo of "Ideas are cheap, execution is everything".

On one hand you have execution that can get you an advantage of a difficult-to-reproduce technology stack for solving a problem, but on the other hand, information that other players might not have discovered (yet) also can get you an advantage in the market. Although I find the latter to be less rigid and prone to disruption.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you have found a niche that is not at all in the tech sector, but through technology gets augmented into a proven market-fit? Can I ask you what your process was in finding that niche? You can leave out the specifics of course.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

#49

Post by 300bps »

ricardobeat wrote: post #43
300bps wrote: post #38

Probably not what you're asking, but my side project is working on software projects for a couple local businesses. I work about 12 hours per week on the side at $150 per hour so I make about $7,200 per month. Having W2 and 1099 income like this is advantageous as well. First, I max out my social security tax at my main employer which means my side income is social security tax free. Second, I max out my 401k employe…

Would you mind sharing what kind of work that is? Getting $150/h on small projects is no small achievement.

My small client is in the medical field and I created a brand new system from scratch that has become indispensable for his offices. If I ever get time, I'll turn it into a SaaS product and sell it to others because there does not seem to be a good competitor out there.

My large client had a fairly large and complex application written for him by a small company about 12 years ago. It was written in Visual Basic.NET and designed horribly. Since meeting him 8 years ago I've made major improvements to the system both in functionality and in maintainability including re-writing areas that I am naturally working on in C#, moving the business logic out of VB.NET screens, etc.

$150 per hour where I am (Top 5 metro area in US) is good but not great. I could definitely charge more if I wanted to squeeze my side clients for every dime and could even change my billing to something more akin to a percentage of NPV of projects but it's just side work for now.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2018 – Show and tell

#50

Post by gremlinsinc »

300bps wrote: post #38

Probably not what you're asking, but my side project is working on software projects for a couple local businesses. I work about 12 hours per week on the side at $150 per hour so I make about $7,200 per month. Having W2 and 1099 income like this is advantageous as well. First, I max out my social security tax at my main employer which means my side income is social security tax free. Second, I max out my 401k employe…

I'm a php dev (5 years laravel), and vue+vuex (1-2 years)... primarily, is 150/hour really do-able for someone in php/vue stack? Is there a specific type of coding you do?

I've got some imposter syndrome/esteem issues I find it hard to pitch > $50/hour for my services... (I'm in utah)..

Average pay around here is also like $70-80k which I think is something like $35-40/hour, so again $150/hr just seems really high... I'd love to get $100/hour freelancing..

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