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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

#51

Post by iamgopal »

osrec wrote: post #9

I started https://usebx.com/app just under a year ago. We now do a few hundred thousand GBP per month in revenue. Nothing fancy, just a solid accounting and project management app, solid service, and good sales to corporate customers (we look after the smaller customers too, but only actively market to larger corporate clients, where the returns are significantly better). We've just invested more in the code base to…

Looks amazing and fast, congratulations. If you don't mind sharing, What is your tech stack ? How many developer hour were consumed developing it and how many to maintain it ?

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

#52

Post by leetbulb »

conorpp wrote: post #40

This is a hardware project I started when I was a senior in college. U2F Zero, a open source U2F token / two factor authentication device. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01L9DUPK6 https://conorpp.com/designing-and-producing-2fa-tokens-to-se... Brings in around $500-$1000 per month of revenue (when in stock haha). I started just to learn how to lay out a circuit board and make my own embedded device, just kind of…

I have a few U2F Zero's, they're really cool!

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

#53

Post by osrec »

iamgopal wrote: post #51
osrec wrote: post #9

I started https://usebx.com/app just under a year ago. We now do a few hundred thousand GBP per month in revenue. Nothing fancy, just a solid accounting and project management app, solid service, and good sales to corporate customers (we look after the smaller customers too, but only actively market to larger corporate clients, where the returns are significantly better). We've just invested more in the code base to…

Looks amazing and fast, congratulations. If you don't mind sharing, What is your tech stack ? How many developer hour were consumed developing it and how many to maintain it ?

Thank you :)

We wrote our own JavaScript framework called alive.js. We're going to open source it once we've got it documented properly. It's similar to Vue, but without the virtual DOM. Instead we keep track of "update" functions. It also has some nice async lazy loading capabilities which helps keep the experience fast.

Development time was about 4 months to an MVP. 2 developers, but one was an absolute rockstar. Maintained by 2 guys now (1 of whom is an original developer). Also have a small sales team, composed of 5 contractors.

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

#55

Post by marketgod »

I was trading options for a while and a lot of people kept asking me how I did it, just never had the time to describe everything. Finally decided to setup a website, www.marketgodfathers.com and a Discord channel. Automated reading my entries and exists from my brokerage and posting to discord allowing everyone to enter and exit the trades when I do. Now I just wait for people to sign up and I pay someone to chat with the customers/answer their questions on Discord.

Need to work on automatically posting my plans to other locations, or maybe find a service that does it for me, if anyone has recommendations. Looking to private message Discord users, Facebook friends, Facebook groups, Instagram posts, and Reddit subreddits/daily threads.

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

#56

Post by _spoonman »

marketgod wrote: post #55

I was trading options for a while and a lot of people kept asking me how I did it, just never had the time to describe everything. Finally decided to setup a website, www.marketgodfathers.com and a Discord channel. Automated reading my entries and exists from my brokerage and posting to discord allowing everyone to enter and exit the trades when I do. Now I just wait for people to sign up and I pay someone to chat wi…

Where did you get the cover photo on your site?

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

#57

Post by marketgod »

_spoonman wrote: post #56
marketgod wrote: post #55

I was trading options for a while and a lot of people kept asking me how I did it, just never had the time to describe everything. Finally decided to setup a website, www.marketgodfathers.com and a Discord channel. Automated reading my entries and exists from my brokerage and posting to discord allowing everyone to enter and exit the trades when I do. Now I just wait for people to sign up and I pay someone to chat wi…

Where did you get the cover photo on your site?

That came with the template, I have been lazy to change it.

Edit: I also couldn't find a better pic, this one just fits for some reason.

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

#58

Post by fipple »

justaj wrote: post #48
fipple wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I basically have a shitty Rails app that solves a particular problem for a completely non tech industry (there are millions of such problems). It’s easy for me to find the people who need it. But if I ever had to compete with high quality software my app would probably die.

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

#59

Post by fipple »

rootusrootus wrote: post #44
fipple wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Doesn’t matter if you figure it out, you’ll never solve the problem unless you’ve seen it yourself. Imagine an app for plumbers, you’d probably need to know plumbing to make it. It’s like that.

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

#60

Post by cityzen »

gremlinsinc wrote: post #50
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...…

Charge your next client $100/hour then. What is the worst thing that could happen? They say no? Honestly if they say no you probably need to focus more on your pitch. Learn to sell and hourly rates are not your concern. I would learn to sell and then learn to sell your expertise in a different format than hourly.
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