Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 156 posts

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

#101

Post by freediver »

amuresan wrote: post #75
freediver wrote: post #35

Built WooRender to allow easy access to GPU compute. Basically leasing my deep learning server with 10x 1080ti cards for $100/day. https://woorender.com

Pretty cool! How about turning this into a service where other people can lease their own GPU hardware? Either through your website or by offering it as a sort of turnkey solution.

I've though about this and the unit economics look good, especially with so many GPUs sitting idle now due to crypto situation. There have been some attempts to build this (vectordash.com and vast.ai are examples) but not sure they achieved type of scale I think it is possible. There are about 5 million GPUs bought to mine crypto that are mainly doing nothing today. Getting 1% of them to join a marketplace would make for GPU compute that probably exceeds AWS, GCE and Azure combined. Happy to chat more about this if anyone is interested, my contact is in profile.

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

#102

Post by bwb »

Down For Everyone Or Just Me https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

Makes ~$1,000 a month gross, lot less after AWS costs.

I've had it for a long time, but haven't done much with it because of my primary business. After I sold that I spent the last year playing with some ideas and testing. I am working to get a new design up and just partnered with a friend to redo the arch and let him see what ideas he has to better monetize it.

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

#103

Post by fiatjaf »

https://teams.cardsync.xyz/, a Trello Power-Up I started as a Trello bot some years ago (I actually "invented" the concept of Trello bots as there were no one doing that at the time, but now all bots are banned).

I just made it because I thought it was a cool feature that was missing. As I started to develop it I realized it was much more complicated to implemente than it seemed, that was probably the reason the feature was missing. Anyway I accepted the challenge, put it live for free on Heroku and forgot about it.

One year later I got back to check it out and thousands of people were using it.

Still, I'm bad at market and monetization, and it's still a side-project to this day, but makes about $1200/mo.

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

#104

Post by saluki »

roybarberuk wrote: post #93

I’m a full time developer but own a gym. By accident! I went to take over a building as office space that was a liquidated gym. Signed the lease and the day before we moved in the owner called and said we can’t remove the equipment as it was all put in before the stairs. I asked a lot of questions about why the gym didn’t work, had already seen the equipment in there and did some negotiating on purchasing the kit, kn…

great story, congrats.

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

#105

Post by cyclecycle »

_august wrote: post #8

https://fitloop.co/ A site I built to teach myself bodyweight fitness (from a routine I found on reddit) -- grew a userbase and built up more detailed tracking, configuration, and usability. The MRR is a bit hard to calculate right now (since I charge annually), but somewhere in the $500 - $1000 range. Edit: This app grew from feelings of being stuck / burned out / almost depressed that can come from being in front o…

Nice work. I'd be interested to know how your customers are finding you. Have you invested much time into customer acquisition?

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

#106

Post by harel »

ransom1538 wrote: post #100
harel wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They idea is not worth much in the sense that if you thought of it, there is a 98% chance someone else has thought of it before you, and 95% chance a few others are already doing it. The remaining few percents on both cases determine that the idea is not worth much. Great ideas with done badly can succeed, but those successes are usually short term and fade away, in particular when someone else copies the idea and do…

"Ideas are a dime a dozen. Really. " Really? Pitch me one.

Find an industry you are familiar with, or perhaps a friend or family member. Find their pain points. Find how technology can help. Then see if it is something that they will pay for. Look around your daily life. Find problems to fix. Most likely someone else is already fixing them and if not, they will once you start if your idea is good enough.

Two ideas for you off the top of my head:

Do CRM right for SMBs. (Sounds simple, but it's not, because of the S and the M in SMB).

Do time tracking right (timesheet management for contractors etc.). Never saw a single solution that didn't suck to the extreme.

Bonus tip: Here's a thing though: non techies won't have the advantage a technical person (i.e., adventurous software developer) has: The tech can do it with minimal resources and overheads. If you also have a business sense - that's great. Otherwise break existing market by offering a superior service dirt cheap (but not free!). Once you reach a critical mass, grandfather the existing accounts in their original early bird price and nudge the cost for new customers up a bit. Automate as much as you can and you have a side income with potential to be main income.

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

#107

Post by schappim »

roybarberuk wrote: post #93

I’m a full time developer but own a gym. By accident! I went to take over a building as office space that was a liquidated gym. Signed the lease and the day before we moved in the owner called and said we can’t remove the equipment as it was all put in before the stairs. I asked a lot of questions about why the gym didn’t work, had already seen the equipment in there and did some negotiating on purchasing the kit, kn…

I've been to one of these automated gyms in Australia and always wanted how they deal with insurance/liability/duty of care?

Could you please tell us how you went about writing the gym membership contract? Did you just rock up to your solicitor and say "Hey, I need a gym membership contact for my automated gym?"

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

#108

Post by goatherders »

I started ChatterBox as a side project to the actual business I started. www.heychatterbox.com

Clients are all lawyers or medical/health services like Spas and Chiropractors. Marketing is all done by email. Everything in the service delivery is outsourced or automated. All I do is send some cold-outreach campaigns each month and process the client invoices at the end of the month. Just about past $500. If I focused on it more I'm sure it would grow a lot.

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

#109

Post by future1979 »

freediver wrote: post #35

Built WooRender to allow easy access to GPU compute. Basically leasing my deep learning server with 10x 1080ti cards for $100/day. https://woorender.com

How the heck do you fit 10 cards into one server??? Super cool btw.

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

#110

Post by freediver »

future1979 wrote: post #109
freediver wrote: post #35

Built WooRender to allow easy access to GPU compute. Basically leasing my deep learning server with 10x 1080ti cards for $100/day. https://woorender.com

How the heck do you fit 10 cards into one server??? Super cool btw.

Read more about the server here: https://www.servethehome.com/deeplearning11-10x-nvidia-gtx-1...
Post reply on HN