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Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

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231–240 of 480 posts

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#231
post #207

Algotrading options. Some initial investment is needed in order to open margin account, but otherwise it's basically passive income.

I’m guessing that “passive income” means buying volatility & selling protection? If that’s what you’re doing, how did you fare in the recent Covid-related volatility spike?

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#232
I wrote a game engine to learn more about how they work and it ended up evolving into "Portal meets Doom" iOS game (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gate-escape/id1449377239)

I've talked a little about the technical details, but not much of the game itself. It makes about $40/month - not exactly motivating money. It's been very difficult to market so I have lost most motivation to acquire more users.

I dream to open source the level editor and allow community made maps, but I can't really judge the demand for such a large feature investment.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sidequestion: Does anyone have any recommendations on simple guides to SEO? I run a Chrome extension that will crawl your site and give on-page/technical SEO suggestions: https://www.checkbot.io/ . The SEO best practices it checks for are explained + justified in a simple fashion here: https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/ I know a lot of developers are skeptical about SEO advice (e.g. keyword density stuff, experimen…

> Most on-page SEO best practices align with what would benefit a regular user also. Because good SEO is indistinguishable from good UX. :) The best SEO advice you can give someone is "make the page easy for a blind person to read". Just doing that one thing will get you about 99% of the way there.

> The best SEO advice you can give someone is "make the page easy for a blind person to read".

Yep, makes sense when you consider most search bots "see" webpages in the same way a screen reader will. Anything that helps a screen reader understand the content of a page better is going to help a search bot and vice versa - they're both bots. :)

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#234
I build websites and manage them for cash-flow (and have been doing this for a decade). Started with SAAS affiliate sites and moved onto a more ambitious vision of cleaning up content categories on Google that are loaded with bad advice. (So build a better site that replaces self-serving junk and amateur nut-job sites with real content)

My latest project (un-monetized) is an attempt to raise the bar in the business opportunities vertical; I aim to research and lay out (in non-promotional terms) paths to earning a living wage in the gig economy. There's a lot of bad advice pushing courses / e-books / etc with a high rate of failure. Most of these gig economy roles are fairly simple businesses to manage; the idea is if you can instill some self-employment literacy, you can even the odds for new freelancers and side hustlers.

I'm working on a publishing model which delivers legitimate advice with a decent chance of success (for the reader) and a fair return for the publisher. https://highestpayinggigs.com/

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#235
post #229

My side project at the moment is day/swing trading. I started sometime in early March when I pulled my money out from the stock market and cashed in on some capital gains. Things went to hell shortly after that but I was safe waiting in cash waiting to buy back in. Because I was sitting on about 220k in cash I decided to look into other ways to put my money to use. I realized I could probably buy massive positions in…

would you be willing to discuss your strategy for evaluating trades/picking stocks? this is something I've been trying to get into, mostly through the options market but haven't been able to come up with a solid strategy for picking stocks

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#236
post #207

Algotrading options. Some initial investment is needed in order to open margin account, but otherwise it's basically passive income.

would you be willing to share the resources you used to get started with algotrading and understanding options?

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sidequestion: Does anyone have any recommendations on simple guides to SEO? I run a Chrome extension that will crawl your site and give on-page/technical SEO suggestions: https://www.checkbot.io/ . The SEO best practices it checks for are explained + justified in a simple fashion here: https://www.checkbot.io/guide/seo/ I know a lot of developers are skeptical about SEO advice (e.g. keyword density stuff, experimen…

> Most on-page SEO best practices align with what would benefit a regular user also. Because good SEO is indistinguishable from good UX. :) The best SEO advice you can give someone is "make the page easy for a blind person to read". Just doing that one thing will get you about 99% of the way there.

Agree 100%, + fresh content

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#238

My app Twitter Archive Eraser ( https://martani.github.io/Twitter-Archive-Eraser ) used to be free, then I added a donation button and people, while barely donated, used to say that this is something they would have paid for! I worked on a paid tier (learnt a tremendous amount about actually selling an app, integration with payment processors, licensing, more legal stuff than I wanted to etc.) Almost from the get go,…

Dang congrats that is a solid monthly income and solo wow.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#239
post #2

I really don't like talking about my side projects, so I guess they all qualify, but I'm particularly excited about one at the moment. Right now I'm working on a dog treat business - I make a treat mix that you add water to and freeze for a meat-based frozen treat. I feel really good about the product and the packaging design (and this is the first time I've ever worked on any kind of a physical product, so it's real…

I had a look and this might be a completely ignorant suggestion (I don’t have a dog) but to me it was very surprising that dogs would like frozen food, so maybe you should explain that/why they do. Just seemed counterintuitive, I’ve never seen anybody give anything frozen to their dog.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#240

My app Twitter Archive Eraser ( https://martani.github.io/Twitter-Archive-Eraser ) used to be free, then I added a donation button and people, while barely donated, used to say that this is something they would have paid for! I worked on a paid tier (learnt a tremendous amount about actually selling an app, integration with payment processors, licensing, more legal stuff than I wanted to etc.) Almost from the get go,…

good for you but its sad this is a viable business. Imagine being a working adult and getting in trouble for something you thought was funny as a high school freshman.
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