Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

471–480 of 480 posts

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

#471
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…

Would love to buy one of these if there was a meat free variant, my dog is alergic to meat and does not take it well - would love to see a vegetarian option!

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

#472
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recycling plastic is hard because it will be degraded to various levels, will be of different plastic types, will be dirty, will have custom additives, etc. If you are interested in plastic recycling: https://preciousplastic.com/

We need more research into it I guess also see: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/greek-researchers-determ... Here they report improved ABS properties on recycling

This test does not simulate actual product recycling where the plastic is exposed to sunlight and liquids. Its environmental iterations that cause the degradation.

Interesting findings though.

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

#473
post #377
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FastComments is really cool looking and so simple (it reminds me of brutalist web design). Could you explain a little on how you do limiting of page loads? I've been trying to add this kind of functionality to my own projects but can't think of a way to track it without storing in a db which seems like a bottleneck process if every page load is a write

Store an object representing the namespace (customer+month) and use whatever your DB's increment operator is to increment the count for that month. Keep a map, or use an LRU cache, to check the DB periodically to see who has gone past their limit. You can also fire off this write to the DB asynchronously since you don't care that much if it fails and you don't want to create back pressure in your application. For exa…

Thank you. this is very useful and will certainly work for my use case.

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

#474

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,…

Sorry about the late comment (hackernewsletter) but I found the pricing page a bit confusing, since you mention both "one-time payment" and license valid for one year".

Do I have to pay every year to keep using the app?

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

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also that many people have pretty fixed salary and evolution in their company. I won't make more money by dedicating more time or energy at my day job. It's fixed.

I'm in the same boat in that my next big increase will be from a promotion, but it's the time and energy that will make that happen. Another commenter was talking about a review site where they'd stay up all night watching infomercials to get a list of products to review, and then post the reviews on a site with ads. I respect the drive, but not getting a full night's sleep would definitely impact my performance at m…

In my experience, past a minimum acceptable performance level, networking matters a lot more for promotions than any additional job performance. And that minimum performance is fairly low.

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

#476
Hi, When saying a project "you'd not talk about" and then talking about it - it's kind of taking the point out of it :-) But I guess I understand what you mean. I have created https://yabs.io just for me and let other people use it for free for now. It is a copy of del.icio.us for saving bookmarks with tags and then searching them easily. I have also created https://www.gematrix.org for calculating Gematria values of words and phrases.

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

#477

I don't typically talk about my side projects, but I made a simple Montessori materials website for use while teachers/students have been stuck at home the past few months: https://montessori.tools It has grown organically to 1,000 visits per day and ~$1,000/month. I have a couple of additional materials in the pipeline. Of course, I've already seen everything from the site shamelessly copied and posted elsewhere. Th…

This is very cool. I have made also some material for teachers teaching from home https://www.freememorygame.com to build card matching game from your own photos and images. Teachers use it to create games for kids in class.

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

#478

Neural net for soft porn (tasteful nudes). Android app, 3 years old: http://driftwheeler.com More than 800 users per day, on average. Continuously growing user base. Profit through Met-Art affiliation.

Why is it a native app and not PWA / Website ? I couldn't install it.

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

#479
post #122

I work ~4 hours a week making aircraft add-ons for X-Plane, releasing one product every 3 months, net profit ~$5k a month total. It's fairly simple: 1) Commission Russian 3D artist to make model of aircraft -$1000 2) Commission Audio Engineer to do sound - $500 3) Tweak model to work well with simulator + animation - 12 hours 4) Paint model in Substance - 12 hours 5) Set up flight model in X-Plane's "Plane Maker" - 8…

I don't suppose you worked at a large digital agency in the Northern Quarter in Manchester for a while before leaving for the BBC did you? I think I might have an inkling who you are if so, the hobbies and professions line up with what I assume is a manipulation of the name Steve as a username!

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

#480
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…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN