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Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

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Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#141

Post by tinco »

frankbyte wrote: post #136
djeiasbsbo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love these stories also but I am genuinely curious how you were able to work 8 hours a day on it and also work your regular job. I assume you don't work a full time job, otherwise it seems unhealthy. I put a lot of time into my side projects but that is mostly the whole saturday and sunday, but even then I obviously don't feel so well rested on monday.

There's 24 hours in a day. Read Bezos or Musk's or anybody stories and they'll tell you they worked 20-23 hours a day. It's fucking crazy with some people, but that's what it takes to get ahead of the competition. Edit: Please note that I'm not advocating that anybody should do this, but just be aware that a lot of people are setting that level for themselves and in some cases for their subordinates.

Pulling an all nighter every once in a while, or even a couple consecutive days during crunch time is not the same as working 20 hours per day. So unless you've got a specific quote from either of them I call bullshit.

That said, Bill Gates definitely said he and some of his crew were working 16 hour days delivering their first DOS release.

Point is, you might work some intense stretches, and doing that shows your passion and might land give you an edge when you need it. But you don't need to go insane. If you work 8 hours day job, don't spend hours in commute, you can be perfectly healthy spending 2 hours of your night time each day working a side gig.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#142

Post by pier25 »

Congrats, these things are hard. Could you share some technical details? DB, infrastructure, frameworks, etc?

What's your main use case?

I can see some audio pros sharing files regularly with their clients (demos, WIP of mixing and mastering, etc).

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#143

Post by 1123581321 »

gigamick wrote: post #133
TooCreative wrote: post #121

After clicking around your site a bit, I am left with a somewhat "cold" feeling of an anonymous service. As a potential customer and business partner, I would leave the site for good if I had not seen your post here on HN. For me to engage with a service, I need to know who is behind it. See their face. Their Twitter account, their Github. I would not put my data into an anonymous machine.

I appreciate that feedback however I would say 'each to their own'. I'm pretty sure the majority of businesses don't have people's faces on display and info about their personal life. HOWEVER... I take it onboard. Would it help if I made more a big deal about the "why I built it" article?

I think you’re just missing an about or company page that tells the user about Songbox and Division77. No need for faces and personal Twitter accounts unless you individually are the “brand” driving the revenue.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#145

Post by cpeterso »

Very cool! Some questions:

* Showing the UI that listeners will experience seems important. Can customers customize the listening pages their listeners will use?

* Have you considered offering to sell songs and albums? The listener is right there on your website, listening to a song they like, and now they want to buy it. Will they know how to do that? Will they have to navigate off to a different website?

* How long does a user have to listen to a song before SongBox counts it as a "play"?

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#146

Post by ramraj07 »

djeiasbsbo wrote: post #134
holoduke wrote: post #41

Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a d…

I love these stories also but I am genuinely curious how you were able to work 8 hours a day on it and also work your regular job. I assume you don't work a full time job, otherwise it seems unhealthy. I put a lot of time into my side projects but that is mostly the whole saturday and sunday, but even then I obviously don't feel so well rested on monday.

The reality is that some people can just do more per day than others. It's very common in academia that many professors spend their entire lifetime in 60-80hr work weeks their entire life.

I remember going to conferences,especially the really small ones, the professors and students would spend all day listening to extremely draining lectures; this one particular conference started at 8.30 am, went till 1 pm, you get a few hours break, and then it goes till 9 pm.

I'd go back to my room in the noon time to take a nap, and in the evening maybe go to the bar for a small bit to get a drink and go back to the room to get ready for the next day, but the majority of professors would spend most of the midday break meeting each other, and also continue socializing in the bar fairly late into night, and they'll still come back the next day as if this is a regular day.

I had a talk with my professor on how they're doing it and his response was just "you just have to train yourself to do it and get used to it." Probably one of the main reasons why I chose not to continue down that path!

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#147

Post by frankbyte »

tinco wrote: post #141
frankbyte wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's 24 hours in a day. Read Bezos or Musk's or anybody stories and they'll tell you they worked 20-23 hours a day. It's fucking crazy with some people, but that's what it takes to get ahead of the competition. Edit: Please note that I'm not advocating that anybody should do this, but just be aware that a lot of people are setting that level for themselves and in some cases for their subordinates.

Pulling an all nighter every once in a while, or even a couple consecutive days during crunch time is not the same as working 20 hours per day. So unless you've got a specific quote from either of them I call bullshit. That said, Bill Gates definitely said he and some of his crew were working 16 hour days delivering their first DOS release. Point is, you might work some intense stretches, and doing that shows your pa…

“There were times when, some weeks ... I haven’t counted exactly, but I would just sort of sleep for a few hours, work, sleep for a few hours, work, seven days a week. Some of those days must have been 120 hours or something nutty.”

Now, Musk said he is “down to 80 or 90” hours of work per week and “it’s pretty manageable.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/05/elon-musk-on-working-120-hou...

That's the quickest I could find. But yeah, I suppose 20-23h constantly long-term would not be doable. Point is though that many people can and do work even long-term the equavalent of 2 "full-time jobs".

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#149

Post by jiofih »

coderunner wrote: post #62
holoduke wrote: post #41

Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a d…

Would you mind sharing what your app is? I'm curious what level of technical sophistication is needed for an app that makes $2k/day. Was it more engineering or marketing or equally both that helped you gain users and traction?

Guessing by his profile: a Football Live Scores app that has 100k+ reviews in the play store - a very conservative estimate would put it at 3-5m users. It seems to have been plastered with ads which, safe to assume, are the source of that revenue.

Re: Show HN: After 2.5 years on my side project, it has hit £500/month revenue

#150

Post by jiofih »

jacquesm wrote: post #43
holoduke wrote: post #41

Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a d…

I love these stories a lot more than that I love the venture capitalist backed start-up that makes 3x for their investors.

That new fintech venture is most definitely backed by VC.
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