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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

#161

Post by RangerScience »

Congrats! I have some side projects, and these stories are always very inspirational. Thank you for sharing :)

I'm not a music creator. I use SoundCloud (sometimes) to listen to stuff friends of mine make, or musicians I've heard here or there.

It's not clear to me if there's a way that you want someone like me to use your site; which is fine, there might not be. If there is tho, I'm not seeing it yet.

Design-wise, I think you could do with more whitespace, mostly around things. (Ex: Keep the div the same size, shrink the font size a bit).

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

#162

Post by harrisonjackson »

Very cool! Congrats on the revenue milestone.

Is there a mobile app? Does it stream or download the songs for offline consumption?

There are a lot of authors looking for an alternative to audible. Bandcamp does not work great either due to pricing and their app UX. Songbox currently seems very focused on music but maybe future avenues to explore are podcasts and audio books.

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

#164

Post by swyx »

Wirerack wrote: post #158

I'm always curious how do people come up with these ideas. I assume that to be in a position to make something like this you need to have a very good understanding of the problem space. As tech people i often feel that while we may have an advantage in being able to execute, finding a problem can be quite tricky if all you know is IT!

thats a self limiting belief. it is not true that "all you know is IT". all of us have interests beyond tech. if that's not enough, all of us have close relatives or friends with problems we can solve. they are representative of people who are like them, all of whom have problems that need solving.

make sure you're not merely making excuses for not trying when you say "all you know is IT"

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

#165

Post by dave_4_bagels »

allenu wrote: post #129
dave_4_bagels wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd generally still argue that marketing is the hardest part of any side-hustle / startup in general. What is lost on many here is that $100/mo. spend on solid marketing could speed up the growth curve (without that much more engineering effort) so that it would take maybe a year instead of three to reach the point you could quit your day job.

I released my own app a month ago after working on it on the side for a year... and I am finding that marketing is important indeed. Just having something in the app store doesn't guarantee eyeballs. You have to find ways of getting your message out. No matter how good your product is, if your users can't find it, you won't sell anything. This is probably why it's important to make sure you're not doing it for the "e…

Totally agree, I have a number of non-tech related side hustles and quite frankly I prefer these to tech ones because they took maybe 50hrs each to setup and 2 hours max per week to operate. I know for a fact it'd take much more time tech wise to get something of equivalent revenue up and running.

I have to question these "I spent years making $40 a month working 8 hours after hours to built but now makes $60k a month" stories, since at some point you really have to ask yourself how much your time is worth. Thousands of hours for $1M pre-tax, not to mention how much life you gave up for that is kind of idiotic IMO.

My metric generally is, "if someone on etsy selling magic rocks is making more than my tech project after three months, time to move on". I'm not being shitty, this is just a standard I hold myself to when it comes to valuing my personal time. Also, don't worry, I'm not one of these people who thinks my time isn't worth cooking or cleaning (like many YT gurus and even Financial Samurai now claim).

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

#168

Post by Nkuna »

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.

Quite naive of you to believe Musk or Bezos worked 23 hour workdays. Even if that was remotely true, everything bears consequence. It might have "worked", but the downsides of this toxic work ethic are bound to present themselves, in the present or future.

Never mind working such hours does not guarantee success. Hell, it only about guarantees poor relations and health with any chance of success a very distant second.

So at best you're successful with shit relationships or fail with the same prospects? Dunno 'bout you, but I don't play no game I can't win!

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

#169

Post by neogodless »

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…

1 dollar a month is the dream for me. I could finally pay for several of those domain names I keep holding on to!

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

#170

Post by ed_elliott_asc »

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.

I could do it if I didn’t have a family, I used to commute 2 hours each way so considering getting a part time job for the commute time I am now at home for - if it wouldn’t cause a divorce I’d get two jobs or work on a side project for that time.

You need to take time off though at weekends etc if you are doing it longer term.

(Note this isn’t a recommendation)

Also note that I don’t care for tv or gaming so don’t have those time black holes.

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