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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

#241

Post by blackrock »

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…

Maybe you should use a Twitter Account. Get a following. And keep promoting it on Twitter.

Some people have said that this was far more effective than advertising. And it’s free.

But most importantly, you need a following, an audience to sell your product to.

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

#242

Post by gigamick »

samizdis wrote: post #237

You wrote on your site about why you developed SongBox, saying: We received dozens of demos in the post every day. This was well into the streaming era, but we still received box loads of CDs every day, from all over the world. Some of these packages were exquisite. Some were terrible. Some came with elaborate gifts. What they all had in common was that none of them got heard. They piled up in the corner of the offic…

Thanks for this. I hadn't read that since the time I wrote it.

you're right, it is pretty sad.

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

#243

Post by gigamick »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #232

That looks really polished. Well done. It wouldn't be HN if I didn't give some feedback! One thing that I think is confusing is "Advanced security" and "Any file type" in the price comparison. I think it is better to list the specifics e.g. "Password Protect Your Profile Page" "Only .mp3 and .wav supported" "All music files supported" Etc.

This is great feedback and I will implement.

Thank you.

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

#246

Post by JulianWasTaken »

halfdan wrote: post #173
rubicon33 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately for some of us, passions fade. I still love coding, but it's not the kind of thing I'm likely to enjoy spending 16 hours a day doing anymore. I've been there, done that, seen it all (server, web, mobile, firmware, games). It's routine now, but not something I can lose myself into like I used to be able to. I get bored far faster.

It's interesting. I'm still in a state where I enjoy it most of the time and I could certainly spend an entire day coding... But I'm running super low on good ideas. Ideas used to pop into mind all the time, now it's like once a year and I quickly abandon it.

Maintain an open source project, it'll help that passion fade somewhat quickly.

(I kid, but more seriously, it did indeed help dampen some of my own passion for quite awhile. And then a bit of resurgence...)

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

#247

Post by blackrock »

jxm262 wrote: post #70
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…

Congrats! Posts like this give me massive inspiration. Like many here, I have tons of side project/toy apps stored in private repo's; that will probably never see use by anyone other than myself. However, some of this code _does_ make me profit (trading bots). Been contemplating taking portions of my trading app and generalizing into a product, but always seem to lose motivation. Glad I saw this post + thread today,…

What kind of algorithm do you use for your trading bot?

Say:

Strategy 1: If the market is trending higher. Then, buy on the dips. Hold. Sell for 20% gains. Then rinse and repeat.

Strategy 2: Or, if the market ($SPY) has risen for x percent for the day, say 3%, then you short the stock. Wait for it to correct, and sell for 20% gains. But if it continues rising higher than 10%, then buy back the stock to close out your position.

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

#248

Post by nevster »

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…

One other suggestion - it needs to be something you want yourself. It's hard to be passionate about something you personally don't want.

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

#249

Post by josephg »

ramraj07 wrote: post #146
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.

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…

I suspect this is works for them because they’re steeped in the field already. So the number of new ideas per hour is way lower for the professors than it’d be for newcomers. And the professors can probably comfortably tune out when they want without getting lost because they have enough background.

Learning new things requires physical changes in your brain. Fewer new ideas = less cognitive effort = more energy remaining at the end of the day.

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

#250

Post by wolco2 »

retsi wrote: post #186
rubicon33 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately for some of us, passions fade. I still love coding, but it's not the kind of thing I'm likely to enjoy spending 16 hours a day doing anymore. I've been there, done that, seen it all (server, web, mobile, firmware, games). It's routine now, but not something I can lose myself into like I used to be able to. I get bored far faster.

This is what real experience sounds like.

I have 20 years+ experience. It doesn't have to be like this.

I know exactly what happened. Changing languages and domains every few years can wear you out. If you were lucky enough to pick one language that madw it 20 years you can spend your time deep diving different domains. Bonus if the language becomes unpopular with developers but still need with business. Bonus points for picking a fun language you like.

A real pain is leetcode.

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