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Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

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31–40 of 164 posts

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#31
post #29

I did some stuff one afternoon about 4-5 years ago and it continues to pay my mortgage ever since. It's the goose that lays the golden egg and under no circumstances do I mess with it.

Any chance you'd share what it was?

He got a goose. It lays eggs. Gold ones.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#32
post #28
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you sell such apps?

I just have a website. It's almost all word-of-mouth, blog posts, and people posting on forums recommending it that drives traffic. I do some Google Ads.

How much does the app cost? Are these one-time sales? If so, what's your best source of customers?

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#33
post #3
post #2

My android games, hands down.

Cool, what kind of games/how much did they bring in?

Over $100k so far (after google fees, but before taxes and expenses)

I don't like publishing which games they are because there's already a lot of competition in their genres, no reason to extend it. However, for each, I was actually one of the first few of their kind when the market was just getting rolling with paid apps.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#36
post #4

I only have 1 side project, which is a utility for Windows laptops (a battery meter). It does about $1500 to $2k per month in sales. I've been thinking about expanding it to have a Enterprise (B2B) product. I'm trying to get another idea I have into a startup, but I haven't been able to get that off the ground.

are you the guy who makes battery meter? because that is seriously the best $7 i have ever spent.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#37
iScrob - http://iscrob.com - a Last.fm scrobbler for iOS. It's free with ads, or $5 with no ads. I released it almost exactly 1 year ago, and it's averaged about $20/day in revenue since then.

It's unique because there's some trickery involved getting around the strict iOS backgrounding requirements, and most of my competitors haven't done a great job with it.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#38
post #11

I made an iOS application for reading comics in literally 6 hours. I released it back in May and it's currently earning me ~$1000 a month via ads. Impressions are still increasing by ~25K each day, so profits are likely to increase in the coming months.

What kind of comics?

Probably manga. The US manga market has expanded hugely since I started reading manga (~8 years ago). Just about any genre (or subject matter) you can name has manga dedicated to it, which contributes to its ability to appeal across all age groups.

The other big thing is that most of the hardcore fans (those who would also like to read on their iOS devices) like to download & read scanlations (A $10 manga volume takes at most 90 minutes to read, so this is an expensive hobby for a hardcore fan, many of whom are children. Also, the hardcore fans prefer the scanlations because they allow them access to manga that hasn't been released in America or has been Americanized by the official English-language translator/publisher.), which are easily placed on an iPhone/iPad, whereas American comics would much more often require legal licensing.

Re: Ask HN: What has been your most profitable side/weekend project to date?

#40
post #32
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just have a website. It's almost all word-of-mouth, blog posts, and people posting on forums recommending it that drives traffic. I do some Google Ads.

How much does the app cost? Are these one-time sales? If so, what's your best source of customers?

It's a one-time sale. It's a freemium model. You can download the app and get limited functionality. You can purchase for $10 the "Pro" version which is a serial number that unlocks the advanced features.

For a while I was doing cheaper time-limited licenses, like $1 for 6 months, $2 for 1 year, etc and $10 for lifetime.

Best source of customers is from free users. I started the app as free until version 3.0 when I switched to freemium. Sales have been fairly consistent each month for years, with spikes when a blog picks it up.

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