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

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

#51
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.

Where is the self plug? I want to check it out! :P

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

#54
I've made $40 in pro subscriptions (2) and about $50 in ad revenue from http://www.twistertracker.com While the money isn't yet covering hosting costs I've learned a ton and managed to gain 1500+ free users and 1200+ twitter followers at @twister_tracker.

It's a pretty seasonal site so I'm hoping to grow it more next spring with additional features and a better pricing model.

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

#55
I've made $40 in pro subscriptions (2) and about $50 in ad revenue from http://www.twistertracker.com While the money isn't yet covering hosting costs I've learned a ton and managed to gain 1500+ free users and 1200+ twitter followers at @twister_tracker.

It's a pretty seasonal site so I'm hoping to grow it more next spring with additional features and a better pricing model.

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

#57
post #50
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wow, 100K over how many months? So after taxes maybe 60-70K?

Yes, my taxes in April were pretty heavy, but I put a lot aside because I saw it coming.

I'd say most of the income came in over a 6-7 month period of really amazing sales.

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

#58

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.

"Solve a difficult problem" is certainly one way to create value that you can sell. Thanks for sharing the figure.

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

#59

An instructional DVD I made on SEO for wedding photographers and their websites ( http://photographyseo.com ). Recorded screen casts and mastered it in iDVD. Did a run of 1,000 at Discmakers for about $900. Sold out the initial run (@ $79 per disc) in under 2 years. Now we just one-off them or give them an option of viewing online. Looking back (or if I do it again), I would probably do it as just an ebook or online…

This looks like a nice number . How do you advertise your product?
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