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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?

#91

Post by herrherr »

prawn wrote: post #85
herrherr wrote: post #67

getmetricmail.com creates simple Google Analytics reports and sends them to you as a PDF. Currently 3000 free users. A handfull pays, so it makes about $100 per month. A good example of Freemium gone wrong.

I've signed up to check it out. As Alex said, it's a good idea, nice design, etc. Maybe the feature exists and I didn't spot it, but if you white labelled it so that web designers could send out branded messages to their clients as a value-add, I think you could see paid accounts pick up a bit. Edit: OK, first email is in. Seems that I have to click a link or get an attachment - this is why I already avoid the Analyt…

You can receive pdf attachments directly, so you don't have to click on the link. Nevertheless that's not what you're looking for, I guess ;)

We thought about putting the data directly into an email, but the crappy HTML/CSS support in the gazillion email clients, make this a pretty tough job.

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

#92

Post by ja27 »

After a football-related post on my personal blog got a surprising amount of search traffic, I threw up a quick Blogger blog with similar posts for a few football teams. The traffic rolled in. I threw on some more and eventually added baseball which was a much bigger source of traffic. Right now baseball season is earning me about $10 a week. I think I've spent less than 30 hours on it total. Not a great return on my time so far but it just keeps cranking away and Google keeps paying me. I've certainly spent more time on projects that have earned zero.

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

#93

Post by prawn »

herrherr wrote: post #91
prawn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've signed up to check it out. As Alex said, it's a good idea, nice design, etc. Maybe the feature exists and I didn't spot it, but if you white labelled it so that web designers could send out branded messages to their clients as a value-add, I think you could see paid accounts pick up a bit. Edit: OK, first email is in. Seems that I have to click a link or get an attachment - this is why I already avoid the Analyt…

You can receive pdf attachments directly, so you don't have to click on the link. Nevertheless that's not what you're looking for, I guess ;) We thought about putting the data directly into an email, but the crappy HTML/CSS support in the gazillion email clients, make this a pretty tough job.

Yeah, I think Analytics does PDFs from memory and I cancelled all of those.

Can appreciate the frustration with HTML/CSS support - maybe if you kept your layout really simple and/or called it an Old School theme. Mostly I'd be looking for anything that quickly showed me if there was something wrong with a site (or right, e.g., major incoming link).

Wonder if you can throw in some marketing factoids like "Fourth straight month with an increase in traffic" or "Traffic growth continues; fourth straight month" - the sorts of things a marketing guy can repeat to the boss without any more time or research.

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

#94

Post by icebraining »

herrherr wrote: post #91
prawn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've signed up to check it out. As Alex said, it's a good idea, nice design, etc. Maybe the feature exists and I didn't spot it, but if you white labelled it so that web designers could send out branded messages to their clients as a value-add, I think you could see paid accounts pick up a bit. Edit: OK, first email is in. Seems that I have to click a link or get an attachment - this is why I already avoid the Analyt…

You can receive pdf attachments directly, so you don't have to click on the link. Nevertheless that's not what you're looking for, I guess ;) We thought about putting the data directly into an email, but the crappy HTML/CSS support in the gazillion email clients, make this a pretty tough job.

I haven't used your product so I may be saying nonsense, but why don't you also embed an image created from the PDF? HTML support may be crappy, but as far as I know most of them support images.

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

#96

Post by fmavituna »

herrherr wrote: post #67

getmetricmail.com creates simple Google Analytics reports and sends them to you as a PDF. Currently 3000 free users. A handfull pays, so it makes about $100 per month. A good example of Freemium gone wrong.

I guess I'm missing something, but there is a setting in Google Analytics to send dashboard to an email address every week / month in PDF format. What's the difference here?

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

#97

Post by herrherr »

fmavituna wrote: post #96
herrherr wrote: post #67

getmetricmail.com creates simple Google Analytics reports and sends them to you as a PDF. Currently 3000 free users. A handfull pays, so it makes about $100 per month. A good example of Freemium gone wrong.

I guess I'm missing something, but there is a setting in Google Analytics to send dashboard to an email address every week / month in PDF format. What's the difference here?

Indeed. Google Analytics allows you to create those reports. But apparently it's far too difficult for people who are not that tech-savvy.

As I said we currently have over 3000 users, so there seems to be some interest in such a solution :)

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

#98

Post by bemmu »

nonrecursive wrote: post #17

Clean Up Your Mess ( http://www.visualmess.com/ ) is just a mini visual design tutorial and not a product, but it was a side project and it's made a few hundred bucks from amazon ads. I did not intend to make money from it, so it was nice surprise that I did.

How many people are visiting the page? I am curious to hear how much a well-targeted Amazon ad can extract from a visitor.

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

#99

Post by tnorthcutt »

sahillavingia wrote: post #10

Gumroad - http://gumroad.com/ - right now I'm trying to turn it from a million dollar business (current valuation) to a billion dollar one. :)

"On anything about $1000/month in sales, we take a 10% cut."

about -> above

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