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

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101–110 of 164 posts

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

#103

I wrote a WordPress plugin in about 4 hours to run a website listing web hosting company reviews. Simple affiliate stuff. The plugin was generic, it would add star ratings to WordPress comments and display average ratings for the post and such. I used the plugin to run my own site, then also built it a little site to sell to anyone else that wanted it. In 18 months it sold over $200,000 in licenses before I sold righ…

I'm interested to know the plug-in and if you have any plug-in ideas. Thanks you.

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

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very neat idea. How do you generate the preview image?

Thanks! It's currently a third party screenshot service, but as I've had a lot of interest and good feedback, I'm now looking into setting up my own in-house screenshot system.

I wrote my own custom screenshot service. I have no idea how to monetize it but you can check out a demo here: http://yoursitemakesmebarf.com

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

#105

Made a wireless stumbler for iOS in about two days that sold a bit over $100k total. Admittedly, I spent probably another day in random debugging for version 3-ish of it (just went walkabout in Chicago with a debug build, logging AP details when it had bad behavior). And then ungodly amounts of time answering e-mails and on the phone with the iOS app review team, but that was long after the "weekend project" phase.

It's a shame these type of apps are now against the app store TOS. I'd be interesting to hear your experience of what happened to yours.

I had to dig about on Installous to find one, what was yours called?

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

#107
post #83

I started DNSimple ( https://dnsimple.com/ ) a year ago and it's doing pretty well. It's a side project but I put a lot into it, so it's really like a second job. I currently put all of the money back into it rather than paying myself, so profitable might be pushing it.

DNSimple is a side project? I would never have guessed; it's such an awesome service. Keep up the good work!

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

#108
post #23

NewsBlur - http://www.newsblur.com - a visual RSS feed reader with intelligence. I have a few hundred paying users and a few thousands free users. I develop it almost entirely on the train, which I'm on for almost an hour and a half everyday. It's a ton of work and is profitable in the sense that the hundreds of dollars a month in server costs are just a bit more than covered by the premium users. But otherwise, it d…

Very cool UI. May I ask what laptop you use for coding on the train? I spend ~2 hrs on the train everyday and have been trying to figure out what would be a good laptop to code on. I realize personal preferences play a role, but it seems like large laptop is a hassle to hold, and a small one is difficult to code on because of the smaller screen space.

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

#109

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

Would this work, or can it work with UK transactions in UK £ Sterling?

I absolutely love the idea and would like to integrate something like it into a project I'm working on.

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

#110
post #72

I've got a site collating interior design photos for inspiration. Makes about US$2k+/mo fairly passively from ads. I would spend maybe 10 minutes on it every six or so months.

I'd like do do something similar for landscaping inspiration. Any advice?
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