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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#401

Post by hemmert »

Mine scaled to about $800/month this year (from $200/month in the previous years):

Escape Team, a printable escape room https://www.escape-team.com

All revenue is generated via in-app purchases, and it is about 60% iOS, 40% Android.

People download and print a mission PDF with all the physical cut-fold-and-draw puzzles, then the app offers a $1.99 in-app purchase to unlock the audio narrative/gameplay for that mission. Most revenue comes from mission packs, which are $6.99 for four missions.

I am doing zero advertisement, if just works by word of mouth. I think that is because the game is a very fun and social activity. I also see hundreds (!) of custom missions being created for Christmas in the Mission Editor, there seem to be a lot of escape room-savvy Santas this year.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#402

Post by hemmert »

hemmert wrote: post #401

Mine scaled to about $800/month this year (from $200/month in the previous years): Escape Team, a printable escape room https://www.escape-team.com All revenue is generated via in-app purchases, and it is about 60% iOS, 40% Android. People download and print a mission PDF with all the physical cut-fold-and-draw puzzles, then the app offers a $1.99 in-app purchase to unlock the audio narrative/gameplay for that missio…

(I am really happy paying the App Store/Play Store the commission, by the way, as they handle the global tax management - I wouldn’t want to send a tax report to every country in which some user made a $1.99 in-app purchase…)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#403

Post by hemmert »

crobertsbmw wrote: post #25

My little hardware book, Computer Engineering for Babies launched on Kickstarter a few months ago and blew my mind by raising almost $250k. It’s a simple book with buttons and LEDs to demonstrate different logic gates. I just shipped out the first batch of books a week ago and now waiting for the next batch of books. It’s gotten pretty demanding pretty quickly but I’m really excited about it. I’m hoping I can soon em…

Oh I saw that! It is amazing! I recommended it to a friend who is in the right situation :-)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#404

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #397
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #373

I helped my wife (a primary school teacher) start a social emotional development book & activity subscription service. https://mybookbag.com.au/ It's slowly growing, but to be honest the pricing needs to be increased. Profit margins are paper thin (ha!). Still though, it's been fun putting together the website, integrating Stripe etc. Biggest issue is book publishers. Wow their ordering systems are archaic! We can't…

>It's slowly growing, but to be honest the pricing needs to be increased. Profit margins are paper thin (ha!). Looking at your site, the first thing I noticed is that you use AusPost (I'm assuming you'd be paying MyPost Business rates). Especially for larger packages within the same city, Sendle generally has better rates and turnaround times. Have you looked into alternative logistics options? >>We can't deliver dif…

We've looked into this quite a bit actually. Auspost did work out the cheapest, at least initially. However, Auspost's recent price increase was particularly painful. Children's books have fairly large dimensions, so our pricing is largely dictated by parcel size, rather than weight.

I can't remember whether this factored in, but we are ourselves reasonably remote. Technically Melbourne, but not really. So I think the typical advertised rates aren't always accessible to us.

It doesn't help that Auspost recently implemented some sort of automated parcel measuring/weighing and it's incredibly wrong. We use the exact same box for every single delivery, yet we randomly receive bills to our business account claiming we've underpaid postage due to the odd parcel supposedly fluctuating in dimensions, by over 10cm in some cases!

Needless to say, we will definitely be revisiting this again. Will for sure check-out Sendle again. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#405

Post by pstuart »

madman2890 wrote: post #61

I bought a coffee farm in Colombia. Annualized it makes around $800 / month and growing. Should double to $1600 / month next year as we’ve doubled our production. It’s barely profitable, but is profitable nonetheless. The more we plant the more profitable it will get, and we’ll be planting 10,000 more trees soon!

This would be a great Tell HN.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#406

Post by _august »

I made an app to learn bodyweight fitness! - https://fitloop.app

Got into learning bodyweight fitness from reddit and lacking access to a proper gym back in the day. Started initially as a simple webpage, I've now built a mobile app that earns about $1000/mo, its a way for beginners to get into bodyweight workouts and learn exercises with youtube videos.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#407

Post by telesilla »

unobatbayar wrote: post #382
czue wrote: post #289

I have two! An app for making wedding place cards that does about $1000/mo https://www.placecard.me/ A boilerplate for making SaaS apps with Python/Django that does $5k/month (highly variable) https://www.saaspegasus.com/ I also have a third that does around $150/mo. It's an app that adds analytics to GroupMe which is a WhatsApp alternative. https://chatstats.co/ I keep complete revenue and effort data here if you're…

What happens when it comes to taxes? Do you pay taxes if it's from side projects? Or it's done automatically e.g. Stripe?

Do you mean, sales taxes or personal income taxes? How a person manages those depends on their country. If you can, hire an local accountant to help or at least get advice. If the amounts get large enough you may need to open a business for yourself.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#408

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

fy20 wrote: post #396
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #373

I helped my wife (a primary school teacher) start a social emotional development book & activity subscription service. https://mybookbag.com.au/ It's slowly growing, but to be honest the pricing needs to be increased. Profit margins are paper thin (ha!). Still though, it's been fun putting together the website, integrating Stripe etc. Biggest issue is book publishers. Wow their ordering systems are archaic! We can't…

Nice idea! If I was in AU I'd subscribe for my kid. Do you think you'd have the same issues in the US or Europe, is it just local distributors don't have that much stock?

Thanks :)

I'm largely speculating, however I suspect the situation would be slightly improved in the US/Europe. Some of the distributors are local branches of international publishers/distributors. Hachette for example do have real-time stock management and ordering, and I think even an API. I inquired about this with the local arm of Hachette that we order through, and they didn't really know what I was talking about. I assume they use it internally, but there's nothing exposed.

With the big distributors, I think the situation may be improved elsewhere in the world. However, given we're after social emotional development themed books, we do tend to branch out and order from smaller boutique publishers. I imagine their operations would be similar worldwide.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#409

Post by bserge »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #384
Nexxxeh wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This literally made me say "WTF?!" when I went to the page. I think you're burying the lede here. It's only $29 inc worldwide shipping ! WTAF, that's awesome. I'll be ordering one as soon as Christmas is out of the way. Any plans to add an EU or UK distribution point? I'm prepared to wait the 2-3 weeks for free UK shipping tbh, but if you're adding more local distribution early next year I'd hold on.

>It's only $29 inc worldwide shipping Oh yeah, thanks for pointing that out. The one time I'm not in a shilly mood (Christmas and all) and the post actually gets interaction. Murphy's Law! >Any plans to add an EU or UK distribution point? Sorta kinda maybe. I did have one, but a whole lot of VAT compliance bullshit caught up with me. In most countries, GST/VAT is handled automatically by large eCommerce platforms (if…

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2021 – Show and tell

#410

Post by _august »

eruci wrote: post #34

I built a free reverse geocoding api about 4 years ago ( https://api.3geonames.org ) Usage grew steadily sometimes crashing the server. So I loaded the software on GCP and AWS Marketplaces. Those needing a dedicated api launched their own servers for a fee. It has made an average pf $500 a month since I made those machine images available on https://3geonames.org/api about 2 years ago.

this is pretty awesome -- may use it for some hobby projects. how does it work?
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