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Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

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Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#241

Post by ghusbands »

jhiggins777 wrote: post #236
kilroy123 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow you on twitter. It seems you've been super successful over the years with side gigs. You're an inspiration to me for when it comes to newsletters.

Handle?

Just click the petercooper user link, upthread. It's in the profile.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#242

Post by is_true »

dev_at wrote: post #232

I made an app last year that lets the user track virtually anything. Most notably, it is possible to track prices from any website. The app has made me a fair amount of money, but I don't really mention it to my friends or family. The thing is, I am Norwegian, and most people here use iPhones. Since the app is only available for Android, the conversation usually ends in an -oh, anyway. The app (AnyTracker): https://p…

Nice. How do you "track" pages? Do you open a browser and extract the response?

Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#243

Post by wnolens »

dev_at wrote: post #232

I made an app last year that lets the user track virtually anything. Most notably, it is possible to track prices from any website. The app has made me a fair amount of money, but I don't really mention it to my friends or family. The thing is, I am Norwegian, and most people here use iPhones. Since the app is only available for Android, the conversation usually ends in an -oh, anyway. The app (AnyTracker): https://p…

Nice. There's many website versions of this out there. Big enough market?

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#244

Post by wnolens »

sarora27 wrote: post #154

Two years ago, my cofounder and I built and launched a tool that turns Google Drive folders into a wiki ( https://kbee.app ). It's making about $1.5K/month and growing organically on it's own...

Love the name. Don't see any examples of what it looks like though.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#245

Post by jschulenklopper »

jhiggins777 wrote: post #236
kilroy123 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow you on twitter. It seems you've been super successful over the years with side gigs. You're an inspiration to me for when it comes to newsletters.

Handle?

https://twitter.com/cooperx86

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#246

Post by rgriggs »

I built PDFEncrypt (https://pdfencrypt.net) a couple years ago based on a very simple need from a client: to encrypt PDF files via a native Windows app, for free, without needing to upload files to a sketchy website or buy expensive software. I have been amazed at the number of visitors (4000/mo), emails, downloads, and donations the project has received. I released it as open source software, and I'm now working on V2 (almost done!) which is a complete rewrite based on user requests, as well as a bunch of new features I've dreamed up. This has been a very fun side project and good practice coding in C#.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#247

Post by pi3rre »

exceltrading wrote: post #161
jontas wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about this ecosystem but do you see an opportunity for a business to supply these tools (or be the app store) for excel/google sheets addons?

There definitely is for excel. Both for consumer add-ins and internal business add-ins. I've thought about it, and even started on the idea a few times, but have given up. There are just so many components of the system that are outside of your control as a developer. Someone with the appropriate resources might be able to do something neat.

I thought about developing a simple Google Sheets add-on but I've been put off by Google verification process because of the scopes I use.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#248

Post by dev_at »

wnolens wrote: post #243
dev_at wrote: post #232

I made an app last year that lets the user track virtually anything. Most notably, it is possible to track prices from any website. The app has made me a fair amount of money, but I don't really mention it to my friends or family. The thing is, I am Norwegian, and most people here use iPhones. Since the app is only available for Android, the conversation usually ends in an -oh, anyway. The app (AnyTracker): https://p…

Nice. There's many website versions of this out there. Big enough market?

Thanks. So far (8 months in) 30,000 have downloaded it, so I think the potential is there. It is more convenient to have an app, as it provides widgets and notifications.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#249

Post by dev_at »

is_true wrote: post #242
dev_at wrote: post #232

I made an app last year that lets the user track virtually anything. Most notably, it is possible to track prices from any website. The app has made me a fair amount of money, but I don't really mention it to my friends or family. The thing is, I am Norwegian, and most people here use iPhones. Since the app is only available for Android, the conversation usually ends in an -oh, anyway. The app (AnyTracker): https://p…

Nice. How do you "track" pages? Do you open a browser and extract the response? Thanks.

Hi, the parsing is done with Jsoup. So it parses the Html content of the website, without opening a browser. Also it has a neat feature that lets you select the number you want to track by simply highlighting it.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#250

Post by conductr »

msoh wrote: post #219
conductr wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wanted to start expanding features look at macabacus. It's a darling for finance folks on Windows but has no Mac support. The way it handles stored formats and keyboard access is a wonderful feature for productivity as is the formula auditing features.

Thank you for this. I’ve been toying with this idea - there is a technical path to this with Microsoft’s JavaScript office API, since vba isn’t available on Macs. But the limited market size is what’s giving me pause.

Sure thing. I'd have the same concern. Their feature set is robust but I think there is a pareto effect in play. I think just the features I mentioned are 80% of the tool's value, you could probably charge >=2x what they do, and those feature have "broader than finance" appeal. However, back to your point, I've never seen finance folks use a Mac for actual work so the market is probably tiny.
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