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Ask HN: What HN post made you money?

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Re: Ask HN: What HN post made you money?

#61

Post by giantg2 »

joshmanders wrote: post #37
giantg2 wrote: post #16

"Is there a HN post that made you money?" Nope. I assume very few people made any money from an HN post, directly or indirectly. Edit: Why disagree without reply? Most of us (even on HN) are just normal devs and nothing we do on here will make us money.

> Edit: Why disagree without reply? Most of us (even on HN) are just normal devs and nothing we do on here will make us money. Probably being downvoted because you have no evidence to back this up. HN posts have made people money directly AND indirectly.

Everyone is posting anecdotes. My anecdote is that it hasn't made me any money. The number of commenters on this post is much less than the overall number of users on HN. I see no evidence against my statements either.

"HN posts have made people money directly AND indirectly."

This doesn't negate my claim. Some people do make money on here. I feel that number is very low.

Re: Ask HN: What HN post made you money?

#63

Post by nindalf »

gregdoesit wrote: post #12

Seven years ago, I started a blog called The Pragmatic Engineer. For three months, I wrote a post every two-three weeks. But no one really read them. So I took a short break, which break turned into a month, then another, another… and I did not have motivation to write. Barely anyone read it, after all. A few months after starting the blog, I saw a small traffic spike - maybe 30 visitors - from this site called Hacke…

I had a similar experience. I would write whatever I felt like writing and put it up on my blog, but the first real appreciation I got was on reddit and later HN.

This doesn't make me any money, because I don't monetize my blog. But having people read, critique and enjoy my writing has given me immense satisfaction over the years. Can't put a price on that.

Re: Ask HN: What HN post made you money?

#64

Post by bob1029 »

ggambetta wrote: post #58

This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19584921 And it wasn't even my post! A long time ago I found myself teaching Computer Graphics at my alma mater. Over the following years my approach to the subject evolved, and I really got the hang of it. After I stopped teaching, I took my notes, handouts and slides, and made them into a series of articles that I put on my website, where they remained in relative obsc…

I've got your book sitting on my coffee table right now.

My primary reason for picking it up was to get my head around writing a triangle rasterizer from scratch. I found it to be a really good reference that addresses some of the nastier things like clipping, which most other tutorials happily omit.

At some point, I will probably end up writing my own book about all of this as well. I don't know that any 2 people can ever have the same trip through this jungle.

Re: Ask HN: What HN post made you money?

#65

Post by ronyfadel »

moneywoes wrote: post #60
ronyfadel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make Mac [1] and iOS [2] apps. [1]: https://fadel.io/ [2]: https://vidcap.app/

How did you determine product demand? Congrats!

If it takes < 1 month to build, and it fixes an issue you encounter every day, then it’s worth building an MVP of and putting it out there.

Re: Ask HN: What HN post made you money?

#66

Post by joshmanders »

giantg2 wrote: post #61
joshmanders wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: Why disagree without reply? Most of us (even on HN) are just normal devs and nothing we do on here will make us money. Probably being downvoted because you have no evidence to back this up. HN posts have made people money directly AND indirectly.

Everyone is posting anecdotes. My anecdote is that it hasn't made me any money. The number of commenters on this post is much less than the overall number of users on HN. I see no evidence against my statements either. "HN posts have made people money directly AND indirectly." This doesn't negate my claim. Some people do make money on here. I feel that number is very low.

This thread was made 2 hours ago, it's 745AM in silicon valley, where majority of people on this site are at... Don't expect it to explode so fast with people sharing.

The difference between your anecdotes and everyone else's is they aren't saying "Well only 6 people replied to this thread in the first hour and a half, therefore I claim nobody has made money from HN"

Re: Ask HN: What HN post made you money?

#67

Post by hardwaresofton »

I’ve had a few HN posts reach the front page and they’ve enabled me to make many tens of thousands of dollars just this year.

How? Well my penchant for yak shaving SOMETIMES produces interesting projects —- so now people and companies pay me to do interesting work/experiments/writing with their software (or software we both like).

Some recent examples:

- https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2022-06-rise-of-o11y/

- https://supabase.com/blog/2022/07/18/seen-by-in-postgresql

It’s often very hard to produce something of high quality (I’m still working at it) —- I’m essentially doing controlled rabbit hole rappelling —- but as far as paid work goes it doesn’t get much better than this.

Can’t ask for more than working with prestigious companies to do interesting greenfield work to actually accomplish something — the incentives are aligned and it’s awesome.

I’ve liked this so much I’ve started trying to branch out and find more companies to work with, it might change the course of my career.

Re: Ask HN: What HN post made you money?

#69

Post by ggambetta »

bob1029 wrote: post #64
ggambetta wrote: post #58

This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19584921 And it wasn't even my post! A long time ago I found myself teaching Computer Graphics at my alma mater. Over the following years my approach to the subject evolved, and I really got the hang of it. After I stopped teaching, I took my notes, handouts and slides, and made them into a series of articles that I put on my website, where they remained in relative obsc…

I've got your book sitting on my coffee table right now. My primary reason for picking it up was to get my head around writing a triangle rasterizer from scratch. I found it to be a really good reference that addresses some of the nastier things like clipping, which most other tutorials happily omit. At some point, I will probably end up writing my own book about all of this as well. I don't know that any 2 people ca…

The more, the merrier! Everyone understands and explains things in their own unique way, so there's no perfect book for everyone - but each book might be a perfect fit for someone!
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