Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 448 posts

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#171

Post by munbun »

twodave wrote: post #132

Software consulting. You’d be surprised how many little businesses out there have a need for custom software. I make about $60-70k/year in my spare time (maybe 10 hours/week) doing everything from adding features to legacy products, building brand new applications and even simply conducting technical interviews. It’s also pretty nice to work on something besides the usual thing at work, experiment with new/different…

Over the last 2 years, I made ~$30k/year on projects that could be completed in a weekend (10 hours/week max).

It was fun to work on something outside my day job but it required some judiciousness to ensure I could meet my set time limits.

I found taking on bigger projects + a demanding day job pushed me to burnout pretty quickly.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#172

Post by clay-dreidels »

spacemark wrote: post #35

I'm a mechanical engineer (satellites currently, launch vehicles and satellite payloads previously). On the side I sell budget star tracking astrophotography mounts I designed and build in my basement. I also do a few consulting gigs each year. These efforts combined bring in an extra ~25k annually. My plan is to develop two more space-related products, hire a tech, and transition to more of an oversight and design r…

I'm in the same situation that you were in, and I'm looking for an extra revenue stream.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#173

Post by Mushhh »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #125
Mushhh wrote: post #16

My partner and I created a very successful business in the UK out of selling mushroom grow kits and microscopy spores. We didn’t think there would be any market here because there weren’t any UK shops doing it. Then a couple of years later it took off and growing mushrooms became cool. In this time we learned how to run a webshop and navigate an industry where every payment processor dropped us - to the point where w…

I'm sure this is a very naive question but... are we talking hallucinogenic mushrooms or the "normal", tasty kind? I'm guessing the former since payment processors kept dropping you?

Gourmet tasty ones. If you are into looking at magic spores under a microscope, we also do those too. The microscopy scene in the UK is huge.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#174

Post by yahelc »

I built a social media analytics API. At its peak, it brought in about $23k/mo, with server costs at about $3k/mo. When I got a job at Instagram, they decided it was a conflict of interest and told me to sell it, which I did for a very healthy six figure sum.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#176

Post by holler »

yahelc wrote: post #174

I built a social media analytics API. At its peak, it brought in about $23k/mo, with server costs at about $3k/mo. When I got a job at Instagram, they decided it was a conflict of interest and told me to sell it, which I did for a very healthy six figure sum.

I know Meta pays a lot, but did you ever consider an alternate path where you didn't take that job and instead grew the service out further? $23k/month is good money.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#177

Post by giaour »

to1y wrote: post #120
giaour wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. The amount of overhead involved in any side hustle is just too high compared to getting stuff done as an employee. even volunteering as anything but unskilled labor is a hassle.

There's no overheads as a employee but too many in solo endeavours? Did you get that the right way around?

Yep! To contract, I have to find clients, solicit project work, write invoices, keep after clients for payment; in general, I have to do all the extroverted business shit I became a software developer to avoid doing.

As an employee, I can work on problems I identify, invest time in mentoring colleagues, spend time building a skill that will be of long term but not immediate benefit to my employer, etc: stuff nobody would pay a contractor to do.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#178

Post by asicsp »

Left my job in 2014. Tried a few things that didn't succeed before selling programming ebooks came to my rescue (2018). From the danger of draining out my savings completely, I'm now earning more than double my needs (which isn't really that much for my modest lifestyle, living alone in a developing nation - $150/month).

What's more, my ebooks are all free to read online. Only PDF/EPUB are sold, and I've always given them away for free during launch week.

List of my ebooks: https://learnbyexample.github.io/books/ (topics include Regular Expressions, Linux CLI tools, Python and Vim)

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#179

Post by Mushhh »

gualang wrote: post #169

Suing lawyers as side income. we all know most lawyers are scummy using all sorts of deceit to gain advantage. However in the increasing documented world, it is a matter of digging(using text search) to find fault with the offending lawyer's deceit and then file a DIY action in court. I am involved in estate litigation since 2016 where I discovered collusion by many lawyers with the estate administrator to defraud th…

Wow. Did you go to uni to study law I take it? Or was this all DIY?

Re: Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?

#180

Post by yahelc »

holler wrote: post #176
yahelc wrote: post #174

I built a social media analytics API. At its peak, it brought in about $23k/mo, with server costs at about $3k/mo. When I got a job at Instagram, they decided it was a conflict of interest and told me to sell it, which I did for a very healthy six figure sum.

I know Meta pays a lot, but did you ever consider an alternate path where you didn't take that job and instead grew the service out further? $23k/month is good money.

I thought about it, but I hadn't originally built it to make money. It was a weekend hack project that I never expected to do that well, and suddenly the prospect of centering my life around a product I didn't really feel passionate about felt like a nightmare. I had a lot of anxiety about whether my external dependencies I'd built on top of would continue to work, and reached the point where a large payoff was worth it to de-risk myself from $23k/mo becoming $0/mo with no exit.
Post reply on HN