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Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

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Re: Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

#81

Post by pimterry »

synergy20 wrote: post #68
pimterry wrote: post #15

I run HTTP Toolkit ( https://httptoolkit.com ) which passed $2k a couple of years back. No longer a side project, as it's made enough money for me to work on it full time for a fair while now, but it certainly started that way, and it's still a one-man show (plus many wonderful open-source contributors). I suspect that'll be a common theme in answers here though: if you have a side project making $2k a month, in most…

how is this different from devtools? is the main selling point easy of use, or more extra features on top of devtools?

Yes: ease of use, lots of additional power (for starters, you can modify traffic, not just view it) and being able to intercept anything (multiple tabs, multiple browsers, mobile, docker, CLI tools, backend services, you name) all in the same interface.

For the web dev case, for example, if you're debugging some interaction that means you can intercept your browser server traffic and your server upstream API traffic all in the same place, and see the full flow, and you can modify server responses or backend API responses in flight, to test out different edge cases.

There's a Chrome dev tools vs HTTP Toolkit comparison page here with a little more detail: https://httptoolkit.com/chrome-devtools-alternative/

Re: Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

#82

Post by paulgb »

jmduke wrote: post #2

I run Buttondown (buttondown.email) full-time now, but until this past year it was a side project for me alongside my day job as an IC (later EM). It took...around two and a half years, I think, to hit $2k/mo MRR. It was definitely not the stereotypical "launch → iterate a bit → boom, PMF" story that you often hear, which was fine because it was 'just' a side project and I didn't have to worry about running out of mo…

Buttondown is great! It seems that being indie allows you to just ship a good product that does what it says on the box, instead of trying to squeeze every last bit of juice out by building a bloated product that is a jack of all trades but master of none.

Re: Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

#83

Post by Glench »

I run a service that lets browser extension developers easily take payments in their extensions: https://extensionpay.com

Started making $0.15 a day and has taken a couple years to make decent monthly revenue. One cool thing is that it's also helped developers make a lot of money — over $200k so far and growing!

Re: Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

#84

Post by rwilinski »

I made Dynobase [1], an alternative GUI for DynamoDB. Passed 2k/mo few years ago. Runs 100% automatically now, I spend ~2h/week mostly responding to customer inquiries. I could leave my full time job but I just like it (and money) too much.

[1] https://dynobase.dev

Re: Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

#85

Post by klaaz0r »

nghiatran_uit wrote: post #65
klaaz0r wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use proxyman a lot, you did an amazing job, it's a super slick and well working app

Thanks. I assume you're using the macOS version. You might check out the iOS app too : ] Don't forget to activate the Premium for iOS with your Mac License Key. No need to purchase the Subscription.

Already have it running!

Re: Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

#86

Post by trillic »

epolanski wrote: post #77
agotterer wrote: post #21

A friend and I host a monthly dinner club for people interested in ethnic cuisine. We work with a single restaurant each month to create an 8-12 course all inclusive price fixe menu. The food is served family style and is authentic to the region we are hosting. We typically host the dinners on a Tues or Wed when the restaurants in our region aren’t too busy and could use the extra business. So far we’ve hosted 12 din…

[flagged]

That attitude isn’t invited to the dinner party.

Re: Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

#87

Post by vyper91 »

vapidness_is wrote: post #17

I run Afterplay ( https://afterplay.io ). It's a game emulation platform where you bring your own games. It took 18 months from first line of code to 2K. It's now my full time job :)

this is such an awesome idea, i can't wait to check this out!

Re: Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

#88

Post by OJFord »

jb1991 wrote: post #66
richrichardsson wrote: post #8

If I got my side project to generate $2k/month it would no longer be my side project!

In many places (most places), it would be hard for 2k/month be your full income.

I think the point is it would probably be well worth spending more time on. Either tapering off employed work, or being underpaid/using savings for a little bit while you push to increase it.

At least, that was my reaction too, and it seems echoed by many of the people sharing their ('no longer a side') projects.

Re: Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

#89

Post by hambos22 »

I don't know if that counts, but I see it as a tech side project.

Last year I've built for my gf, a custom D2C (direct to client) ecommerce webapp [0] for her handmade products.

Then I started looking into PPC, tracking, social advertisement & marketing etc.. Now we are profitable avg ~8k / month only on retail.

[0] https://yuma.gr

Re: Ask HN: Side project of more than $2k monthly revenue? what's your project?

#90

Post by pimterry »

ericb wrote: post #69
pimterry wrote: post #15

I run HTTP Toolkit ( https://httptoolkit.com ) which passed $2k a couple of years back. No longer a side project, as it's made enough money for me to work on it full time for a fair while now, but it certainly started that way, and it's still a one-man show (plus many wonderful open-source contributors). I suspect that'll be a common theme in answers here though: if you have a side project making $2k a month, in most…

Any tips on making a nice animated gif like your homepage?

Not really! To be honest it's a bit of a hassle and I don't have good tooling or a proper setup. I write a little script, then just record myself manually clicking through it (which is boring, and takes a bunch of tries to do smoothly) and then load it into iMovie and trim it down and speed up any awkward slow bits. It's not a perfect solution at all, but it does the job and I only update it once a year or so.

In a perfect world, I'd kill for a tool where I could define a script (something similar to a Playwright test) and it'd automatically run and record everything, so I could redo the video much more frequently and accurately. I think you probably can do that for a normal web app already (?) but the challenge here is that HTTP Toolkit is launching other apps that also pop up over the top, and so I need to record them all together.

If you're looking for inspiration around this sort of thing, the Android demo video is different and also worth looking at: https://httptoolkit.com/android/

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