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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?

#231

Post by pocket_cheese »

mpakes wrote: post #217
pocket_cheese wrote: post #203

I am a gift card reseller. Pretty much, there are marketplaces where you can sell gift cards and cd keys for games and when a customer places an order, I make an API call to procure that item and deliver it. Currently at 70k Euros a month. It took me about 3 years to get here. And it took a few months to get to 2k monthly revenue.. However, the first two months I was at break even and it took me about a year before I…

What is the wholesale source for the gift cards and CD keys?

There's a bunch of shady ones that I avoid, and the really big legal ones are blackhawk networks and incomm. Becoming an official distributor requires a lot of vetting from their side though, so it isn't like any joe blow can apply and get approval.

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

#232

Post by vapidness_is »

sebiandev wrote: post #219
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 :)

Hey! I've used Afterplay haha. Funny seeing the creator here. Thanks for making this!

No way :) It's a small world. Thank you. I hope you're enjoying it. If you have any suggestions please feel free to let me know :)

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

#233

Post by pimterry »

l5870uoo9y wrote: post #230
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…

> A few inflection points that made a notable difference (releasing rewriting support & Android support particularly)... Do you mean that improving documentation helped get customers? I have a small side project and I think this is one of its weaker spots, even if it is relatively simple [0]. I noticed "helper popups" are getting used quite extensively. [0]: https://aihelperbot.com/guide

> Do you mean that improving documentation helped get customers?

It probably did, but no that's not what I mean, sorry :-). By "rewriting support" I mean adding features that allowed you to rewrite arbitrary network traffic, rather than just viewing it (as in the very first PoC).

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

#234

Post by pimterry »

plugin-baby wrote: post #191
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…

Hi Terry, awesome project! Can I use it to MITM my smart TV, or TV stick?

It depends :-). If it's Android (like a Fire stick) then in some cases, but all the Android caveats apply, e.g. you'll need root access to access traffic from apps that don't opt-in to debugging. For testing your own apps that's fine, but for reverse engineering HTTPS traffic you'll generally need a rooted device. In practice, if you don't already have a rooted phone on hand it's usually best to use an Android emulator on your computer, since most of those provide root access out of the box.

Even with root, certificate pinning can cause problems (as the sibling comment points out) but you can usually defeat that fairly easily: https://httptoolkit.com/blog/frida-certificate-pinning/.

For non-Android, HTTP Toolkit can't set it up for you automatically, but you can absolutely intercept _anything_ manually if you can configure it with your own HTTP proxy setting (fairly common) and add a trusted CA certificate (less common).

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

#235

Post by pocket_cheese »

GordonS wrote: post #211
pocket_cheese wrote: post #203

I am a gift card reseller. Pretty much, there are marketplaces where you can sell gift cards and cd keys for games and when a customer places an order, I make an API call to procure that item and deliver it. Currently at 70k Euros a month. It took me about 3 years to get here. And it took a few months to get to 2k monthly revenue.. However, the first two months I was at break even and it took me about a year before I…

Have you had any issues with the authorities or law enforcement? Are you planning on shutting it down once you reach a certain figure? (I ask, since this seems very risky!)

I only go to authorized distributors, where the brand themselves has approved the vendor to resell the cards. For game keys, I haven't done anything in bulk, but the best route is going directly to the publisher and getting permission, but this requires large order commitments and game prices fluctuate too much and can be super risky.

My real biggest risk though is when I open up my own store is chargebacks. Digital goods have a very very high chargeback risk, and I need to be clever on how I mitigate that!

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

#237

Post by kube-system »

shlant wrote: post #167
dom96 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's Apache 2.0 how are you getting royalty payments from it?

Pretty sure the license means you do not have to pay royalties, not that you are disallowed from paying royalties

Royalties are typically a contractual payment, though. Calling a voluntary payment a royalty is kind of an odd use of the word, if not plainly incorrect.

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

#238

Post by swah »

pdksam wrote: post #52
colesantiago wrote: post #24

Not really $2K/mo but I run a SaaS for pest control businesses that brings in $100K/mo and started this business during the pandemic.

Is this an on demand platform like uber?

You have a good idea here.. Even though I feel it already exists even on my local market.

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

#239

Post by yamtaddle »

FloatArtifact wrote: post #164
darthcloud wrote: post #34

I've build BlueRetro [1] an universal Bluetooth controller adapter for nearly all pre-USB gaming console. I made a gross income of around 3K a month last year out of Royalties on the soft for each device sold. It's Apache 2.0 software so people can do whatever they want. I started making money when I decided to list on the GitHub README the list of manufacturers/makers that where sponsoring the project. (Only one per…

What controllers you would recommend for retro games with a great d-pad and buttons? I can't find anything that's even remotely close to native controllers especially for Super NES.

I've never managed to find a Wii-connector-to-USB adapter that wouldn't inexplicably die within six months, but the 1st-party SNES Classic controllers are basically perfect clones of the original. Ditto the NES versions they have. Wii Pro Controllers are also great and have a similar feel & quality, but with modern ergonomics (no rumble, though, so not great for e.g. Playstation games, and IIRC the triggers aren't analog, which is limiting)

You can connect Wiimotes to PCs over Bluetooth and use any of those Wii-connector controllers through them, which would make them wireless and solve the finding-a-reliable-adapter problem, but I've never managed to make that kind of set-up sufficiently stable. Always having to screw with re-pairing and such.

In the end, my go-to for BT emulation controllers is usually a PS3/4/5 controller. I haven't tried the XBone but I found the d-pad on the XB and XB360 controllers unusably inaccurate, and the face buttons weirdly slow when trying to play old-school Nintendo-hard games. Playstation controller d-pads are much better, and the face buttons feel quicker to switch between, for whatever reason.

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

#240

Post by 3dfan »

hazhu wrote: post #169

I built a Charades-game [1] for both iOS [2] and Android [3]. Launched last year and just recently got to around 2k a month, some months like December are of course better than let's say September because of holidays like New Year etc. It took about 10-12 months reaching those numbers, and I'd say we still have lot's of room for improvement. It's also very low maintenance, but highly scalable. What I do is basically…

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