Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

371–380 of 515 posts

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

#371
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep - that's correct. My hunch was that people are tired of paying for subscriptions but would drop $20 on something that makes their life slightly better. GTM is the hardest but mostly through referrals / word of mouth. I want to do more Twitter/LI ads.

Sorry, what is GTM?

Haha sorry - yeah as the kind person above says.. "go to market" -- just your question about how I take it to market.

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

#372
I've been working on https://webtoapp.design since December 2019. I cracked $2k/month after around 2 years.

Could've probably done it quicker if I did more things that don't scale (as people often say). Should've focused less on SEO and more on outreach or other growth channels.

I've since got my CS degree and I'm working on it full time now :)

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

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's strange how you are being downvoted when my foreign friends say the exact same thing. They say that the food at the restaurants we go to have a different smell from the food back home.

“You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish you had at a later time.”

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

#374

I run an iOS app on the side thats at ~$2500 MRR. It lets you generate music playlists from a prompt, like "make me a playlist for music to listen to while coding". I launched in January and it took 2 weeks to get the first $2k in revenue. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/playlistai-playlist-maker/id16...

Is the business model in-app purchases? For what do the users pay?

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

#375
post #356

I'm building Pirsch Analytics [0], a privacy-friendly web analytics tool. I think it took the two of us ~1.5 years to get to $2000 MRR. Currently we're setting just above $4000 MRR. It started as an experiment for my personal website and I was in the same position as you're right now. We were already working on a Notion like app to take notes, but didn't make any money and probably went into the wrong direction. As m…

Love it. That's great. Been looking for something like this. If you don't mind me asking -- did you do the landing page yourself? It looks really, really good.

Thanks! Yes we did that ourselfes :) We'll be adding a lot more content soon, it's nice but there is not much text, so no good for SEO.

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

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The advantage of getting older is time is at warp speed so 2 years is nothing ha ha! To be honest: Realising that time is going by so fast really scared me this week. Being mid-30s I really need to get my shit together, soon... :-D

Coming up on 40. A quarter feels about as long as two weeks did when I was 10, I reckon. If this keeps going, each year will feel like a day by the time I'm 60 or so. [EDIT] Incidentally, I reject the "routine & boredom are what do it" thing. High school felt like it took forever and was far more regimented and regular and boring than my life is now.

I think it is the brain’s compression algorithm that does it.

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

#377
post #297

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…

Interesting that people voluntarily pay. Write-up of bloggers doing the "buy me a coffee" button suggested to me that nobody pays like that. I guess software is a bit more tangible than a blog post even if both have value.

Sounds like good advertising! If these companies are trying to sell hardware corresponding to this software, then having a callout right in the software's README is a great way to attract people who are discovering the project through GitHub. This wouldn't work as well if the product was oriented toward non-technical people (not discovering it through GitHub) or if the software wasn't directly related to the hardware (most OSS projects are probably run on general-purpose hardware).

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

#378
post #372

I've been working on https://webtoapp.design since December 2019. I cracked $2k/month after around 2 years. Could've probably done it quicker if I did more things that don't scale (as people often say). Should've focused less on SEO and more on outreach or other growth channels. I've since got my CS degree and I'm working on it full time now :)

How does it work? Do you upload an SPA and then you download something that can be uploaded to the appstore?

How can your customers be sure you do not inject any faulty or malicious stuff into their apps?

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

#379

I run small outsourced IT systems for SMBs. Web scrapers, reporting, stuff like that. Baisically private bespoke SaaS. About $10k/mo gross revenue and takes a few hours of work a week (unless there’s a downtime event that needs fixing). A lot of upfront work to build some of these systems though. Got to $2k/mo in the first month of doing this. I don’t recommend working (as a solo operator) with clients who have budge…

Would love to learn more about this. What type of SMBs do you target? How did you acquire your first customer?

I work mostly in the travel industry. First client 10+ years ago came from a friend who worked as a manager in a large company and needed some special software built to improve his unit’s results - the existing contractor was not good and internal IT did not have time/skill.

Follow on work came from other people at that first client company who knew my work and went on to work at other companies.

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

#380
post #101

I run small outsourced IT systems for SMBs. Web scrapers, reporting, stuff like that. Baisically private bespoke SaaS. About $10k/mo gross revenue and takes a few hours of work a week (unless there’s a downtime event that needs fixing). A lot of upfront work to build some of these systems though. Got to $2k/mo in the first month of doing this. I don’t recommend working (as a solo operator) with clients who have budge…

A couple questions, if you don't mind. How did you go about finding clients? What is the nature of the work agreement—project-based, hourly, or something else?

Clients for this work have come almost entirely by referral. See my other comments in this thread.

For ongoing things I do fixed rate or usage based pricing.

For custom one-off stuff, consultancy, and build-out of systems I charge a day rate.

Post reply on HN