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Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#22
post #7

I work as head of ML & Innovation at my day job. On the side, as a technical consultant, I help teams to ship products with ML under the hood. I live in Vienna, so that makes it convenient for evening calls with USA/Canada, where my three clients operate. Usually this involves weekly 30min calls with the teams to show them shortcuts, working recipes and save time by avoiding pitfalls. Mostly around ChatGPT/Local LLMs…

What did you do before 2023 as a technical consultant?

I’ve been working in software since ~2004. Mostly working with startups as tech lead/team lead or full-stack.

Half of these companies were about big data/data science. But applications of AI/ML always attracted me more :)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#23

I've been writing an email newsletter on backend dev for the past few years - https://quastor.org/ Basically, I look through all the Big Tech engineering blog posts and look for interesting posts. Then I'll write up an article talking about the tech stack and the main takeaways. I've been learning Adobe Illustrator + After Effects recently and am now starting to add some visualizations + graphics to accompany the art…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#24
post #16
post #7

I work as head of ML & Innovation at my day job. On the side, as a technical consultant, I help teams to ship products with ML under the hood. I live in Vienna, so that makes it convenient for evening calls with USA/Canada, where my three clients operate. Usually this involves weekly 30min calls with the teams to show them shortcuts, working recipes and save time by avoiding pitfalls. Mostly around ChatGPT/Local LLMs…

Is it possible for someone who has no knowledge of ML (but can code) to get into this space? Where would one start?

Yes, that is the perfect spot!

If you already have a coding background and want to focus on practical applications, there is surprisingly little to catch up with LLM/ML/ChatGPT.

Here is my quickstart on LLM/ChatGPT for developers: https://abdullin.com/llm/faq-chat-gpt-quickstart-for-program...

Don't hesitate to ping me with questions, too!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#25
I started a project to do Search powered by mixture of ai models: https://www.Labophase.com

It's like google but all the results are from different ai models. Some ai models are better at reasoning, others at coding, or have bigger context.

Makes money from a tier where more advanced models can be used like gpt4, claude2, mixtral. But a very permissive free-tier has led to a lot of fraud/spam with the associated costs but most users like to see the benefits right off the bat without signing up for an account.

Got a few defenses coming up for fraud detection and hopefully cross the $500 barrier soon.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#27
I started working on an open-source API mocking tool six years ago. It's called Mockoon and has recently crossed 500k downloads.

Two years ago, I quit my job to focus nearly full-time on it. I'm still freelancing on the side, but it's slowly bringing more money through sponsoring and the SaaS platform I'm building (a bit less than 1000$/month). Hopefully, 2024 is the year I can stop freelancing and live the dream! Work on an open-source project I love while not feeling guilty about not bringing enough money home :D

--> https://mockoon.com

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#28
I started SupeChoiceForm as a passive income project many years ago: https://superchoiceform.com.au/

It started as just a content site, with google Adsense. Making about $1200 per month from ~30k visits.

It kept growing in popularity over about 2 years and I finally decided it might be worth some more effort.

So I turned it into a web app that took an employee through the process of gathering/generating all the paperwork they require to provide their employer with their superfund details. Effectively just digitising the paper form process with some smart automations.

(Superannuation is the 401k of Australia, but probably more widespread as it’s mandatory)

That was 2x MVP’s ago. Last year I got two trust partners / co-founders involved and we’ve turned it into an embedded service that can drop into any payroll/hr provider.

Raised $1M and now we’re making a lot more than $1200

All because I was nervous about getting Adsense banned for no reason. So thanks google!!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#29

I’ve been running Bear Blog for a few years. It’s a privacy focused, super fast blogging platform, and is making well over $500/mo. It’s also a really fun tool to build and use, with a tight community. https://bearblog.dev

There seems to be no mention of cost/pricing anywhere. Perhaps it's visible once signed up, as I presume it's not free if it's making money.

There's a cost to adding a custom domain and media storage at ~$5/mo depending on your country's purchasing power. I'll make a note to add it to the homepage somewhere :)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#30
post #14

I’ve been running Bear Blog for a few years. It’s a privacy focused, super fast blogging platform, and is making well over $500/mo. It’s also a really fun tool to build and use, with a tight community. https://bearblog.dev

It's just so damn fast and simple! And no GDPR banners and newsletter prompts! How do you make money? I can't see any pricing page.

Thanks! That was exactly what I was trying to escape from when I built it. The platform is free to use, but if you want to connect a custom domain (and a few other neat features) there's a ~$5/mo subscription. I'll make a note to add pricing to the homepage somewhere.
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