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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

#31

Post by Tidash »

1500$ MRR (or ~1000$ after taxes and operating costs) with a (native) Plex audiobook player for iOS and Android.

Android accounts for 85% of the userbase and has been the focus last year with a 2.0 release so it's in much better shape than the iOS version, which is still in 1.0 today. MRR is growing 5-10% per month, not sure how big the niche is yet. It's a lot of efforts to maintain both platforms as native apps with a high level of quality, but trully convinced crossplatform solution are not worth it either.

-> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.bookcamp.a...

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

#32

Post by boundlessdreamz »

I built and recently released a UI kit for Rails - https://zestui.com

Built with Phlex, styled with Tailwind with custom built Stimulus controllers.

It's got

- 25 themes

- Dark Mode

- Form Builder

- Icons

- Built in Flash Toast

- The components are responsive or have specific mobile views

- All the JS needed (Stimulus controllers) is wired up automatically

Phlex is a game changer. It is simple, powerful, intuitive and performant. I will never ever write a component as a partial/ViewComponent again.

A short video (50 seconds) showing it off: https://youtu.be/OQmDZddLtR8

It has crossed $500/month but since it's a one time purchase it is too early to tell whether it will sustain since I launched it only in December 2023.

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

#33

Post by DreamGen »

I am building https://dreamgen.com : platform for story-writing and role-play based on my own open-weight models [1][2]. Sort of alternative to NovelAI and CharacterAI. Launched November last year.

Why? I think building on top of (and using products built on top of) closed models in this space is not sustainable.

Currently the largest limiting factor, and why I am not spending on marketing just yet, is the model quality at longer contexts. This is my main focus right now, and I am in the middle of data collection for opus-v1 (which will also be released in various sizes). I also hope GPU prices will go down soon :D

It's a lot of fun, being able to work on data, models, backend and frontend all within the scope of 1 project.

[1] https://huggingface.co/dreamgen/opus-v0-7b

[2] https://huggingface.co/dreamgen/opus-v0-70b

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

#34

Post by longnguyen »

I started working on KTool[0] in 2022. Here was the Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32637996

It recently reached $1K MRR.

Not enough for us to pay the bills, so I started 2 other projects: BoltAI[1] & PDF Pals[2]

I sell traditional licenses for these app and so it's not "recurring revenue", but it's well over $500/mo and help me going full-time on these products.

[0]: https://ktool.io

[1]: https://boltai.com

[2]: https://pdfpals.com

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

#35

Post by bmitc »

vsnf wrote: post #17

These threads, along with the related recurring Show HN solo-founder success stories often seem to either be some form of newsletter/social publication, or analytics platform. I wonder if that's just the natural limit of what teams of 1 can feasibly accomplish, but I do wish there was some more variety in what people were successful with.

And a lot of the projects, at least in this thread are not passive or even side projects. They're being reported as full-time projects.

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

#36

Post by akudha »

abdullin wrote: post #24
akudha wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Thank you. I subscribed to your newsletter. Might take up your offer for advice :) Thank you

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

#37

Post by nice_scott »

I have a simple sex life tracking app that fills a niche many users are willing to pay for. (iOS only)

https://nicetracker.app

It has a single one time purchase of US$9.99. I loathe subscriptions personally, so all premium purchases just get all and any new features I add.

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

#38

Post by imetatroll »

HermanMartinus wrote: post #11

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

Nice X-Header :)

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

#39

Post by koromak »

jameshush wrote: post #4

Out of all the side projects I’ve tried, the one that’s been the most lucrative consistently is buying boring index funds. I kinda wish I just doubled down on the boring route sooner .

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/ if anyone agrees. This has been my strategy for a couple years.
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