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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

#621

Post by pfista »

brianbreslin wrote: post #366
johnjungles wrote: post #340

I built https://check.supply with a friend - it’s an iOS app that is like a cash app experience for mailing a check. Old school landlords, paying gardeners, or other people still only accepting checks. We use plaid to connect your account, then press send, then track the printing, mailing and delivery of the check. Only iOS App here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/check-supply/id6475490646

are you using lob to print/mail everything?

Nope. Lob doesn’t have instant bank verification which was a deal breaker for us.

In fact there are several providers that offer checks via api but none of them worked for us, so we rolled our own :)

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

#622

Post by joeframbach »

nspeller wrote: post #116

I built an interactive Music Theory course 8 years ago over a winter break and it continues to bring in enough to pay my rent each month. I just thought there had to be a more intuitive way to learn music theory than the very boring and jargon-heavy alternatives. It uses Tone.js to include little interactive pianos, guitars, and other demos. I've done no marketing, it hit the HN front page for a day, and after that i…

Firefox Android here, the page zooms in and out when I double tap on a keyboard.

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

#623

Post by iximiuz »

Hey there! I built a learning-by-doing platform for DevOps, SRE, and all other types of infra engineers - https://labs.iximiuz.com. Started working on the project exactly two years ago, and about 12 months ago added a Premium membership, which immediately took off! Still mind-blown by the results, and it's something I build only in my free (from the main job) time. The labs were making ~$3K MRR for a few months before the Black Friday sale and then doubled the annual revenue in a week by making another ~25K at the end of this November.

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

#624

Post by [deleted] »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #60
goenning wrote: post #10

I did not like any Kubernetes UI so I built my own https://aptakube.com It went from side project to my primary job in less than 6 months. Everyone was saying that $99 was too much for “an API wrapper”, but here we are, 2 years later and with hundreds of small to enterprise companies using it :)

That UI looks nice, do you blog anywhere about tech you used to make it?

[deleted]

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

#626

Post by cdosborn »

throwthrow4567 wrote: post #553
cdosborn wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking a look. For the past two years I've been thinking about drawing. Why it's difficult, how its possible for people like Kim Jung Gi to draw from their imagination. My theory is that it's a learned thing (as opposed to innate ability), but that it's not taught from primitives well. For example, rotating a cube is something that you cannot really find an explanation for. I think the actual difficulty in drawing (r…

Forget it. There's very little that can be taught about drawing. Drawing from model is about being the kind of character that enjoys spending hours tweaking at tiny details and measuring measuring measuring. Anybody willing to sit 3 hours in front of the model every day can learn it, if he understands that he must measure. Drawing from imagination like Kim Jung Gi on the other hand is about doing that every day most…

Yeah, I'm not referring to drawing which is copying.

> There's very little that can be taught about drawing.

While drawing from the imagination is largely about using the intuition. The intuition can be trained just like the more analytical side of the brain. I can teach you a few properties of rotation/space, etc, and then give you the right exercises, and then you won't need to use construction to draw.

KJG does have some innate ability, and he was clearly obsessed, but it's not actually the bulk of his method. He has a video about drawing scissors. He can articulate nearly everything he is drawing, specifically the function which guides the design. There are others who can draw like him. Look up Tom Fox.

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

#627

Post by idoma »

n1c wrote: post #552
idoma wrote: post #381

I buy & sell pixels (hats) in a video-game - Team Fortress 2. I'm currently making $10k-15k per month; I'm one of the largest sellers on the game's main third-party marketplace ( https://marketplace.tf ). Less of a side project and more of a part-time job, since it's ~4-6 hours of work per day.

Only TF2? Or do you also do other markets like CS? I'm curious to know how much actual knowledge about the game makes compared to just being a good "trader"?

Some CS, but TF2 is my main focus. Items are less liquid and the cash trading scene isn't as established. For example, my average margin on TF2 items is 6x higher than CS (~25% vs. ~4-5%). I'm able to buy for less & sell for more than I could in CS.

Knowledge about the game isn't necessary at all - it's just the market itself. Understanding what people are interested in, what items can sell at, how long they take, etc.

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

#628

Post by archontes »

anonzzzies wrote: post #37
goenning wrote: post #10

I did not like any Kubernetes UI so I built my own https://aptakube.com It went from side project to my primary job in less than 6 months. Everyone was saying that $99 was too much for “an API wrapper”, but here we are, 2 years later and with hundreds of small to enterprise companies using it :)

You really shouldn't listen to too many people. The only thing that counts is paying customers; everything else is just jealous people.

Dismissing disagreement as jealousy always bothered me. To think a person is jealous of you requires a lot of ego, like... narcissistic amounts of ego in my opinion. Either that or a world view so small that it can't conceive of other world views that don't align with yours.

Some folks just can't imagine buying what some folks are selling.

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

#629

Post by idoma »

soulofmischief wrote: post #578
idoma wrote: post #381

I buy & sell pixels (hats) in a video-game - Team Fortress 2. I'm currently making $10k-15k per month; I'm one of the largest sellers on the game's main third-party marketplace ( https://marketplace.tf ). Less of a side project and more of a part-time job, since it's ~4-6 hours of work per day.

Really curious about what kind of alphas exist in this space, if you don't mind divulging.

The market is incredibly small & illiquid - the main alpha comes from:

- a better knowledge & understanding of the market. What items are desirable? What will take a long time? How do you price them? etc.

- trust/reputation, which takes form through cash trading (directly buying items from people at a discount).

I also have a few automated trading bots & scripts that save time on buying items, but that's easily replicable.

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

#630

Post by [deleted] »

ludston wrote: post #435
kmoser wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm impressed! Every couple of years I come across a different music theory website and I try to follow along, but inevitably after a few sentences I'm completely lost and the rest becomes incomprehensible. I got really far along in yours, which was great, until I got to 6 (Keys): "When a song says that it is in the key of C Major or D Minor this is simply telling you which of the 12 notes are used in this song." You…

You have to understand that music theory is not a set of rules to follow, its a set of ideas that sound good to western ears and therefore are very commonly found in most music. Not every song, but much western music, especially pop music and nursary rhymes, will stick to the same major or minor scale of notes for the whole song. Going outside of this scale is quite normal too and changing the scale/key multiple time…

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