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

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691–700 of 818 posts

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

#691
post #504

I've built https://cophone.io - your online smartphone, complete with a phone number. It is an Android system running in the cloud that you can access via a browser, even on mobiles. Things like microphone and webcam work nicely, so you can even have meetings on cophone. After iterating on it for a while, customers seem very happy and now growing day by day. No marketing so far, just being out there and posting on va…

A small feedback: The poster image on your homepage (https://cophone.io/assets/images/virtual-smartphone-cophone....) is unnecessarily big (1.7MB). You can compress it into a much smaller JPEG without any visible defect. Maybe you don't need it at all as video will start playing soon anyway.

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

#692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have an idea why it‘s not interesting abroad? Is keeping kid’s baby teeth considered normal behavior in Germany? It’s considered a bit bizarre in US. I have a 6 year old and very much in this market but simply have zero interest in the entire premise of logging and keeping this info and the teeth themselves. The tooth fairy is our main tradition and I think most people are happy to dispose of the biohazard w…

Isn't it for tracking baby teeth development? Nothing about physically collecting the teeth.

Maybe. The first line of the site says “Keep hold of your babies' first teeth.” Which to me sounds like storing them somewhere physically. Maybe the problem is how it’s worded?

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

#693

I built https://explorehere.app to help you learn about the history of the world around you by sending a push notification whenever you pass a new historical marker on your travels! It’s a freemium app with a pro subscription for advanced features; our revenue is just under $1k/month. We’re working towards ExploreHere being a passive adventure guide. As you go about your travels ExploreHere will nudge you about inter…

In the days before global data plans, there was an amazing offline travel companion app called Triposo that was well before its time. One of its best features was to guide you toward nearby places of interest. I remember in ~2012 visiting Paris and being led to a historic but dilapidated building that used to be a notable school, near to where I was staying but not along the walk to the metro station so I never would have seen it otherwise.

It was really one of the most unforgettable travel tech experiences. I was still free to explore at my whim, but it gave some context to what was around me. It wasn't just the over-trafficked tourist highlights, but the whole city. ExploreHere seems like it could have a similar impact.

The Triposo team briefly made a cute app called Walter that was basically a minimalist indication of nearby POIs using the device compass for orientation: https://web.archive.org/web/20170607100433/https://www.tripo...

There's a post-mortem of the company from @dosinga here: https://dosinga.medium.com/leaving-triposo-9d35f72ce28

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

#695
post #250

I make between $3k to $6k from putting a log cabin on Airbnb. This started during period of boredom during the pandemic. I operate remotely with smart home devices and with a local cleaning team/handyman. I had a project to completely automate this with an AI agent but Airbnb doesn't offer a publicly available API. $3k seems high but the costs add up and the time as well (details here https://studiozenkai.com/post/ai…

That's not really a side project. It's an income, but not a project.

Definitely a side project. Did you read the post?

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

#696
post #523

I write a newsletter on cybersecurity every week. Usually a summary of interesting articles and a list of known breaches and software issues. It's been going for seven years now I think? It makes about 25k in sponsorships each year, although it could be more if I actually got myself to sell a bit more. Either way, it's been a great way for me to keep learning. Nothing beats having to summarize a thing to thousands of…

Awesome! I love news-related ideas like this since I'm interested in several industries. Had an idea similar to this a few years ago (in a different industry though) but didn't follow-through because I got bogged down in hosting/email infrastructure decisions. Keep it up!

Thanks! If it helps, I ended up using Curated for hosting and email infrastructure. Been meaning to self-host something for ages but until then I'm happy to use them.

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

#697

I write a newsletter on cybersecurity every week. Usually a summary of interesting articles and a list of known breaches and software issues. It's been going for seven years now I think? It makes about 25k in sponsorships each year, although it could be more if I actually got myself to sell a bit more. Either way, it's been a great way for me to keep learning. Nothing beats having to summarize a thing to thousands of…

Cool site. I'll probably check it out every now and then. How do you source all of the articles? And have you done any marketing for it?

Thanks :-)

I have a bunch of news websites bookmarked over the years that I scour through every week. And once and a while I pick something up through social media or friends and colleagues.

Marketing: I tried. I did some cross-promotion with other newsletters, some paid marketing, but that was ages ago. I don't take to marketing well so it tends to fall by the wayside ^^

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

#698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe buy pdfto.com if its not already taken

And move the site over? Or buy it and 301 it to pdf.to in hopes it works?

I would personally rather rebrand as competing service under better name and copy

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

#699

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…

I love Lightnote! I'm trying to get my kids into it as well.

Awesome work.

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

#700
post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I certainly understand that in any system (not just music), some rules can be broken at certain times for various reasons (safety, aesthetics, etc.). To combine what you're saying with what I was saying, I would like to see, at least in this case, a better explanation of what exceptions are commonly made to these rules (e.g. using non-standard chords) and when they are made (e.g. in music from region XYZ). In fact, I…

You've missed my first point. It's not rules. There are no rules to break. The "broken rules" simply describes systems within music that you haven't been introduced to yet. For example, major and minor are also called "ionean" and "aeolean" "modes" respectively, and these sit within a set of 8 modes. There are also blues and jazz scales, names for music that break out of standard tuning. There is a style called "12 tone" (of which an example is Also Sprach Zarathustra) which uses deliberate dissonance.

You simply aren't up to that part yet, because classical western music training teaches the more common ideas which are in music that the punters listen to first. (Mainly because people generally need a few years playing music before they develope a taste for these things anyway)

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