Sadly not $500/mo, but I do get a few sales on https://dailychinesestories.com each month. It's as simple as it sounds - a story in Chinese at your HSK level for your preferred themes once a day.
Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
111–120 of 575 posts
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
#112I'm at year 1.5 and built this software for making small art books
The goal is to make physical books. It's still early days, but fun to see what people are creating.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
#113Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
#114I run OnlineOrNot - https://OnlineOrNot.com
It started as just an uptime checker for websites, eventually I added support for APIs and cron jobs, and automated status pages (you may have seen this one yesterday: https://hackernews.onlineornot.com/)
I started it in 2021, I give it two hours a day before work every workday, and I cut scope on most features to ensure they're shippable in two hours. Then I iterate. It works because it's default-alive. I keep a full time job to be able to build it exactly how I want.
Like my React blog, I started it knowing thousands of others were doing the same thing. I made a bet that my unique perspective would be useful to others, and it paid off.
Has been above $500/mo since 2022, growing steadily since (still a few years away from being able to replace my salary).
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
#115A friend and I host a monthly dinner club for people interested in ethnic cuisine. We work with a single restaurant each month to create an 8-12 course all inclusive price fixe menu. The food is served family style and is authentic to the region we are hosting. We typically host the dinners on a Tues or Wed when the restaurants in our region aren’t too busy and could use the extra business. Since 2023 we’ve been to 4…
Love the communal aspect. Curious about the economics of this, how do you typically split revenue with the restaurant, and what’s the average ticket price per guest?
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
#116About 8 years in, Escape Team steadily keeps growing, which surprises me (I didn’t add any new missions for about 5 years): https://www.escape-team.com It‘s making about $700 on iOS and $300 on Android, solely from $2.99 IAPs for the later missions in the game (the first 2 missions are free). I think a main reason for this is that escape rooms (and games) don’t „saturate“: you play them only once, because then you kn…
The link to your community built missions is down.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
#117https://dbpro.app I’m building DB Pro, a modern desktop database client for developers who want a fast, local-first workflow. I started in October 2025, launched v1 at the end of November, and just crossed $1k MRR. I also post devlogs of life building and marketing DB Pro and am about to post devlog #4. The latest one is here if anyone’s curious: https://youtu.be/-T4GcJuV1rM Still very early, but it’s been fun seeing…
Hi! When will Windows/Linux be available? I'm growing weary of DB Browser for SQLite.
Windows and Linux are both launching next week (just in time for Xmas!)
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
#118Occasionally $500/month, but more reliably $300/month in sales of my Video Hub App - lets users browse, search, tag, and organize videos on local / network drives. Aiming to have an 8th anniversary release February 2026. $5 per copy (Windows, Max, Linux; keep forever) https://videohubapp.com/ MIT open source (build your own copy) https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
Curious how you manage licensing?
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
#119Last year, I came across NotebookLM and immediately noticed a pain point: importing the web pages I was browsing into NotebookLM required several steps. So in less than a day, I developed this Chrome extension: NotebookLM Web Importer[1], which allows for one-click importing. As NotebookLM has gained popularity this year, my extension has also seen great growth. So, in July, I added paid premium features to unlock ad…
I really liked your extension having used it in the past. Great job and really useful! If you don't mind me asking, how do you manage the paid features from a technical point of view? Do you give paid users a token to enter in the extension which then activates certain features or is it something else?
It is account based, and I'm using Clerk for the auth.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
#120https://cluesbysam.com
I started making a daily logic puzzle called Clues by Sam in May and it's been stadily growing since. The number one thing people were asking for was more puzzles, so I started selling puzzle packs instead of monetizing with ads. The reception has been great, and the revenue has been enough for me to decline some consulting gigs and instead focus on improving the game.