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Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#241

Post by topnde »

I run drawcharts[1], which is a tool to help you build good looking hand-drawn style charts. It is not very expensive so I am currently making around 500 a year from it.

Also, as someone who likes to go to conferences and meet and connect with people, I found it hard connecting to 50 people at a conference on Linkedin and then reaching back out to them. So I build LinkedMemo[2] which is a CRM on "top" of Linkedin. You scan a profile, the profile is automatically saved and enriched in the CRM with a quick note.

[1]: https://drawcharts.xyz [2]: https://linkedmemo.com

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#242

Post by laurentiurad »

marziply wrote: post #238
laurentiurad wrote: post #135

I built and run several SaaS platforms: - https://dave-bot.com -> a full-stack AI platform where you can generate videos, images, music, code, 3d objects with frontier Gen AI models. - https://headsnap.io -> a platform that you can generate images of yourself based on 4 selfies. - https://quantiq.live -> a service providing financial and historical data for stocks, as well as government trades. - https://aivestor.tec…

I find both of your stock apps (API and investment) quite interesting but both websites are eerily absent of any information outside of their respective purposes. Both websites are clean and the designs are nice but struggle on mobile it seems (I'm on Android, Brave browser, horizontal scroll seems to be buggy). I wish there was additional information outside of just what they do - I'd like to know more about the dev…

thanks a lot for the feedback! That's a really good point!

When it comes to QuantiQ, I thought about targeting businesses. I already have 2 major clients and had plenty of demos with others. Usually they are not interested when taking a decision about reading pages on the website. Most of them are concentrated on finding out how you manage incidents, security policy, how do you handle improvement suggestions, SDLC, velocity etc. They anyway do their due diligence when it comes to the founder. But I totally understand your point. For B2C this is really important.

Already fixing the mobile navigation and adding some pages with more info about me.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#243

Post by mft_ »

laurentiurad wrote: post #181
aembleton wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get 404 when I look for pricing of headsnap - https://headsnap.io/pricing

thanks a lot for the heads up! That menu shouldn't be available for users that are not logged in. I just pushed a change to hide it. You can check the prices at the bottom of the landing page, before I add a dedicated page for unauthenticated users. LE: I just added the pricing page for unauthenticated users too.

Well-meaning feedback: on the front page, there's a pricing section lower down, which only mentions credits and doesn't give a price; the click-though goes to a login screen.

I found this so instantly frustrating that I rage-closed the page and came here to moan!

Reading the comments, I don't believe you're looking to implement a dark pattern and not show the price, but that's what seems to be happening currently.

Now I see the main pricing page, it's worth pointing out that the categories and prices there don't match with those on the front page: 'starter' with 30 headshots vs. 'novice' with 35; 'basic' with 60 headshots vs. 'proficient' with 70, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#244

Post by piazz »

furk4n wrote: post #231
piazz wrote: post #211

Making almost exactly $500/mo on an Anki extension that embeds AI / text to speech / image gen deeply into the app, allowing you to generate example sentences, audio, explanations, etc, for whatever you’re studying, in bulk. https://smart-notes.xyz Still holding off on the show HN post for now; have a few more features and QoL things I’d like to add first. It’s been an enormously gratifying project and I hear from us…

It looks like a great idea. Kudos on the work so far! May I ask which channels / approaches benefited you the most in terms of reaching your first paying customers?

Thank you!

Almost all of my customers so far have been directly from the central Anki plugin directory. I made sure to use lots of SEO friendly terms / buzzwords in the title so that when people ctrl+f for AI or ChatGPT, they find mine.

My next steps I think are to better incentivize leaving reviews so that it ranks higher on the add-on list, and then launch it on various language learning subreddits. There’s a whole cottage industry of Anki influencers on YouTube as well (absurd, I know), so that’s another channel eventually.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#245

Post by tikotus »

kurtis_reed wrote: post #201
tikotus wrote: post #120

https://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.

Hi Sam

Hi there!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#246

Post by tikotus »

lucasqueiroz wrote: post #218
tikotus wrote: post #120

https://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.

I love the puzzles, I played once and already got the Pack #1, it's a great game! As soon as I finish #1, I will for sure get #2!

Awesome! Thank you so much!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#247

Post by laurentiurad »

mft_ wrote: post #243
laurentiurad wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks a lot for the heads up! That menu shouldn't be available for users that are not logged in. I just pushed a change to hide it. You can check the prices at the bottom of the landing page, before I add a dedicated page for unauthenticated users. LE: I just added the pricing page for unauthenticated users too.

Well-meaning feedback: on the front page, there's a pricing section lower down, which only mentions credits and doesn't give a price ; the click-though goes to a login screen. I found this so instantly frustrating that I rage-closed the page and came here to moan! Reading the comments, I don't believe you're looking to implement a dark pattern and not show the price, but that's what seems to be happening currently. N…

thanks a lot! Will update on the main page so it matches with the actual pricing tiers.

LE: done :D

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#248

Post by insin »

tikotus wrote: post #120

https://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.

I do Clues by Sam every day when I'm walking my dog before I start work, and I was particularly glad to have the daily mental workout this month, as I didn't have time for Advent of Code. Just bought both puzzle packs to support your great work!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#249

Post by MyFirstSass »

dsincl12 wrote: post #136

We're a group of developers who worked together years ago. We meet a few times a year, but scheduling is always a hassle with endless back-and-forth trying to align everyone's calendars. Frustrated by this, I built Troviamo to solve it automatically. I know similar tools exist, but this one is modern and tailored to exactly what we needed. https://troviamo.app

How's this different than the good old Doodle everyone uses in europe at least?

https://doodle.com/en/

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

#250

Post by randallsquared »

pjc50 wrote: post #213
zandert wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's super cool, how do you run it? Are you using some other service under the hood, and just abstract their annoying pricing model?

It used to be possible to do this with a faxmodem; these days telephony is over IP, so there might be telco APIs for it. But, because it's a telco, that will be annoying and hidden. UK: OFCOM are phasing out the fax support requirement https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-infra... (I slightly balked at the $5 initial price, but then realized: this is a desperation fee and I think for a lot of the us…

Why would you need a PBX line to send faxes with Asterix? You'd just need a normal phone line with a plan that includes free ("long distance") calling to the whole country, right?
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