Two weeks ago, I released the tactical map-based WW2 submarine sim Silent Shark (which I got feedback on from HN for beta test a few months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180924 ) and it's gone extremely well for a side project - I've had over 100 Steam reviews, 99% of them are positive, and I have sold a few thousand copies so far. I began working on this game just 6 months ago and have only worked on it…
Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#42https://admakeai.com - Recently got this to 800 MRR , kinda trying to make it the main thing since the LTV on it is the highest. So if I could just figure out ads, this has the highest potential
https://aieasypic.com - First project that I made that made money from subs vs making money from ads, whole reason I continued to indiehack. Its kinda dying but core users still bring in 3-4k/mo , altho actual MRR is 1k/mo
https://bestphoto.ai - Made this after I got frustrated from the bad decisions I made on above, basically a tech rewrite + clone + simplification of aieasypic. Currently makes the most but at a lower margin than aieasypic. Not gonna say exact numbers, but lets say 5k+/mo
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#43The world is changed - given the low cost of reverse engineering and implementation, it would be product suicide to openly call out a money making product. I don't expect too many actual >500$ moneymaking projects to be listed. Would love to be proven wrong.
Precisely what has effectively killed off the "building in public" trend that was all the rage just a two years ago.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#44https://volt.fm It started as a side project in 2001, but now it’s my main business. Here's my own profile if anyone's interested: https://volt.fm/soheilpro
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#45Recently, I have a few Digital Nomads in Europe switching over from Nomad to me due to very good pricing [1]. A lot of customers have also come over from Airalo due to customer service. For example, recently major eSIM providers had a huge incident and left customers stranded for Internet. Akariq had backup resources and replacement eSIMs during those upstream telecom providers issues. I even wrote an Incident Report here [2].
Customer satisfaction remains my highest priority these days.
[1] https://akariq.com/en/esim/region/europe-31-areas/
[2] https://akariq.com/en/blog/akariq-backup-esim-service-interr...
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#46I've grossed 17,531.33 so far this calendar year. You know those cold emails you get sometimes where they want you to get contract jobs and them do the work? I've been doing that for 18 months now and I average roughly 2 hours/week throughout the year. There are some weeks where I'm doing almost no work at all, but then there are some weeks where I'm interviewing daily and maybe have a video call with a client. I've…
Fraudulently doing so probably opens you up to a decent amount of legal risk.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#47I had an idea in 2008 to make a website that emailed your friends when you die. I built https://www.deadmansswitch.net/ in a weekend, and it's been making money since. Around $1k/mo now.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#48Pretty basic ones, I got into AI images cause of that viral AI avatars thing that levelsio made 2-3 years back and have just been iterating on that idea(even though I think if I went into the AI text side of things, I'd have been much bigger at this point): https://admakeai.com - Recently got this to 800 MRR , kinda trying to make it the main thing since the LTV on it is the highest. So if I could just figure out ads…
The only reason I'm sharing these is cause AI image generators are already like thousands in the market, so I mean if someone wants to go through the hell, I don't think its really that easy a market to succeed in anyways.
And here's my list of things that didn't work out: https://mesmer.tools/