I 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.
just curious, how did you find your first user?
Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
101–109 of 109 posts
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#102Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#103I 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
#104I 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.
How much does it cost you to run it? I just remembered this company death.io that does this kind of thing but they do a whole package for what happens after you die.
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#105https://socialmediascheduler.ai/ Just crossed $1.45K/mo!
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#106https://www.roomantic.ai/ Launched this a few months ago for free to gather user feedback and iterate, but didn’t get much traction. Finally got burned out last week and decided to charge $10 for it, thinking I could at least justify abandoning it once my downloads went to zero. But was pleasantly surprised to see I still get 3-5 downloads a day. And these paying users are much more likely to actually provide feedbac…
I like the name but didn’t noticed that it was Room-antic, not romantic. So I was expecting your site to be about dating or AI generated romance fiction, either way something I am not in market for. But after visiting the site, I can definitely use your app for when we are buying furniture or even rearranging things. I wonder if that’s causing any issues with potential customers.
The real issue is that when you search “roomantic” in the App Store, Apple thinks it’s a typo and shows you results for “romantic” instead.
Currently trying to sort this out with the Search team, but a rebrand might be necessary…
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#107Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#108I run Akariq [0] which sells travel eSIMs in 190+ countries and regions in the world. It does not require an app or account. Customers like it for ease of use. Many HN users have bought eSIMs including countries like China, Japan, Australia and USA. I have overall received positive feedback. Recently, I have a few Digital Nomads in Europe switching over from Nomad to me due to very good pricing [1]. A lot of customer…
Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2026 – Show and tell
#109I'm doing okay, to be honest. I'm not putting this money towards anything. I just get the money into my bank account and I become extremely happy about it because it is not life‑changing money, but it is internet money, so it's always extremely attractive. But it is not something that you do in a day, I think, because I've been working on this project for three months. I released it to the public, and then after a couple months it just exploded with Google Search. Now I get $30 to $20 per day, every day, completely passively.