How much money are you earning from your software products? • Hacker News Board

Re: How much money are you earning from your software products?

#131

Post by w0rd-driven » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 2:47 AM UTC

reiz wrote: post #96

I am running http://www.versioneye.com . Currently don't earn much with it. Most people are using it for open source projects. Still thinking about how to monetise it right. Any ideas?

As it is, I find it hard. If you stick to bundler/npm/etc would there be benefit it not only notifications but an automatic update feature? Tie it to git where possible to have a "newest" branch that keeps this out of master and/or tie it with the likes of Travis CI to make sure things didn't break. There's almost too many moving parts but I see high value in keeping a project on the latest dependencies without much involvement from myself. Its not foolproof though and may be too error prone to pull anything off without pulling your hair out.

Re: How much money are you earning from your software products?

#132

Post by rk0567 » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 2:48 AM UTC

$100/mo from http://assembleyourpc.net - a simple tool for assembling pc online.

Re: How much money are you earning from your software products?

#133

Post by mhoad » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 3:07 AM UTC

I literally just launched http://fmhgifts.com last week so it's a bit early to say but I have heard rumours of similar websites making several thousand a month.

Re: How much money are you earning from your software products?

#134

Post by w0rd-driven » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 3:28 AM UTC

lemonberry wrote: post #59

I love these posts. They are super inspirational. I'm a relatively new developer and have some saas ideas geared towards restaurants and bars. I'm hoping 18 years of domain knowledge and great customer service skills will trump any lack in developer skills that I have. Congratulations to everyone that's found success doing this. And a huge go for it to those of you on the fence of writing your own product.

If you have customer service skills that rival development work, there's a lot of people who are precisely flipped, myself included. I would suggest finding a Yin to your Yang, but only if you felt inclined. Its not to stick you with the customer facing parts only. It could be a mentor/partnership where you build that up in someone while they mentor/partner your developer chops. This may be unmanageable and hard to find the right fit where you aren't the one giving more than taking. I just think there's some pretty high value in domain knowledge and customer service skills that if you have deficiencies that eventually halt progress, finding someone to throw you over a wall is a definite advantage. I just got a flash of coop games like splinter cell and the analogy seems way too spot on. Co-founders should help you reach places neither of you could alone in a "single player game". Now if I could just remember this when the time comes to put myself on the market, so to speak :>.

Re: How much money are you earning from your software products?

#135

Post by codex » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 3:47 AM UTC

dangrossman wrote: post #119

codex wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems strictly worse than a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter assuming the same 40 hour week. Are there lifestyle advantages?

What about a job at Google, Facebook or Twitter would be better? If you think they're strictly better, there must be some huge downside to my lifestyle I mentioned that I don't see. They offer worse hours, less pay, less autonomy, higher cost of living, and they're on the wrong end of the country if I want to keep close ties to relatives.

The compensation at these is substantially better than what you've mentioned. Some offer regional offices around the country and world. I can see how the extra autonomy and reduced workload would be nice, but I'm not sure you can judge without trying both.

Re: How much money are you earning from your software products?

#136

Post by sarah2079 » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 4:57 AM UTC

pm wrote: post #102

waleedka wrote: post #56

Symphony makes $2500/month ( http://www.symphonytools.com ). Launched 4 months ago. Back in December, my co-founder and I spent 3 weeks brainstorming and wrote 25 business plans for 25 ideas. And then chose this one. Started building it in January. It's written in Python. Hosting costs about $700/month on Google App Engine. It doesn't cover our costs yet, but it's growing. Hardest challenge so far has been to find wa…

Hosting SHOULD NOT cost that much with GAE. What's the bulk of your cost (I'm guessing DB writes)?

I was able to get my GAE costs way down by focusing on minimizing DB writes. Some tips:

- Instead of storing an array in the database directly, store it as a json string. storing an array uses a DB write for every array element.

- Don't index things if you can get away with it (indexing doubles writes).

In my case I was using about 600 writes for every user action when I only needed two. This may be common knowledge, but I was pretty surprised that storing arrays was costing me so much.

Re: How much money are you earning from your software products?

#137

Post by dannowatts » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 5:19 AM UTC

ritchiea wrote: post #127

dannowatts wrote: post #23

have a few side projects. here's a fun one: http://ShouldIDrinkThisFuckingBeer.com it is making absolutely zero money (yet), but the engagement on the site is INSANE. also, the site itself, and the people who come to it (and email/tweet/blog/instagram/vine/smoke signals/carrier pigeon/etc about it) are passionate and willing to support craft beer. besides the benefit of interacting with super cool, kick-ass people wh…

It told me to go fuck myself when I entered Sixpoint Crisp, what's wrong with Sixpoint?

abso-fucking-lutely nothing! got nothin but love for brooklyn beers, i am a huge fan of six point and brooklyn brews.

the real question is: why don't you know the beer's actual fucking name?!

THE Crisp (by Sixpoint)

http://sixpoint.com/beers/core/thecrisp

it's even IN the url slug! ;)

Re: How much money are you earning from your software products?

#138

Post by msurguy » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 5:30 AM UTC

Making around 500$/month from a carbon ad on my http://bootsnipp.com (free Bootstrap snippets), plus a couple hundred from affiliate income that I link to from the site... Time spent originally was 4 days.

Released a new improved version of the site two weeks ago (the rewrite took about 60-80 hours total but has bigger potential for the site). Now thinking of selling templates or skins on the site too - that would be a whole lot more $ than the ad...

Re: How much money are you earning from your software products?

#139

Post by dannowatts » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 5:30 AM UTC

bascule wrote: post #100

dannowatts wrote: post #23

have a few side projects. here's a fun one: http://ShouldIDrinkThisFuckingBeer.com it is making absolutely zero money (yet), but the engagement on the site is INSANE. also, the site itself, and the people who come to it (and email/tweet/blog/instagram/vine/smoke signals/carrier pigeon/etc about it) are passionate and willing to support craft beer. besides the benefit of interacting with super cool, kick-ass people wh…

It told me to go fuck myself when I put in Mephistopheles Stout by Avery. I think it's broken

you're broken. the actual beer is called "Mephistopheles' Stout" if you typed that in, it will offer congratulations and offer to fuck your face. and even if you were to just type in "Mephistopheles" it would want to hang the fuck out with you.

if on the other hand you typed in "Mephistopheles Stout" you would of course not have entered the name of the beer, and you would be rightly told that you are an inspiration for birth control (or other such wonderful life lessons)

or at the end of it, you can be like the others who get it and realize, it's vulgar insults and vulgar encouragements that helps suggest craft beers to drink after you're done drinking the one you're currently on. either way, thanks for looking and taking the time to type in your beer to see if a shitty website approves of your (mostly) shitty life choices :)

Re: How much money are you earning from your software products?

#140

Post by dannowatts » Mon, Nov 04, 2013, 5:36 AM UTC

allworknoplay wrote: post #130

dannowatts wrote: post #23

have a few side projects. here's a fun one: http://ShouldIDrinkThisFuckingBeer.com it is making absolutely zero money (yet), but the engagement on the site is INSANE. also, the site itself, and the people who come to it (and email/tweet/blog/instagram/vine/smoke signals/carrier pigeon/etc about it) are passionate and willing to support craft beer. besides the benefit of interacting with super cool, kick-ass people wh…

it doesn't like dale's pale ale. dale's pale ale is fucking delicious (I am in fact drinking it right now) and definitely "craft".

the site is called "should i drink this fucking beer ?" not "should i drink this fucking beer by this brewery?" ;)

typing "Dale's Pale Ale" brings forth the lovely foamy compliments i so desire in a green, hoppy, insulting website. go give it a shot and you'll feel warm and fuzzy (from the website, not just the beer)

so tonight, i raise my bottle of pliny to you and tomorrow i shall raise my can of heady topper to you. for you will have checked out a site about beer. and typed your shit correctly.