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Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

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Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#12
post #5

It's been a few years, but at one time I averaged $3,500.00 per month, with two months at $5,000.00, from two AdSense units on just one single, quite lengthy but well-researched and well-written essay on legal music downloading. I am, today, skeptical that it's worth anyone's while to try to make money from ads published alongside one's articles. At one time that was widely accepted as the very best way to make money…

I always assumed you had to know how to make a compelling video to succeed at kickstarter. And as a correlate be charismatic and photogenic.

I have two close friends who are professional filmmakers, Sari Gennis and Ted Arabian. Sari was the animation director for Ferngully, her sister was my boss' girlfriend back in the day.

I met Ted in high school, when he and I both played Roman Soldiers in Jesus Christ Superstar.

However I plan to make most of the video myself, but then to have Ted edit it. Real Soon Now I'm going to make a storyboard from digital still shots, then an improvised voice track, then I'll transcribe the voice track into text and edit it down to where I think Ted could get it to fit into three minutes.

My plan is to produce a quality video but with some very humbling imagery. Consider that a homeless fellow here in Portland, not long ago said to me "Some of they people I find sleeping on the street, they tell me they used to make six figures".

I find lots of software engineers eating at soup kitchens and sleeping in homeless shelters.

It's not exactly like my computer employer index is going to find them jobs, but that if I can make it easier for most people to find jobs, then everyone will benefit.

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#14
post #8

I wrote a book[1] a year and a half ago that just recently crossed $42k in total revenue. These days it consistently earns $1.5k/mo without much further input from me, other than tweaks to the landing page copy and updates once in awhile when Stripe or Rails changes significantly. [1]: https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com Edit: If you'd like to read a preview, you can do so here: https://www.masteringmodernpayment…

What proportion of that revenue are you receiving?

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#15
post #5

It's been a few years, but at one time I averaged $3,500.00 per month, with two months at $5,000.00, from two AdSense units on just one single, quite lengthy but well-researched and well-written essay on legal music downloading. I am, today, skeptical that it's worth anyone's while to try to make money from ads published alongside one's articles. At one time that was widely accepted as the very best way to make money…

I always assumed you had to know how to make a compelling video to succeed at kickstarter. And as a correlate be charismatic and photogenic.

[deleted]

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#16
post #5

It's been a few years, but at one time I averaged $3,500.00 per month, with two months at $5,000.00, from two AdSense units on just one single, quite lengthy but well-researched and well-written essay on legal music downloading. I am, today, skeptical that it's worth anyone's while to try to make money from ads published alongside one's articles. At one time that was widely accepted as the very best way to make money…

I always assumed you had to know how to make a compelling video to succeed at kickstarter. And as a correlate be charismatic and photogenic.

[deleted]

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#17
post #5

It's been a few years, but at one time I averaged $3,500.00 per month, with two months at $5,000.00, from two AdSense units on just one single, quite lengthy but well-researched and well-written essay on legal music downloading. I am, today, skeptical that it's worth anyone's while to try to make money from ads published alongside one's articles. At one time that was widely accepted as the very best way to make money…

I always assumed you had to know how to make a compelling video to succeed at kickstarter. And as a correlate be charismatic and photogenic.

Realizing that personal anecdote is in no way data, but I've backed 49 Kickstarter projects and have never one watched a video.

Edit: Apparently I've backed 59 projects, 10 didn't reach their funding goal.

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#18
post #14
post #8

I wrote a book[1] a year and a half ago that just recently crossed $42k in total revenue. These days it consistently earns $1.5k/mo without much further input from me, other than tweaks to the landing page copy and updates once in awhile when Stripe or Rails changes significantly. [1]: https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com Edit: If you'd like to read a preview, you can do so here: https://www.masteringmodernpayment…

What proportion of that revenue are you receiving?

I use Stripe (and sometimes PayPal) so I get 97% of the gross revenue. Monthly recurring expenses are a cheap VPS to run the app and Facebook retargeting fees.

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#19
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always assumed you had to know how to make a compelling video to succeed at kickstarter. And as a correlate be charismatic and photogenic.

I ran a successful Kickstarter with what I believe to be a cruddy video. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1985705009/pimame I think there are two spectrums to successful Kickstarter videos: Over the top really well done quality videos, and super low budget (read: $0) iMovie videos that show sincerity. Anywhere in between that and you come off looking like a scam.

That is a good point. I helped with a kickstarter for a fusion project. Our budget was low but we hired some marketing people who spent about $6000 putting together a video for us. It wasn't great but it was the best we could manage. We got a ton of comments about how scammy we looked, including from many of the project's long-time supporters.

(Luckily it didn't hurt us too badly, we raised $180K.)

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